Everything about cloud computing. Easy explanation.

1. Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
Cloud Computing Made Simple
Cloud Computing is being introduced widely to end users by understand it as a huge online resources for end users and many
not only professional IT consulting companies but also IT hardware services will use these resources accordingly, to establish an online
manufacturers. However, for a lot of users, Cloud Computing is still eco-system. One example is Dropbox, an online storage service that
somehow “fuzzy”, it’s something in the “sky”. Actually, Cloud allow users register and store 2GB storage capacity [2] (free) or
Computing is not something strange. It’s quite familiar with us. much more (paid) on their servers. Or another services from Google
We’re using it every day but we may not know it’s the “Cloud”! which you can store your files online also create online documents,
spreadsheets, calendars. By storing your data on service provider’s
Cloud Computing is not a new comer huge servers (datacenter) with internet connection, you can access
There is an interesting truth that Cloud Computing has your data and use your web-based application from anywhere (your
existed for a long time through the services we’re using today. home, office, public zone), any compatible devices (your PC, laptop,
However, not too many people know this. Even in a recent research mobile phone, tablet) connected to the internet. By using your PC at
report of NPD Group about Cloud Computing [1], more than 76% of work, you can compose your document from your office with an
respondents reported using some type of cloud services such as online application such as Google Docs, save them on the “Cloud”
webmail, online storage and online media sharing. However, only and then turn your PC off. Later, when you go home, you turn on
22% of them were familiar with Cloud Computing. So, have you your PC at home and continue composing your document previously
ever stored your computer files in a place and use it anywhere else stored on the “Cloud”. In enterprise environments, Cloud
(SkyDrive, Dropbox, MediaFire,…), ran applications through the Computing even plays a more important role. It allows companies
internet such as webmail (Gmail, Hotmail,…), office documents reduce the operation costs such as cut down the cost to operate on-
(Google Docs, Office365,…), ran Virtual Machine? If so, you have premise servers (electricity, human resources), software licenses…
ever used Cloud Computing. We also heard about “as a service” if companies change from using home-made software (project
terms like Software as a service (SaaS). management, email client software) to use online application
provided by service providers; change from using on-premise
In theory, Cloud Computing can be understood as the usage servers to store files to use online storage services or even hire a
computing resources (including software and hardware) through the virtual server and access it through remote control software.
network connection (usually the internet). Simpler, you can

2. Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
Cloud Computing provides almost of your needs accessed by end users using a client application, normally a web
browser over the internet. There is no installation, no updates. This
There are several kinds of Cloud Computing and they can be delivery model has become more popular for many kinds of
grouped in three main types, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform applications including accounting, inventory, customer relationship
as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). In a management… Instead of researching and developing owned
traditional computing model as shown in figure 1 below, we have 3 software, enterprise can use the software which is controlled and
layers of services contained in a stack. The bottom layer is the managed by another company. Now a day, SaaS is recognized as
network and infrastructure service such as the hardware, network billion dollars industry. Many companies have successfully and
connection… The middle layer is the Framework services such as more and more ones are starting to invest in this industry as Marc
the Operating system, software development tools and Benioff, Founder and CEO of salesfoce.com, says in his recent book
frameworks… The top layer is the application service, which is the about salesforce.com, “It is the end of the software business model”
computer software we use every day. [4]. Some well-known SaaS companies and their products including
salesfoce.com with famous CRM online application, Google with
Google Docs….
Figure 1: Traditional computing model
According to Kevin Roebuck, Software as a Service or Figure 2: Traditional vs. Cloud Computing model
Cloud software, sometimes referred to as “on-demand software” [3], A computing platform generally refers to a prefabricated
is a software delivery model in which the software and its data are environment [5] where computer software is running. It provides core
hosted and managed centrally by another third party company and software functionalities. Upon which, software developers can build

3. Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
computing solutions to meet their customers’ needs. This environment Infrastructure as as Service, IaaS, in the other hand delivers
includes the Operating system (Windows, Linux…), application computing infrastructure as a service. It’s a virtual computing
frameworks (.Net, PHP); application services (IIS, Apache); middleware; environment. In the old days, when starting up a computing service,
data storage and management. From this general understanding, when a organization must purchase servers with suitable capacity to meet
platform is managed and delivered “as a service”, it becomes Platform as organization’s needs and the abilities to provide services to customer
a service that serves as a launch pad for a cloud software, providing quickly. Rather than purchasing real servers, network equipment, license
necessity functionalities. PaaS providers will offer the platform for others to run server operating system, organization instead will by these services
to use and take care of everything needed to run some specific outsourced by another cloud service providers. In this way, organization
programing languages or technologies. Let’s take a look into a software actually rents a “virtual server” and use, manage it over the internet. The
developer’s work. He needs to write code for computer software. Then, organization doesn’t care about the electricity, hardware maintenance,
need to configure the environment such as installing the database, setup physical disaster or even stolen by thieves. It’s also easy to scale the
the web server and a few more things. He (or another member in his virtual server’s computing capacity along with organization’s business
company) will need to do this for him on every project and this process scaling. When the business increased or the organization is going to run a
takes time and cost. One day, he found a service that can offer him all of business campaign which needs more extra capacity, virtual server will be
the things he need just in a few seconds. The service provides him upgraded quickly and with a small cost. After that, this extra capacity will
everything and he just need to focus on writing the code to finish the be released and the organization will not be charged for it anymore. This
computer software on time. PaaS providers sometimes just simply deliver is a Pay per use service model because we just pay for what we really use
a storage service to their customers. In a sales company, sales reports are and doesn’t pay for unnecessary things. There are famous providers in
being centralized in a file server administrated by a system administrator. IaaS such as Amazon with Amazon’s EC2 [6] instances and Microsoft with
He needs to setup the backup process for data files to make sure they are Microsoft Windows Azure Virtual Machine [7] role.
safe from disaster. He also needs to increase the server capacity in case
there are a lot of requests to this server. Instead of doing so, the The reason of IaaS being possible is virtualization. As mentioned
company owner decides to use Dropbox storage service. Since then, they previously, the server we use is a “virtual server”. It’s not a real server, it’s
not a dedicated server existed in the office and you cannot “touch” it.
don’t need to care about the data lost. Dropbox will synchronize local
data reports to their cloud platform. Now the system administrator can Instead, it’s all operating virtually by virtualization software. In the past
focus on another duties assigned to him. Some famous PaaS providers time, one operating system can be run only on one physical machine. If
include Amazon with a series of elastic computing services, Microsoft you have a physical machine, you will setup an operating system like
with Windows Azure, Google with Google Apps Engine. Microsoft Windows and necessary applications on it. If you need to run a
special application that requires a Linux operating system, you will need

4. Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
to use another physical machine. However, with server virtualization
software, now a day we can run more than 1 operating system in a
physical machine. In reality, Infrastructure as a service is not limited to a
single server but rather it relies on a series of servers on a datacenter.
Any user can scale up to use extra computing capacity when needed. One
virtual server can be cloned as many as the user needs.
Cloud Computing Deployment models
Each organization may have different use of Cloud services.
Some purchase strong servers and run several virtual machines on
that server and resources will be used privately in those
organizations. This deployment, we call it Private Cloud. This
model of cloud doesn’t public to everybody. It just serves locally Figure 3: Cloud Computing deployment models
within an organization and may be put under control of an IT Privacy and security on the Cloud
department. The Public Cloud, in the other hand, will expose its
services and share its resources to everyone to use it with free or By using Cloud services, we’re using our data remotely. In
paid like Dropbox, Gmail, and Hotmail… Within an organization, other words, our data is being managed and secured by the
there are some cases that the organization needs to use the public providers. Many questions come up but the most important one is
services. For example, when a company builds up a private cloud how secure our data is. We don’t control our data. Will it be lost?
and there is a file server. However, in this file server, the IT Can our data be leaked? Is there any unauthorized access to our
department configures Dropbox to synchronize local data files to data? Those concerns are amongst Cloud Computing challenges.
Dropbox storage service. In this model, a private cloud (company Almost Cloud providers will have a commitment to protect
based cloud) uses services from public cloud (Dropbox) and we call customers’ data on the cloud but don’t provide the information of
it a Hybrid cloud, a mixture of Private and Public cloud. how they protect them. So, while choosing the right provider,
organization almost based on provider’s profile and trust.

5. Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
Conclusion
Cloud computing is completely real and it’s day by day
affecting everyone, all areas of business. It opens a new era of
computing based on services. Individuals and companies focus on
the main business and somebody else that is more expertise take
care of our computing abilities and we know they will do better than
us. We’re in the age where billions of people are being wirelessly
interconnected. A long with the fast development of the
infrastructure, when the internet connection is as fast as local
connection, Cloud Computing becomes more popular. It is changing
the way organizations do computing. Furthermore, the Cloud service
market has been predicted with a hundreds of billions dollars [8] in
the next coming years and it is a potential market for organizations.

6. Cloud Computing Made Simple Mai Nam Chuong, 2012-BIS-M-02
References
[1] NPD Group. (2011, September) Involving Technology. [Online]. https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/pr_110809
[2] Dropbox, Inc. (2013, February) Dropbox pricing term. [Online]. https://www.dropbox.com/terms#pricing_terms
[3] Kevin Roebuck, SaaS: High impact technology.: Tebbo, 2011.
[4] Benioff Marc and Carlye Adler, Behind the Cloud, 1st ed.: Jossey-Bass, October 2009.
[5] Blacharski Dan and Landis Cary, Cloud Computing Made Easy.: lulu.com, 2010.
[6] Inc. Amazon Web Service. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. [Online]. http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/
[7] Microsoft Corporation. Windows Azure VM role. [Online]. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/virtual-machines/
[8] Gartner, Inc. (2013) Gartner report on Cloud service. [Online]. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2163616