INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

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Engineering Instructions for

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING
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Telecom Quality Assurance circle, Bangalore

AlqSi Approved by

The CGM, TQA circle, Bangalore

eU MUl M SlM Date of Issue

26.09.2012

Written by

Expert Comments

ATISH PAL (QA CIRCLE)

MAMATHA N.K (QA CIRCLE)

Restricted use by BSNL Employees only

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

CONTENTS

Sl.
No.

Particulars

Page No.

Scope

Overview

3-6

Cloud Computing Models

6-7

Cloud Deployment Models

7-8

Challenges of Cloud Computing

8-9

Growth of Cloud Computing

Future of Cloud Computing

9-10

Abbreviations

FAQs

10

Reference

10

10-12

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

1.0 SCOPE :
This Engineering Instruction describes about Cloud Computing.

2.0 Overview Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a computing paradigm, where a large pool of systems are connected
in private or public networks, to provide dynamically scalable infrastructure for
application, data and file storage. With the advent of this technology, the cost of
computation, application hosting, content storage and delivery is reduced significantly.
Internet and central remote servers are used to maintain data and applications. Cloud
computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installation and
access their personal files at any computer with internet access. This technology allows for
much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and
bandwidth. A simple example of cloud computing is Yahoo email, Gmail, or Hotmail etc.

A non-exhaustive view of the main aspects forming Cloud Computing Systems

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

2.1 Characteristics of Cloud Computing are as follows:

i)

High scalability - Cloud environments enable servicing of business requirements

for larger audiences, through high scalability.

ii) Agility -The cloud works in the distributed mode environment. It shares
resources among users and tasks, while improving efficiency and agility
(responsiveness).
iii) High availability and reliability -Availability of servers is high and more
reliable as the chances of infrastructure.
iv) Multi-sharing - With the cloud working in a distributed and shared mode,
multiple users and applications can work more efficiently with cost reductions by
sharing common infrastructure.
v) Services in pay-per-use mode - SLAs between the provider and the user must
be defined when offering services in pay per use mode. This may be based on the
complexity of services offered.
vi) Application Programming Interfaces -(APIs) may be offered to the users so
they can access services on the cloud by using these APIs.

vii) Support for all service oriented applications

2.2 Cloud Computing comprises of the following three sections in a pyramidal

structure

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

a. Cloud Application
This is the apex of the cloud pyramid, where applications are run and interacted with
via a web browser, hosted desktop or remote client. A hallmark of commercial cloud
computing applications is that users never need to purchase expensive software
licenses themselves. Instead, the cost is incorporated into the subscription fee. A
cloud application eliminates the need to install and run the application on the
customer's own computer, thus removing the burden of software maintenance,
ongoing operation and support.
b. Cloud Platform
The middle layer of the cloud pyramid, which provides a computing platform or
framework as a service. A cloud computing platform dynamically provisions,
configures, reconfigures and de-provisions servers as needed to cope with increases
or decreases in demand. This in reality is a distributed computing model, where
many services pull together to deliver an application or infrastructure request.

c. Cloud Infrastructure
The foundation of the cloud pyramid is the delivery of IT infrastructure through
virtualisation. Virtualisation allows the splitting of a single physical piece of
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OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

hardware into independent, self governed environments, which can be scaled in

terms of CPU, RAM, Disk and other elements. The infrastructure includes servers,
networks and other hardware appliances delivered as either Infrastructure Web
Services, farms or "cloud centres". These are then interlinked with others for
resilience and additional capacity.

3.0 Cloud Computing Models:

Cloud Providers offer services that can be grouped into three categories.

1. Software as a Service (SaaS):

In this model, a complete application is offered to the customer, as a service on
demand. A single instance of the service runs on the cloud & multiple end users are
serviced. On the customers side, there is no need for upfront investment in servers or
software licenses, while for the provider, the costs are lowered, since only a single
application needs to be hosted & maintained. Today SaaS is offered by companies
such as Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, Zoho, etc.

2. Platform as a Service (Paas):

Here, a layer of software, or development environment is encapsulated & offered as a
service, upon which other higher levels of service can be built. The customer has the
freedom to build his own applications, which run on the providers infrastructure. To
meet manageability and scalability requirements of the applications, PaaS providers
offer a predefined combination of OS and application servers, such as LAMP
platform (Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP), restricted J2EE, Ruby etc. Googles App
Engine, Force.com, etc are some of the popular PaaS examples.

3. Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas):

IaaS provides basic storage and computing capabilities as standardized services over
the network. Servers, storage systems, networking equipment, data centre space etc.
are pooled and made available to handle workloads. The customer would typically
deploy his own software on the infrastructure. Some common examples are Amazon,
GoGrid, 3 Tera, etc.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

4.0 Cloud Deployment Models:

On premises/ Internal

Off premises/ External

Enterprises can choose to deploy applications on Public, Private or Hybrid clouds. Cloud
Integrators play a vital part in determining the right cloud path for each organization.
a. Public Cloud:
Public clouds are owned and operated by third parties; they deliver superior
economies of scale to customers, as the infrastructure costs are spread among a mix
of users, giving each individual client an attractive low-cost, Pay-as-you-go model.
All customers share the same infrastructure pool with limited configuration, security
protections, and availability variances. These are managed and supported by the cloud
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provider. One of the advantages of a Public cloud is that they may be larger than an
enterprises cloud, thus providing the ability to scale seamlessly, on demand.
b. Private Cloud:
Private clouds are built exclusively for a single enterprise. They aim to address
concerns on data security and offer greater control, which is typically lacking in a
public cloud. There are two variations to a private cloud:
- On-premise Private Cloud:
On-premise private clouds, also known as internal clouds are hosted within ones own
data center. This model provides a more standardized process and protection, but is
limited in aspects of size and scalability. This is best suited for applications which
require complete control and configurability of the infrastructure and security.

- Externally hosted Private Cloud:

This type of private cloud is hosted externally with a cloud provider, where the
provider facilitates an exclusive cloud environment with full guarantee of privacy.
This is best suited for enterprises that dont prefer a public cloud due to sharing of
physical resources.
c. Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid Clouds combine both public and private cloud models. With a Hybrid Cloud,
service providers can utilize 3rd party Cloud Providers in a full or partial manner thus
increasing the flexibility of computing. The Hybrid cloud environment is capable of
providing on-demand, externally provisioned scale. The ability to augment a private
cloud with the resources of a public cloud can be used to manage any unexpected
surges in workload.

5.0 Challenges of Cloud Computing:

a. Data Protection:
Data Security is a crucial element that warrants scrutiny. Enterprises are reluctant to
buy an assurance of business data security from vendors. They fear losing data to
competition and the data confidentiality of consumers. In many instances, the actual
storage location is not disclosed, adding onto the security concerns of enterprises. In
the existing models, firewalls across data centers (owned by enterprises) protect this
sensitive information. In the cloud model, Service providers are responsible for
maintaining data security and enterprises would have to rely on them.
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b. Data Recovery and Availability:

All business applications have Service level agreements that are stringently followed.
Operational teams play a key role in management of service level agreements and
runtime governance of applications. In production environments, operational teams
support Appropriate clustering and Fail over Data Replication System monitoring
(Transactions monitoring, logs monitoring and others)
Maintenance (Runtime Governance) Disaster recovery , Capacity and performance
management.
If, any of the above mentioned services is under-served by a cloud provider, the
damage & impact could be severe.

c. Management Capabilities:
Despite there being multiple cloud providers, the management of platform and
infrastructure is still in its infancy. Features like Auto-scaling for example, are a
crucial requirement for many enterprises. There is huge potential to improve on the
scalability and load balancing features provided today.
d. Regulatory and Compliance Restrictions:
In some of the European countries, Government regulations do not allow customer's
personal information and other sensitive information to be physically located outside
the state or country. In order to meet such requirements, cloud providers need to setup
a data center or a storage site exclusively within the country to comply with
regulations. Having such an infrastructure may not always be feasible and is a big
challenge for cloud providers.

6.0 Growth of Cloud Computing :

Cloud computing is a powerful new abstraction for large scale data processing systems
which is scalable, reliable and available. Moving to a cloud computing model can help an
organisation to survive in a tough economic climate, equipping with the latest business
tools and giving an access to advanced technologies at a fraction of the cost of purchasing
and running the same systems in-house. Issues pertaining to the security/privacy aspects
may require new ways of addressing to facilitate the growth of Cloud Computing as the
computing means in the future.

