Mixed Stories About Origin of Cloud Computing

As a metaphor for Internet, cloud computing is open to different interpretations. Among the many stories about the origin of the term cloud computing, the one that stands out dates as far back as 1960s when the concept of network-based computing originated. And in the block diagrams we became used to seeing cloud to represent Internet and a network of computing post- ARPANET in 1977 and post- CSNET in 1981, which were both predecessors to Internet. It continued to be used to refer to the platforms for distributed computing in 1993.

The first coinage of the term cloud computing was in fact tracked by MIT, in its Technology Review-report by Dr Antonio Regalad, way back in 1996 from the documents of Compaq which were concerned with the future of Internet business, wherein it was thought that the business software would move to the web, and computer file storage would also move to the web, as web browser was an exciting technology available to enable access this. In this context, the description by both George Favaloro of Compaq and Sean O’Sullivan of a Startup Net Centric has been cited as the originator of cloud computing, first coined as Internet computing, more as a marketing term to link a fast-growing Internet opportunity to business. Compaq has been selling its Servers to the Internet providers as more compute power, data storage and application software were hosted on remote data centers, or indeed the cloud, without mentioning it as a cloud computing service.

The first scientific use of the term cloud computing occurred in 2006 when Google CEO Eric Schmidt introduced this term in a conference while advocating the proliferation of Internet, with data storage services and applications to be run on the servers and with the right kind of web browser one can access all these resources wherever the servers are connected on the net. Cloud computing was introduced as a new paradigm in which users can access computing power, software and the data files over the web instead of their desktops.

In 2002, Amazon Web Services already offered Single Storage Services (S3) and Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) which pioneered the concept of virtualization and deliver infrastructure as a service to be taken on rent by the users. In 2008 Google further released Google App engine with platform as a service to enable users to create their own applications to run on the Internet infrastructure. In 2010 Microsoft released their Cloud computing system known as MS Azure. This was followed by IBM and many others.

We now have several Cloud service providers, more popular ones being Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, IBM Smart, Yahoo, Alibaba, Rackspace, Oracle Cloud.

One common story around each one of these offerings is that cloud computing has created a path breaking opportunity for the providers to offer significant advantages to its users in their businesses, mainly as;

· One can self-administer their technical requirements

· Provide access everywhere and from any where

· Provide safe access

. Get an aggregated high uptime

· Has all the backup arrangements

· Cost of usage are much less than those associated with owning the infrastructure

· Relieve the users from the headaches of creating and running complex IT infrastructure and a dedicated and experienced IT team

· Need not bother about technology upgrades as that is looked after by the provider

It is curious to note that, way back in 1960s, before the introduction of the term cloud computing, John McCarthy opined that Computing one day will be transformed to serve as a Utility like Electricity, and there would be a time, as today users are able to plug and draw electric power as per their time convenience and need, the users will access computing power, computing storage and software applications as per their demand. This was a prophesy come true.

Cloud Computing - Well Defined

Cloud computing has been variously defined in the literature with the most comprehensive definition (as defined by Microsoft) as;

The delivery of computing services, including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence over the Internet with the provider offering faster innovation in delivery mechanisms, flexible resources as per the needs and economies of scale in sourcing as the user pays only for the services used, help in lowering the operating cots to the user, run the infrastructure more efficiently with the large investments amortized over multiple users, which can be scaled up with the changes in business needs.

Cloud computing thus offers (as defined by IBM);

On - demand availability of computer system resources, especially the computing power and data storage without user involvement. The operations are distributed over multiple locations, each location being a data center, without the user to necessarily know which server is serving him with the resources. It relies on secure sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economy of scale, using the model of pay as you use, thereby reducing huge capital expenses and also unexpected operating expenses.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has also elaborated on the explanation of cloud computing to comprise of.

