Demystifying the Cloud (Part 1 of 5)

This is the first post of fiveto help explains the concepts of Cloud Computing in simple terms. The section will introduce you to key concepts and the terminologies of the Cloud.

Its not just all about branding.

The remaining sections cover the implementations of the Cloud Computing on some of our tried and tested favourite flavours from such cloud infrastructure providers as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Windows Azure Platform, Google App Engine, OpenStack and Cloud Foundry.

Now for an analogy (because, I am really good a writing them...)

"Think of the Cloud as you do like with electricity; you plug your toaster's power cord into an outlet and you get a supply of electricity.

You don't know where it comes from, how its made available, you don't need to help the electricity company to run the infrastructure, and more than likely you don't know what is involved with making continue to run. The only outcome you care about is that its always available, from anywhere and it lets you run your toaster, to make toast.

Now replace electricity with compute, toaster with critical business process and toast with application."

Cloud Formation. Get it? Layers of abstraction. Amazing Photo: Lenticular Cloud Formation Over Mt Fuji

Part 1: Defining the Cloud

Evolution of the Internet Service Provider (ISP)

There are multiple factors that led to the evolution of Cloud Computing. One of the key factors is the way Internet Service Providers (ISP) matured over a period of time. I am borrowing this analogy from Forrester Research.

Forrester Research. ISP Evolution.

From the initial days of offering basic Internet connectivity to offering Software as a Service (SaaS), the ISPs have come a long way. ISP 1.0 was all about providing Internet access to their customers. ISP 2.0 was the phase where ISPs offered hosting capabilities.

The next step was co-location through which the ISPs started leasing out the rack space and bandwidth. By this, companies could host their servers running custom, Line of Business (LoB) applications that could be accessed over the public internet by its employees, trading partners and customers. ISP 3.0 was offering applications on subscription resulting in the Application Service Provider (ASP) model. The latest trend of Software as a Service is a mature ASP model. The next logical step for ISPs would be to embrace the Cloud.

The Programmable Web

Web Services made the web programmable. They enabled the developers to look at the Internet as a class library or an object model.

Programmable Web + Web browsing = Web Application. (Sometimes coined as "Cloud App")

Protocols like Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Representational State Transfer (REST), JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Plain Old XML (POX) fueled the growth of APIs on the web. Today every popular search engine, social networking site and syndication portal have APIs exposed to developers.

Virtualization

Virtualization is the most discussed term among CTOs and IT decision makers. Through Virtualization, the data center infrastructure can be consolidated from hundreds of servers to just tens of servers.

All the physical server roles like Web Servers, Database Servers and Messaging Servers run as virtualized instances.

Virtualisation. Abstracting from the physical into the virtual. A cornerstone of Cloud Computing.

This results in lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and brings substantial savings on the power bills and reduced cost of cooling equipment, being listed as some of the benefits of abstracting from the physical server based approaches of the yesteryear.

Though the evolution of ISP, programmable web and virtualization are independent trends, they have been the soul contributors to the evolution of Cloud Computing.

By your powers combined...

Understanding Cloud Computing

If you are wondering what is so special about the ‘Cloud’ in Cloud Computing, here is an explanation- Traditionally, developers and architects used a picture of cloud to illustrate a remote resource connected via the web.

Eventually cloud became the logical connector between the local and remote resources on the Internet. Most of the people get confused when they encounter the term Cloud Computing. According to them, their Web Services are already hosted on the Cloud and that can be potentially called as Cloud Services. While there is some truth in this argument, it is a not very accurate way of describing Cloud Computing.

Next time, we will look at Cloud Computing through the eyes of a normal person. Understanding Cloud Computing...