Title

WHITE PAPER ON CLOUD COMPUTING

Abstract
This white paper will help readers to know the basics of cloud computing and also to gain an understanding on how cloud computing works. I hope it will be beneficial to all people who want to save some money on infrastructures. Cloud based on demand web-services such as databases, queues, identity management, data on-demand, widgets, etc. are meeting with browser based thick-client frameworks such as AJAX, Adobe Flex, MS Silverlight, etc. to create a new breed of applications, built on a resuscitated Client/Server (Client/Server 2.0) SOA-based paradigm. The traditional "business logic" application server middle-tier is ceding the way to cloud based pay-per-use SOA. The increasing sophistication of cloud web-services platforms, the increase in browser sophistication and the availability of advanced client side IDEs will reinforce this trend. The new paradigm will simplify the development of web applications, simplify the creation of SaaS, provide better maintainability and lower TCO.

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Table of Contents
I. Cloud Computing Basics...............................................................................................................................4 II. Segment of Cloud Computing......................................................................................................................6 i. Application................................................................................................................................................6 ii. Platforms...................................................................................................................................................6 iii. Infrastructure...........................................................................................................................................7 III. Implementing Cloud Computing ...............................................................................................................8 i. Private Clouds............................................................................................................................................8 ii. Public Clouds ...........................................................................................................................................9 iii. Hybrid Clouds ......................................................................................................................................10 IV. Characteristics of Cloud computing.........................................................................................................11 i. Dynamic computing infrastructure..........................................................................................................11 ii. IT service-centric approach....................................................................................................................11 iii. Self-service based usage model.............................................................................................................12 iv. Minimally or self-managed platform.....................................................................................................12 v. Consumption-based billing.....................................................................................................................12 V. Cloud Computing Security Plan................................................................................................................14 VII. Barriers to Cloud Computing..................................................................................................................17 i. Customer Perspective..............................................................................................................................17 ii. Vendor Perspective.................................................................................................................................17 VIII. Summary ...............................................................................................................................................19 IX. Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................................20 X. Abbreviation..............................................................................................................................................21

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I. Cloud Computing Basics

Cloud computing is Internet ("cloud") based development and use of computer technology ("computing"). It is an emerging computing technology that uses the Internet and central remote servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows consumers and business to use applications without installation and access their personal files at any computer with Internet access. This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralizing storage, memory, processing and bandwidth. Cloud computing is the convergence and evolution of several concepts from virtualization, distributed application design, grid, and enterprise IT management to enable a more flexible approach for deploying and scaling applications. Cloud promises real costs savings and agility to customers. Through cloud computing, a company can rapidly deploy applications where the underlying technology components can expand and contract with the natural ebb and flow of the business life cycle. Traditionally, once an application was deployed it was bound to a particular infrastructure, until the infrastructure was upgraded. The result was low efficiency, utilization, and flexibility. Cloud enablers, such as virtualization and grid computing, allow applications to be dynamically deployed onto the most suitable infrastructure at run time. This elastic aspect of cloud computing allows applications to scale and grow without needing traditional fork-lift upgrades. IT departments and infrastructure providers are under increasing pressure to provide computing infrastructure at the lowest possible cost. In order to do this, the concepts of resource pooling, virtualization, dynamic provisioning, utility and commodity computing must be leveraged to create a public or private cloud that meets these needs. World-class data centers are now being formed that can provide this
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Infrastructure-as-a-Service manner.

(IaaS)

in

very

efficient

Customers can thus decide to develop their own applications, to run on their own internal private clouds, or leverage software as a SaaS application that run on public clouds. Integration and federation of services across both the public and private cloud, so-called hybrid clouds, is an emerging area of interest. The public cloud concept allows customers to develop and deploy applications with tremendous speed without the procurement and red-tape issues of dealing with potentially slow moving and costly IT departments. This also allows customers to shift traditional Capital Expenditures (CapEx) into their Operating Expenditure (OpEx) budgets. Driven by concerns over security, regulatory compliance, control over Quality of Service (QoS), vendor lock-in, and long-term costs, many larger customers, who have the economies of scale and strong IT competency, will build internal private clouds. These private clouds can provide the same cost and agility benefits as public clouds, while mitigating enterprise concerns about security, compliance, QoS, lock-in and TCO.

