Historical Development of Cloud Computing - Essay Example

CLOUD COMPUTING INTRODUCTION Cloud computing has been recognized as one of the most progressive and intriguing phenomena in InformationTechnology industry. Cloud computing has a number of distinguishing characteristics. As indicated by Berkeley researchers Armbrust et al. (2009), term cloud computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the datacenters that provide those services. To distinguish, the researchers define Software as a Service (SaaS) as the services provided over the Internet. The hardware and software combine to form the cloud. When cloud service providers bill their customers for only the services they use, the researchers define this business model as a public cloud; the service is utility computing. Examples of utility computing include Amazon Web Services, Google Applications and Microsoft Azure. In late 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt publicised the cloud computing concept (Aymerich, Fenu, & Surcis, 2008). As discovered during the literature search when preparing this paper, an extensive increase in cloud computing research has occurred, especially starting around 2008. Research efforts emphasise a variety of topics related to cloud computing. Some of these topics include applications and their capabilities, costs, the need for cloud computing, security, reasons for adoption, and growth trends. This particular paper aims to discuss main characteristics of cloud computing as a recent phenomenon, trace its historical development, analyse its effectiveness, advantages and concerns. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CLOUD COMPUTING In their 2009 article in The Wall Street Journal, Fowler and Worthen write about the term "cloud computing," which has a long history in computer science. They quote Alex Bochannek, a curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., who said that engineers have been using cloud images for decades to show where their network joins another more unfamiliar network. As technology advanced, IT specialists started using "cloud" terminology to the Internet. Some of the precursor technologies to cloud computing include Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), distributed computing, virtualisation, and grid computing (Youseff et al., 2008). Cloud computing has strong ties to ubiquitous computing, where multiple computing resources are available for use via the Internet. It also had its roots in the search and retrieval systems that emerged in the 1990s. These search and retrieval systems originally were based of cluster computing but eventually migrated to the geographically dispersed grid computing. Cloud computing can be considered a natural evolution from grid computing in its approach to providing computing resources to remote users. From the practical perspective, cloud computing constitutes the storage and processing of information at another location. For the last several years, major companies joined the cloud computing bandwagon with their own products. For instance, back in 2006 Amazon.com implemented Elastic Computer Cloud for programmers to rent the company's computers. As cloud computing demand expanded, the types of cloud providers extended to include public and community clouds. Thus, Yahoo, Intel, HP Labs, along with other organizations have started an open cloudcomputing research program, called Open Cirrus on the design, provisioning and management of services at a global, multi-datacenter scale. As cloud computing demand expands, the types of cloud providers are extending to public and community clouds. From this standpoint, many researchers consider cloud computing to be the third wave of Internet advancement, following the Internet as the first wave and the Web as the second wave. ANALYSIS OF CLOUD COMPUTING In 2009, Peter Mell and Tim Grance of the Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a draft working definition of cloud computing. The authors defined cloud computing as: Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models (Mell & Grance, 2009). However, they caution that cloud computing is still - an evolving paradigm, and that the definition of cloud computing, along with its characteristics, will evolve over time as the debate continues in the public and private sectors. They caution that the cloud computing industry encompasses many models, vendors and market niches. Their definition attempts to cover all aspects of cloud computing. Mell and Grance (2009) list the essential characteristics of cloud computing as: (1) On-demand self-service to allow computing capabilities for consumers such as server time and network storage that do not require the need for human intervention (Mell and Grance, 2009, p.1). (2) Ubiquitous network access to allow for computing capabilities at any time over the network for any kind of client platforms such as cell phones, laptops and personal digital assistants. (3) Location independent resource pooling where a provider pools its computing resources, such as storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines, from various physical locations that enables it to offer them based on consumer demand. (4) Rapid elasticity to allow computing capabilities to be rapidly expanded of decreased based on consumer demand (Mell and Grance, 2009, p.1). (5) Measured Service to allow resource usage to monitored, measured and controlled based on consumer demand. Based on these characteristics, one can obtain a working definition of cloud computing as a service that is available on demand regardless of the geographic location of the provider's physical resources and that service can be monitored to expand or decrease based of customer demand. With the ability to monitor the use of computing capabilities, the customer pays only for the computing resources that are used. Contemporary research identifies three main delivery models for cloud computing. They are: (1) Software as a Service (SaaS) allows a cloud consumer to use the provider's applications through the use of various client devices, usually a web browser (Mell and Grance, 2009, p.2). The consumer has little control over the application with the exception of user-specific application configuration settings. The provider manages and controls the infrastructure, network, servers, storage and application capabilities. (2) Platform as a Service (PaaS) allows the consumer to deploy an in-house created application to the cloud infrastructure but still does not control or manage the cloud network environment, servers, operating systems or storage (Mell and Grance, 