Cloud computing provides on-demand access to shared computing resources via the internet on a pay-per-use basis. It offers several benefits including simplified customer acquisition, elastic demand that scales with usage, and utility pricing where customers only pay for what they use. However, security, lack of standardization, and unclear legal responsibilities if a provider fails present challenges. Cloud computing impacts businesses by challenging traditional IT practices and acting as either a disruptive innovation or additional outsourcing option.

1. Cloud Computing:
An Introduction

4. What is Cloud Computing?
• Technologies facilitating a new service-
oriented consumption and delivery model
of information systems (as utilities)
• Essentially, a new kind of IT/IS outsourcing
option for businesses
Virtual Environment
Physical Device Physical Device

5. Technology Convergence
• Computing-as-a-service is not new idea –
dates to 1960s and IBM’s Service Bureau
• Back then, and like many emerging
technologies, computing was relatively
expensive, so sharing made sense
• Moore’s Law sees the exponential increase in
price performance and ushers in the device-
centric era which has dominated, especially
since the 1980s

6. Technology Convergence
• But despite the allure of its perceived
autonomy, device-centric computing is
problematic – cost and complexity of
management
• Fast-forward to 2000s. Cheap, ubiquitous
broadband networks ushers in the Internet-
dominated era and sees cloud computing
emerging as a significant contender

7. Where did it come from?

10. 1994

11. History of Cloud Computing
• Originally, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and
others had built large computing
infrastructures to support their core business
needs
• But excess capacity during non-peak demand
times, innovative resource scheduling and
large economies of scale gives rise to a new
business opportunity

12. History of Cloud Computing
• Reselling excess capacity as packaged, on-
demand services, using lightweight customer
acquisition and provisioning models
• Now, no longer just about excess capacity but
a business in its own right
• Cloud is dominated by de-facto standards
which has emerged from the rapid successful
operationalisation and commercialisation of
these computing services

13. Cloud Computing Models

14. Defining Cloud Computing
• The US National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) proposes the following
definition for cloud computing:

15. Defining Cloud Computing
• “Cloud computing is a model for enabling
ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network
access to a shared pool of configurable
computing resources (e.g., networks, servers,
storage, applications and services) that can
be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service
provider interaction.”

16. Defining Cloud Computing
• NIST also says the cloud model promotes
availability and is composed of:
5 4 3

17. Defining Cloud Computing
• NIST also says the cloud model promotes
availability and is composed of:
5 4 3
Essential
Characteristics
Deployment
Models
Service
Models

18. Five (5)
Essential
Characteristics

19. Five (5)
Essential
Characteristics
Online
Self-service
Broad
Network
Access
Resource
Pooling
Rapid
Elasticity
Measured
Service

20. Five (5) Essential Characteristics
• 1. On-Demand Self-Service
• A consumer can unilaterally provision
computing capabilities, such as server time
and network storage, as needed automatically
without requiring human interaction with each
service provider.

21. Five (5) Essential Characteristics
• 2. Broad Network Access
• Capabilities are available over the network and
accessed through standard mechanisms that
promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick
client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets,
laptops, and workstations).

22. Five (5) Essential Characteristics
• 3. Resource Pooling
• The provider’s computing resources are pooled
to serve multiple consumers using a multi-
tenant model, with different physical and
virtual resources dynamically assigned and re-
assigned according to consumer demand.

23. Five (5) Essential Characteristics
• 3. Resource Pooling (cont.)
• There is a sense of location independence in that
the customer generally has no control or
knowledge over the exact location of the provided
resources but may be able to specify location at a
higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or
datacenter). Examples of resources include
storage, processing, memory, and network
bandwidth.

24. Five (5) Essential Characteristics
• 4. Rapid Elasticity
• Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and
released, in some cases automatically, to scale
rapidly outward and inward commensurate
with demand. To the consumer, the
capabilities available for provisioning often
appear to be unlimited and can be
appropriated in any quantity at any time.

25. Five (5) Essential Characteristics
• 5. Measured Service
• Cloud systems automatically control and optimize
resource use by leveraging a metering capability at
some level of abstraction appropriate to the type
of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth,
and active user accounts). Resource usage can be
monitored, controlled, and reported, providing
transparency for both the provider and consumer
of the utilized service.

26. Five (5) Essential Characteristics
• Also
• Resiliency- By virtue of a given cloud deployment’s size, its
service can survive interruption or loss of some physical
components without loss of function
• Redundancy - More availability, and better protection
against loss or damage
• Resolution - Automatic and dynamic resolution of resource
identities and addresses – by necessity of design and scale
• Ubiquity - Regardless of scope (public or private), the cloud
is expected to be available within that scope

27. Four (4)
Deployment
Models
Public
Cloud
Private
Cloud
Community
Cloud
Hybrid
Cloud

28. Four (4) Deployment Models
• 1. Public Cloud
• A public cloud deployment makes it possible for
anybody to access systems and services, and that
makes it less secure as it is open to everyone. It is
one in which cloud infrastructure services are
provided by the entity that delivers the cloud
services, not by the consumer. It is a type of cloud
hosting that allows customers and users to easily
access systems and services.

29. Four (4) Deployment Models
• 2. Private Cloud
• A private cloud deployment is the opposite of the
public cloud deployment model. It’s a single
customer. There is no need to share your hardware
with anyone else. The distinction between private
and public clouds is in how you handle all of the
hardware. It is also called the “internal cloud” and
it refers to the ability to access systems and
services within a given border or organization.