· On -demand self-service to accessing the resources needed

· Broad network access- access through thick and thin clients

· Resource pooling – pooled to serve multiple customers

· Rapid elasticity – enabling capacities to be elastically created

· Measured service - in built transparent metering capability of the extent of resources accessed

Cloud computing is thus seen as a big shift from the traditional way businesses earlier deployed their own IT infrastructure and ran it to serve their continuing IT requirements maintaining qualified IT staff to manage the operations securely and efficiently thereby incurring significant expenses. This revolutionary style of computing emerges from the evolutionary developments, maturity and advancements in the technologies resulting in the individual users having a thin device to access resources with a browser while the technology and complexity residing on the cloud infrastructure.

The goal of cloud computing is thus to allow users to take benefits from all of the emerging technologies of distributed computing, server virtualization, systems software, cyber security, data analytics, intelligence etc., without the need for deep knowledge about them or expertise with them, and aim to cut costs to the users and help users focus on their core business instead of being impeded by their IT infrastructure needs and resources complexities.

Types of Services Offered in Cloud Computing and the Models thereof

Cloud computing provides a variety of services via the Internet. It also caters to different types of customers with their variety and time changing computing requirements. As a convenience, the types of services offered are broken up into the following categories.

Software- as- a- service (SaaS) –

where businesses subscribe to an application which they access on the net from its client machine using a web browser, a desktop client or an API integrated with the user desktop without any worry to keep the application up to date, as that is the responsibility of the provider. It is a primary delivery model for all commercial software today.

Platform- as- a- service (PaaS) –

where businesses create their own custom application using hardware, software, and the development tools available on the web for use by all user authorized personnel and save them from creating their own infrastructure to support running, developing and managing such an application. Every cloud provider has this offering.

Infrastructure- as- a- service (IaaS)

– where the provider offers its backbone infrastructure comprising of virtual machines, high performance computing power, storage, network etc. that can be rented by the businesses. It enables users to scale or shrink resources on a need basis, also managing within the user budgets for renting. This is the most popular type of service from cloud computing.

Serverless Computing (or Function- as a- service-FaaS) –

this is the special type of service model where all backend infrastructure management tasks are offloaded to the provider freeing the developers to focus on their code and business logic for building the application functionality for specific application which is highly scalable, and event driven. Thus, customers pay for the resources only when the application is running not while it is idle. In FaaS model the developers pay only for the duration of the portion of the code (function) execution start to stop.

A common feature in- built in these services is their availability whenever and wherever, eliminate expenses associated with buying and maintaining user owned backbone and subscribe only what is needed, need not bother to estimate about the capacities needed and use as much as or as little as required, better value realization per currency spent, higher quality of service, increased flexibility of service, higher security in the services offered, significant increase in user productivity, and agility in change/scaling the resources elastically.

To service different types of customer requirements, different types of cloud deployment models have evolved. These are mentioned below.

Public Cloud

– this is owned and operated by third party cloud service provider which delivers its computing resources aggregated on the cloud, like physical servers, virtual machines, storage over the Internet, and the users access them as per their needs using a browser.

Private Cloud

– refers to cloud computing resources aggregated and used exclusively by a single user organization. It may be located at the user organization’s data center site. In some cases, an arrangement is made with a third party to host cloud computing resources over a private network for which requisite payment is made by the user organization.

Hybrid Cloud

– is a combination of a public and private clouds bound together by the technology that allows data and application hosted on the clouds to be shared between them. It gives the user businesses greater flexibility, more deployment options and optimization on existing infrastructure, security and compliance requirements.

Community Cloud

– is a stripped version of a public cloud where the provider delivers the computing resources on the cloud meant for the users that are limited to a group or community under some useability arrangement and contract of confidentiality, compliance and usership.

Reasons for Organizations Turning to Cloud Computing Services

With the increasing popularity of cloud computing among its potential users, its usership has increased manifolds over the years. The prime reasons well recorded by the popular Providers are mentioned here.

· Cost advantage – a prime reason being its usage eliminates the capital expenses of procuring expensive hardware and software components and running it 24*7. The expenses are for maintaining the server racks, uninterrupted electricity, clean power for cooling, and a skilled IT team of experts, which are to the account of provider and user only pays as it uses. The provider in turn is advantaged by the economies of scale over the usage by multiple users.

