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LESSON PROPER:

Cloud Computing
What is cloud computing, in simple terms?

Cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing services -- from applications to storage and
processing power -- typically over the internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis.

How does cloud computing work?

Rather than owning their own computing infrastructure or data centers, companies can rent access to
anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider.

One benefit of using cloud computing services is that firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of
owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it.

In turn, providers of cloud computing services can benefit from significant economies of scale by delivering
the same services to a wide range of customers.

What cloud computing services are available?

Cloud computing services cover a vast range of options now, from the basics of storage, networking, and
processing power through to natural language processing and artificial intelligence as well as standard office
applications. Pretty much any service that doesn't require you to be physically close to the computer hardware that
you are using can now be delivered via the cloud.

What are examples of cloud computing?

Cloud computing underpins a vast number of services. That includes consumer services like Gmail or the
cloud back-up of the photos on your smartphone, though to the services which allow large enterprises to host all their
data and run all of their applications in the cloud. Netflix relies on cloud computing services to run its video streaming
service and its other business systems too, and have a number of other organizations.

Cloud computing is becoming the default option for many apps: software vendors are increasingly offering
their applications as services over the internet rather than standalone products as they try to switch to a subscription
model. However, there is a potential downside to cloud computing, in that it can also introduce new costs and new
risks for companies using it.

Why is it called cloud computing?

A fundamental concept behind cloud computing is that the location of the service, and many of the details
such as the hardware or operating system on which it is running, are largely irrelevant to the user. It's with this in
mind that the metaphor of the cloud was borrowed from old telecoms network schematics, in which the public
telephone network (and later the internet) was often represented as a cloud to denote that the just didn't matter -- it
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was just a cloud of stuff. This is an over-simplification of course; for many customers location of their services and
data remains a key issue.

What is the history of cloud computing?

Cloud computing as a term has been around since the early 2000s, but the concept of computing-as-a-
service has been around for much, much longer -- as far back as the 1960s, when computer bureaus would allow
companies to rent time on a mainframe, rather than have to buy one themselves.

These 'time-sharing' services were largely overtaken by the rise of the PC which made owning a computer
much more affordable, and then in turn by the rise of corporate data centers where companies would store vast
amounts of data.

But the concept of renting access to computing power has resurfaced again and again -- in the application
service providers, utility computing, and grid computing of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This was followed by
cloud computing, which really took hold with the emergence of software as a service and hyperscale cloud computing
providers such as Amazon Web Services.

How important is the cloud?

Building the infrastructure to support cloud computing now accounts for more than a third of all IT spending
worldwide, according to research from IDC. Meanwhile spending on traditional, in-house IT continues to slide as
computing workloads continue to move to the cloud, whether that is public cloud services offered by vendors or
private clouds built by enterprises themselves.

451 Research predicts that around one-third of enterprise IT spending will be on hosting and cloud services this year
"indicating a growing reliance on external sources of infrastructure, application, management and security services".
Analyst Gartner predicts that half of global enterprises using the cloud now will have gone all-in on it by 2021.

According to Gartner, global spending on cloud services will reach $260bn this year up from $219.6bn. It's also
growing at a faster rate than the analysts expected. But it's not entirely clear how much of that demand is coming
from businesses that actually want to move to the cloud and how much is being created by vendors who now only
offer cloud versions of their products (often because they are keen to move to away from selling one-off licenses to
selling potentially more lucrative and predictable cloud subscriptions).
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What is Infrastructure-as-a-Service?

Cloud computing can be broken down into three cloud computing models. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
refers to the fundamental building blocks of computing that can be rented: physical or virtual servers, storage and
networking. This is attractive to companies that want to build applications from the very ground up and want to
control nearly all the elements themselves, but it does require firms to have the technical skills to be able to
orchestrate services at that level. Research by Oracle found that two thirds of IaaS users said using online
infrastructure makes it easier to innovate, had cut their time to deploy new applications and services and had
significantly cut on-going maintenance costs. However, half said IaaS isn't secure enough for most critical data.

