A

Seminar Report
on

Cloud Computing

Submitted as a requirement for the partial fullfillment of degree of

Bachelor of Technology
under
Rajasthan Technical University, Kota

Session: 2009-2010

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Mr. Nitesh Chauhan Neha Milak
Lecturer, Department of ICT Final Year B.Tech.
M. L. V. T. E. C.
Bhilwara(Raj)

Department of ICT
M.L.V.Textile & Engineering College.
(An Autonomous Engineering College of Govt. Of Rajasthan)
Bhilwara 311001(Rajasthan), India.
Preface

Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving the energy, kinetic and

potential, provided and stored up by nature for the use of man. It is the business
of engineering to utilize this energy to the best advantage, so that there may be the
least possible waste of time. Engineering is the professional art of applying science
to the optimum conversion of natural resources to the benefit of man. Engineering
is associated with creativity and judgment, which is not a theory subject but is an
art which can be gained with systematic study, observation and practice. To bridge
the gap of theory and practical and to provide a solution for it practical knowledge
is very necessary.

In the college circulation we usually get the theoretical knowledge of indus-

tries, as how is it work? But how can we prove our theoretical knowledge to increase
the productivity or efficiency of the industry? To make the learning of engineering
more fruitful, we the students of Manikya Lal Verma Textile & Engineering College,
Bhilwara, present a seminar on a technology topic as per specified in the syllabus of
Rajasthan Technical University, Kota of B.Tech. final year. This seminar also helps
in increasing the understandibility and knowledge about the technology, we present.

Succeeding chapters give details about Cloud Computing, a future comput-

ing based on internet, together with its deployment models, service layers, benefits,
limitations and the top five vendors of it.

i
Acknowledgement

Before I get into think of the things I would like to add a few heartfelt
words for people who were the part of this seminar report in numerous ways. I feel
it pertinent to add a word of praise for my teachers for their cool mind, patience
and smile which definitely provided me encouragement, enthusiasm and lively at-
mosphere all the times.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. M. C. Govil (Princi-

pal, MLVTEC), Mr. Mukesh Verma (Lecturer, MLVTEC) and Mr. Anurag Jagetiya
(Lecturer, MLVTEC) for the help provided in presentation of the seminar, which
was assigned to me. I owe my special thanks to my seminar guide Mr. Nitesh
Chauhan (Lecturer, MLVTEC) for his help and support during development of the
report. Without his friendly help and guidance it was difficult to do work on this
topic.

Words are insufficient to express my profound sense of gratitude to my

teachers, parents, friends whose encouragement and blessings gave me great strength
to work for the seminar and report on “ Cloud Computing ”.

Neha Milak

ii
Abstract

“ The data center of the future could be based in the cloud.” (Jason
Staten, Forrester) [Herrmann 2008]

The cloud computing is a next generation platform that provides dynamic

resource pools, virtualization, and high availability. Cloud computing describes
both a platform and a type of application. A cloud computing platform dynami-
cally provisions, configures, reconfigures, and deprovisions servers as needed. Cloud
applications are applications that are extended to be accessible through the Inter-
net. These cloud applications use large data centers and powerful servers that host
Web applications and Web services.

Cloud computing infrastructure accelerates and fosters the adoption of

innovations as it comprises an automated framework that can deliver standardized
services quickly and cheaply. Cloud computing infrastructure allows enterprises to
achieve more efficient use of their IT hardware and software investments. Cloud com-
puting increases profitability by improving resource utilization. Pooling resources
into large clouds drives down costs and increases utilization by delivering resources
only for as long as those resources are needed.

This report introduces the value of implementing cloud computing. The

report defines clouds, its deployment models, service layers, explains the business
benefits of cloud computing, limitations and name of top five cloud providers.

iii
Contents

1 Introduction to Cloud Computing 1

1.1 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Comparison of the three: Grid, Utility and The Cloud Computing . . 4

2 Cloud Computing Deployment Models 6

2.1 Public clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Private clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3 Hybrid clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3 SPI : Cloud Computing Service Model 8

3.1 Software as a service (SaaS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2 Platform as a service (PaaS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3 Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4 Business Values Of Cloud Computing 10

