What is cloud computing and why should you understand it? This presentation defines the different types of cloud computing, discusses how it is impacting nonprofits, outlines some criteria for use, and mentions some challenges of which you should be aware
1. September 28, 2010 Why Nonprofits Should Care About Cloud Computing Anna S. Jaeger Co-Director of GreenTech TechSoup Global [email_address] www.techsoup.org/greentech
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3. We are working toward a time when every nonprofit and social benefit organization on the planet has the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential
4. TechSoup is an integrated offering of the Resources, Knowledge, and Connections that NPO ’ s need to effectively use technology to advance their work
The history of technology is characterized by periods of particularly rapid evolution. The adoption of the PC by businesses in the 90s dramatically altered the staid, mainframe/mini-computer dominated world of enterprise IT and empowered individuals to apply technology creatively and broadly across business to the point where – today – it’s almost unimaginable to consider working without a PC. In the middle of the 1990s the Web emerged, and a whole generation of Internet-facing Web applications, both Internet, and intranet within a corporation, were built using HTML and Web servers. And we see many, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of these being written every year. It is still a core model that people use for building modern applications. In the early 2000s Web services and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) enabled applications to communicate over standard-based Web protocols, be it Web services, or REST-based protocols, and this is also very popular particularly because it promotes the ideal of assembling – or composing – more complex solutions from simpler parts. In fact, it is a core building block for how we think about the Azure services platform. There are many advantages to the services model particularly with the immediacy of global reach, the ease of provisioning and, of course, allowing a 3 rd party with the greater expertise to run the computers, networks, data-centers and software on my behalf. However, there are many advantages to running software on premises too. Principally, the ability to tailor the software to most effectively address specific business needs and the level of privacy and control that can only be guaranteed when the software and data are within my control. The cloud platform builds on previous platform generations but it is a fundamentally different approach and it has its own unique advantages.
NIST also refers to 3 delivery mechanisms for cloud computing – the industry is converging on these as well. This is a slide from the Center for Digital Government showing those: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – essentially vendors providing a data center as a service, where customers can buy server instances; Platform as a Service (PaaS) – development tools and environment allowing customers and ISVs to build applications that consume computing, storage, and other services in the cloud rather than relying on on-premise servers to provide those capabilities; and Software as a Service (SaaS) – software applications delivered across the internet.
Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services. Hybrid cloud . The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting).
Add Azure
Source: Scalable definition, André B. Bondi, 'Characteristics of scalability and their impact on performance', Proceedings of the 2nd international workshop on Software and performance, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 2000, ISBN 1-58113-195-X , pages 195 - 203 Source: Three attributes for SaaS, Architecture Strategies for Catching the Long Tail, Frederick Chong and Gianpaolo Carraro Microsoft Corporation April 2006, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479069.aspx
There is not yet an IT system that is fully hosted in the cloud (e.g. You just get your computers to the Internet and everything you need is there). Cloud adoption will be gradual. For instance, you might find a database service that is useful, or an online meeting service like ReadyTalk, or begin using cloud based storage like Windows Live SkyDrive. As time goes on you’ll probably be using more cloud based IT software and services and fewer ‘on premises’ software and services.
Shifting costs, increased complexity, lower barrier to entry, easier access to more software outside the office
Some possible examples: * Seasonal workers or volunteers Campaigns (advocacy organization) that have spikes in requirements in election years or similar Maybe add some examples to each
Source SLA Zone: http://www.sla-zone.co.uk/ Wikipedia definition of SLA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement
C&A: Certification and Accreditation of IT Systems
For some, services mark the culmination of the evolution of software. Indeed some – Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff – even go so far as to say that we’ve reached the end of software. In reality, the deployment choice of deploying software on-premises or handing software to a 3 rd party hosting provider to run as services should be based on business’ – not vendors’ technologies’ – requirements, on the unique advantages and limitations of each approach and in the knowledge that the decision will likely change at some point. For security or privacy reasons, for business differentiating purposes that require exquisitely detailed customization or even for the purposes of the peace of mind of knowing where applications and data reside, software will always have unique benefits over a services model. However, for the ability to deliver solutions readily planet wide, for the flexibility in being able to subscribe to and unsubscribe from services without having to deploy people and hardware within an organization and for the ability to offload – or outsource – non-differentiating technologies, services provide many benefits. The debate is not whether enterprises will run software or services but how they may combine the best of both.