What is Platform-as-a-Service?

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the next layer up -- as well as the underlying storage, networking, and virtual
servers this will also include the tools and software that developers need to build applications on top of: that could
include middleware, database management, operating systems, and development tools.

What is Software-as-a-Service?

What is Microsoft 365? Microsoft's most important subscription bundle, explained Microsoft 365 is becoming a
centerpiece of Redmond's cloud strategy. Here's everything you need to know about what it is and how it's evolving.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the delivery of applications-as-a-service, probably the version of cloud

computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis. The underlying hardware and operating system is
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irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or
per-user basis.

According to researchers IDC SaaS is -- and will remain -- the dominant cloud computing model in the
medium term, accounting for two-thirds of all public cloud spending in 2017, which will only drop slightly to just under
60% in 2021. SaaS spending is made up of applications and system infrastructure software, and IDC said that
spending will be dominated by applications purchases, which will make up more than half of all public cloud spending
through 2019. Customer relationship management (CRM) applications and enterprise resource management (ERM)
applications will account for more than 60% of all cloud applications spending through to 2021. The variety of
applications delivered via SaaS is huge, from CRM such as Sales force through to Microsoft's Office 365.

Cloud computing benefits

The exact benefits will vary according to the type of cloud service being used but, fundamentally, using cloud
services means companies not having to buy or maintain their own computing infrastructure.

No more buying servers, updating applications or operating systems, or decommissioning and disposing of
hardware or software when it is out of date, as it is all taken care of by the supplier. For commodity applications, such
as email, it can make sense to switch to a cloud provider, rather than rely on in-house skills. A company that
specializes in running and securing these services is likely to have better skills and more experienced staff than a
small business could afford to hire, so cloud services may be able to deliver a more secure and efficient service to
end users.

Using cloud services means companies can move faster on projects and test out concepts without lengthy
procurement and big upfront costs, because firms only pay for the resources they consume. This concept of business
agility is often mentioned by cloud advocates as a key benefit. The ability to spin up new services without the time
and effort associated with traditional IT procurement should mean that is easier to get going with new applications
faster. And if a new application turns out to be a wildly popular the elastic nature of the cloud means it is easier to
scale it up fast.

For a company with an application that has big peaks in usage, for example that is only used at a particular
time of the week or year, it may make financial sense to have it hosted in the cloud, rather than have dedicated
hardware and software laying idle for much of the time. Moving to a cloud hosted application for services like email or
CRM could remove a burden on internal IT staff, and if such applications don't generate much competitive
advantage, there will be little other impact. Moving to a services model also moves spending from capex to opex,
which may be useful for some companies.

Cloud computing advantages and disadvantages

Cloud computing is not necessarily cheaper than other forms of computing, just as renting is not always
cheaper than buying in the long term. If an application has a regular and predictable requirement for computing
services it may be more economical to provide that service in-house.
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Some companies may be reluctant to host sensitive data in a service that is also used by rivals. Moving to a
SaaS application may also mean you are using the same applications as a rival, which may make it hard to create
any competitive advantage if that application is core to your business.

While it may be easy to start using a new cloud application, migrating existing data or apps to the cloud may
be much more complicated and expensive. And it seems there is now something of a shortage in cloud skills with
staff with DevOps and multi-cloud monitoring and management knowledge in particularly short supply.

In one recent report a significant proportion of experienced cloud users said that they thought upfront
migration costs ultimately outweigh the long-term savings created by IaaS.

And of course, you can only access your applications if you have an internet connection.

What is cloud computing adoption doing to IT budgets?

Cloud computing tends to shift spending from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operating expenditure (OpEx)
as companies buy computing as a service rather than in the form of physical servers. This may allow companies to
avoid large increases in IT spending which would traditionally be seen with new projects; using the cloud to make
room in the budget may be easier than going to the CFO and looking for more money.

"CIOs are increasingly turning to cloud infrastructure and services in order to increase flexibility and relieve
pressure on capital budgets," notes ZDNet's survey of IT budget predictions. Of course, this doesn't mean that cloud
computing is always or necessarily cheaper that keeping applications in house; for applications with a predictable
and stable demand for computing power may be cheaper (from a processing power point of view at least) to keep in-
house.

