Thursday, May 18, 2017

Cloud Computing - A Key Digital Force

1. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of the key forces of Digital Transformation which is being adopted by enterprises thick and fast due to high computing power, cheap cost of services, high performance, scalability, accessibility as well as availability.



Cloud computing is an innovative delivery practice to use and share an array of computing devices at remote sites which are managed through internet for data processing, computing and storage. 

Cloud computing provide users access to shared pool of configurable computing resources viz. Servers, Networks, Applications, Databases, Services etc. which can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort.


2. Core Objective

Enterprise must include business agility and capability as part of their cloud computing core objectives. Enterprise may definitely experience growth in business by migrating to cloud; where in they focus of their core business and leave rest to the Cloud Service Provider which are as follows:

Ø  Ensure resource scalability as fulfillment to business needs. These are managed remotely by expandable and extendable infrastructure services.
Ø  Enhance security by invoking security modules such as authentication and authorization.
Ø  Facilitates host of User Interfaces and workflows which reduces time-to-market.
Ø  Provides superior user experience through agile and robust cloud services.
Ø  Some cloud platforms empower business users to make effective changes to functionality through configuration. This reduces the dependency on development teams and results in increased business agility.
Ø  The seamless integration of applications in the enterprise architecture results in low maintenance and support, thereby reducing the overhead costs.
Ø  Reduces hardware, software or licensing costs, as cloud services operate in the pay-as-you-use model. This results in predictable operation expenditures with minimum deployment cost and almost zero capital expenditure.
Ø  Automatic security and software updates shrink IT infrastructure maintenance costs.




3. Key Characteristics

Agility for organizations may be improved, as cloud computing may increase users' flexibility with re-provisioning, adding, or expanding technological infrastructure resources.

Ø  Overall Cost Reduction: Enterprise willingness not to invest upfront on infrastructure is suited best in a cloud computing model where they only need to pay as they go. Therefore overall cost reductions are experienced wherein enterprise only need to pay choosing one of the available usage billing model.
Ø  Device & Location Independence: Infrastructure deployed on the cloud is accessed remotely over the internet. This not only gives the flexibility to access the resources by means of any device, anytime, anywhere but also do away with the hassle of maintain an exclusive space hosting the entire infrastructure onsite. This also results in ease of maintenance of cloud based application resources. 
Ø  Multitenancy: This allows sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus enabling centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs. Users only pay for the resources and equipment to meet their highest possible load-levels.
Ø  Service Oriented Architecture: Consistent and loosely coupled architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface.
Ø  Productivity: Users working with same set of data simultaneously increases productivity.
Ø  Reliability:  Usage of multiple redundant sites makes well-designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery. This results in increased reliability.
Ø  Scalability: The flexibility to ramp up and down.
Ø  Performance: Monitoring performances and taking corrective actions are done by a dedicated team of skilled resources.




4. Service Model

The architecture of Cloud Computing suggests that it encourages "Everything as a Service". Thus, predominately we have following three service model under the Cloud Computing umbrella:

Ø  Software as a Service (SaaS): Under this service model, users can access and use the various applications and tools hosted across the providers' cloud to which they are subscribed. The access can either be provided over an internet browser or by virtue of any program interface. The users have access to limited sets of configuration and settings on the subscribed Applications.
Ø  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Under this service model, users can provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the user is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The user does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components.
Ø Platform as a Service (PaaS): Under this service model, users can deploy onto the cloud infrastructure their created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The user has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.






5. Deployment Models

Private cloud
These are for single origination usage which are hosted internally or externally and are managed by organization owned resources or by third-party associates.
Undertaking a private cloud project requires a significant level and degree of engagement to virtualize the business environment, and requires the organization to re-evaluate decisions about existing resources. Security remains a key area which should be thoroughly looked at to prevent serious vulnerabilities. Setting up private cloud is quite an expensive affair owing to the fact that they have a massive physical footprint, requiring allocations of space, hardware, and environmental controls. And, these assets have to be refreshed periodically; inflicting huge monetary stress. This model doesn't quite goes with the concept with which Cloud Computing has been envisaged as users still have to buy, build and manage resources resulting in additional capital expenditures.

Public cloud
The architecture of public cloud is same as private cloud expect for security aspects which may be exceptionally different for services related to applications, storages, and all other deployed and configured resources; that are made available by a service provider for a public audience and when communication is effected over a non-trusted network. Cloud Service providers own and operate infrastructure at their data center premises and access to the users are made available over the internet.


Hybrid cloud
Gartner, Inc. defines a hybrid cloud service as a cloud computing service that is composed of some combination of private, public and community cloud services, from different service providers. A hybrid cloud service crosses isolation and provider boundaries so that it can't be simply put in one category of private, public, or community cloud service. It allows one to extend either the capacity or the capability of a cloud service, by aggregation, integration or customization with another cloud service.



6. Major Cloud Providers

A. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services are undoubtedly leading the cloud computing market. AWS offers a complete range of IaaS and PaaS services. Among the best known are its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Elastic Beanstalk, Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Block Store (EBS), Glacier storage, Relational Database Service (RDS), and DynamoDB NoSQL database. It also offers cloud services related to networking, analytics and machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile services, development, cloud management, cloud security and more.