7.0 Future of Cloud Computing:

Cloud Computing offer the opportunity to build data observatories with data, software and
expertise together to solve problems such as those associated with economic modelling,
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climate change, terrorism, healthcare and epidemics etc. Clouds could assist greatly in the egovernment agenda by providing information in one place to the citizen, together with
software to manipulate the data. It is a new emerging architecture needed to expand the
Internet to become the computing platform of the future. Cloud Computing today is the
beginning of network based computing over Internet in the future. It is also the beginning of a
new Internet based service economy: the Internet centric, Web based, on demand, Cloud
applications and computing economy.

8.0 Abbreviations:

API : Application Programming Interface

SaaS: Software as a Service
PaaS : Platform as a Service
IaaS : Infrastructure as a Service

9.0 FAQs:
i)

What are the benefits of Cloud Computing ?

ii)

Reduction of capital expenditure.

Increased Storage
Improved Resource Utilization.
Flexibility
Economies of scale.
Scalability on demand.
Quick & easy implementation
Quality of Service
Guaranteed uptime/SLAs.
Anywhere access.
Helps smaller business to compete.
Disaster recovery /backup.

Who probably gains in the use of Cloud Computing Technology ?

Internet-based companies that could gain from a shift towards cloud computing
include:

Amazon.com (AMZN)
Google (GOOG)
Rackspace Hosting (RAX)

Healthcare providers that have embarked their solutions onto the clouds include:
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iii)

eKlinik Healthcare Cloud Computing

Who probably loses out in the use of Cloud Computing Technology ?

Traditional software producers that could have some catching up to do if cloud

computing ultimately wins out include:

iv)

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Oracle (ORCL)
SAP AG (SAP)
Blackbaud (BLKB)
Lawson Software (LWSN)et
Aecom Technology (ACM)
Microsoft

What is Cloud of Clouds ?

The term cloud of clouds is used for the aggregate of the clouds hosted by several
providers that co-operate in delivering cloud services.

v)

What is Intercloud ?
The term Intercloud is used for all cloud systems, after an analogy with the word
Internet, meaning inter-networks. This is not the same as all websites on the
Internet, because there are many that are excluded from cloud computing.

vi)

What is Cloud Balancing & Cloud Bursting ?

Cloud balancing is the day-to-day use by a consumer of more than one cloud
provider for load balancing, and cloud bursting is the automatic overflow of
demand to a different cloud provider only at peak times.

vii) What is Cloud Spanning ?

Cloud spanning is the use of more than one cloud service to run different
components of an application.
viii) What are Cloud Clients ?
They are end-user access point to a cloud system. These include PCs, notebooks,
tablets and mobile phones, and the access may be through a web browser or a
program interface running on the client.They are used only to access cloud systems,
and they arent part of cloud computing themselves.

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ix)

OVERVIEW OF CLOUD COMPUTING

What are Cloud operating systems for Clients & Datacentres ?

For Clients:
A cloud operating system for a cloud client, such as Chrome O/S and Cloud,
is a combination of a simple O/S and a web browser that enables a user
device with minimal processor and memory resources to access cloud
services.
For Datacentres:
Unlike a traditional server O/S, such as Windows NT and Unix, which
manages the resources of a single server computer, a cloud operating system
for a cloud datacentre manages all the servers in the entire datacentre, which
are possibly in distributed locations.

x)

What is Cloudware ?
Cloud software is also known as cloudware, and it includes cloud:

xi)

Applications
Databases
Platforms
Datacentre operating systems

What are Cloud Operations?

Cloud operations are IT operations that provide, support or develop cloud systems,
or that manage cloud data centres. Cloud operations use cloud engineering, which is
the application of systems engineering and software engineering to the design of
cloud systems, and cloud architecture, which is the structure of these systems, in
terms of their components and the way they interact with each other and with
external systems.

xii)

What is OneCloud ?
It is Indias first Uptime Institute Certified data centres with combined connectivity
and IT services availability from BSNL. It is a joint initiative of BSNL and
Dimension Data where both have formed a strategic alliance to provide Indian
enterprises the power of cloud computing via their data centre services in India.
These services are designed to meet global IT standards, with effective
connectivity, manageability and security.

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10.0 Reference :
Technical Documents on Cloud Computing.

****** End of document******

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