How do you build a business case for cloud computing?

To build a business case for moving systems to the cloud you first need to understand what your existing
infrastructure actually costs. There's a lot to factor in: obvious things like the cost of running a data centers, and
extras such as leased lines. The cost of physical hardware -- servers and details of specifications like CPUs, cores
and RAM, plus the cost of storage. You'll also need to calculate the cost of applications -- whether you plan to dump
them, re-hosting them in the cloud unchanged, completely rebuilding them for the cloud or buying an entirely new
SaaS package each option will have different cost implications. The cloud business case also needs to include
people costs (often second only to the infrastructure costs) and more nebulous concepts like the benefit of being able
to provide new services faster. Any cloud business case should also factor in the potential downsides, including the
risk of being locked into one vendor for your tech infrastructure.

Cloud computing adoption

It's hard to get figures on how companies are adopting cloud services although the market is clearly growing
rapidly. One set of research suggests that around 12% of businesses consider themselves to be 'cloud-first'
organizations, and about a third run some kind of workloads in the cloud -- while a quarter of firms insist, they
will never move on-demand.
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However, it may be that figures on adoption of cloud depend on who you talk to inside an organization. Not
all cloud spending will be driven centrally by the CIO: cloud services are relatively easy to sign up for, so business
managers can start using them, and pay out of their own budget, without needing to inform the IT department. This
can enable businesses to move faster but also can create security risks if the use of apps is not managed.

Adoption will also vary by application: cloud-based email -- is much easier to adopt than a new finance
system for example. Research by Spiceworks suggests that companies are planning to invest in cloud-based
communications and collaboration tools and back-up and disaster recovery, but are less likely to be investing in
supply chain management.

What about cloud computing security?

Certainly, many companies remain concerned about the security of cloud services, although breaches of
security are rare. How secure you consider cloud computing to be will largely depend on how secure your existing
systems are. In-house systems managed by a team with many other things to worry about are likely to be leakier
than systems monitored by a cloud provider's engineers dedicated to protecting that infrastructure.

However, concerns do remain about security, especially for companies moving their data between many
cloud services, which has leading to growth in cloud security tools, which monitor data moving to and from the cloud
and between cloud platforms. These tools can identify fraudulent use of data in the cloud, unauthorized downloads,
and malware. There is a financial and performance impact however: these tools can reduce the return on investment
of the cloud by five to 10%, and impact performance by five to 15%. The country of origin of cloud services is also
worrying some organizations’

What is public cloud?

Public cloud is the classic cloud computing model, where users can access a large pool of computing power
over the internet (whether that is IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS). One of the significant benefits here is the ability to rapidly
scale a service. The cloud computing suppliers have vast amounts of computing power, which they share out
between a large number of customers -- the 'multi-tenant' architecture. Their huge scale means they have enough
spare capacity that they can easily cope if any particular customer needs more resources, which is why it is often
used for less-sensitive applications that demand a varying amount of resources.
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What is private cloud?

Private cloud allows organizations to benefit from the some of the advantages of public cloud -- but without
the concerns about relinquishing control over data and services, because it is tucked away behind the corporate
firewall. Companies can control exactly where their data is being held and can build the infrastructure in a way they
want -- largely for IaaS or PaaS projects -- to give developers access to a pool of computing power that scales on-
demand without putting security at risk. However, that additional security comes at a cost, as few companies will
have the scale of AWS, Microsoft or Google, which means they will not be able to create the same economies of
scale. Still, for companies that require additional security, private cloud may be a useful stepping stone, helping them
to understand cloud services or rebuild internal applications for the cloud, before shifting them into the public cloud.

The Art of The Hybrid Cloud

Cloud computing is insatiably gobbling up more of the backend services that power businesses. But some
companies have apps with privacy, security, and regulatory demands that preclude the cloud. Here's how to find the
right mix of public cloud and private cloud.

