Cloud computing, as per definition laid down by National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

In simple terms, cloud computing is just a massively distributed Internet based computing model that allows users to share information and access applications, without installing them from anywhere in the world, provided the user has a computer and an Internet connection.

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Advantages

One of the many advantages of cloud computing is that it spares local machines from forfeiting its resources and space to beefy applications and software. As you step into the world of cloud computing, you will find that the cloud, which has a network of computers, is designed to tolerate and accommodate heavy loaded applications.

Thus cloud computing saves your money that you would, otherwise, have been spending on

1. Buying expensive software and applications
2. Employing resources to manage and run those applications and software
3. Managing your time and effort in running an additional task or business activity

You can redeploy all these money, resources, and effort, that you save, to further streamlining and improving your core business activities.

Another advantage of cloud computing is that it assures 24/7 access to your data. Also, as these cloud servers are usually maintained in at least two different synchronized locations, your data is well protected from natural calamities.

Cloud Services

The best examples of cloud services are Google Docs and Microsoft Office Live.  Another example of cloud computing that we use on a daily basis is the mail service like Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. You don’t have the server or email management software required to run them but they are in the cloud and the service provider manages them. You just access the services with your internet connection. How convenient, right?

Today, there are a many cloud applications available in the market and they serve different needs of customers. Evernote, iCloud, Spotify, CloudApp, Waze, Box.net, Joukuu, Do.com., etc are few among them.
Amazon, Google, Rackspace, VMware, Microsoft etc are some of the top cloud computing service providers. You may get in touch with us to know more on Amazon Web Services(AWS).

Cloud Concerns

Though cloud computing is all set to establish itself as an ultimate solution for many existing business concerns, some geeks believe that the cloud still suffers privacy and security issues.

As everything is located outside the LAN, the concept of building a secure fortress no longer applies with the cloud! Also, it is practically impossible to draw a visible boundary lines inside the cloud.

The authentication and authorization processes are complex in cloud computing. Where should the corporates build their security? Is it in the cloud or for the cloud or from the cloud? – geeks ask!

Addressing the concerns

Cloud service providers, themselves, are more concerned about the privacy and security of the cloud than anybody else as these directly impact their business. Obviously, customers wouldn’t opt for a service which is not safe and secure and they know this very well. For the same reason, they work relentlessly to provide superior services to their customers.

Besides, strong authentication and access controls further enhances the  cloud security. Users also have the option to improve their cloud security by applying stringent registration and validation processes and also by performing more deliberate monitoring and coordination throughout the computing platform.

Looking Forward

The benefits of cloud computing far outweigh its concerns because of its sheer effectiveness. It can streamline your business and break down the complexity of your business problems. Cloud computing also saves you from the headaches and costs of running and managing complex servers and storage, technical teams to keep them running, and upgrades to your software. Thus cloud computing positions itself as a cost effective, reliable, and scalable solution for many of the business concerns.

Get in touch with our expert team to know more about our cloud services and the benefits we could offer to your business.

Top vendors confirm that clients were asking for more services to be provided for lesser money. How could that be possible in an industry with a growth rate of more than 15% per annum? How could vendors sustain their growth momentum and, more importantly, their profit margin under the circumstances? It was hard for companies to sustain their growth margin solely by reducing their capital expenditures. Instead, they had to look for ways to increase revenue simultaneously. That, actually led to the evolution of the business model where billing would be based on the business outcome rather than the employees work or time. Cloud Computing came into limelight as a result of acceptance of this new model.

In Cloud Computing, you needed to pay only for the services you availed of and didn’t have to bother about the hardware and other expenses. This was more than acceptable to clients because they had to pay more only if they were getting more. The disadvantage though, for the vendors, was the low margins. Vendors now looked for multiple contracts from the same client to sustain their revenues. They proposed a complete outsourcing package to clients by beefing up their portfolio and this happened through acquisition of niche players also. Clients too, were looking for a similar alternative and they awarded bulk contracts to the same vendor reducing the number of vendors drastically. By this, clients could negotiate more and concentrate on fewer vendors.

This new trend has forced outsourcing companies to integrate IT and BPO services to win more contracts. Many top IT-services players have added BPO to their portfolio to provide end-to-end service to their clients. Conforming to this model oil giant, British Petroleum, has reduced their number of vendors from 40 to 6. BPO players are also striving to add IT services to their portfolio. To this end, they are partnering up with small IT companies to create simplified systems that make life easier for their clients.  So the recession has helped clients to get more work done at a lesser cost. As for vendors, it has aided in the expansion of their portfolio and area of expertise.For the employees, it has been an opportunity to expand their skill-set and hence demand bigger salaries. A burst in the economy is inevitable after a boom and our economy is slowly gearing up for another boom. This is a natural cycle and will prevail until the expiration of earth!!

The term ‘Cloud Computing’ has been creating a buzz in the Information Technology space for a couple of years. There are so many articles, blogs, pod-casts and web-casts available in the Internet about Cloud Computing. More and more companies are moving to tap the opportunity in it to stay competitive. Merrill Lynch predicts that Cloud Computing will be $95 billion industry in 5 years and 12% of the software industry would be pulled into it. So what’s Cloud Computing all about? Why is it considered as an unprecedented solution to reduce the IT costs?

According to Wikipedia, Cloud Computing is “Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are used by computers and other devices on-demand, like a traditional utility.” In simple words, we can say that, “The delivering of services that is hosted in the Internet”. Google Apps, Sales-force.com, Zoho web applications are all examples of services hosted in the Cloud. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is another example of a web service that provides re-sizable computing capacity in the Cloud. The Internet is often represented in diagrams and flow charts by the Cloud symbol and from that the name has been derived.

