International Journal of Computer Networking, Wireless and Mobile Communications (IJCNWMC) ISSN 2250-1568 Vol.

3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 149-156 TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

COMMUNICATION AS SERVICE CLOUD

GURUDATT KULKARNI1, MAHESHCHANDRA JADHAV 2, SADANAND BHUSE3, HEMANT BANKAR 4 & AUTADE SUSHMA5
1

Lecture in Marathwada Mitra Mandals Polytechnic, Pune, Maharashtra, India

2 3,4,5

Software Engineer in BMC Software

Lecturer in Vidya Pratishtans Polytechnic, Pune, Maharashtra, India

ABSTRACT
Cloud communications and cloud-based computing (here referring to the different types of services and applications being delivered in the internet cloud, and the fact that, in many cases, the devices used to access these services and applications do not require any special applications) are seemingly on a steep growth curve. With the need to reduce costs, the explosion of communications capabilities, and the increasing demand for mobile access to services, the service delivery move to the cloud enables faster growth and improved management and scalability. Cloud provides data independency and remote desktop applications. In the paper Infrastructure as a service (IAAS), Software as a Service (SAAS) and implementing the new concept of Communication as a Service (CAAS) in the cloud is explained. Paper contains the concept of client server architecture where the database of the client is stored on the server and the client would get the available software as a service. At the client side, the client can access the cloud server with browser via Internet with proper Authentication thereby performing different tasks In the new concept of Communication as a service the client can send email, chat with their friends, send texts and voice over internet protocol (VoIP). Communications as a Service (CaaS) is an outsourced enterprise communications solution that can be leased from a single vendor. Such communications can include voice over IP (VoIP or Internet telephony), instant messaging (IM), collaboration and videoconference applications using fixed and mobile devices. CaaS has evolved along the same lines as Software as a Service (SaaS).

KEYWORDS: Communication, Caas, VPN, Cloud INTRODUCTION

Cloud Computing is a generic term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that is often used to represent the Internet. Gartner [1] defines Cloud Computing as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are delivered 'as a service' to external customers using Internet technologies. According to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), Cloud Computing is essentially on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources [2]. It is an all-inclusive solution in which all computing resources (hardware, software, networking, storage, and so on) are provided rapidly to users as demand dictates [3] and promises to revolutionize IT and business by making computing available as a utility over the internet. Forrester [4] suggests that Cloud Computing refers to a pool of abstracted, highly scalable and managed infrastructure capable of hosting end-customer applications and billed by consumption. The broader aim of Cloud Computing is to make supercomputing available to the masses. Cloud Computing suggests a paradigm shift, which is significantly different from other ideas in the past, particularly due to the evolving nature of infrastructure and the developments in hardware. Enterprises are also required to be agile and responsive to the changes in the computing environment.

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CLOUD COMPUTING DEPLOYMENT AND DELIVERY MODELS

Cloud Computing can be classified and deployed in a number of ways e.g. as public, private or hybrid clouds. Public Clouds, also known as External Clouds, are cloud services provided by third parties and hosted and managed by the service providers. The cloud providers assume the responsibilities of installation, management, provisioning and maintenance. This variety of Clouds provides a much greater level of efficiency of pooling of resources. The customers access and consume the services and IT resources. Consumers are charged only for the resources and services they use following a pay-as-you-go approach. Lack of appropriate security, reliability and regulatory compliance is often a major issue, here. Amazon.com is one of the largest public cloud providers. Private Clouds, also known as Internal Clouds, are proprietary networks, often data centers, residing within the enterprise for the exclusive use of the organization or for a known group of consumers. A local or private network infrastructure is employed. In this case, the enterprise is in charge of setting up and maintaining the cloud and thus the enterprise can take better control of all aspects of the provision and functioning. The added advantage is in terms of better control of security, more effective regulatory compliance and improved quality of service. For mission critical processes and for location of sensitive data, this type of cloud infrastructure is much more effective than Public Clouds. This also provides much more privacy then a Public Cloud would. Private Clouds are, generally, Clouds that reside within the organization, however, private clouds, outside the organization, are also becoming a possibility, where the resources inside such a Cloud are available only to the organization concerned and totally invisible to others. When a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud, the result is a virtual private cloud. A Community Cloud is a semi-private cloud that is used by a defined group of tenants with shared backgrounds and requirements [6]. This, then, becomes a private cloud for this community, where the management responsibility is shared amongst the members of the community. Hybrid Clouds are a combination of private and public clouds. In this case, the management responsibilities are split between the enterprise and the public cloud providers, which can often become an issue of concern. For mission critical processes, this type of cloud infrastructure can also be highly effective because of enhanced control and management by the enterprise itself. For example, the organizations can keep the sensitive data within the private cloud and the rest in the public cloud. The Cloud model generally consists of three varieties of architectures which refer to and provide three types of generic services, namely: Software Services, Platform Services and Infrastructure Services. These are generally abbreviated as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), respectively. Presenting the model as a pyramid, the Software Services will be at the top and the Infrastructure Services will be at the bottom of the pyramid [3, 7]. Software as a Service This refers to prebuilt and vertically integrated applications (e.g. an email system, human resource management, payroll processing, database processing and other application processes) are delivered to and purchased by customers as services. Here, customers are looking to purchase functionality. Applications are normally designed for ease of use based on proven business models. This may be regarded as a user level layer and it can be further classified into two separate layers: 1) Services (which are often stand alone applications e.g. a billing service); and 2) Applications (which are often units of functionalities). SaaS is a very broad market where services can be anything from Web-based email to inventory control, even in some cases online banking services, as well as database processing. Gmail, Hotmail, Quicken Online, IBM WebSphere, Boomi and SalesForce are some of the well known SaaS products and providers.