What is hybrid cloud?

Hybrid cloud is perhaps where everyone is in reality: a bit of this, a bit of that. Some data in the public
cloud, some projects in private cloud, multiple vendors and different levels of cloud usage. According to research by
TechRepublic, the main reasons for choosing hybrid cloud include disaster recovery planning and the desire to avoid
hardware costs when expanding their existing data center.
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Cloud computing migration costs

For start-ups who plan to run all their systems in the cloud getting started is pretty simple. But the majority of
companies it is not so simple: with existing applications and data they need to work out which systems are best left
running as they, and which to start moving them to cloud infrastructure. This is a potentially risky and expensive
move, and migrating to the cloud could cost companies more if they underestimate the scale of such projects.

A survey of 500 businesses that were early cloud adopters found that the need to rewrite applications to
optimize them for the cloud was one of the biggest costs, especially if the apps were complex or customized. A third
of those surveyed said cited high fees for passing data between systems as a challenge in moving their mission-
critical applications.

The report by Forrester also found that the skills required for migration are both difficult and expensive to find
-- and that even when organizations could find the right people they risked them being stolen away by cloud
computing vendors with deep pockets. One third of those surveyed said their software database license costs
drastically increased if they moved applications.

Beyond this the majority also remained worried about the performance of critical apps and one in three cited
this as a reason for not moving some critical applications.

Is geography irrelevant when it comes to cloud computing?

Actually, it turns out that is where the cloud really does matter; indeed, geopolitics is forcing significant
changes on cloud computing user and vendors. Firstly, there is the issue of latency: if the application is coming from
a data center on the other side of the planet, or on the other side of a congested network, then you may find it
sluggish compared to a local connection. That's the latency problem.

Secondly, there is the issue of data sovereignty. Many companies -- particularly in Europe -- have to worry
about where their data is being processed and stored. European companies are worried that, for example, if their
customer data is being stored in data centers in the US or (owned by US companies) it could be accessed by US law
enforcement. As a result, the big cloud vendors have been building out a regional data center network so that
organizations can keep their data in their own region.

In Germany, Microsoft has gone one step further, offering its Azure cloud services from two data centers,
which have been set up to make it much harder for US authorities -- and others -- to demand access to the customer
data stored there. The customer data in the data centers is under the control of an independent German company
which acts as a "data trustee", and Microsoft cannot access data at the sites without the permission of customers or
the data trustee. Expect to see cloud vendors opening more data centers around the world to cater to customers with
requirements to keep data in specific locations.

And regulation of cloud computing varies widely elsewhere across the world: for example, AWS recently sold
a chunk of its cloud infrastructure in China to its local partner because of China's strict tech regulations. Since then,
AWS has opened a second China (Ningxia) Region, operated by Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology.
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Cloud security is another issue; the UK government's cyber security agency has warned that government
agencies need to consider the country of origin when it comes to adding cloud services into their supply chains.
While it was warning about antivirus software in particular, the issue is the same for other types of services too.

Consultants Accenture have warned that 'digital fragmentation' is the result as different countries enact
legislation to protect privacy and improve cyber security. While the aims of the laws is laudable, the impact is to raise
costs for businesses. Three quarters of the 400 CIOs and CTOs surveyed expect to exit a geographic market, delay
their market-entry plans or abandon market-entry plans in the next three years as a result of increased barriers to
globalization.

More than half of the business leaders surveyed believe that the increasing barriers to globalization will
compromise their ability to: use or provide cloud-based services (cited by 54% of respondents, versus 14% that
disagree); use or provide data and analytics services across national markets (54% versus 15%); and operate
effectively across different national IT standards (58% versus 18%).

Over half said these increasing barriers will force their companies to rethink their: global IT architectures
(cited by 60%) physical IT location strategy (52%); cybersecurity strategy and capabilities (51%); relationship with
local and global IT suppliers (50%); and geographic strategy for IT talent (50%).

AWS: The complete business guide to Amazon's cloud services

A few brilliant strokes of ingenuity, combined with a large dose of capitalism, made the e-retailer into the
world’s cloud services leader.

