What is Cloud Computing?
What cloud computing really means
Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT
always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly
without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or
licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any
subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the
Internet, extends IT’s existing capabilities.
Cloud computing is at an early stage, with a motley crew of providers
large and small delivering a slew of cloud-based services, from
full-blown applications to storage services to spam filtering. Yes,
utility-style infrastructure providers are part of the mix, but so are
SaaS (software as a service) providers such as Salesforce.com. Today,
for the most part, IT must plug into cloud-based services individually,
but cloud computing aggregators and integrators are already emerging.
InfoWorld talked to dozens of vendors, analysts, and IT customers to
tease out the various components of cloud computing. Based on those
discussions, here’s a rough breakdown of what cloud computing is all
about:
1. SaaS
This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the
browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On
the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers
or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to
maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting.
Salesforce.com is by far the best-known example among enterprise
applications, but SaaS is also common for HR apps and has even worked
its way up the food chain to ERP, with players such as Workday. And who
could have predicted the sudden rise of SaaS ”desktop” applications,
such as Google Apps and Zoho Office?
2. Utility computing
The idea is not new, but this form of cloud computing is getting new
life from Amazon.com, Sun, IBM, and others who now offer storage and
virtual servers that IT can access on demand. Early enterprise adopters
mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical
needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter. Other
providers offer solutions that help IT create virtual datacenters from
commodity servers, such as 3Tera’s AppLogic and Cohesive Flexible
Technologies’ Elastic Server
on Demand. Liquid Computing’s LiquidQ offers similar capabilities,
enabling IT to stitch together memory, I/O, storage, and computational
capacity as a virtualized resource pool available over the network.
3. Web services in the cloud
Closely related to SaaS, Web service providers offer APIs that enable
developers to exploit functionality over the Internet, rather than
delivering full-blown applications. They range from providers offering
discrete business services — such as Strike Iron and Xignite — to the
full range of APIs offered by Google Maps, ADP payroll processing, the
U.S. Postal Service, Bloomberg, and even conventional credit card processing services.
4. Platform as a service
Another SaaS variation, this form of cloud computing delivers
development environments as a service. You build your own applications
that run on the provider’s infrastructure and are delivered to your
users via the Internet from the provider’s servers. Like Legos, these
services are constrained by the vendor’s design and capabilities, so
you don’t get complete freedom, but you do get predictability and
pre-integration. Prime examples include Salesforce.com’s
Force.com,Coghead and the new Google App Engine. For extremely lightweight development, cloud-basedmashup platforms abound, such as Yahoo Pipes or Dapper.net.
5. MSP (managed service providers)
One of the oldest forms of cloud computing, a managed service is
basically an application exposed to IT rather than to end-users, such
as a virus scanning service for e-mail or an application monitoring
service (which Mercury, among others, provides). Managed security
services delivered by SecureWorks, IBM, and Verizon fall into this
category, as do such cloud-based anti-spam services as Postini,
recently acquired by Google. Other offerings include desktop management
services, such as those offered by CenterBeam or Everdream.
6. Service commerce platforms
A hybrid of SaaS and MSP, this cloud computing service offers a service
hub that users interact with. They’re most common in trading
environments, such as expense management systems that allow users to
order travel or secretarial services from a common platform that then
coordinates the service delivery and pricing within the specifications
set by the user. Think of it as an automated service bureau. Well-known
examples include Rearden Commerce and Ariba.
7. Internet integration
The integration of cloud-based services is in its early days. OpSource,
which mainly concerns itself with serving SaaS providers, recently
introduced the OpSource Services Bus, which employs in-the-cloud
integration technology from a little startup called Boomi. SaaS provider
Workday recently acquired another player in this space, CapeClear, an
ESB (enterprise service bus) provider that was edging toward b-to-b
integration. Way ahead of its time, Grand Central — which wanted to be a
universal “bus in the cloud” to connect SaaS providers and provide
integrated solutions to customers — flamed out in 2005.
Differences Between Dedicated Server, Cloud Computing and VPS
Many people still do not know or are confused when speaking of the
major differences between Cloud Server Hosting, Virtual Private Servers
(VPS) and Dedicated Servers. Starting with the most basic, you know
what to serve?
Quite simply, all the three technologies are used to store data, host
websites and structures of e- mail, besides running various
applications and softwares. So if they serve for the same thing because
they are different?
Each has a different characteristic, let us understand :
Dedicated Servers
It is a physical machine, usually allocated on a fully equipped data
center and is totally dedicated to one customer who requires high
reliability and high performance hardware ( processing, memory , etc.)…
If the client needs more resources, you must purchase more hardware and
manually install or exchange server. Its main advantage is the high
performance and flexibility and its disadvantage is the high price and
inability to upgrade / downgrade immediately. This is one of the best
flexible solution than shared web hosting, as because the owner gets a
total control over the hosting environment and every aspects of the
dedicated hosting, which includes the selection of operating system,
server hardware, etc… Some web hosting providers may provide the server
administration for free, but usually, the client has to manage the
server administration and management tasks.
