ABC of Cloud

Movies, Technology and Real life form an interesting triangle.

Real life gets influenced by movies and improvised by technology.

Wheras Movies almost always get inspiration from real life and enlarges technology into science fiction.

And technology always tries to catch up with imaginary prototypes from movies (Sci-Fi, James Bond gadgets etc.)

Identity theft of words:

Now talking about the real life connection of technology, technology has borrowed/stolen words from real life sometimes completely altering  the original meaning and identity.

 Apple - once upon a time a fruit, now everything digital from world's biggest technology company.

Blackberry- once a status symbol for corporates, fortified gadgets which now may go extinct, given current downfall.

Storage- then just space/boxes to store physical things, now refers to 'digital data storage physical/virtual devices'

Cloud- Once only referred to visible mass of liquid droplets in homosphere, causing rain across the planet, now….? (that’s what we are going to discuss in this article).

Rightly said by  Larry Ellison, Co-founder & CEO, Oracle Corp, “All the Cloud is, is computers in a network… Our industry is so bizarre. I mean, they just change a term and they think they’ve invented technology.”

So, to clear the most common doubt,  Cloud computing has nothing to do with the clouds in SKY. Everything they talk about Cloud computing is real computers, storage systems, networks and infrastructures are set up by real people with tons of real money in one or more of data-centers around the world, from where the show is being run for it's users to make it work like magic and effortless.

The original Cloud is nothing but Nature's way of distributing water across the globe :)

Yes, DISTRIBUTION is the keyword here, that links what cloud means in nature and technology.

 So, it started with De-boxing / decentralization of giant mainframe servers and computing power. Initially, users had to be in the same physical location as their servers and storage, connected directly or by LAN. Then, evolving through many intermediate variants, we got network of machines (biggest form of it is Internet) enabling computing machines to talk to distant machines what we call distributed computing and the relationship is called client-server, where machines assumed the role of client and servers of computing powers accordingly. A powerful computer thus enabled many smaller terminals to use its computing resources for running various applications.

Those powerful computer(s) were vaguely drawn as cloudy boxes to denote overall system of computing power in textbooks, workflows, flowcharts etc. and this is how the term cloud got fixated to distributed computing.

Next big addition was to have distribution of digital storage using the same model. So, even though you have smaller desktops and laptops, you can run huge demanding computer applications and store relevant data securely irrespective of size.

WHY CLOUD:

One of the biggest driver of Cloud evolution is to help companies, who don't want to own and operate powerful computers, heavy storage capacities, running enterprise grade operating system, and requiring specialists to run, maintain, troubleshoot and manage.

The urge to be free from the shackles of the capex involved in business enabling digital infrastructure.  Investing to build one's own infrastructure comes with huge upfront investment and can't be scaled up beyond a point.

Suppose, you are heading a new start-up offering unique web based services to your user base. Given you don't know how soon or how big your company is going to be, you would prefer to invest your precious funding on acquiring more customers and building a stable business model than investing on building infrastructure. Pay as you grow model suits the new breed and thus the demand for someone who outsources the headache of digital infrastructure from you.

Using Cloud based implementations, your users can access heavy applications(which can only run on certain servers with minimum required certain computing power, storage and operating system) from a handheld device  (having non-standard processor and very limited memory and poorer connectivity speed)  and you don't have to worry a system collapse if there are lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of them using your services at the same time (what happens during a flash sales at Flipkarts, Snapdeals or Amazons of the world)

From the Cloud provider's perspective, they have to have a stable, sustainable monetization model to be a cloud services provider. To answer this cloud offerings evolved into ' AS A SERVICE' model by existing tech-giants as well as newer companies.

Just like Airplanes, trains and buses (transportation as a service), e-commerce sites ( shopping/procurement as service), Cloud based distribution of services came into existence as one, more or similar of the following: 

• Computing as a service,
• Storage as a service,
• Software as a service,
• Desktop as a service,
• Platform as a service,
• Infrastructure as a service,
• Mobile Backend as a service,
• Mail as a service,
• Security as a service,
• Data as a service,
• API as a service,
• Payment as a service,
• Backup/Disaster recovery as a service … and the list grows on wings of innovation....

 Now, quickly touching upon the types of clouds  based on user control and customization, security and exclusivity:

Public Cloud - a large service provider serving generic offerings where control mostly lies in the hand of providers, like Gmail, OPEX based, you pay more as you grow, no upfront hoarding of capacity, never going to be used.

Private Cloud- when a more secure, isolated and customized service is required , utilizing some of your existing infra, dedicated to you, with most user control, of course at a higher price, higher Capex.

Hybrid Cloud- a mix of pvt and public, customized in the proportion you require, with the choice to juggle and control in yours hands.

Below image from redhat captures the differences between public/open and pvt/closed clouds beautifully: 

 Challenges:

Security, reliability, cost and dependence on network speed and concerns on service provider's business stability and viability in future.

Besides, there are genuine concerns regarding who controls your data and what they are capable of deriving out of it without your permission !  That's one of the reason why hybrid clouds are gaining popularity as the middle path.

In coming future, the clouds may also evolve into Community model where every device is  a service provider and consumer both   Or hyper large scale integration of clouds may take place where everything including clouds are connected to everything else.