What is a cloud computing region? What is a cloud computing availability zone?

Cloud computing services are operated from giant datacenters around the world. AWS divides this up
by 'regions' and 'availability zones'. Each AWS region is a separate geographic area, like EU (London) or US West
(Oregon), which AWS then further subdivides into what it calls availability zones (AZs). An AZ is composed of one or
more datacenters that are far enough apart that in theory a single disaster won't take both offline, but close enough
together for business continuity applications that require rapid failover. Each AZ has multiple internet connections
and power connections to multiple grids: AWS has over 50 AZs.

Google uses a similar model, dividing its cloud computing resources into regions which are then subdivided
into zones, which include one or more datacenters from which customers can run their services. It currently has 15
regions made up of 44 zones: Google recommends customers deploy applications across multiple zones and regions
to help protect against unexpected failures.

Microsoft Azure divides its resources slightly differently. It offers regions which it describes as is a "set of
datacenters deployed within a latency-defined perimeter and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency
network". It also offers 'geographies' typically containing two or more regions, that can be used by customers with
specific data-residency and compliance needs "to keep their data and apps close". It also offers availability zones
made up of one or more data centers equipped with independent power, cooling and networking.
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Cloud computing and power usage

Those data centers are also sucking up a huge amount of power: for example, Microsoft recently struck a
deal with GE to buy all of the output from its new 37-megawatt wind farm in Ireland for the next 15 years in order to
power its cloud data centers. Ireland said it now expects data centers to account for 15% of total energy demand by
2026, up from less than two percent back in 2015.

Which are the big cloud computing companies?

When it comes to IaaS and PaaS there are really only a few giant cloud providers. Leading the way is
Amazon Web Services, and then the following pack of Microsoft's Azure, Google, IBM, and Alibaba. While the
following pack might be growing fast, their combined revenues are still less than those of AWS, according to data
from the Synergy Research Group.

Analysts 451 Research said that for many companies the strategy will be to use AWS and one other cloud
provider, a policy they describe as AWS + 1. These big players will dominate the delivery of cloud services: Gartner
said two thirds of the spending on cloud computing services will go through the top 10 public cloud providers through
to 2021.

It's also worth noting that while all these companies are selling cloud services, they have different strengths
and priorities. AWS is particularly strong in IaaS and PaaS, but has designs on moving up towards databases.
Microsoft in contrast has a particular emphasis on SaaS thanks to Office 365 and its other software largely aimed at
end user productivity, but is also trying to rapidly grow its IaaS and Paas offering through Azure.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (which also offers office productivity tools) is somewhere between the two.
IBM and Oracle's cloud businesses are also made up of a combination of Saas and more infrastructure-based
offerings.
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There are vast numbers of companies who have been offering applications through the cloud using a SaaS model.
Salesforce is probably the best known of these.

AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure -- what is the difference?

The cloud giants have different strengths. While AWS and Microsoft's commercial cloud businesses are
about the same size, Microsoft includes Office 365 in its figures. IBM, Oracle, Google and Alibaba all have sizeable
cloud businesses too.

What Google Cloud Platform is and why you’d use it

The challenger in any competitive market has greater incentive to produce sharper and more customer-
focused products and services. Google has to make a bigger splash, and for a company that isn’t known for being
flashy, it’s not doing a half-bad job.

Increasingly the major cloud computing vendors are attempting to differentiate according to the services that
they offer, especially if they can't compete with AWS and Microsoft in terms of scale. Google for example is
promoting its expertise around artificial intelligence; Alibaba wants to attract customers who are interested in learning
from its retail know-how. In a world where most companies will use at least one cloud provider and usually many
more, IBM wants to position itself as the company that can manage all these multiple clouds. Meanwhile AWS is
pitching itself as the platform for builders, which is its new take on developers.