· Global scaling – an advantage of the ability to scale the cloud configuration elastically delivering the right amount of IT resources on when and as required basis, and from the right geographical location most suitable to the user’s location thereby control communication latency. Thus, instead of purchasing a fixed capacity from the cloud, users can scale capacity up or down in real time in response to the developing user needs. Also, it can enable spread the user application to all its clients taking the advantage of cloud global connectivity.

· Optimized performance - running services from a network of secure data centers which are regularly evaluated for their performance and upgrading them to the latest generation of high-performance computing environment, also giving advantage of a single corporate data center including reduced latency, high speeds, and high storage.

· Cyber security – adopting the relevant cyber security technologies and policies in terms of digital hygiene and social engineering that help to strengthen cyber security of the cloud to protect its data, application, and IT infrastructure from potential threats, and offer a trusted and secure cloud services to the users.

. User productivity – removes the user needs of many mundane but time-consuming tasks such as racking & stacking, hardware set up updates, software patching, network reconfiguration, storage cleansing etc. in the cloud which are taken care of by the provider thereby rendering improved user productivity.

· Speed – services offered by the cloud are self service and on- demand so that any amount of computing resources can be provisioned in a very short time giving the user businesses a lot of operational flexibility and taking the pressure off the capacity planning that are needed due to the changing needs of the user businesses.

· Reliability –improved cloud reliability with regular data backups, in built disaster recovery, and business continuity with the precious data, a most important resource of the application, being mirrored at multiple redundant data center sites over the cloud network.

· Agility – clouds offer increased flexibility for user operations. Also, the cloud enables to ‘spin up’ the required server and the user organizations to start using the enterprise applications running on the server (s) within no time.

Challenges in use of Cloud Computing and the Strategies Thereof

With so much of push accrued to the users in adopting cloud computing for their businesses, comes a range of challenges in its use. The major ones among these and the strategies to counter are mentioned here;

· Most important requirement for functioning of the cloud is the availability of Internet. This is a challenge as it is under the control of the Internet service provider, and the strategy has to ensure that interruptions, if any, are far and few, and that there are alternate routes available to support critical operations.

· Cloud resources downtime due to the needs of servicing/upgrading the  high-performance computing servers or software patches updates should be kept to a minimum. These may be dictated by the arrangements with suppliers of the hardware and software components and hence should be preannounced and controlled to minimize down time as a part of the strategy.

· Servers maintained by the cloud provider may fall victim to natural disasters, hardware bugs or power outages. Also, the geographical reach of cloud provider may get impacted by a blackout in location ‘A’ that could paralyze users in location ‘B’, and a user in location ‘C’ could lose its data by some failure at location ‘D’ due to crash. Impacts arising out of these should be part of the worked-out strategy and minimize loss.

. Availability of user confidential/ sensitive data with the cloud provider as a part of migration can be an issue as its knowingly or unknowingly sharing with the third party may compromise sensitivity of the user data  besides a significant loss that may accrue of it. This should be factored in any contractual arrangement with the cloud provider.

· Advanced cyber security technology and practices are required to strengthen security of the cloud to protect its data, application and IT infrastructure from potential threats, and offer a trusted and secure cloud infrastructure to the users.

Advanced security layers are used across data to application to OS and to hardware in the cloud and these have to be continuously monitored using cyber forensic tools for any unauthorized access.

In this context Zombies refer to a part of the original IT system assets having linkages with the original system that continues to remain until migration to cloud is complete and it may take 2-3 years. Thus, if the original system is not maintained fully a Zombie system can reside without the knowledge of the user and that these systems can be highly vulnerable and represent a significant security risk to the system assets being migrated to the cloud. Any migration strategy should therefore include full maintenance of these systems until they are officially removed.

· Insecure interfaces and APIs to client devices, data loss and leakage and hardware failures are often cited as issues with cloud computing systems. As per an estimate these account for 65% of the outages. Instances of such user impacts should be minimized in any migration strategy.

. Cloud computing is cost effective because of the economies of scale; it offers a given set of and extent of resources pre-announced to all its users by the provider and the user selects its needed resources from that fixed menu. That is the reason the provider services are cost competitive. Any changes to the set menu will render a very significant increase in cost.

