Cloud Computing
Eurécom
Adomas Svirskas Sophia-Antipolis
France
The 3rd meeting of the Special Interest Group on eBusiness and
eCommerce, Kingston University, 12/05/2009

Today’s Topics
• What is Cloud Computing?
• Why do we care?
• Flavors of the Cloud Computing
• What Cloud Computing can do for us?
• Important things to keep in mind
• It is cool, now what? How to reach the
clouds?

What is Cloud Computing
• Anyone…?
• Ask 10 IT professionals and you will end-
up with 10 different answers
• Cloud computing (CC) is a way of
providing both hardware and software
as a service via the Internet, on demand

Cloud Computing Combines
• The concept of software-as-a-service
(SaaS), where a software application is
accessed and used in a hosted
environment
• Together with the concept of utility
computing, where shared, scalable
software and hardware is purchased on
a usage basis (IaaS, PaaS)

Why do we care?
• Because the whole world is nuts about it?
• Because it is a new shiny “gadget”?
• Well, yes by definition we are geeks 
• However, more practically…
– Because it can save money (for everyone of
us)
– Because we need to teach students, CC is
already very important in the field
– Gives us interesting research opportunities

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS … XaaS… ?
• Infrastructure as a Service - computing
resources such as servers, storage, and
other forms of low level network and
hardware resources offered in a virtual,
on demand fashion over the Internet
• IaaS in a general sense, delivers value
similar to what one might find in a
traditional datacenter
• Examples – GoGrid, Amazon EC2, etc

PaaS
• Platform as a Service - a runtime-system
and application framework that presents
itself as an execution environment and
computing platform available over the
Internet with the sole purpose of acting as
a host to application software

PaaS
• It is foundation upon which it is possible to
build highly scalable and robust Web-
based applications in the same way that
the traditional operating systems like
Windows and Linux have done in the past
for software developers.
• Operational capability of the platform
hosting is the primary value here

Evolution of Google PaaS

SaaS
• Software as a Service - Specialized
software functionality delivered over the
Internet to users who intend to use the set
of delivered functionality to augment or
replace their application domain solutions
• Examples: Salesforce.com CRM, or
SugarCRM

SaaS vs. PaaS vs. IaaS
http://www.saasblogs.com/2008/12/01/demystifying-the-cloud-where-do-saas-paas-and-other-acronyms-fit-in/

XaaS Taxonomy

CC Taxonomy

What CC can do for us?
• Save money by moving a part of IT
expenses from capital investment to
operational expenses
• Unlock virtually unlimited computational
resources
• Augment and complement SOA concepts
and solutions

Not to forget
• It is still Day One of CC
• Availability issues, outages, downtimes
• Jurisdiction aspects, e.g. WHERE the data
is stored
• Security and Privacy
• Licensing, contractual issues
• Standardization (your cloud is not my
cloud yet we need to talk…)

Summary
• The field is new, huge and promising
• CC is a REALITY
– Industry support (CC Expo in New York was a
good place to experience this)
– Open source support
– Research community interest
• Every IT professional must be
knowledgeable in CC area
• CC is available to try it out

Thank you!
Q&A…?

References
• Dion Hinchcliffe blog, Enterprise Web 2.0
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?cat=78
• Peter Laird
blog, http://peterlaird.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
• Issues related to CC
arrangements, http://www.seyfarth.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publica
tions.publications_detail/object_id/9275a22b-3998-494c-84d8-
7d234e503d82/IssuesRelatedToCloudComputingArrangements.cfm
• Demystifying The Cloud: Where Do SaaS, PaaS and Other
Acronyms Fit In?
http://www.saasblogs.com/2008/12/01/demystifying-the-cloud-
where-do-saas-paas-and-other-acronyms-fit-in/