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Platform as a Service This layer refers to software and product development tools (e.g. application servers, database servers, portal servers, middleware, etc) which clients purchase so they can build and deploy their own applications, thus providing a much increased flexibility and control to the consumer. However, there may sometimes be a certain amount of dependence upon the infrastructures and platform providers. The services, here, are intended to support the software services top layer of the pyramid. The customers are looking to buy time and cost savings in deploying their applications. Typical offerings include runtime environment for application code, Cloud Services, Compute power, storage, and networking infrastructure. This level of services may be regarded as a developer level layer. The pricing structure is often along the lines of: Compute usage per hour; data transfer per GB; IO requests per million; storage per GB; data storage requests per thousand. All charges are per each billing period. Google App Engine, Heroku, Mosso and Engine Yard are examples of PaaS products and providers.

Infrastructure as a Service[5] This layer is essentially hardware (e.g. visualized servers, storage, network devices, etc) and hardware services to enable Cloud Platforms and Applications to operate. These services support the software services top layer of the pyramid. Customers get full control over server infrastructure and that sometimes comes with a price premium. Here, customers are looking to buy computing, without making upfront investment. Since, the infrastructure is offered on a pay-for what-you-use basis, it is sometimes referred to as utility computing, as there is similarity with the provision and use of services such as electricity and gas. The pricing structure is often similar to the provision for PaaS. Amazon EC2, IBM BlueHouse, VMWare, GoGrid, RightScale and Linode are some of the IaaS products and providers.

Communication-as-a-Service[6] The heart of the project lies in the communication as a service, where the user on the cloud can directly communicate with the other user. The user can even communicate with other people from the cloud via E-mails, Texts, Voice and Video Calls, chat box etc. This facility is developed from the point of view of the user. It helps the user to share their thoughts with other people, without logging in the other website or service providers. Thus from the cloud website alone the user can have the multiple options to communicate with the other users. The communication mode would be anonymous and authenticated. The API of the email clients and chat rooms would be provided for the communication. This project is mainly built up for the educational use so according to the criteria, facilities would be provided. The APIs are build on the java platform with the object oriented concepts and are the part of SAAS. The chat application is developed on the basis of the concept of Remote method invocation (RMI) and Ajax.

CAAS WITH NEW APPROACH

CaaS is an outsourced enterprise communications solution. Providers of this type of cloud-based solution (known as CaaS vendors) are responsible for the management of hardware and software required for delivering Voice over IP (VoIP) services, Instant Messaging (IM), and video conferencing capabilities to their customers. This model began its evolutionary process from within the telecommunications (Telco) industry, not unlike how the SaaS model arose from the software delivery services sector. CaaS vendors are responsible for all of the hardware and software management consumed by their user base. CaaS vendors typically offer guaranteed quality of service (QoS) under a service-level

