What *is* Cloud?

1. What is ”Cloud”?
Andrew Ferrier and Ravi Khetani
Global Innovation Unit, Institute for Global Change

2. Who are we?
Ravi Khetani – Senior Developer,
Global Innovation Unit
Andrew Ferrier – Enterprise
Architect, Global Innovation Unit
Combined ~30 years of experience
building and deploying information
technology for large enterprise
companies, including on the cloud.

3. What’s a
“server”?
=

4. •✉️ Your email
•📱 Most the apps on your mobile
•🕸️ Every website you ever visit
•️ Almost every payment you will ever make
•📺 Most TV programmes you watch
•🌐 Any internet-based technology
•⛽ 🍲 The flow of fuel, food, and most vital
goods.
•etc…
=

5. A more familiar example…
“Please give me www.institute.global”
“Here you go”
Your laptop
TBI’s ”web” server

6. But they’re serving loads of people!
Please give me
www.institute.global
Your laptop TBI’s ”web” server
(and me!) (and me!)
x millions…

7. So, if you had a laptop, how could you make a
server?
+ =
+ More memory (can do more)
+ More powerful processor (brain)
+ More storage (can remember more)
+ More $$$$
- Take away the monitor, keyboard, and
mouse
- Take away the keyboard

8. A bit of history
In the ancient era (️ = earlier than 2002),
companies (and governments) used to keep their
servers in a datacenter…
And they owned all of it.
Building, power, cooling, servers, software,
everything.

9. When working
with the
cloud…
They ... still … keep servers in …
datacenters.

10. So what changed?

11. …. who owns them

12. OK, so what does that mean?
When you’re using ”a cloud” someone else
owns the servers, and you (company,
government, whomever):
• Rent them
• + Use them over the internet.
️ [… yes, there are exceptions]

13. So why is that useful?
• Because running a datacenter is
expensive, complicated, time-consuming,
and a specialized set of skills.

14. … So who does what?
All the things it normally takes to ‘do IT’
Operating Systems
Servers
Databases
Networks
Racks
Cables
Buildings
Your Data
Your Application(s)
[e.g. institute.global]
The stuff your ‘cloud provider’ takes care of
[yes.. this is oversimplified too]

15. There’s a more
formal definition
we can mostly
ignore…
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpu
bs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublic
ation800-145.pdf

16. You can think of cloud as like a
utility – electricity or water
• ✅ Use as much or little as you want
• ✅ Don’t need to think about how they are
generated
• ✅ You can save money by signing up for fixed plans
• ✅ The cloud normally makes it easier to start to use
(and stop using) servers – this saves cost if used wisely.
• ❌ You can’t really do that much if the prices go up -
unless you’re big enough and decide to generate
your own utilities

17. Why does this
even matter?…
• Quicker time to market
for businesses like
startups
• Really easy to scale
up/scale down services
and pivot
• For the most part, takes
away initial capital in term
of expensive software
licenses
• Access to latest services

18. How is cloud
practically used
today?
• If you’re a small startup, you can
literally rent with your credit
card…
• But generally, ”you”
(government, company,
whomever) undertake a
commercial agreement with a
large cloud provider to use some
cloud capacity (i.e. rent some
computers or services).
• Well known vendors would be
Amazon (Web Services),
Microsoft (Azure), Google
(Cloud Platform)
• … and in certain markets and
circumstances Oracle, IBM, and
others…

19. Why might clouds make
you sad?
• ❌ “Vendor lock-in”, especially
SaaS
• It’s hard and expensive to change
your mind
• ❌ Security responsibilities can be
confusing
• ❌ Data might not physically be
where you’d like to be, or where
you think it is
• (Important for data
sovereignty), e.g. CLOUD Act.
• ❌ It's more expensive – maybe.

20. 🤔 So what did we learn?
• Servers are essential for all modern technology
• Cloud is a way of renting those servers rather than buying them and
running them yourself
• Cloud is good because you can focus on your activities, not running
those servers
• Cloud might be bad because you are beholden to your cloud provider
for some of the decisions you might otherwise make (and it might
cost more)