5 Limitations 14

6 Cloud Vendors : Top Five 17

7 Future Scope 20
7.1 Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

8 Conclusion 22

9 References 23

iv
List of Figures

1.1 Timeline of computing transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 Cloud, IT on rent via internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Comparing the three Grid, Utility and Cloud Computing . . . . . . . 4
2.1 Cloud Computing Deployment Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1 Cloud Computing Service Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1 Cloud Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1 Cloud Porviders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

v
Chapter 1

Introduction to Cloud Computing

1.1 History
Cloud computing has evolved through a number of phases which include
grid, utility computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) but the overarching concept
of delivering computing resources through a global network is rooted in the sixties
, when John McCarthy opined that ”computation may someday be organized as a
public utility.” However, since the internet only started to offer significant band-
width till nineties, cloud computing for the masses has been something of a late
developer.
Figure 1.1 shows the evolution phases of cloud computing. As the compu-
tation complexity increased overtime, ”Cluster Computing” came in light that was
based on using multiple computers together, to perform a task, in parallel. The
next concept was of ”Grid Computing”, that was extending Cluster computing in
the sense that here ”Clusters” can be distributed in different geographical regions.
In parallel another term ”Utility Computing” also emerged that was the first that
brought the concept of ”PAY-PER-USAGE” model for resources but it was complex
to manage as all the control had to be done by the end-user.
The next is what we are discussing here, “ The Cloud Computing ”. One
of the first milestones for cloud computing was the arrival of Salesforce.com in 1999,
which pioneered the concept of delivering enterprise applications (SaaS) via a sim-
ple website. The services firm paved the way for both specialist and mainstream
software firms to deliver applications over the internet.
The next development was Amazon Web Services in 2002, which provided
a suite of cloud-based services including storage, computation and even human in-
telligence through the Amazon Mechanical Turk. Then in 2006, Amazon launched
its Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) as a commercial web service that allows small
companies and individuals to rent computers on which to run their own computer

1
applications.

Figure 1.1: Timeline of computing transformation

Another big milestone came in 2009, as Web 2.0 hit its stride, and Google
and others started to offer browser-based enterprise applications, though services
such as Google Apps. The most important contribution to cloud computing has
been the emergence of ”killer apps” from leading technology giants such as Mi-
crosoft and Google. When these companies deliver services in a way that is reliable
and easy to consume, the knock-on effect to the industry as a whole is a wider gen-
eral acceptance of online services.

1.2 Definitions
Everyone has an opinion on what is cloud computing. It can be the ability
to rent a server or a thousand servers and run a geophysical modeling application
on the most powerful systems available anywhere. It can be the ability to rent a
virtual server, load software on it, turn it on and off at will, or clone it ten times to
meet a sudden workload demand. It can be storing and securing immense amounts
of data that is accessible only by authorized applications and users.
The cloud model differs from traditional outsourcing in that customers do
not hand over their own IT resources to be managed. Instead they plug into the
cloud, treating it as they would an internal data center or computer providing the
same functions.
Figure 1.2 gives a abstract look to cloud computing that allow an end
user to access cloud facilties that the cloud providers provides via internet.The term
came into vogue a few years ago and has since generated its share of controversy.
Here are some descriptions found for cloud computing:
 Figure 1.2: Cloud, IT on rent via internet

• General Definition - The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet,
based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network,
and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction
of the underlying infrastructure it represents and computing reflects the ability
of performing computing tasks.
• Wikipedia defines it as “ An Internet-based computing, whereby shared re-
sources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices
on-demand, like a public utility.”
• Amazon EC2 It’s “ A web service that provides resizable compute capacity
in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers
”
• Salesforce.com “ When you use any app that runs in the cloud, you just log
in, customize it, and start using it”
• A technical definition is “ A computing capability that provides an abstrac-
tion between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture
(e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network ac-
cess to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider
interaction.”
Clearly, there is a diversity of opinion on what cloud computing is, what
it isn’t, and whether it’s a sea change or just another technology but I suggest not to
get hung up on definitions. Don’t focus on the jargon of whether something is cloud
computing, or software as a service, or the latest buzzword. Instead, focus on the
changing IT equation. The world of computing is moving away from the on-premises
IT model, where you keep buying servers, PCs and software licenses as your business
grows. Cloud computing disrupts the conventional model and opens a new IT path
for the small-to-midsize business: ”clouds” of computing power, accessed over the
Internet, become your server and your data center. Among the clouds: inexpensive
applications that users can access on demand from any location and through a va-
riety of devices.