Cloud Computing is broadly classified into three categories – 1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 2. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) 3. Platform as a Service (PaaS).

1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – In Software-as-a-Service model, the vendor hosts applications on the server and it is distributed to the customers over the Internet. The price will be based on the usage of a subscription. It has been estimated that this model will be worth $15 billion by 2011 and take way more than 30% of the software market. Salesforce.com is a good example.

2. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – In this model, the vendor owns the infrastructure like storage, networking devices, hardware etc and will be responsible for facilitating and maintaining it. The user will pay for the service on the basis of the usage. This model is often helpful for web 2.0 start-ups who are keen on reducing their IT costs. IaaS model also helps companies to reduce their expenses in creating and maintaining data centers, which contributes heavily to the capital expenditure of the IT companies. Amazon web services is an example of IaaS model.

3. Platform as a Service (PaaS) – In PaaS, the vendor will host a set of software and product development tools on a provided space. The biggest advantage is that the user needs just a computer and internet connection to start building applications and he doesn’t have to worry about the infrastructure. Some vendors even provide pre-built business applications, which helps developers to build applications from the scratch. Google Apps is a perfect example for this model.

We have seen the different types of services offered in Cloud Computing. Now, the Cloud itself can be classified into three – Private, Public and Hybrid Clouds. In Public Clouds, the vendors offer services ranging from storage, servers and other services to different customers within the Cloud. The vendor can achieve ‘economies of scale’ through this endeavour and is considered as an effective pricing model even in recession. Data Security is an issue, which the vendors have to deal with and that is the only disadvantage these type of Clouds possess.

Private Clouds are often used by individual companies, who deal with service level issues and want data security. In Private Clouds, the particular company controls the access, the applications that run on the Cloud and the complete administration. They own all the facilities including networks and servers.

Hybrid Clouds are the combination of Private and Public Clouds, i.e., in a controlled way, the vendors use some part of the Cloud and share other parts. Hybrid Clouds are useful for customers who own simple applications that will not require any synchronization or have complex databases.

There is no doubt that Cloud Computing will revolutionize the entire IT Industry and it is just a matter of time before majority of the players move to this platform. By 2020, at least 40-50% of the entire software providers will embrace cloud computing.

The giant has already made promises of a pure web based OS. Yes, I am talking about Google Chrome OS which is in development now. By studying the latest products from Google, it won’t be anything bigger than an Android in better shape. Android which is a purely web oriented OS for mobile phones may be tweaked to an extent where it can be used in low power portable computers, or precisely – Netbooks. But the key point to be noted here is that, Chrome will be a web ‘based’ OS, not an OS in the web. So what will be a pure web OS? And why should one need it?

Mobility is the first advantage of having a pure web OS. Resource sharing and low cost end user hardware is another one. Consider having an entire OS in web, which will handle all the heavy tasks for you and all you need is a cheap, low end, web enabled notebook or netbook which is powerful enough to just run a browser. In short, you can encode an HD video even with a mobile phone! Interesting, isn’t it? Of course it is but the concept is very old and yet to become a reality. A few attempts have been made towards this end and the result was web applications like Google docs and Adobe’s online Photoshop. The interoperability of these online applications is essential for a web OS. No one will like to process a file in one application, download it and upload it to another application. It will be a fair job if these applications can send files/data to each other. It will be much better if both applications have access to a common online storage just like we have hard disks in our PC. And finally, it has to be free and open source! Before someone creates a perfect web OS, let’s take a look at something close to it. The eyeOS – an OS in a browser window, which is the Project of the Month in Sourceforge.

eyeOS is an attempt towards the perfect Web OS. “Open Source Cloud Desktop” is what they call it. You will have all your essential applications, a storage system and a desktop to integrate it all. eyeOS doesn’t look like a web page even though it’s inside the browser window. eyeOS package can be installed in your own server and you can allow other users to sign up and use it. The process is straightforward and simple as installing a WordPress blog. The wizard driven installation won’t take much time and soon you will be provided with a login window as in normal OS. Once you pass this screen, you will take a couple of seconds to realize that what you are looking at is actually a web page inside a browser window. I was confused whether it was my Linux desktop; it has everything that a normal desktop should have. A task pane, notification area, desktop with changeable wallpapers and themes, games, application menu and everything that you won’t expect in a web page. It even has a browser and a task manager which lists the running processes like Windows Task Manager. The default installation comes with a handful of applications which can be further extended using a package manager like in most Linux distros. There is already a large pool of applications available for eyeOS. And all this is written in PHP and XML! Yes, eyeOS is a PHP application which runs on Apache server and doesn’t need a database. Instead of a database it relies on XML files. This is primarily for making the installation simple for the end user as all they would need to set up an eyeOS server is to enter account information for the first user. Flat files are used to avoid bottlenecks on data fetching. Core parts of eyeOS runs as independent applications and uses Javascript to send server commands. The UI is fast even on a 512kbps connection.

eyeOS is being developed by a company based in Barcelona and it’s currently in the 4th year of development. They also provide a tool kit with which we can develop cloud applications easily. A reasonably good wiki page, including a “Hello World application” is present to provide a walk-through towards eyeOS application development. Anyone fluent with PHP and Javascript can start writing applications for eyeOS without any further learning curve. You can try it out at their demo server : eyeos.info or get your copy of eyeOS package from here.

eyeOS may not be mature enough to host anything serious, but it is proof on how far a web application can go!