An introduction to cloud computing

1. Cloud Computing
...a walkthrough

2. Agenda
> What is Cloud Computing?
> What are the characteristics?
> What are the disadvantages?
> Who is providing Cloud?
> hiccups in Amazon EC2
> How to decide for your cloud

3. means ...
> you don't need any special hardware or software installed on your
system
> all you need is a internet connection and any platform to access it
like desktop,laptop or a mobile phone.
> you need not to have expertise over technical infrastructure that
cloud supports
> its not just a distributed computing or hosting infrastrucure or appli-
-cation hosting, but all of them and much more ...
... so what's inside cloud

4. ... yes, everything!

5. ... and these are cloud components
iPhone, Windows mobile, IE, Firefox, Android
Identity, Payments, search, live chat, Integration
Peer-to-peer, web app, Software as a service(Saas)
Google Web Kit,Phython Django, .NET, Ruby on Rails
full virtualization, grid computing, hosted desktop and
many more
Amazon S3, Nirvanix, Rackspace
examples

6. characteristics -
> customers do not buy anything
> customers pay for the usage
> customers do not have to worry about costs like servers, storage, softwares,
licenses, facilities, people
> customers do not have to take care of upgrades
> clouds are more scalable, secure and reliable than most of the apps.
> cloud apps don't eat your valuable IT resources
> Faster and lower-risk deployment
> Multi-Tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs among large pool of users.

7. Despite the advantages, there are concerns which makes businesses think before using it,
some of them are
> Cloud computing does not allow users to physically possess the storage of
their data.
> has been criticized for limiting the freedom of users by making dependent
upon cloud computing provider
> Users has no freedom to install new apps and need approval from the
administrators
> Users has to sacrifice their privacy and personal data to a third-party

8. Whos' providing them?
> Google
> Amazon
> 3Tera
> Cloudscale Networks
> Cassat
.... and many more
bottom line :
Cloud computing is a simple idea, but it can have a huge impact on your business.
-- salesforce.com

9. "Cloud" isn't magic though. There has been instances where cloud failed to give
100% uptime and it has been noticed with few providers like Amazon EC2, they were -
> On 15th Feb 2008, storage service went down, including many companies
including twitter. Many companies faced downtime, impacting their businesses.
> On 20th July 2008, second storage service went offline for extended period,
making many customer offline. This is what Amazon clarified for it :
As distributed system, components need to be aware of the state of each
other. This awareness makes possible for the system to decide which
redundant physical storage server to route request to. This internal system
communication was not happening correctly, so team decided to make server
offline and to restore proper communication
> On June 10th 2009, a portion of Amazon Web Sevices EC2 went down, which
was explained as that it had lost connectivity in a part of its network due to a
"localized" power issue. Apparently the cause of issue was a lightening strike

10. .. so what you need to discuss before get your business to Cloud
> Privlieged user access - who has access to data and about hiring management
of such administrators
> Regulatory compliance - is vendor willing to undergo external audits and security
certifications
> Data segregation - is encryption available at all stages and were there designed
and tested by experienced professionals
> Recovery - what happens in case of disaster? how much time will it take for
restoration
> Long-term viability - what will happen if company goes out-of business?
.. and few more. This will help to decide which provider to choose for your business

11. + Harit Himanshu
Thank you for your reading