B. Microsoft Cloud Offerings



C. IBM

IBM's most visible cloud service is its Bluemix PaaS, which is aimed primarily at enterprise development teams. The company also has a lot of enterprise software on a SaaS basis, and it sells cloud infrastructure, cloud management tools and cloud managed services.


D. Google Cloud Platform

Google offers a very full range of IaaS and PaaS services that span compute, storage, networking, big data, machine learning, developer tools and security. Some of its best-known cloud offerings include Compute Engine, App Engine, Container Engine, Cloud Storage and BigQuery.



E. Oracle Cloud

Oracle flaunts its public cloud as "the industry's broadest and most integrated." Its SaaS applications include HR Cloud, CX Cloud, ERP Cloud, EPM Cloud, SCM Cloud and Analytics Cloud.





7. Adoption of Cloud – Prediction & Forecast by expert analysts.

According to a report published by IDC, the public cloud computing market is on pace to double over the next few years, climbing from around $70 billion to more than $141 billion by 2019. That huge market offers a tremendous opportunity for those companies that establish themselves as leaders in the cloud computing space.
Gartner Says by 2020 "Cloud Shift" Will Affect More Than $1 Trillion in IT Spending
More than $1 trillion in IT spending will be directly or indirectly affected by the shift to cloud during the next five years, said Gartner, Inc. This will make cloud computing one of the most disruptive forces of IT spending since the early days of the digital age.



451 Research’s Market Monitor forecasts that the market for cloud computing ‘as a service’ – which includes PaaS, IaaS and infrastructure software as a service (ITSM, backup, archiving) – will hit $27.1bn this year and nearly $44.2bn by 2020.

According to IDC, by 2020, penetration of software as a service (SaaS) versus traditional software deployment will be over 25%. Packaged software will shrink to 10% of new enterprise installations.
A press release report by Strategyr states that the global market for Platform as a Service (PaaS) is projected to reach US $ 7.5 Billion by the year 2020.

Gartner predicts that by 2020, over 50% of all new applications developed on PaaS will be IoT-centric, disrupting conventional architecture practices.

TBR predicts worldwide public cloud revenue will increase to $167 Billion in 2020



8. Emerging Trends

Cloud computing had displayed its potential and holds lot of promises in time to come. With major cloud technology companies invest billions of dollars per year in cloud research and development; we are bound to witness unbelievable changes the way we look at advance computing today.
One of the areas which will create huge impact over the next couple of years is Robot as a Service (RaaS).  
RaaS can be viewed as an extension of Internet of Things (IoT) where robots get integrated seamlessly with the cloud computing environment. In terms of service-oriented architecture (SOA), a RaaS unit includes services for performing functionality, a service directory for discovery and publishing, and service clients for user's direct access. The current RaaS implementation facilitates SOAP and RESTful communications between RaaS units and the other cloud computing units. Hardware support and standards are available to support RaaS implementation. Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) defines implementation constraints to enable secure Web Service messaging, discovery, description, and eventing on resource-constrained devices between Web services and devices.

IDC states that by 2019, 30 % of commercial service robotic applications will be in the form of a "Robot as a Service" business model.

Forbes states that Lufthansa is using an IoT-based strategy to create an entirely new business mining data from their maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations and providing it to their customers. They are also using real-time aircraft, airport, and weather sensor data to improve on-time performance and optimize operations. Lufthansa aggregates all available data together to consistently deliver excellent customer experiences as a result. It’s these sensor-driven strategies that drive the most reliable IoT and IIoT forecasts and predict the future of this industry.

Forrester states that fleet management in transportation, security and surveillance applications in government, inventory and warehouse management applications in retail and industrial asset management in primary manufacturing will be the hottest areas. Forrester also found enterprises are more likely than smaller companies to use IoT. 23% of global enterprise respondents use IoT, but only about 14% of small and medium-size business (SMB) respondents do. For example, Lufthansa Airlines is using real-time aircraft, airport, and weather sensor data to improve on-time performance and optimize operations.


9. The Way Forward

With the evolution, progression and adoption of cloud computing we can very well witness end of traditional infrastructure. We have seen enterprises are already looking out for online application addressing their needs in order to eliminate the scope of creating and setting up necessary infrastructure.
In next couple of years we can look at Cloud computing as given under:

More Apps on the Cloud
By 2020, 25% of Applications would be accessed and served from the Cloud. As more companies are spending handsomely on Cloud, another left out sections are quickly joining in sensing that Cloud is going to be the key differentiator in the new future. As researchers predicted, there will be about 8.2 billion active mobile devices by 2020 with more and more applications to follow. Applications will be made available on the cloud to build and deploy applications that would lead to better technology and faster response time.


Embracing Hybrid Cloud Computing
Some industry leaders predict that about 50 percent of companies will have hybrid clouds by 2017. Hybrid cloud computing would provide a combination of strengths like on-premise solutions and management convenience.

Increased Cloud Development
An 85 percent of the new applications are being built with the cloud in mind, which expects to see more and more resources going towards cloud development. Companies can expect an increase in the third party, commercial and enterprise developers and API exchanges.




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References
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