2009, p.2). The consumer has control over the applications and possibly some environment configurations where the application is hosted. (3) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) allows the consumer to rent the computing resources necessary to deploy and run operating systems and applications without having to manage or control the infrastructure (Mell and Grance, 2009, p.2). The consumer maintains control over the systems that are deployed. ADVANTAGES OF CLOUND COMPUTING Practically, one of the most evident advantages of cloud computing for consumers is its broad availability and wide range of applications it offers. A cloud computer globally provides access to programs, storage, processing, applications, and software development. Cloud computing offers various applications in the areas of information technologies services, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and/or software as a service. These applications capitalize on technology innovations such as Web-based operating systems. For example, Google offers cloud-based applications such as Google Apps and Microsoft introduced its Software-Plus-Services concept. Cloud computing offers extraordinary cost effectiveness for companies, which have to pay for services as they are needed, avoiding large up-front expenses for computer system purchases (Armbrust et al., 2009). King points out in Business Week article that Google offers its enterprise version for $50 per user per year, "while a license of Microsoft Office Professional retails for $499.99" (King, 2008, par.8). From the practical perspective, using cloud computing services companies can economize on on space, utilities, and maintenance, all of which can be realized by outsourcing computing applications to a cloud computer provider. King cites Plummer, who indicates that "about $8 out of every $10 spent on technology in corporations is for maintaining systems" (King, 2008, par.7). Another evident advantage of cloud computing is that it makes high performing applications affordable and available. The convenience of performing large computations rapidly upon demand can save an organization both time and money because of the more rapid response time possible with the large number of processors on a cloud computer. For example, a cloud computer can have thousands of nodes, while most private computer systems are smaller. Because of the discrepancy, many large parallel calculations can be performed much faster on a cloud computer than on most private computing systems. These can mean a difference between minutes or hours running a job on a cloud computing system compared to days or even many years on a desktop system. As a result, calculations that were previously impractical to solve can now be solved in a reasonable time and applications with time urgency can often be completed more rapidly, assuming that transferring data to and from the cloud is performed with limited latency. Data security constitutes one of the most important determinants favoring cloud computing. Organisations preventing sensitive information loss or data breach can use a cloud service provider and store their data in a secured environment. Ironically, this move would result in employees using "dumb terminals" or computers that connected to a data source and application reminiscent of early computers used only for mainframe access. It would eliminate the need for employees to store sensitive data on their easily stolen, application-rich laptops. By using cloud computing, companies would be able to reduce costs for hardware and data center management. Particularly, during contemporary global economic downturn, companies look for more ways to cut expenses and cloud computing looks even more advantageous. Among possible disadvantages of cloud computing experts indicate its reliability and again security. In order to be competitive and maintain customer satisfaction cloud computing should exhibit several characteristics, such as staying cost-competitive, ensuring information security and confidentiality, and most important maintaining system reliability and availability. King indicates an example of cloud computing reliability issues, citing case of "the six-hour outage on July 20 of Amazon's S3 service, designed for developers who want easy access to storage over the Internet" (King, 2008, par.8). When companies have a reduced control over the application security concerns can be an issue. In addition, the cloud computing provider also manages system security for customer data. Numerous security measures must protect this information from unauthorized release to other users or to outside parties, while the information is at the cloud provider and while the information is in transit over the Internet between the user and the cloud provider. Providing security can be complicated. Not only must a cloud provider set up a secure system, but the provider must also include safeguards against user and employee carelessness. With the use of remote logins, a secure login method is needed. Practically, there are limits on which applications can be safely transferred to a cloud provider. For example, very sensitive data or classified information would need a higher level of data protection than less sensitive data, such as operational information, etc. As a result, an organization must carefully weigh the pros and cons of transferring various applications and data to a cloud provider. Companies can opt in for data encryption as a mandatory step toward their data protection strategy. REFERENCES Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, R. H., Konwinski, A., et al. 2009. Above the clouds: A Berkeley view of cloud computing. University of California at Berkeley Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2009-28. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from Aymerich, F. M., Fenu, G., & Surcis, S. 2008. An approach to a cloud computing network. Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Applications of Digital Information and Web Technologies, 113-118. Fowler, G. & Worthen, B. (2009). The Internet Industry Is on a Cloud -- Whatever That May Mean. Retrieved April 20, 2010 from King. R. (2008). How Cloud Computing is Changing the World. Business Week. Retrieved April 20, 2010 from Mell, P. & Grance, T. (2009). The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing. Retrieved April 20, 2010 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Web site: Youseff, L., Butrico, M., & Da Silva, D. 2008. Toward a unified ontology of cloud computing. Proceedings of the Grid Computing Environments Workshop, 2008, 1-10 Read More