Cloud computing price wars

The cost of some cloud computing services -- particularly virtual machines -- has been falling steadily thanks
to continued competition between these big players. There is some evidence that the price cuts may spread to other
services like storage and databases, as cloud vendors want to win the big workloads that are moving out of
enterprise datacenters and into the cloud. That's likely to be good news for customers and prices could still fall
further, as there remains a hefty margin in even the most commodity areas of cloud infrastructure services, like
provision of virtual machines.

What is the future of cloud computing?

Cloud computing is still at a relatively early stage of adoption, despite its long history. Many companies are
still considering which apps to move and when. However, usage is only likely to climb as organizations get more
comfortable with the idea of their data being somewhere other than a server in the basement. We're still relatively
early into cloud adoption -- some estimates suggest that only 10% of the workloads that could be move have actually
been transferred across. Those are the easy ones where the economics are hard for CIOs to argue with.

For the rest of the enterprise computing portfolio the economics of moving to the cloud may be less clear cut.
As a result, cloud computing vendors are increasingly pushing cloud computing as an agent of digital transformation
instead of focusing simply on cost. Moving to the cloud can help companies rethink business processes and
accelerate business change, goes the argument, by helping to break down data and organizational silos. Some
companies that need to boost momentum around their digital transformation programs may find this argument
appealing; others may find enthusiasm for the cloud waning as the costs of making the switch add up.
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The basic idea behind cloud computing is to outsource one or more of your networked computing resources
to the Internet. “The cloud” represents a new way of handling common computer tasks. Following are just a few
examples of how the cloud way differs from the traditional way:

Email services

· Traditional: Provide email services by installing Microsoft Exchange on a local server computer. Then your
clients can connect using Microsoft Outlook to connect to the Exchange server to send and receive email.

· Cloud: Contract with an Internet-based email provider, such as Google Mail (Gmail) or Microsoft’s Exchange
Online. Cloud-based email services typically charge a low-monthly per-user fee, so the amount you pay for your
email service depends solely on the number of email users you have.

Disk storage

· Traditional: Set up a local file server computer with a large amount of shared disk space.

· Cloud: Sign up for an Internet file storage service and then store your data on the Internet. Cloud-based file
storage typically charges a small monthly per-gigabyte fee, so you pay only for the storage you use. The disk
capacity of cloud-based storage is essentially unlimited.

Accounting services

· Traditional: Purchase expensive accounting software and install it on a local server computer.

· Cloud: Sign up for a web-based accounting service. Then all your accounting data is saved and managed on
the provider’s servers, not on yours.

Looking at the Benefits of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a different — and, in many ways, better — approach to networking. Here are a few of the
main benefits of moving to cloud-based networking:

Cost-effective: Cloud-based computing typically is less expensive than traditional computing. Consider a typical file
server application: To implement a file server, first you must purchase a file server computer with enough disk space
to accommodate your users’ needs, which amounts to 1TB of disk storage. You want the most reliable data storage
possible, so you purchase a server-quality computer and fully redundant disk drives. For the sake of this discussion,
figure that the total price of the server — including its disk drive, the operating system license, and the labor cost of
setting it up — is about $10,000. Assuming that the server will last for four years, that totals about $2,500 per year.

If you instead acquire your disk storage from a cloud-based file-sharing service, you can expect to pay about
one fourth of that amount for an equivalent amount of storage.
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The same economies apply to most other cloud-based solutions. Cloud-based email solutions, for example, typically
cost around $5 per month per user — well less than the cost of setting up and maintaining an on-premises Microsoft
Exchange Server.

Scalable: So, what happens if you guess wrong about the storage requirements of your file server, and your users
end up needing 2TB instead of just 1TB? With a traditional file server, you must purchase additional disk drives to
accommodate the extra space. Sooner than you want, you’ll run out of capacity in the server’s cabinet. Then you’ll
have to purchase an external storage cabinet. Eventually, you’ll fill that up, too.

Now suppose that after you expand your server capacity to 2TB, your users’ needs contract to just 1TB.
Unfortunately, you can’t return disk drives for a refund.