1.3 Comparison of the three: Grid, Utility and The Cloud

Computing
Whenever anyone discuss about Cloud Computing, two more terms appear over-
whelming with it namely GRID computing and UTILITY computing but there is a
clear distinction between GRID and CLOUD whereas UTILTY is extended by The
Cloud.

Figure 1.3: Comparing the three Grid, Utility and Cloud Computing

Figure 1.3 gives a clear distinction between the three. Where grid brought
the concept of clustering, utility introduced renting facility that is extended by cloud
computing with ease of use through abstraction.
 • Grid computing is a form of distributed computing whereby resources of many
computers in a network is used at the same time, to solve a single problem.
Grid systems are designed for collaborative sharing of resources. It can also
be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing. Here all the
resources are allocated simultaneously means scalability is a big issue.

• Utility computing users, conversely, are seeking a service that allows them to
deploy, manage, and scale online services using the provider’s resources and
pay for resources they consume. However, they want to be in control of the
geographic location of the infrastructure and what runs on each server. As the
underlying infrastructure is under the control of user thus sometimes it becomes
complex for use.

• Cloud computing is a broader concept than utility computing. Cloud com-

puting is the use of a 3rd party service (Web Services) to perform computing
needs. With cloud computing, companies can scale up to massive capacities in
an instant without having to invest in new infrastructure. Basically consumers
use what they need on the Internet and pay only for what they use.

Cloud computing eliminates the costs and complexity of buying, config-

uring, and managing the hardware and software needed to build and deploy appli-
cations; these applications are delivered as a service over the Internet (the cloud).It
provides an abstraction to end user from the complexities of underlying complex
infrastructure.
Chapter 2

Cloud Computing Deployment Models

There are many considerations for cloud computing architects to make

when moving from a standard enterprise application deployment model to one based
on cloud computing. There are three basic service models to consider, and they dif-
fered as the open APIs versus the proprietary ones. These are public, private and
hybrid cloud and IT organization can choose to deploy applications according to
their requirements.

2.1 Public clouds

Public clouds are run by third parties, and applications from different cus-
tomers are likely to be mixed together on the cloud’s servers, storage systems, and
networks. Public clouds are most often hosted away from customer premises, and
they provide a way to reduce customer risk and cost by providing a flexible, even
temporary extension to enterprise infrastructure. If a public cloud is implemented
with performance, security, and data locality in mind, the existence of other ap-
plications running in the cloud should be transparent to both cloud architects and
end users. Indeed, one of the benefits of public clouds is that they can be much
larger than a company’s private cloud might be, offering the ability to scale up and
down on demand, and shifting infrastructure risks from the enterprise to the cloud
provider, if even just temporarily.

2.2 Private clouds

Private clouds are built for the exclusive use of one client, providing the
utmost control over data, security, and quality of service. The company owns the

6
infrastructure and has control over how applications are deployed on it. Private
clouds may be deployed in an enterprise datacenter, and they also may be deployed
at a colocation facility. Private clouds can be built and managed by a company’s
own IT organization or by a cloud provider. This model gives companies a high level
of control over the use of cloud resources while bringing in the expertise needed to
establish and operate the environment.

Figure 2.1: Cloud Computing Deployment Models

Figure 2.1 shows the three possible models and a clear distinction between the three.
Where the public cloud is avialable to all subscribers at some remote location, the
private cloud is on-premise to company and is used by itself whereas the third is the
combination of the previous two and is best when security is promised to high level.

2.3 Hybrid clouds

Hybrid clouds combine both public and private cloud models (Figure 5).
They can help to provide on-demand, externally provisioned scale. The ability to
augment a private cloud with the resources of a public cloud can be used to maintain
service levels in the face of rapid workload fluctuations. A hybrid cloud also can be
used to handle planned workload spikes.
Hybrid clouds introduce the complexity of determining how to distribute
applications across both a public and private cloud. Among the issues that need to
be considered is the relationship between data and processing resources. If the data
is small, or the application is stateless, a hybrid cloud can be much more successful
than if large amounts of data must be transferred into a public cloud for a small
amount of processing.
Chapter 3

SPI : Cloud Computing Service Model

In practice, cloud service providers tend to offer services that can be

grouped into three categories: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service
(PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (Iaas). Figure 3.1 shows Cloud Computing
service architecture as a SPI model.