· There are challenges in regard to the governance and compliances in use of cloud computing resources, which should be transparent between the cloud host and user guest.

· There is often an issue of the wasted cloud spend due to user sourcing capacities that are not intelligently utilized. As per an estimate upto 35% of the cloud bills are towards such wastages. Hence a very careful capacity planning and well understood usage description are needed to restrict such wastages. This will help in cloud cost optimization by the users.

Technologies Relevant to Cloud Computing

Cloud architecture involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over a lose coupling mechanism. Some of the main components are;

Cloud compute

– Responsible for hosting the given amount of computing power in a distribute computing model.

Virtualization servers

– Virtualization enables the providers to make maximum use of their data center resources. It is a software that enables a virtualized IT infrastructure so that it can be pooled or divided irrespective of the physical server boundaries.

Cloud storage

– Responsible for hosting sufficient storage capacities so that the required data bases can be accommodated for analytics and deriving intelligence.

Cloud infrastructure

– The cloud configuration allows metering of resources booked and billing for the capacity utilization by users.

Cloud platform

– A web front end is created for enabling the development tools to create user customized applications.

Cloud services

– A system of messaging que is used to service customer requests in the order of their location in the que.

Cloud network

– Is a distinct part of the cloud that sports the required security layers at various service points of the network deployed.

Cloud management and cloud configuration

– These tools are used in operation of the cloud. Container, as a cloud software management tool, is the most popular one. Container is a software in which application code is packaged along with the libraries so as to run it anywhere with the devices taking advantage of OS virtualization on host. Docker and Kubernetes are the most popular container tools. Similarly, Ansible is the popular configuration tool used in the Cloud.

The following innovations in cloud computing technologies working behind cloud computing platform render it reliable, usable and flexible.

Virtualization -

It is a technique that allows to share the single physical instance of an application or resource among multiple organizations or clients.

It does this by assigning a logical name to a physical resource or an application and providing a pointer to that physical resource when demanded. It allows to

share the license keys of the application running on physical instance among different users so that a standard version of cloud application is available to all user clients. There are various versions of virtualization, viz. hardware, servers, OS and storage in which case the virtual machine is installed on the system enabling all users irrespective of the physical system.

Service oriented architecture (SOA) -

It enables to user applications as a service for various applications regardless of the type of vendor, product or technology. By this it is possible to exchange the data between applications of different vendors without any additional programming or changes to service.

Grid computing -

It refers to distributed computing in which a group of heterogenous computers or data bases from multiple locations are connected with each other to achieve a common goal. It converts large complex problems into smaller ones and broadcast to the computing resources to execute, and in the process helps to utilize the power of unused computers.

Utility computing -

It is a process that promotes ‘pay as per use’ model and offers the computational services on demand as a metered service which is cost convertible. Thus, as the computing requirements for a business increase or decrease the cloud usage and the billing also changes accordingly and overall helps in cost optimization.

Edge computing -

In conjunction with cloud computing it is used for those applications where speed of computation with low latencies, data security and increased bandwidth are important. Edge computing is a practice of moving compute power physically closer to where data is. Its convergence with cloud thus gives an added advantage of best of both.

Customers using Blockchain platforms are serviced to support in building, transacting, storing and deploying new application products. Google Digital Asset team has recently announced such a support to the products on blockchain platform. 

Cloud engineering -

Deals with the issues of commercialization, standardization and governance in conceiving, developing, operating and maintaining the cloud. It encompasses contributions from system software, web front end, IT engineering, cyber security, risks and quality of cloud services.

Factors to Evaluate for Cloud Migration

In the current race for the organizations adopting cloud for running their business in the hope for securing advantages at multiple fronts, it is important that the organizations carefully evaluate important factors while migrating their business to the cloud. A good migration plan should address these factors.