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agreement (SLA). A CaaS model allows a CaaS providers business customers to selectively deploy communications features and services throughout their company on a pay-as-you-go basis for service(s) used. CaaS is designed on a utilitylike pricing model that provides users with comprehensive, flexible, and (usually) simple-to-understand service plans. According to Gartner, the CaaS market is expected to total $2.3 billion in 2011, representing a compound annual growth rate of more than 105% for the period. CaaS service offerings are often bundled and may include integrated access to traditional voice (or VoIP) and data, advanced unified communications functionality such as video calling, web collaboration, chat, real time presence and unified messaging, a handset, local and long-distance voice services, voice mail, advanced calling features (such as caller ID, three way and conference calling, etc.) and advanced PBX functionality. A CaaS solution includes redundant switching, network, POP and circuit diversity, customer premises equipment redundancy, and WAN fail-over that specifically addresses the needs of their customers. All VoIP transport components are located in geographically diverse, secure data centers for high availability and survivability. CaaS service offerings are often bundled and may include integrated access to traditional voice (or VoIP) and data, advanced unified communications functionality such as video calling, web collaboration, chat, real time presence and unified messaging, a handset, local and long-distance voice services, voice mail, advanced calling features (such as caller ID, three way and conference calling, etc.) and advanced PBX functionality. A CaaS solution includes redundant switching, network, POP and circuit diversity, customer premises equipment redundancy, and WAN fail-over that specifically addresses the needs of their customers. All VoIP transport components are located in geographically diverse, secure data centers for high availability and survivability.

Figure 1: CaaS Architecture

CAAS ARCHITECTURE
CaaS (Communications as a Service) is beginning to flourish. As companies evaluate the cost, time, and flexibility advantages, CaaS becomes a desirable tool businesses can use to quickly respond to changing markets. A closer look at CaaS reveals that proper CaaS deployments are built upon the same basic principles used by good premise based implementations. The primary determining factors for selecting a CaaS methodology are: Initial cost Recurring cost Functionality Connectivity

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Security Administration Survivability Based upon these factors, a variety of CaaS solutions have been developed. As you would expect, each has

strengths and weaknesses, largely determined by the software, hardware, and architecture of each approach. Currently, there are three primary types of CaaS offerings in the marketplace: Hosted VoIP Hosted TDM Local Control/VoIP

Hosted VoIP Hosted VoIP is by far the most common solution. In the Hosted VoIP model, the primary equipment and telco circuits are located at one or more facilities operated by the hosting company. For best call quality, the customer should use a connection that supports Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritize and protect voice traffic over their network connection.

Figure 2: Hosted VoIP Although using a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connection or other connection with an appropriate committed rate of throughput is recommended, there are specific situations where quality is not as critical. In those cases, establishing a VPN connection over a best-efforts connection (such as DSL or cable Internet) may be sufficient. Some configurations support almost no equipment at the customer premises, perhaps as little as a router with VPN connectivity and some SIP phones. More complete solutions usually include some local connectivity for local 911 service, a SIP proxy server, and onsite connections to the customers other applications. Hosted TDM [7] For customers who are not ready to make the investment in VoIP but need more advanced communications abilities, a hosted TDM configuration could be a good fit. Often this is also a good choice when disruption to the business could be more expensive than the cost of the equipment. Other reasons to adopt hosted TDM include the need for quick time-to-market, lack of personnel with sufficient network or VoIP expertise, or a move to a new facility is in the near future or when investing in the current facilitys infrastructure doesnt make sense. Like the hosted VoIP model,

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interactions come into the hosted facility. However, the interaction is not routed to an agent via a network connection. The hosted system connects the incoming call to the agent via a bridged call to the agent. Typically, the agent works behind a traditional PBX system using DIDs. Usually this results in little or no extra hardware at the customer site. There are some trade-offs for avoiding the expenditures of upgrading infrastructure.

Figure 3: Hosted TDM Local Control/VoIP The first is incurring a higher monthly cost because of the charges for the bridge calls between your office and the hosting location. In addition, setup and administration costs will be higher because moves, adds, and changes must be made and coordinated between two phone systems. At times, the additional complexity may lead to difficulty when trying to locate a communications problem. A third option is the local control/VoIP model. This choice gives a customer most of the advanced benefits of having a on-premise VoIP phone system even though the primary server is located off-site in a hardened data center. This is especially helpful for customers who have or desire to create a robust local network supporting VoIP but need to add advanced functionality that their current system doesnt support. Instead of replacing an entire phone system or creating a patchwork of existing features, the customer can connect to a more advanced system to provide greater functionality. While calls come into equipment located on the customer premises, call control is handled by the advanced phone system located in the hardened data center. For customers with exceptionally strong compliance or security requirements or who rely upon high bandwidth applications, the combination of features, functionality, and flexibility are hard to beat. Since phones, network, gateways, proxy/media servers remain at the customers facility, they retain full access and control of those devices.