Figure 3.1: Cloud Computing Service Model

3.1 Software as a service (SaaS)

SaaS is software that is developed and hosted by the SaaS vendor and
which the end user accesses over the Internet. Unlike traditional applications that
users install on their computers or servers, SaaS software is owned by the vendor
and runs on computers in the vendor’s data center (or a colocation facility). A single
instance of the software runs on the cloud and services multiple end users or client
organizations.
Broadly speaking, all customers of a SaaS vendor use the same software:
these are one-size-fits-all solutions. Well known examples are Salesforce.com, Google’s

8
Gmail and Apps, instant messaging from AOL, Yahoo and Google, and Voice-over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) from Vonage and Skype.

3.2 Platform as a service (PaaS)

PaaS provides virtualized servers on which users can run applications, or
develop new ones, without having to worry about maintaining the operating systems,
server hardware, load balancing or computing capacity. A PaaS environ-
ment provides compute power by providing a runtime environment for application
code. Therefore the unit of deployment is a package that contains application code
or some compiled version of the application code.
Another capability of PaaS environments is that scale can be specified via
configuration and provided automatically by the environment. For example, if you
need three instances of a web user interface in order to deal with anticipated load
then this could be specified in a configuration file and the environment would deploy
your three instances automatically.
For example, Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform supports the .NET Frame-
work and php. As another example Google’s App Engine supports Java and Python.

3.3 Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

In its purest incarnation Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offers compute
power, storage, and networking infrastructure (such as firewalls and load balancers)
as a service via the public internet. An IaaS customer is a software owner that
is in need of a hosting environment to run their software. Originally the term for
this type of offering was Hardware as a Service (HaaS). IaaS vendors use virtualiza-
tion technologies to provide compute power. Therefore the unit of deployment is a
virtual machine which is built by the software owner. The best known example is
Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).
Commercial examples of IaaS include Joyent, whose main product is a line
of virtualized servers that provide a highly available on-demand infrastructure. Ser-
vices are typically charged by usage and can be scaled dynamically, i.e. capacity
can be increased or decreased more or less on demand.
Chapter 4

Business Values Of Cloud Computing

“ Cloud computing represents a key technology in delivering new eco-

nomics, rapid deploy-ment of services, and tight alignment with busi-
ness goals” - IBM Research Doubles its Productivity with Cloud Com-
puting

Cloud computing has matured from buzzword to a dynamic infrastruc-

ture used today by several organizations. Leading analysts-including thought leaders
from Gartner, Forrester, and IDC-agree that this new model offers significant advan-
tages for fast-paced startups, SMBs and enterprises alike. Today, forward-thinking
business leaders are using the cloud within their enterprise data centers to take
advantage of the best practices that cloud computing has established, namely elas-
ticity, pay-as-you-go model, automation, reduced capital investment and resource
sharing and much more.

• Elasticity

This characteristic is just as important as it has ever been. Appli-

cations designed for cloud computing need to scale with workload demands so
that performance and compliance with service levels remain on target. In order
to achieve this, applications and their data must be loosely coupled to maximize
scalability. The term elastic often applies to scaling cloud applications because
they must not only be ready to scale up, but also scale down as workloads
diminish in order to not run up the cost of deploying in the cloud.
The Animoto application is a good example of how the cloud can be
used to scale applications and maintain quality of service levels. Animoto’s
mashup tool can creates a video from a set of images and music. The com-
pany’s application scaled from 50 to 3,500 servers in just three days due in part

10
 to an architecture that allowed it to scale easily.

Figure 4.1: Cloud Responses

Figure 4.1 shows the responses of the various companies that are adopting cloud
computing as their business tool and the resons, why they are accepting it.

• Pay-as-you-go model

The metered cost, pay-as-you-go approach appeals to small- and medium-

sized enterprises; IT is remotely managed and maintained, typically for a
monthly fee, and the company can let go of ”plumbing concerns”. Since the
vendor has many customers, it can lower the per-unit cost to each customer.
SaaS deployments usually take less time than in-house ones, upgrades are eas-
ier, and users are always using the most recent version of the application.