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II. Segment of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is broken down into three segments: "applications," "platforms," and "infrastructure".

i. Application
So far, the applications segment of cloud computing is the only segment that has proven successful as a business model. By running business applications over the Internet from centralized servers rather than from on-site servers, companies can cut some serious costs. Furthermore, while avoiding maintenance costs, licensing costs and the costs of the hardware required to run servers on-site, companies are able to run applications much more efficiently from a computing standpoint. On demand software services come in a few different varieties that may vary in their pricing scheme and how the software is delivered to the end users. In the past, the enduser would generally purchase a license from the software provider and then install and run the software directly from on-premise servers.

ii. Platforms
Platforms serve as an interface for users to access applications provided by partners or in some cases the customers. The following companies are some that have developed platforms that allow end users to access applications from centralized servers using the Internet. Next is the name of the platform used by the company: 1. Google (GOOG) - Apps Engine 2. Amazon.com (AMZN) - EC2 3. Microsoft (MSFT) - Windows Live
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4. Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) - The Enterprise Cloud 5. Salesforce.com (CRM) - Force.com 6. NetSuite (N) - Suiteflex 7. Mosso - Mosso, a division of Rackspace 8. Metrisoft - Metrisoft SaaS Platform

iii. Infrastructure
The final segment in cloud computing, known as infrastructure, is the backbone of the entire concept. Infrastructure vendors provide the physical storage space and processing capabilities that allow all the services described above.

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III. Implementing Cloud Computing

All of the architectural and organizational considerations mentioned herein are generally apply to all implementations of a cloud infrastructure. As we focus on building the cloud, a number of models have been developed for deploying a cloud infrastructure.

i. Private Clouds
In a private cloud, the infrastructure for implementing the cloud is controlled completely by the enterprise. Typically, private clouds are implemented in the data center of the enterprise and managed by internal resources. A private cloud maintains all corporate data in resources under the control of the legal and contractual umbrella of the organization. This eliminates the regulatory, legal and security concerns associated with information being processed on third party computing resources. The private cloud can also be used by existing IT departments to dramatically reduce their costs and as an opportunity to shift from a cost center to a value center in the eyes of the business. As an example, the following diagram depicts the key architectural elements of a private cloud utilizing Oracle scalabilities:

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ii. Public Clouds

In a public cloud, external organizations provide the infrastructure and management required to implement the cloud. Public clouds dramatically simplify implementation and are typically billed based on usage. This transfers the cost from a capital expenditure to an operational expense and can quickly be scaled to meet the organizations needs. Temporary applications or applications with burst resource requirements typically benefit from the public clouds ability to ratchet up resources when needed and then scale them back when they are no longer needed. In a private cloud, the company would need to provision for the worst case across all the applications that share the infrastructure. This can result in wasted resources when utilization is not at its peak. Public clouds have the disadvantage of hosting your data in an offsite organization outside the legal and regulatory umbrella of your organization. In addition, as most public clouds leverage a worldwide network of data centers, it is
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difficult to document the physical location of data at any particular moment. These issues result in potential regulatory compliance issues that include the use of public clouds for certain organizations or business applications. Not all public cloud based applications can provide the necessary flexibility and functionality needed by business users. For this reason, customers require the ability to take preferred functionality from one cloud application and combine it with another, creating a cloud based component application. This is still an emerging area of development with some early companies, such as Cast Iron, providing integration of a wide range of cloud-based applications. Ultimately, many customers may decide that the private cloud offers more flexibility and develop new applications themselves.

iii. Hybrid Clouds

To meet the benefits of both approaches, newer execution models have been developed to combine public and private clouds into a unified solution. Applications with significant legal, regulatory or service level concerns for information can be directed to a private cloud. Other applications with less stringent regulatory or service level requirements can leverage a public cloud infrastructure. Implementation of a hybrid model requires additional coordination between the private and public service management system. This typically involves a federated policy management tool, seamless hybrid integration, federated security, information asset management, coordinated provisioning control, and unified monitoring systems.