With cloud computing, you pay only for the capacity you’re actually using, and you can add capacity whenever you
need it. In the file server example, you can write as much data as you need to the cloud storage. Each month, you’re
billed according to your actual usage. Thus, you don’t have to purchase and install additional disk drives to add
storage capacity.

Reliable: Especially for smaller businesses, cloud services are much more reliable than in-house services. Just a
week before I wrote this chapter, the tape drive that a friend uses to back up his company’s data failed. As a result,
he was unable to back up data for three days while the tape drive was repaired. Had he been using cloud-based
backup, he could have restored his data immediately and wouldn’t have been without backups for those four days.

The reason for the increased reliability of cloud services is simply a matter of scale. Most small businesses can’t
afford the redundancies needed to make their computer operations as reliable as possible. My friend’s company can’t
afford to buy two tape drives so that an extra is available in case the main one fails.

By contrast, cloud services are usually provided by large companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and IBM.
These companies have state-of-the-art data centers with multiple redundancies for their cloud services. Cloud
storage may be kept on multiple servers so that if one server fails, others can take over the load. In some cases,
these servers are in different data centers in different parts of the country. Thus, your data will still be available even
in the event of a disaster that shuts down an entire data system.

Hassle-free: Face it, IT can be a hassle. With cloud-based services, you basically outsource the job of complex
system maintenance chores, such as software upgrade, patches, hardware maintenance, backup, and so on. You
get to consume the services while someone else takes care of making sure that the services run properly.

Globally accessible: One of the best things about cloud services is that they’re available anywhere you have an
Internet connection. Suppose that you have offices in five cities. Using traditional computing, each office would
require its own servers, and you’d have to carefully design systems that allowed users in each of the offices to
access shared data.

With cloud computing, each office simply connects to the Internet to access the cloud applications. Cloud-based
applications are also great if your users are mobile because they can access the applications anywhere they can find
an Internet connection.
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Detailing the Drawbacks of Cloud Computing

Although cloud computing has many advantages over traditional techniques, it isn’t without its drawbacks. The
following sections outline some of the most significant roadblocks to adopting cloud computing.

Entrenched applications: Your organization may depend on entrenched applications that don’t lend themselves
especially well to cloud computing — or that at least require significant conversion efforts to migrate to the cloud. For
example, you might use an accounting system that relies on local file storage.

Fortunately, many cloud providers offer assistance with this migration. And in many cases, the same application that
you run locally can be run in the cloud, so no conversion is necessary.

Internet connection speed: Cloud computing shifts much of the burden of your network to your Internet
connection. Your users used to access their data on local file servers over gigabit-speed connections; now they must
access data over slower bandwidth Internet connections.

· Although you can upgrade your connection to higher speeds, doing so will cost money — money that may well
offset the money you otherwise save from migrating to the cloud.

• Internet connection reliability: The cloud resources you access may feature all the redundancy in the
world, but if your users access the cloud through a single Internet connection, that connection becomes a
key point of vulnerability. Should it fail, any applications that depend on the cloud will be unavailable. If
those applications are mission-critical, business will come to a halt until the connection is restored.

· Here are two ways to mitigate this risk:

Make sure that you’re using an enterprise-class Internet connection. Enterprise-class connections
o
are more expensive but provide much better fault tolerance and repair service than consumer-
class connections do.
o Provide redundant connections if you can. That way, if one connection fails, traffic can be rerouted
through alternative connections.
• Security threats: You can bet your life that hackers throughout the world are continually probing for ways
to break through the security perimeter of all the major cloud providers. When they do, your data may be
exposed.

· The best way to mitigate this threat is to ensure that strong password policies are enforced.

Examining Three Basic Kinds of Cloud Services

Three distinct kinds of services can be provided via the cloud: applications, platforms, and services (infrastructure).
The following paragraphs describe these three types of cloud services in greater detail.
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Applications

Most often referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS), fully functional applications can be delivered via the
cloud. One of the best-known examples is G Suite (formerly known as Google Apps), which is a suite of cloud-based
office applications designed to compete directly with Microsoft’s traditional office applications, including Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. G Suite can also replace the back-end software often used to support Microsoft
Office, including Exchange and SharePoint.

