Cloud Hosting

Application Service Provider, Software as a Service, Grid Computing, Utility Computing, Platform as a Service....

All these terms and more at one time and another have been referred to as cloud computing. What is cloud computing? What isn’t cloud computing? Welcome to Cloud Computing (in Plain English) where we try to make cloud computing a little less (cough) cloudy!

So what is cloud computing really and what can it do for you?

Cloud computing is the convergence of three major trends:

1) Virtualisation – where applications are separated from infrastructure
2) Utility computing – where server capacity is accessed across a grid as a variably priced shared service
3) Software as a service – Where applications are available on demand on a subscription basis.

But hold on, we’re getting ahead of ourselves; to understand cloud we need to go way back to the beginning of time. In the beginning, Al Gore gave us the internet. Then broadband got very cheap, and smart folks realized that not everyone had to build themselves in-house datacenters. In fact, they realized that the computer running the application could be pretty far away from the person using it and only a fast connection was needed between them.

This led to Software as a Service, essentially big fast machines running in someone else’s datacenter running an application that we access using our familiar web browser – someone else owns the application and we pay a fixed subscription fee. Allelujah, right?!

Yes and no. On the plus side we don’t have to worry about the machines running the application – they’re the other guy’s problem and we don’t have to devote time and resources to developing and maintaining an application that we’re not expert in – both good things. But at the same time, the one size fits all approach didn’t work for large enterprises with complex requirements, some companies didn’t like the idea of data outside of their firewall. And a subscription didn’t align cost to usage. What enterprises wanted was the convenience and simplicity of SaaS with the flexibility of traditional computing; a hybrid that allowed any software to be easily run as a service in a datacenter that someone else owns and manages. But applications were so darn difficult to deploy in a new different environment.

And then came virtualization, and it was good! With virtualization, applications and infrastructure are independent, allowing servers to be easily shared by many applications and applications to run virtually anywhere (that is as long as the software is virtualized). Virtualising the application involves packaging the application with everything it needs to run, including databases, middleware and Operating System. This self-contained unit can run pretty much anywhere.

It if can run anywhere, it doesn’t have to run in your datacenter, or in your application provider’s datacenter. It can run in the cloud. The cloud is a computing service that charges you based only on the amount of computing resource you use, this pay as you go feature is the hallmark of today’s cloud computing and one of the things that sets it apart from SaaS.

So, why adopt cloud computing?

Basically, because you can’t afford not to!

Think of it this way, traditional licensed software was like buying a premium Sudan. For a fixed price, you got all the bells and whistles and support (the extended warranty) whether you liked it or not…Oh, and you paid cash, up front!

With SaaS, it’s like leasing a car, you get a nice vehicle but you can’t make any significant changes to it because it’s not yours. You pay a certain amount monthly and you’re guaranteed a certain amount of service on the car.

With cloud, it’s like having a metered cab at your disposal whenever you want it. You only pay by the distance you travel, you don’t pay for maintenance, tolls or any costs associated with the cab. You pay based on where you want to go that day. And it’s so economical that you can vary the length of your trips and not have to worry about the cost. You can even trick out the cab the way you want it because you don’t share it with anyone else!

Before you hit the road you may want to take a look under the hood to see what makes your ride go. The engine that powers cloud computing is virtualization. You can’t move without your engine and you can’t deploy apps to the cloud without virtualization. So the first stop in any cloud initiative is to adapt applications to run as virtualized images. In a turbulent economy, cloud computing is even more attractive. Why pay for more computing capacity than you need, when you can pay for only what you use?

Go for the high fuel efficiency of cloud computing and you’ll never own your own car again.

So that’s it, cloud computing in plain English, we hope to have made cloud computing a little less cloudy and help you understand what cloud computing is all about.