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IV. Characteristics of Cloud computing

i. Dynamic computing infrastructure
Cloud computing requires a dynamic computing infrastructure. The foundation for the dynamic infrastructure is a standardized, scalable, and secure physical infrastructure. There should be levels of redundancy to ensure high levels of availability, but mostly it must be easy to extend as usage growth demands it, without requiring architecture rework. Next, it must be virtualized. A dynamic computing infrastructure is critical to effectively supporting the elastic nature of service provisioning and deprovisioning as requested by users while maintaining high levels of reliability and security. The consolidation provided by virtualization, coupled with provisioning automation, creates a high level of utilization and reuse, ultimately yielding a very effective use of capital equipment.

ii. IT service-centric approach

Cloud computing is IT (or business) service-centric. This is in sharp contrast to more traditional system- or server- centric models. In most cases, users of the cloud generally want to run some business service or application for a specific, timely purpose; they dont want to get bogged down in the system and network administration of the environment. They would prefer to quick and easy access a dedicated instance of an application or service. By abstracting away the server-centric view of the infrastructure, system users can easily access powerful pre-defined computing environments designed specifically around their service. An IT Service Centric approach enables user adoption and business agility the easier and faster a user can perform an administrative task, the more expedient the business moves, reducing costs or driving revenue.

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iii. Self-service based usage model

Interacting with the cloud requires some level of user selfservice. Best of breed self-service provides users the ability to upload, build, deploy, schedule, manage, and report on their business services on demand. Self-service cloud offerings must provide easy-to-use, intuitive user interfaces that equip users to productively manage the service delivery lifecycle.

iv. Minimally or self-managed platform

For an IT team or a service provider to efficiently provide a cloud for its constituents, they must leverage a technology platform that is self-managed. Best-of-breed clouds enable self-management via software automation, leveraging the following capabilities: 1. A provisioning engine for deploying services and tearing them down recovering resources for high levels of reuse 2. Mechanisms for scheduling and reserving resource capacity Capabilities for configuring, managing, and reporting to ensure resources can be allocated and reallocated to multiple groups of users 3. Tools for controlling access to resources and policies for how resources can be used or operations can be performed All of these capabilities enable business agility while simultaneously enacting critical and necessary administrative control.

v. Consumption-based billing
Finally, cloud computing is usage-driven. Consumers pay for only what resources they use and therefore are charged or billed on a consumption-based model. Cloud computing platforms must provide mechanisms to capture usage information that enables charge back reporting and integration with billing systems.

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V. Cloud Computing Security Plan

Cloud computing has unique security risks. Security risks, threats, and breaches can come in so many forms and from so many places that many companies take a comprehensive approach to security management across IT and the business. The following pointers useful for creating cloud computing security plan. In most circumstances, approach cloud security from a risk-management perspective. Be sure to involve your organizations risk-management specialists in the planning. The cost of security could be an issue. Be aware of what similar organizations spend on IT security and be prepared to spend a similar amount. It also helps to track time lost due to any kind of attackas a measurement of cost that you may be able to reduce. Identity management is key. Give priority to improving identity management if your current capability is poor. Try to create general awareness of security risks by educating and warning staff members about specific dangers. It is easy to become complacent, especially if youre using a cloud service provider. However, most security breaches are created inside the network. Use external IT security consultants to regularly check your companys security policy and network, as well as those of your cloud service providers. Determine specific IT security policies for change management and patch management, and make sure that policies are well understood by your staff and your cloud service provider. Stay abreast of news about IT security breaches in other companies and the causes of those breaches.

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 Review backup and disaster-recovery systems in light of IT security. Apart from anything else, IT security breaches can require complete application recovery. Because of the complexity of securing cloud environments, many organizations use hybrid cloud environments that include public as well as private clouds. Cloud service providers each have their own way of managing security. Sometimes, the cloud service providers security plan will conflict with your companys rules. Before you implement your security plan you need to ensure that it will complement your providers plan.