• Availability

Whether the application serves the users of social networking sites,

or it manages the supply chain for a large manufacturing company, users of
Internet applications expect them to be up and running every minute of every
day. As all the data is at somewhere on the cloud i.e. at some remote location
so it can easily be access from any location at any time.

• Reliability
 Cloud Services are all time available without any interruption of server
failed, data loss as all the deployment is taken as a backup all the times and
whenever needed, backup server is placed at the place of original server.

• Lower Capital Expenditure (CapEx) and maintenance cost

Costs are reduced in a number of ways. Capital expenditures are

reduced because a lot of the load and storage will be shifted over to the service
provider who can provide that service at a lower cost. Aside from decreased
capital expenditures associated with hardware purchases, users would see the
cost of software decrease due to the reduced cost of subscription software. IT
staff at businesses would be reduced because the majority of the maintenance
is performed at the service provider. All the resources are inside the cloud so
you need not to worry about the maintenance of the rented resources and also
of their updation

• Reduce run time

For applications that use the cloud essentially for running batch jobs,
cloud computing makes it straightforward to use 1000 servers to accomplish a
task in 1/1000 the time that a single server would require.
The New York Times example is the perfect example of what is essen-
tially a batch job whose run time was shortened considerably using the cloud.
When The New York Times wished to convert 11 million articles and images
in its archive to PDF format, their internal IT organization said that it would
take seven weeks. In the mean time, one developer using 100 Amazon EC2
simple Web service interface instances running completed the job in 24 hours
for less than 300 dollars.

• Automation

This is one of the greatest advantage of cloud computing. It allows the

customer to define a configuration file for the deployment of his file according
to which the resourced for his application respond to up and downs . It means
that there is no need to again and again managing the deployed application.
Also, cloud allows automated updation of software thereby reducing human
 intervention in its process to some more.

• Increased pace of innovation

Cloud computing can help to increase the pace of innovation. The low
cost of entry to new markets helps to level the playing field, allowing start-up
companies to deploy new products quickly and at low cost. This allows small
companies to compete more effectively with traditional organizations whose
deployment process in enterprise datacenters can be significantly longer. In-
creased competition helps to increase the pace of innovation - and with many
innovations being realized through the use of open source software, the entire
industry serves to benefit from the increased pace of innovation that cloud com-
puting promotes.

• Environmentally Friendly

One of the greatest advantages of cloud computing is the increased

longevity and use of older hardware used by datacenters. This in turn lessens
the amount of electronic waste dumped because equipment is older and in-
creased use of those resources. When businesses use current assets instead of
purchasing additional hardware they reduce the size of their carbon footprint
because it is one less server that is put into service, it is one less server that is
consuming electricity .

• Agility

IT organizations can use the cloud to reduce the risk inherent in

purchasing physical servers. How many servers are needed and can they be
deployed as quickly as the workload increases? When pushing an application
out to the cloud, scalability and the risk of purchasing too much or too lit-
tle infrastructure becomes the cloud provider’s issue. In a growing number of
cases, the cloud provider has such a massive amount of infrastructure that it
can absorb the growth and workload spikes of individual customers, reducing
the financial risk they face and can respond to the sudden growth in market.
Chapter 5

Limitations

All the good things specified previously may all sound very appealing but
there are downsides too.Some of them are as follows:

• Lack of control

In the cloud you may not have the kind of control over your data
or the performance of your applications that you need, or the ability to audit
or change the processes and policies under which users must work. Monitoring
and maintenance tools are immature. It is hard to get metrics out of the cloud
and general management of the work is not simple.There are systems manage-
ment tools for the cloud environment but they may not integrate with existing
system management tools, so you are likely to need two systems.

• Data Loss and Privacy

Cloud customers may risk losing data by having them locked into
proprietary formats and may lose control of data because tools to see who is
using them or who can view them are inadequate. Data loss is a real risk. In
October 2009 1 million US users of the T-Mobile Sidekick mobile phone and
emailing device lost data as a result of server failure at Danger, a company
recently acquired by Microsoft.
Also, when the data is stored at some remote location of some third
party vendor, there is a great issue of privacy for which some provisions should
be established and standardized.