30. Four (4) Deployment Models
• 3. Community Cloud
• A community cloud deployment allows systems
and services to be accessible by a group of
organizations. It is a distributed system that is
created by integrating the services of different
clouds to address the specific needs of a
community, industry, or business. It is generally
managed by a third party or by the combination of
one or more organizations in the community.

31. Four (4) Deployment Models
• 4. Hybrid Cloud
• A hybrid cloud deployment bridges the public and
private worlds with a layer of proprietary software,
and it gives the best of both worlds. With a hybrid
solution, you may host the app in a safe
environment while taking advantage of the public
cloud’s cost savings. Organizations can move data
and applications between different clouds using a
combination of two or more cloud deployment
methods, depending on their needs.

32. Three (3)
Service
Models
IAAS
PAAS
SAAS

33. Three (3) Service Models
• 1. IAAS
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on-demand
access to cloud-hosted physical and virtual servers,
storage and networking - the backend IT
infrastructure for running applications and
workloads in the cloud.
• DigitalOcean, Linode, Rackspace, Amazon Web
Services (AWS), Cisco Metapod, Microsoft Azure,
Google Compute Engine (GCE)

34. Three (3) Service Models
• 2. PAAS
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) is on-demand
access to a complete, ready-to-use, cloud-
hosted platform for developing, running,
maintaining and managing applications.
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure,
Heroku, Force.com, Google App Engine,
Apache Stratos, OpenShift

35. Three (3) Service Models
• 3. SAAS
• Software as a Service (SaaS) is on-demand
access to ready-to-use, cloud-hosted
application software.
• Google Workspace, Dropbox, Salesforce, Cisco
WebEx, Concur, GoToMeeting

36. SAAS
PAAS
IAAS

37. The Good, the Bad, and
the Interesting of
Cloud Computing

38. THE GOOD

39. Simplified Customer Acquisition
• Per-usage tariffs on the infrastructure or
platforms
• Non-intermediated, automated self-
provisioning over the internet
• Homogenised packaging, pricing and
delivery of services

40. Elastic Demand
• Get and pay for what you need when you
need it (within reason)
• Making it operational expense (Opex) rather
than capital expense (Capex) intensive
• Allows low-risk experimentation or agile
demand fulfilment for out-of-the-ordinary IT
requirements

41. Utility Pricing
• Utility pricing
• Don’t pay for what you are not using
• But pay a little more when you are
• Consumer-style billing for everyone

42. Developer Ecosystem
• APIs
• Tools
• Low-friction entry points (often free to get
hooked)
• Theoretically easy portability and
extractability but not always so in practice

43. THE BAD

44. Security Issues
• There is a lack of transparency of data
location, access permission, soundness of
security architectures.
• These are significant security challenges.

45. Missing or poor SLAs
• Service-level agreements (SLAs) are important
to establish clear commitments between a
service provider and a customer.
• SLAs are common in the telecommunications
industry and provide corporations with a
guarantee that certain standards will be
upheld.

46. Lack of Industry Standardisation
• No ISO, DMTF, IEEE, etc.
• De facto standards by virtue of
commercial success

47. No Real Contracts or Guarantees
• In particular, what happens if a provider
goes bust? Or if they get bought out.
• There are a range of legal issues, here’s an
older dissertation on this topic:
• http://www.damiantgordon.com/Researc
h/Dissertations/AlanHarris.pdf

48. THE INTERESTING

49. Business Impact
• Cloud deployments challenge many existing
business processes and the traditional IT/IS
architectures and practices that support them
• Cloud can be viewed as a disruptive
innovation
• Cloud can also be considered as another
outsourcing option -- build-or-buy decision

50. Business Impact
• IT/IS leaders and managers cannot ignore
this trend in their planning and strategy
development
• But there are always many snake-oil
merchants all too willing to exploit on
unsuspecting or poorly educated CIOs –
cloud washing

51. Business Impact
• Cloud is creating new markets (for
services) and is disrupting an existing
market (proprietary infrastructure
investment)
• Cloud has many obvious disadvantages
compared to owned technologies (e.g.
security, reliability, risk of vendor lock-in)

52. Business Impact
• But the disruptive innovation model
demonstrates how apparently inadequate
technologies can initially satisfy basic
customer needs and then succeed even
more over time

53. Business Impact
• Incumbent suppliers (e.g. Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle) are trying
to re-focus their business but can they be successful
quickly?

54. Business Impact
• Cloud has enabled the creation of new
businesses which may otherwise not exist
• Could be entire new start-ups or new
business units within existing companies
• Cloud’s low friction, low cost acquisition
model changes the game

55. Business Impact
• Facilitates a relatively risk-free trial-and-
error approach to the marketplace –
significant capital commitment not
necessarily required to validate an idea
• Published cloud tariffs allows rough cost-
estimates to be made

56. Business Impact
• Staffing Considerations:
• The risk of losing existing IT skills which may not be a
problem if they are not core to the business activity
– but it is rarely that simple
• Existing and new staff may require different kinds of
training
• Pressures to reduce or redeploy headcount – risks to
retention of key staff
• Each consideration may tempt managers to
postpone important decisions around cloud

57. Business Impact
• Market Considerations:
• Regulatory framework in which the business
might operate (e.g. banking or
pharmaceuticals)
• Customer attitudes towards their data
• Competitors’ stance and relative adoption of
cloud technology and whether this has or
has not led to any perceived advantage