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VI. Primary Benefits of Cloud Computing

The primary benefits of using cloud computing are as follows: 1. To deliver a future state architecture that captures the promise of Cloud Computing, architects need to understand the primary benefits of Cloud computing. 2. Decoupling and separation of the business service from the infrastructure needed to run it (virtualization). 3. Flexibility to choose multiple vendors that provide reliable and scalable business services, development environments, and infrastructure that can be leveraged out of the box and billed on a metered basiswith no long term contracts. 4. Elastic nature of the infrastructure to rapidly allocate and de-allocate massively scalable resources to business services on a demand basis. 5. Cost allocation flexibility for customers wanting to move CapEx into OpEx.
6. Reduced costs due to operational efficiencies, and more

rapid deployment of new business services.

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VII. Barriers to Cloud Computing

IT cloud services are still largely in the early adoption phase. As such, it is no surprise that theres a long list of issues cloud services suppliers need to address to drive mainstream adoption. Heres how our respondents rated nine of the challenges commonly ascribed to the cloud services model.

i. Customer Perspective Data Security: Many customers dont wish to trust their
data to the cloud. Data must be locally retained for regulatory reasons. Latency: The cloud can be many milliseconds away. Not suitable for real-time applications. Application Availability: Cannot switch from existing legacy applications. Equivalent cloud applications do not exist.

ii. Vendor Perspective 1. Service Level Agreements Security: with the businesses information and critical

IT resources outside the firewall, customers worry about their vulnerability to attack. Cloud services dependability: The complex web of interdependency that supports cloud services

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availability and performance from network availability and performance, to the availability and performance of the cloud service providers systems, and beyond, to the performance and availability of the supply chain of services that the service provider depends on cries out for suppliers who can offer greater transparency of interdependencies as well as credible service level assurances. 2. Business Models SaaS/PaaS models are challenging. Much lower upfront revenue. While customers certainly enjoy the economic and operational benefits of the off-the-shelf, standardized nature of many cloud services, this survey shows they nonetheless want greater ability to fit cloud services more tightly into the context of their specific business. Users want to maximize the leverage of their many other critical business systems in-house legacy systems and, increasingly, externally-sourced cloud services by being able to integrate across these systems. SaaS 1.0 systems that lack standardbased APIs, and are effectively islands are of diminishing value; this is why user should be include the requirement for web services APIs in definition of cloud services. 3. Customer Lock-in Customers want open/standard APIs. Need to continuously add value.

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VIII. Summary
For IT departments in larger enterprises, developing a private cloud often makes the most financial and business sense. When developing the architectural vision, an enterprise architect should bear in mind the characteristics of cloud computing as well as consider some of the organizational and cultural issues that might become obstacles to the adoption of the future state architecture. When moving ahead, decisions must be made on whether the future-state technical architecture should emphasize compatibility with the current standard or start from scratch to minimize cost. Future state systems architecture designs involve trade-offs between lower cost/operational efficiency and greater flexibility. Using an Enterprise Architecture framework can help enterprise architects navigate the tradeoffs and design a system that accomplishes the business goal.

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IX. Conclusion
Cloud computing offers real alternatives to IT departments for improved flexibility and lower cost. Markets are developing for the delivery of software applications, platforms, and infrastructure as a service to IT departments over the cloud. These services are readily accessible on a pay-per-use basis and offer great alternatives to businesses that need the flexibility to rent infrastructure on a temporary basis or to reduce capital costs. Architects in larger enterprises find that it may still be more cost effective to provide the desired services in-house in the form of private clouds to minimize cost and maximize compatibility with internal standards and regulations. If so, there are several options for future-state systems and technical architectures that architects should consider finding the right trade-off between cost and flexibility. Using an architectural framework will help architects evaluate these trade-offs within the context of the business architecture and design a system that accomplishes the business goal.

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X. Abbreviation
SaaS PaaS CapEx OpEx SOA TCO IaaS QoS Software as a Service Platform as a service Capital Expenditures Operating Expenditure Service-Oriented Architecture Total Cost of Ownership Infrastructure-as-a-Service Quality of Service

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