14
• Standardization

It may not be easy to tailor service-level agreements (SLAs) to the

specific needs of a business. Compensation for downtime may be inadequate
and SLAs are unlikely to cover concomitant damages, but not all applications
have stringent uptime requirements. It is sensible to balance the cost of guaran-
teeing internal uptime against the advantages of opting for the cloud. Standards
are immature and things change very rapidly in the cloud.

• Rent Cost

Calculating cost savings is also not straightforward. Having little or

no capital investment may actually have tax disadvantages. SaaS deployments
are cheaper initially than in-house installations and future costs are predictable;
after 3-5 years of monthly fees, however, SaaS may prove more expensive over-
all. Large instances of EC2 are fairly expensive, but it is important to do the
mathematics correctly and make a fair estimate of the cost of an ”on-premises”
(i.e., in-house) operation.

• Interoperability

All IaaS and SaaS providers use different technologies and different
standards. The storage infrastructure behind Amazon is different from that of
the typical data center (e.g., big Unix file systems). The Azure storage engine
does not use a standard relational database; Google’s App Engine does not
support an SQL database. So you cannot just move applications to the cloud
and expect them to run. At least as much work is involved in moving an ap-
plication to the cloud as is involved in moving it from an existing server to a
new one. There is also the issue of employee skills: staff may need retraining
and they may resent a change to the cloud and fear job losses.

• Latency and Performance Issues

Last but not least, there are latency and performance issues. The
Internet connection may add to latency or limit bandwidth. (Latency, in gen-
eral, is the period of time that one component in a system is wasting time
waiting for another component. In networking, it is the amount of time it
takes a packet to travel from source to destination.) Nevertheless, the service
provider, not the scientist, controls the hardware, so unanticipated sharing and
reallocation of machines may affect run times. In future, programming models
exploiting multithreading may hide latency.

In general, SaaS solutions work best for non-strategic, non-mission-

critical processes that are simple and standard and not highly integrated with
other business systems. Customized applications may demand an in-house so-
lution, but SaaS makes sense for applications that have become commoditized,
such as reservation systems in the travel industry.
Chapter 6

Cloud Vendors : Top Five

Cloud computing is spreading through the IT world like wildfire,

with innovative start-ups and established vendors alike clamoring for customer
attention. According to service layers of cloud computing cloud providers
fall into three categories: software-as-a-service providers; infrastructure-as-a-
service vendors that offer Web-based access to storage and computing power;
and platform-as-a-service vendors that give developers the tools to build and
host Web applications. Here are the top five cloud companies that are worth
watching.

• Amazon Web Services

Leading cloud pioneer Amazon offers several different in-the-cloud

services. The best known is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or Amazon
EC2, which allows customers to set up and access virtual servers via a
simple Web interface. Fees are assessed hourly based on the number and
size of virtual machines you have (.10 dollar -.80 dollar per hour), with an
additional fee for data transfer. EC2 is designed to work in conjunction
with Amazon’s other cloud services, which include Amazon Simple Storage
Service (S3), Simple DB, Cloudfront, Simple Queue Service (SQS), and
Elastic MapReduce. The Amazon Web Services list of partners is high
profile, including the likes of Citrix, Facebook, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, and
others.

• Google

Yes, they own search - and are working on owning the cloud. With

17
 Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Picasa in its lineup, Google of-
fers some of the best known cloud computing services available. They also
offer some lesser known cloud services targeted primarily at enterprises,
such as Google Sites, Google Gadgets, Google Video, and most notably,
the Google Apps Engine. The Apps Engine allows developers to write ap-
plications to run on Google’s servers while accessing data that resides in
the Google cloud as well as data that resides behind the corporate firewall.
While it has been criticized for limited programming language support, the
Apps Engine debuted Java and Ajax support in April, which may make it
more appealing to developers.

–
Figure 6.1: Cloud Porviders

• Microsoft

The software giant’s ambitious Azure initiative has a solution for

every Microsoft constituency, from ISVs to Web developers to enterprise
clients to consumers. Formally unveiled in 2008, Azure is still very much
a work in progress. If it succeeds as Microsoft hopes, in future years we’ll
be talking about ”Windows Azure,” a cloud-based OS that offers remote
computing power, storage and management services. To make the dream
come true, Microsoft is investing a king’s fortune in a network of dollar 500
million, 500,000-square-feet datacenters around the country. The facilities
will presumably form the physical backbone of the cloud network. If all
goes according to plan, Microsoft will not only control the software but also
the physical infrastructure that delivers that software. In other words, the
company is attempting to be even bigger than it is now.