Figure 4: Local Control/VoIP

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Local Control/VoIP (Extra Redundancy) The customers Telco lines also remain at the customers location. This works especially well when a customer has a preferred voice carrier, has existing contracts that must be fulfilled, or possesses many existing numbers they would prefer not to port or forward. They also avoid the costs of forwarding or bridging calls. Should the WAN connection to the datacenter be interrupted, calls can still be handled by the on premise equipment, although with less functionality. An additional variation of the local control/VoIP model would split the telco lines, placing some at the customers site and some at the hosted provider to provide seamless failover if local trunks ever go down. Likewise, a second, lower priority method of connectivity to the Data Center could be established providing even higher redundancy for data communications.

ADVANTAGES OF CAAS [8]

From the handset found on each employees desk to the PC-based software client on employee laptops, to the VoIP private backbone, and all modes in between, every component in a CaaS solution is managed 24/7 by the CaaS vendor. As we said previously, the expense of managing a carrier-grade data center is shared across the vendors customer base, making it more economical for businesses to implement CaaS than to build their own VoIP network. Lets look as some of the advantages of a hosted approach for CaaS. Hosted and Managed Solutions Remote management of infrastructure services provided by third parties once seemed an unacceptable situation to most companies. However, over the past decade, with enhanced technology, networking, and software, the attitude has changed. This is, in part, due to cost savings achieved in using those services. However, unlike the one-off services offered by specialist providers, CaaS delivers a complete communications solution that is entirely managed by a single vendor. Along with features such as VoIP and unified communications, the integration of core PBX features with advanced functionality is managed by one vendor, who is responsible for all of the integration and delivery of services to users Flexible Capacity and Feature Set When customers outsource communications services to a CaaS provider, they pay for the features they need when they need them. The service provider can distribute the cost services and delivery across a large customer base. As previously stated, this makes the use of shared feature functionality more economical for customers to implement. Economies of scale allow service providers enough flexibility that they are not tied to a single vendor investment. They are able to leverage best-of-breed providers such as Avaya, Cisco, Juniper, Microsoft, Nortel and ShoreTel more economically than any independent enterprise. No Risk of Obsolescence Rapid technology advances, predicted long ago and known as Moores law, have brought about product obsolescence in increasingly shorter periods of time. Moores law describes a trend he recognized that has held true since the beginning of the use of integrated circuits (ICs) in computing hardware. Since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.

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No Facilities and Engineering Costs Incurred CaaS providers host all of the equipment needed to provide their services to their customers, virtually eliminating the need for customers to maintain data center space and facilities. There is no extra expense for the constant power consumption that such a facility would demand. Customers receive the benefit of multiple carrier-grade data centers with full redundancyand its all included in the monthly payment.

Guaranteed Business Continuity If a catastrophic event occurred at your businesss physical location, would your company disaster recovery plan allow your business to continue operating without a break? If your business experienced a serious or extended communications outage, how long could your company survive? For most businesses, the answer is not long. Distributing risk by using geographically dispersed data centers has become the norm today. It mitigates risk and allows companies in a location hit by a catastrophic event to recover as soon as possible. This process is implemented by CaaS providers because most companies dont even contemplate voice continuity if catastrophe strikes. Unlike data continuity, eliminating single points of failure for a voice network is usually cost-prohibitive because of the large scale and management complexity of the project. With a CaaS solution, multiple levels of redundancy are built into the system, with no single point of failure.

Remote Supervisory Monitoring Tools [7] Supervisors and managers can see, in real time, all communication activity going on in their business. In the contact center, they can also see their queues, monitor their SLAs and even listen to and coach their agents even if they are working in another office or at home.

REFERENCES
1. David W Cearley, Cloud Computing: Key Initiative Overview, Gartner Report, 2010 Peter Mell and Tim Grance, The NIST Definition of Cloud 2. Computing, version 15, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Information Technology Laboratory, www.csrc.nist.gov, 7 Oct 2009 3. Dustin Amrhein and Scott Quint, Cloud Computing for the Enterprise: Part 1: Capturing the Cloud, Developer Works, IBM, 8 Apr 2009, www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0904_amrhein/0

904_amrhein.html 4. John Rhoton, Cloud Computing Explained: Implementation Handbook for Enterprises, Recursive Press, 3 May 2010 5. Cloud Computing: Characteristics and Deployment Approaches, Zaigham Mahmood ,2011 11th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology 6. Gartner Press Release, Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Communications-as-a-Service Revenue to Total $252 Million in 2007, August 2007, retrieved 13 Jan 2009. 7. 8. http://caas.tmcnet.com http://www.dvsweb.com/caas/caasarchitecture.htm