1. WHAT IS
CLOUD
COMPUTING

2. Contents
Executive Summary
Introduction
Myth 1: Cloud Is Not Secure
Myth 2: Critical applications do not belong in the cloud
Myth 3: Performance is a problem in the cloud
Myth 4: The Cloud Is Too Complex
Myth 5: The Cloud Is Not For Enterprises
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3. Executive Summary
Cloud computing, in the recent years, has become a subject of significant discussion
among the industry experts. The notion is surrounded by a lot of hype, misperceptions,
and myths created by the firms aggressively looking for providing robust cloud
infrastructure, and do not have much knowledge about the concept.
While some companies believe that the cloud servers can considerably reduce their
capital and operating expenditures, others fear that it just a myth and will fade with
further technological advancements. The architecture is also doubted to have security
constraints.
This white paper dispels various myths on cloud server hosting, while separating
reality from the hypothesis. The paper also examines the potential of cloud computing
industry by comparing its current state with the imperative benefits it offers to the
businesses.
Introduction
“Cloud is the latest buzz in this rapidly changing and complex business environment.
The computing solutions are believed to significantly lower the infrastructure and
other IT related costs of the businesses of all sizes. Cloud computing as defined by
the National Institute of Standards and Technology means:
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a
shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage,
applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal
management effort or service provider interaction”
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4. Cloud Is Not Secure
With the advent of cloud, there has been a major shift in the deployment and
consumption pattern of computing resources. Despite of innumerable cloud benefits
such as flexibility, enhanced security, utility billing model, a large number of potential
cloud customers still pose adoubt about the security of data stored in the cloud.
Most of the times, the businesses are vexed about the location of the data center
where the server is housed. The ignorance about the server positioning, security
mechanism deployed by the service provider raises distrust in the minds of
prospective clients and inhibits cloud adoption.
Moving to the cloud environment brings forth certain legitimate security concerns in
the minds of the organizations:
• What security mechanism will the service provider deploy?
• To what extent will the data be monitored?
• Who will ensure comprehensive security measures for cloud?
• What kind of security measures should be included in the contract with the
Origin of the term ‘Cloud’
service provider?
• What all standards and certificates should be ensured for optimal cloud
security?
All these pertinent questions, fuel the distrust that how secure is the cloud in
reality?
Explanation:
The concern of the businesses around the cloud security is quite reasonable, as
both public and private clouds house huge volumes of highly confidential and business
sensitive data pertaining to client information, products or financials in it.t
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Myth 01

5. However, to mitigate the cloud security and control risks, service providers deploy
top-notch security measures for its users. Most of the cloud hosts have enterprise
class tools such as firewalls, role based access controls and surveillance systems
to ensure that the customer data is accessed only by the authorized personnel.
Stringent measures are also implemented to ascertain comprehensive protection
against the distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), usually in the form of mass
emails that can have an adverse effect on the businesses without an adequate
infrastructure to keep them at bay.
In cloud, the data in transit over the Internet is protected with SSL encryptions.
The cloud providers delegate an information security team to keep a constant
vigilance over servers and data centers.
Gartner, a leading research firm predicts that cloud computing market will reach up
to a shocking figure of 150 billion dollars, thus describing that companies are either
using cloud or are moving applications to the cloud.
It is apt to describe cloud as the bank of the current enterprise technology world.
In fact, cloud computing is the safest way to manage business critical information
and data in a remote location under the stringent security measures that are far
more affordable and practical in comparison to on –premise data storage
provisions.
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6. Critical applications do not belong in the
cloud
The delivery of business applications quickly and efficiently is of utmost importance
for IT organizations. However, some businesses might refrain from deploying critical
applications to the cloud. Most of the organizations have apprehension in shifting
the complex and traditional hardware suites to the cloud environment.
The businesses are uncertain about the capability of the cloud to operate these
complicated applications both speedily and securely
A mistruth that discourages the businesses from deploying critical applications to
the cloud platform is that critical applications do not belong in the cloud.
Explanation:
Business critical applications can be securely deployed to the cloud based
infrastructure.An organization can create a service catalogue and automate the
critical applications such as SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle. It requires an effort on the
part of the business to draft a roadmap that facilitates the deployment and
configuration of cloud services for specific applications and services.
As a part of the roadmap creation, a business should opt for an efficient vendor that
helps to design a cloud map comprising of various workflows and scripts that helps
to automate the entire installation process. An efficient cloud road map should
enable the organizations to install critical business applications that can effectively
utilize both physical and virtual components of a cloud structure.
Cloud is a perfect platform for critical business applications. Cloud based
infrastructure enables a robust computing environment that enables a quick and
reliable delivery of business applications, to reduce IT infrastructure costs, and
ensure comprehensive security of IT resources.
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Myth 02