• Salesforce.com

More than 59,000 companies use Salesforce.com’s Sales Cloud and

Service Cloud solutions for customer relationship management, which has
helped make it one of the most well-known and most successful cloud com-
puting companies. In addition, through Force.com, it allows developers to
use the Salesforce.com platform to develop their own applications. Users
can also purchase access to the Force.com cloud infrastructure to deploy
their applications.

•Oracle

Although Oracle chief Larry Ellison hasn’t always been a big sup-
porter of the cloud model - and yes, that’s an understatement - Oracle’s
cloud offerings are substantial. The company’s cloud portfolio includes a
number of SaaS solutions which fall into three broad categories: CRM On
Demand, Beehive On Demand (secure collaboration), and Sourcing on De-
mand. For developers, they offer Oracle Platform for SaaS. And they’ve
also partnered with Amazon Web Services to allow companies to deploy
or backup Oracle Database and other products through EC2. In addition,
thanks to its recent acquisition, Oracle also adds Sun Microsystems’ cloud
offerings to its portfolio. In fiscal 2009, Oracle reported dollar 779 million
in revenue from its On Demand applications. That’s an increase of 12 per-
cent from 2008’s dollar 694 million.
Chapter 7

Future Scope

As the ”End-User Computing Revolution” enters its 25th year of em-

powering users, the next phase will be dominated by Cloud Computing together
with the ”always available” clients such as the Netbook and SmartPhones
that are providing a world in which the end-user has complete control over their
client-server, web based, and computing solutions - allowing them to choose
what they use, where they use it, and where they get solutions from.
But cloud technologies and models have not yet reached their full
potential and many of the capabilities associated with the clouds are not yet
developed and researched to a degree that allows their exploitation to the full
degree, respectively meeting all requirements under all potential circumstances
of usage.

7.1 Issues

Many aspects are still in an experimental stage where the long-term

impact on provisioning and usage is as yet unknown. Furthermore, plenty of
as yet unforeseen challenges arise from exploiting the cloud capabilities to their
full potential, involving in particular aspects deriving from the large degree of
scalability and heterogeneity of the underlying resources. We need to deter-
mine the technological gaps that need to be closed in order to realize cloud
infrastructures that fulfill the specific cloud characteristics. Here is the list of
some points that should be considered while going for cloud computing:

– Trust, security and privacy always pose issues in any internet provided ser-

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 vice, but due to the specific nature of clouds, additional aspects related e.g.
to multi-tenancy arise and control over data location etc. arise. What is
more, clouds simplify malicious use of resources, e.g. for hacking purposes,
but also for sensitive calculations (such as weapon design) etc.

– Handling data in clouds is still complicated - in particular as data size and

diversity grows, pure replication is no viable approach, leading to consis-
tency and efficiency issues. Also, the lacking control over data location and
missing provenance poses security and legalistic issues.

– Scale and Elastic scalability which is not only currently restricted to hori-
zontal scale out, but also inefficient as it tends to resource over usage due
to limited scale down capabilities and full replication of instances rather
than only of essential segments.
Chapter 8

Conclusion

TIn today’s global competitive market, companies must innovate and

get the most from its resources to succeed. This requires enabling its employ-
ees, business partners, and users with the platforms and collaboration tools that
promote innovation. Cloud computing infrastructures are next generation plat-
forms that can provide tremendous value to companies of any size. They can
help companies achieve more efficient use of their IT hardware and software in-
vestments and provide a means to accelerate the adoption of innovations. Cloud
computing increases profitability by improving resource utilization. Costs are
driven down by delivering appropriate resources only for the time those re-
sources are needed. Cloud computing has enabled teams and organizations to
streamline lengthy procurement processes. Cloud computing enables innova-
tion by alleviating the need of innovators to find resources to develop, test, and
make their innovations available to the user community. Innovators are free
to focus on the innovation rather than the logistics of finding and managing
resources that enable the innovation.
Clouds already make sense for many small and medium sized busi-
nesses, but technical, financial, and operational hurdles will need to be overcome
before cloud will be used extensively by large public and private enterprises.

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Chapter 9

References

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