When you use a cloud-based application, you don’t have to worry about any of the details that are commonly
associated with running an application on your network, such as deploying the application and applying product
upgrades and software patches. Cloud-based applications usually charge a small monthly fee based on the number
of users running the software, so costs are low.

Also, as a cloud-based application user, you don’t have to worry about providing the hardware or operating
system platform on which the application will run. The application provider takes care of that detail for you, so you
can focus simply on developing the application to best serve your users’ needs.

Platforms

Also referred to as Platform as a Service (PaaS), this class of service refers to providers that give you
access to a remote virtual operating platform on which you can build your own applications.

At the simplest level, a PaaS provider gives you a complete, functional remote virtual machine that’s fully
configured and ready for you to deploy your applications to. If you use a web provider to host your company’s
website, you’re already using PaaS: Most web host providers give you a functioning Linux system, fully configured
with all the necessary servers, such as Apache or MySQL. All you have to do is build and deploy your web
application on the provider’s server.

More-complex PaaS solutions include specialized software that your custom applications can tap to provide
services such as data storage, online order processing, and credit card payments. One of the best-known examples
of this type of PaaS provider is Amazon.

When you use PaaS, you take on the responsibility of developing your own custom applications to run on the
remote platform. The PaaS provider takes care of the details of maintaining the platform itself, including the base
operating system and the hardware on which the platform runs.

Infrastructure

If you don’t want to delegate the responsibility of maintaining operating systems and other elements of the
platform, you can use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). When you use IaaS, you’re purchasing raw computing
power that’s accessible via the cloud. Typically, IaaS provides you access to a remote virtual machine. It’s up to you
to manage and configure the remote machine however you want.
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Public Clouds versus Private Clouds

The most common form of cloud computing uses what is known as a public cloud — that is, cloud services
that are available to anyone in the world via the Internet. G Suite is an excellent example of a public cloud service.
Anyone with access to the Internet can access the public cloud services of G Suite: Just point your browser
to http://gsuite.google.com.

A public cloud is like a public utility, in that anyone can subscribe to it on a pay-as-you-go basis. One of the
drawbacks of public cloud services is that they’re inherently insecure. When you use a public cloud service, you’re
entrusting your valuable data to a third party that you cannot control. Sure, you can protect your access to your public
cloud services by using strong passwords, but if your account names and passwords are compromised, your public
cloud services can be hacked into, and your data can be stolen. Every so often, we all hear news stories about how
this company’s or that company’s back-door security has been compromised.

Besides security, another drawback of public cloud computing is that it’s dependent on high-speed, reliable
Internet connections. Your cloud service provider may have all the redundancy in the world, but if your connection to
the Internet goes down, you won’t be able to access your cloud services. And if your connection is slow, your cloud
services will be slow.

A private cloud mimics many of the features of cloud computing but is implemented on private hardware
within a local network, so it isn’t accessible to the general public. Private clouds are inherently more secure because
the general public can’t access them. Also, they’re dependent only on private network connections, so they aren’t
subject to the limits of a public Internet connection.

As a rule, private clouds are implemented by large organizations that have the resources available to create
and maintain their own cloud servers.

A relative newcomer to the cloud computing scene is the hybrid cloud, which combines the features of
public and private clouds. Typically, a hybrid cloud system uses a small private cloud that provides local access to
some of the applications and the public cloud for others. You might maintain your most frequently used data on a
private cloud for fast access via the local network and use the public cloud to store archives and other less frequently
used data, for which performance isn’t as much of an issue.

Introducing Some of the Major Cloud Providers

Hundreds, if not thousands, of companies provide cloud services. Most of the cloud computing done today, however,
is provided by just a few providers, which are described in the following sections.

Amazon

By far the largest provider of cloud services in the world is Amazon. Amazon launched its cloud platform — Amazon
Web Services (AWS) — in 2006. Since then, hundreds of thousands of customers have signed up. Some of the most
notable users of AWS include Netflix, Pinterest, and Instagram.