• Applications- define and understand the needs of running the various workloads on the cloud.
• Economics- compare the cost benefits of resourcing from the cloud with those from the legacy IT infrastructure. 
• Governance and compliance- carefully review the contractual obligations and the expected outcomes from the cloud usage.
• Change management- analyze all factors constituting the changes that will accrue as a result of migration and the ways to deal with them.
• Service operations- become aware of all the services that will be available from the cloud and optimize on cost of sourcing the same.
• Security- be vigilant about the security layers that are available in the cloud and mitigate all risks through digital hygiene and social engineering.

The best practice for migration covers people, processes and technology. Here are some points that serve as a useful tip for the cloud migration.

· It is important to know what a cloud means to the organization.

· It is important to determine whether cloud is right for the organization to go.

· Organization has to make sure that the timing for migration is right.

· Organization should establish a cloud business office to manage all activities starting from deciding to go to completing the migration, including confiding with all stake holders on implications of migration.

· Should be clear about the economics of migration in terms of costs and expected benefits.

· Build on the execution strategy involving every member of the team drawing from their core expertise and get their ‘buy in’ and making them accountable and responsible for the given roles.

· Cloud is not a destination but a way of doing business absorbing the lessons learnt and creating a culture of continuous improvements, cost optimizations, and bring in innovation and creativity in cloud operations.

Useloads of Cloud Computing 

Today, virtually every business or individuals rely on cloud computing. Companies are not only adopting the cloud but using more than one cloud environment for their evolving services. Every desktop or a mobile device user uses some form of cloud, as we all probably are using cloud computing right now without noticing it. As an example, if we are exchanging emails, creating, or editing documents, watching movies or listening to some music or playing TV games, or storing some pictures or files, it is quite likely that cloud computing is making it possible for us.

As would be evident from the above discussion, there are multiple categories of workloads, or useloads, of the cloud computing. They basically originate from such instances that deal with high computing power, large data set analytics and the connected software applications which are eminently suitable for cloud computing. We summarize here the pertinent workloads.

· Store, back up and recover data

– store and protect massive amount of data cost effectively at an offsite cloud storage system which is accessible securely from any location or a device connected to the net. Disaster recovery is an important attribute.

· Streaming video or audio – globally distribute high-definition video or audio to all those users connected with any suitable device at any time or anywhere on the cloud.

. Create cloud native applications - quickly build, test, deploy and scale software applications developed as a customized application and offered for all interested clients online. Also help to reduce application development cost and time on cloud.

. Deliver software on demand- host and deliver on demand software online on cloud with its latest updates and versions to all interested subscriber clients anywhere 24*4 basis on pay as you use basis.

. Data analytics- collect and clean up all the data available from multiple client locations on the cloud and use artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to uncover insights for a decision support. An example being the AI assistant to manage and troubleshoot IT infrastructure, networks etc.

. Intelligent modeling for a predictive analysis- support all those applications that deal with dispersed data for pattern recognition and therefrom make prediction for more informed decisions.

· Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning - the sectors that have benefited from cloud applications notably are the verticals dealing with huge data sets of Healthcare, Education, Banking and Financial services, Retail, Supply Chain, Hospitality, Manufacturing etc. Some details of these applications that are increasingly being run on cloud as workloads are given here.

Healthcare

- Automating medical diagnostics, speedy and accurate image analyses, assisted clinical analysis, health data management, robot assisted surgery, genomic  sequencing, molecular structure modelling for drug discoveries

Education -

AI enabled tutoring, ITS, digital libraries, pedagogy and content management, cognitive learning.

Finance

- Fraud detection, loan/ investment processing, credit risk assessments, companies’ data monitoring and reporting.

Agriculture-

Soil monitoring and disease monitoring based on satellite data, crop yield optimization and cycle management, predictive weather impacts, farm inputs optimization.

Supply-chain

- Optimizing the processes for transporting products from production to consumer, predicting any bottlenecks in supply and identify alternate routes, inventory optimization.

Retail

- Analyzing trends and consumer preferences, predicting supply needs, creating data for future procurement planning, pricing etc.

Social Media

- Chasing the social media networks for data accuracy and authenticity or mis information and taking corrective actions, chasing for preferred contents and advertisements etc.

Urban environment monitoring

– Modelling to cover environmental pollution, weather forecasting, transportation, security, medical and utility services for urban settlements.