Cloud Server Hosting (Cloud Computing)
Already Cloud Server is a fractionation of a number of resources
available to multiple servers and storage arrays. Through an
intelligent architecture, you can allocate these resources allows
scalability without losing performance. Besides the economy and
flexibility, there are numerous advantages to this technology.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
It is the fractionation of resources from one physical server, this
fractionation being allocated to a single client. VPS is an ideal choice
for businesses that requires same flexibility, reliability, security,
root access, stability, etc… at much affordable rates that a dedicated
server offers. In this technology there is no guarantee of processing
and in case of hardware failures, client applications that depend on it
will also fail, as there is integration servers like the Cloud.
We simplify the concepts so that everyone can understand, of course there are many other details, but overall this is it!
How Cloud Computing Can Be A Better Way | How is Cloud Computing Different than Traditional Applications?
In order for traditional applications to work properly, they require a
data center with power, an office, cooling, servers, networks,
bandwidth and storage. Even once you’ve met all those requirements, you
need a professional to install them, configure them and make sure
they’re running as they should. As much time, effort and money that
goes into these programs by large businesses, you can only imagine the
headache they pose for small businesses or individuals.
Cloud computing will help you run your business better and more
efficiently for many reasons. Unlike many traditional business apps,
applications that are cloud based can be up and running in a couple of
days. Let’s face it – for your business to be efficient, you can’t have
a lot of downtime. Cloud computing will also save you money because
you don’t have to pay tons of money in employee wages to run your
applications as well as many products to keep them running and updated.
Any performance or security enhancements and upgrades your cloud based
programs need, they’ll get automatically.
Another way you’ll save with cloud computing is by not having to
constantly buy software and servers. They don’t take up as much of your
IT resources as traditional applications.
Cloud Computing Market Will Reach $16.7 Billion by 2013
As more and more organizations starting to transition their data into
the cloud and tap into web-based applications, the global cloud
computing market is continuing to grow at high speed.Analyst firm 451
Market Monitor has predicted that it expects the cloud computing
marketplace to reach $16.7 billion in revenue by 2013.
According to its report, the large and well-established
software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) category, cloud computing
will grow from revenue of $8.7bn in 2010 to $16.7bn in 2013,
registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24 percent.
The research firm believes that the core cloud computing market will
grow at much more rapid pace as the cloud increasingly becomes a
mainstream IT strategy embraced by corporate enterprises and government
agencies.
Excluding SaaS revenue, cloud-delivered platform and infrastructure
services will grow from $964m in revenue in 2010 to $3.9bn 2013 - a
CAGR of 60% - the report said.
The core market includes platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings, as well as the
cloud-delivered software used to build and manage a cloud environment,
which The 451 Group (News - Alert) calls 'software infrastructure as a
service' (SIaaS).
Cloud-based storage will play a starring role in cloud growth,
accounting for nearly 40 percent of the core cloud pie in 2010. "We
view storage as the most fertile sector, and predict that cloud storage
will experience the strongest growth in the cloud platforms segment,"
the report says.
In June, Gartner said worldwide cloud computing services market is
poised for strong growth and its revenue might reach USD 148.8 billion
by 2014.
Last month, another market analyst firm Renub Research had predicted that global cloud computing market might cross $25 billion by the end of 2013.
MY IDEAS: I think we can also develop cloud processing units. In which
we will have a super computer in a place and the users of it will only
need to have a high really high speed internet and a small processor
which only need to interact a software ( browser like) that would take
the info from the user send it to super computer and present the output
info to the user. This idea would be cost-efficient when people will
have to buy expensive computers processors and graphic cards but only
the would have to buy a 5 dollar processor and every thing will be done
by the supercomputer in backend. My ideas about the payments is that a
person will pay for the number of MBs that the supercomputer processed
network
traffic controller between your network card and your BitComet
application. The speed increase can be enormous, especially on a slow
connection or if you deal with slow sources. The program is free and you
don’t need any networking knowledge to use it. It contains many
advanced features that can accelerate your downloading up 10 times
faster, or even more.
You
probably sometimes spend hours explaining to someone, over the
internet how to do something. Instead of typing at people, you can
create screen recordings for them and shown them what you´re talking
about. Especially if you have your own site and write tutorials, then
it´s very useful to create video tutorials. For that you need ascreen
recorder.I´ve tested a few free screen recorder and make a list of the
best.