7. Myth Performance is a problem in the cloud 03
Though cloud has been welcomed by both small and large enterprises, this newly
coined technology still poses a lot of questions for both global technocrats and
computer geeks. Cloud appears to be a cheaper and more flexible platform in
comparison to traditional data center infrastructure; however the questions that
still daunts businesses in adopting this technology is that does it provide better
performance?
Explanation:
Unlike cloud computing, on premise data centers create havoc for businesses in
terms ofhigh network downtime, sluggish access to the data and frequent data loss
due to application crash, which in turn affects the credibility and competency of the
company. Cloud on the other hand confirms virtual provisioning of resources on an
Internet-based network, which helps them conveniently add more physical servers or
memory by frequently provisioning for more virtual machines.
It is easy and less time consuming to deploy additional servers and data center
resources to a cloud environment and in turn ensure high performance level and
redundancy. Cloud provides a self-management portal which facilitates the ease of
customization, as per fluctuating business requirements. The advanced servers built
for the cloud operate on high performance blades, which is not possible for
businesses to deploy in their own physical environments.
Cloud effectively guards against any hardware failure that might result in business
interruptions and heavy losses. The data is safely stored on several servers housed
in data centers across multiple locations. Thus, even if few of the servers storing
information get crashed or damaged, the data can still be easily retrieved from
cloud.
Most of the cloud providers drive high performance through auto scaling, which help
businesses gauge and modify the available computing resources.
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8. Businesses can reap the benefits of scalability of resources, adequate data backups
and robust security measures with cloud which makes enterprises overcome the
challenge of poor performance associated with on premise data centers.
A hybrid cloud solution provides a perfect blend of both the worlds- scalability and
cost effectiveness of cloud computing technology along with the unswerving
performance of dedicated servers.
The Cloud Is Too Complex
Whenever a new product or service hits the marketplace, a lot of misconceptions or
mistruths start flying around. Several businesses believe that cloud based solutions
are unproven, too risky and complicated in comparison to their existing
infrastructure, thereby giving rise to the myth of “Cloud is too complex”.
Some pertinent questions that keep on howling in the minds of business owners are:
• We have been working in this manner for years; what is the need for complicating
things now?
• How will I manage multiple cloud service providers with my limited resources?
• How will I take care of several usernames, passwords that will be assigned to me
for different portals?
• Is it not a tiresome process to keep a track of all the invoices and payments that
will be made to the service providers?
Explanation:
The reality is far more different from what businesses think of. Cloud ensures
simpler IT Management. It provides a robust and secured cloud storage mechanism
to businesses and reduces the expense of maintaining expensive physical servers or
on-premise IT experts. It lessens the burden of the IT department, which means
that more resources can be used for other value generating activities within the
organization.
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Myth 04