These and such other workloads of cloud computing are the cause factors of digital transformation taking place in the society and the economy.

Cloud Computing Market Assessments

As per Gartner, four business trends of cloud computing are visible from 2021 onwards.

· Major cloud providers rushing to grow and offer more data centers in the new regions with public cloud receiving the maximum push.

· New neighborhoods in South America, Middle east and Southeast Asia getting attention to offer increased cloud services.

· Beyond the traditional services of data storage and computing resources, opening a new vault of advanced technology services like computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, voice recognition, semantic search, spelling support for chatbot etc.

· Market share continues to be dominated by the three players, viz. Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Google (GCP) who are spending huge amount of capital to expend their business in most other regions less served so far. As per Statista, the percentage sharing of the global cloud computing market among the major providers are- Amazon continues to have largest share (33 %), followed by Microsoft (18%), Google (8%) and the rest by others such as IBM, Alibaba, Oracle, Tencent etc.

The cloud computing market can be categorized into segments by technology, by deployment model, by vertical and by region. By technology it is divided into SaaS, IaaS and PaaS. By deployment model it is segmented into public, private or hybrid clouds. By vertical it can be further divided into banking financial services and insurance, healthcare and life sciences, IT and ITeS, retail and consumer services, telecom and utilities, government and manufacturing. By region it can be divided into five major verticals such north America, Latin America, Europe, APAC and MENA.

Among these, as per the Cloud computing Market Research (2022-2030) report.

· SaaS technology segment is expected to grow the highest in CAGR.

· Public cloud deployment segment is expected to register the highest CAGR of over 20 % with US $ 396 billion spend last year.

· Retail vertical segment is expected to grow fastest.

· In the global market growth for cloud computing, UK holds the first place. North America region holds the largest market size in cloud computing. US alone has a US$ 100 billion market share.

· Global market for cloud computing stood at US$ 272 billion (2016) and is expected to reach US$ 623.3 billion by 2023.

· Within the next three years, 75% of existing non- cloud applications will move to cloud.

Flexera has given and reported a further analysis of this market trend based on a sample of 786 technical professionals’ interviews response. As per this;

· 94% of the respondents use cloud. Of these 69% use hybrid cloud, 22% public cloud and 3% private cloud.

· Among these, the public cloud adoption is the largest 91%, followed by private cloud adoption at 72 % and one public and one private cloud (hybrid cloud) adoption at 69%.

· 84% of respondents have multi cloud strategy.

· Companies adopting 4.9 clouds across public and private. Of this, already using 3.4 clouds and experimenting with 1.5 clouds.

· Public cloud spend is growing at 24 % annual with private cloud spend growing at 8% annual.

· Public cloud spend is US$ 2.4 million annual with some respondents while US$ 1.2 million with others.

Conclusion

Cloud computing is such a new jargon that those of us who are beyond about 35 years of age may not even have heard the term leave aside using it in our prime youth professional periods. But its adoption is seen happening at such an accelerated pace, thanks to fast technology developments, that it has created unprecedented demand of the cloud services. We are in an era where cloud computing will continue to dominate business land scape in the society and economy, becoming a prime force to reckon with in digital transformation cost effectively. It is thus a much sought-after discipline among the job seekers.

Today the IT/ITeS corporates and many other industry vertical consumers are not only adopting the cloud but using more than one cloud environment. Cloud journey for others may have just begun, moving away from the traditional way of utilizing IT infrastructure at local site to establish a higher business value, using cloud environment is the norm of the day.

As for the future of cloud computing, cloud will be the mainstay of servicing the clients offering remarkable benefits of usability, reliability flexibility, cost-effectiveness and productivity, primarily driven by the technological advancements in computer science and technology.

i. MIT Technology Review -Oct 31, 2011 – Dr Antonio Regalado ii. What Is Cloud Computing? A Beginner’s Guide | Microsoft Azure https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/what-is-cloud-computing iii. Cloud Computing IBM- Aug 18, 2020 – Sai Vennam https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/cloud-computing iv. Cloud Computing - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing