Cloud Computing is touted to be the next big thing for IT in 2010 (and for few years ahead as well). Its the most attractive technology change thats expected to lure customers towards IT spending. As customers are wary with the decade old dot com bust, but are still willing to spend for legitimate IT spending. But is Cloud Computing one of those is the question lingering in their minds. With recent GMail, twitter and facebook outages, 24*7 availability of Clouds is an impending question. Many IT big wigs believe that Cloud Computing could be a threat as well as opportunity.
So whats cloud computing for those who dunno about it.
Cloud computing essentially is a Software As A (web) Service (SaaS) method wherein companies are coming up with web services for their products or products that they want to position in the cloud. Alternatively cloud computing is a set of web services that are exposed over the web that customers could utilize to build their own set of business features and there by letting their business spread over the web, minimize paper costs, limit IT admin, uptake newer technology seamlessly, etc etc... There are several advantages for cloud computing and also notably several bottlenecks hindrances to get through. Now there is a lot of debate going around on the software as a service (as to what all it should contain and odd...) that I prefer to leave for another blog. This blog is to provide an overview of cloud computing that should be easily understood by web-savvy companies/public than techie's.
Now this SaaS is coined a new term SOA that is Service Oriented Architecture. As the essence of SaaS itself is being debated its no wonder that there are discussions as to whether SaaS and SOA are same or not and how to term it for their products et al. To me its the same whether you call it a web service or SaaS or SOA it all renders to deliver services over the web through one or more software products. Lot many technology companies had come up with several SaaS/ SOA products or platforms. These platforms are either standalone products or have products within themselves that enable the developer to produce a cloud/ web service based product. As more more and features or standards are engrossed by SOA/SaaS, its imperative that the latest release of an SOA product / platform gets superseded by another product release or by its own updated release. Most of these products are open source or rather free software thus it is a more lucrative option for SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) that look to provide their services over the web with limited investment (that covers time, cost, development, etc)
So what is this Web Service?
For this you can refer to this wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
I suggest if you are new to web services or cloud computing better take a quick look at the above URL for an initial understanding.
Now moving on that you have an understanding of web service, a cloud in cloud computing terms is defined as a collection of web services.
Essentially say if an online publishing company wants to benefit from cloud computing, then it would utilize the existing clouds floated around by multiple vendors in launching its website, managing it and making business transactions through it as well. It sounds so easy but then its a constantly changing environment as of today and thus the way you want to launch, manage, sell and service your product might be different from today and tomorrow.
Explaining it further, cloud computing could be utilized for various software aspects right from building my own website, VPN, enterprise applications, document collaboration, etc etc. all that IT that you are involved with or planned to get involved with can be done with cloud computing.
With this understanding, cloud computing can be bifurcated further like private cloud (one thats available for VPN), protected cloud (available for partners, associates, integrators et al) and public cloud (available for the entire public). The essence of this bifurcation is to segregate data, products and clouds in a secure way. the secure way am referring here is to do with business confidentiality. Of course there is another security point of view that is the data/functional security associated with these clouds. But I believe this aspect is associated with all of cloud computing not just a particular format or sector. For example a banking transaction made through a public cloud has to be secured enough from hackers and infringements.
There are several people and/or organizations presently working on setting standards /protocols for coming up with an unified cloud computing service that can interact with several clouds over the web and can respond in a unified manner.
Signing off at the moment, shall get back with more on cloud computing later.
thanks,
Sadagopan.