9. The data stored in the cloud can be easily accessed, updated and shared through
any device across the globe. All that is required to access the cloud based
applications is a simple Internet connection.
Cloud has emerged as a one stop solution for all IT related issues. It helps
businesses design a scalable system of numerous, independent computing devices
that ensure the benefits of grid computing, utility billing, multi-tenancy, scalability
of resources and regular installation and updation of new applications by the cloud
service provider.
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10. In fact, one of the remarkable facts related to cloud technology is that most of the
Internet users or online users are unknowingly associated with cloud computing by
using webmail services, online storage of computer files and hard drive back up
maintenance etc. The emergence of online application stores has made our lives far
more simple and easy. People can today easily buy digital products ranging from
books, music, games and various other software at the ease of a click. Apple store
and Google Play are the live examples reflecting the success rate of cloud based
applications.
The management of cloud based services is quite easy. The ‘anytime anywhere’
availability of cloud solutions provide enterprises with a hassle free, on demand
provisioning of IT services that comprises of applications, servers , storage and
networks etc.
The robust security mechanism deployed by cloud providers, safeguard cloud
applications by storing them in enterprise class data centers, that is almost
impossible for any small business owner to match with. The cloud security
measures comprise of identity and access management, data loss prevention, web
security, email security, intrusion management, network security,SIEM (log
management and analysis), cloud database security, encryption and virtualization
security.
Cloud has emerged as a hosted service delivery model, wherein a large number of
businesses both large and small are opting to embrace cloud in order to make the
most of the IT budgets and maximize return on investments. The deployment of IT
services in the cloud ensures low capital expenditure, easy maintenance &
upgrades, increased flexibility and mobility of resources and improved IT security.
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11. Cloud environment can be tailor made to suit the specific business needs. A user
can either build their own private cloud or can hire a third party to manage their IT.
A subscription based service –public cloud can also be availed, wherein the hardware
and various other computing resources are shared among multiple users.
Cloud is an extremely user friendly technology with rich features such as convenient
dashboards and graphical reports that help businesses to streamline complex
information and processes.
The basic idea behind innovating the cloud was to make the management of web
applications easier for businesses. Though the backend of the technology may be
complicated, but an easy control panel and a graphical user interface makes it a
user friendly model that best fits the business needs.
The Cloud Is Not For Enterprises
Earlier, cloud providers focused more on SMBs, due to the less amount of business
complexity that they offered in comparison to enterprises. Usually, the new
technologies or innovations are adopted by small businesses first, as the large
organizations are more risk averse in their contrast. Moreover, it is often believed
that it is a good business idea to firstly appease the small clients, resolve their
challenges, convert them into a reference for your success and then grow and
capture the larger market share accordingly.
However, this misconception in case of cloud computing did not vanish with time.
Although, the cloud market penetration grew at a high pace, including various large
organizations, but still the mistruth prevails, that cloud is not meant for
enterprises.
Explanation:
The fact that almost 60% of the cloud customers are large enterprises, answers
the misconception. Cloud based applications are designed to ensure
simplification, high business velocity, high scalability, ease of application, and
multi-tenancy to all its users. The significant features such as simplified
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Myth 05

12. consumption, enhanced time to value and scalability of resources are meaningful
aspects for any organization irrespective of its size to opt for cloud services. The
need to optimize the available resources and ensure economies of scale, has led
many large enterprises to embark on the cloud platform along with various small
businesses.
Robust cloud infrastructure provides businesses of all contours an unparalleled
platform to secure on - demand resource provisioning to meet the fluctuating
business demands. PaaS (Platform as a service) model considerably increases the
significance of the cloud platform for companies of all sizes to adopt this efficient
technology for their individual business requirements..
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13. Cloud services benefits all its users, irrespective of its size to focus on their core
business and help them to reap the benefits of scalability of resources, deploy
mission critical applications, enterprise-ready solutions, secure and fully managed
services.
The amount of client business complexity might increase with the size of the
organization. However, there is a substantial upsurge in the overall cloud adoption
rates and even the enterprises are seen adopting this technology. In the next
several years, it is believed that cloud will definitely emerge as a standard
enterprise fixture.
Conclusion
There has been lot of hype about cloud computing. Despite extensive benefits of
cloud as well as growing adoption rates, some companies are still hesitant to
aggressively move their workloads and applications to the cloud. Adoption of cloud
undoubtedly intends cutting through the myths to discover the real business
solutions.
Facts show that shifting gears to cloud can help businesses to accelerate time to
revenue, streamline processes, improve accessibility, achieve economies of scale,
cost-effectively globalize workforce and lessens the burden of IT department.
enterprise fixture.
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