The cloud transforms

CLOUD COMPUTING
TRANSFORMS
Cloud Computing Primer
Eric Rubin
Founder, DreamFactory Software
www.dreamfactory.com

CLOUD COMPUTING
 The cloud has become pervasive in all aspects of computing
 This presentation looks at the evolution of the cloud from the base
enabling technologies to the modern cloud.

CLOUD ENABLERS
 Three interrelated computing trends, popularized in the 90’s, paved the
way for cloud computing
 Distributed Computing
 Virtualization
 Hosting

CLOUD TRANSFORMATIONS
Virtualized Grids pave
the way for the cloud
Browser dominated
Cloud Computing
Smart devices drive
Cloud as Middleware
Hosting upends the
software industry

DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING- THE RISE OF
THE APP SERVER
 To enable large scale networked systems, computational load can be distributed
between application components
 AKA N-tier, the primary architectures are 2-tier Client-Server apps, and 3-tier,
client-application server- database
 With distributed apps, each component is self contained and communicates via a
messaging system
 Application components are distributed across hardware machines, enabling load
balancing and failover to duplicate systems. Called grid computing, this is a
foundational architecture for the Cloud Computing
 3-tier architectures proliferated with the internet, and app servers grew
exponentially
 While a host of new app server companies were spawned (e.g. Coldfusion,
Bluestone, Jboss), two companies dominated the java appserver space-BEAWeblogic
(now Oracle) and IBMWebsphere
 Additionally, Microsoft owns the windows/nt space with their .net product

SERVERVIRTUALIZATION
 Virtualization allows you to run additional operating systems as
instances on a single hardware server
 From the perspective of Software, when it is “Virtualized” it is no
longer tied to a specific hardware platform
 For example a windows software application can run on a virtualized Unix box
 Allows a single platform to support multiple application flavors
 The dominant virtualization platforms areVMware , Citrix Zen (Open
source), and Microsoft Hypervisor
Grid computing optimizes networked hardware sytems,
virtualization optimizes individual machines

BENEFITS OFVIRTUALIZATION
 Optimize hardware deployments
 Consolidate apps on a single platform
 Fully utilize hardware by “un-dedicating” to a specific OS
 Centralized vs distributed simplifies application lifecycle
 Develop/Maintain for one platform
 Update once to a central location versus updating all the distributed nodes
 Foundation for elastic computing
 Virtual machines on grids can automatically be spun up and down to handle variable
computing loads
Not surprisingly these are also key attributes of cloud computing

DEDICATED VS VIRTUALIZED
Apps on
dedicated
Windows NT box
Apps on
dedicated
HP/UX box
Apps on
dedicated
Linux box
Windows/Unix/Mac/Linux
Apps usingVMware on a ‘un-
dedicated” Linux box

GRID COMPUTING,VIRTUALIZATION AND
THE CLOUD
 Virtual machines and Grid Computing provide the plug & play building
blocks that enable the scale required for cloud computing
 They dramatically lower the lifecycle costs of large IT systems fostering
a much larger community of innovators then would otherwise be
possible
 These advances set the table for Google,Amazon, eBay,…

HOSTING
 This is the third trend that paved the way for cloud computing
 Hosting generally refers to businesses that run hardware and software
systems and then rent computing services to end-users and developers.
 Hosting is largely a business model transformation versus technology shift
 It’s worth noting that this is the oldest business model for computing, dating back to
timeshared mainframes in the 60’s (the first “clouds”)
 Hosting upsets the dominant business model for the last three computing
generations- capital expenditures on hardware and software
 Mainframes (IBM, Sperry,Amdahl, Burroughs)
 Client Server (DEC,HP, IBM, SGI, Sun, SAP, Oracle )
 PC (Microsoft,Apple, Dell, IBM, HP)

THE TIMESHARING REVIVAL
 Virtualization and Distributed computing make large scale data centers
practical
 The Internet offers public access to hosting centers
 The combination has fostered a whole new industry of hosting
companies that together have propelled a new disruptive computing
platform- Cloud computing

HOSTING COMPANIES
There are a variety of flavors of hosting companies, and there is a lot of confusion in
how these terms are used. From my experience the following are generally accepted
definitions
 ASP (application service provider)- this was popular in the late 90’s and early 00’s.
With an ASP you still owned the software, but the ASP would run it in on their
computers and charge you a service fee. Examples are USi and Corio. Most of
these companies have been absorbed by the MSP’s or expired. IBM purchased Corio
and ATT purchased USi
 MSP (managed services provider). MSP’s precede ASPs. It became popularized in
the early 90’s with companies like EDS and IBM Global Services. An MSP would take
over managing hardware and software systems for an enterprise. Essentially they
would become a companies’ IT organization. Adding ASP’s allowed them to offer
the same service off-site, i.e. offer a hosting option

HOSTING CONTINUED
 Web hosting. As companies scrambled to get a web presence, a massive
industry arose to host everything you needed to create web sites, and later
web apps. Examples include RackSpace,Verio, and Opsource. Some of
these companies have evolved to IaaS
 SaaS (Software as a Service). SaaS refers to a single hosted application
where a software vendor develops and hosts the application. WebEx and
Salesforce.com were pioneers in the SaaS model. SaaS players introduced
the concept of multi-tenancy, to refer to an architecture where all
hardware and software resources are shared among the user community.
Prior to that, hosting generally was single tenant- meaning that your were
renting back your own hardware and software system, not shared with
other companies. Multi-tenancy introduces enormous economies of scale
and software lifecycle efficiencies that are passed on to customers as cost
savings

HOSTING CONTINUED
 IaaS (infrastructure as a service). This is the base layer and is often
referred to as utility computing. IaaS players offer raw computing
resources as a service. For example you can buy elastic compute cycles,
storage, and database services on a pay as you go model. Amazon was
a pioneer in IaaS with their AWS offering. Other players include
Microsoft Azure and Oracle
 PaaS (Platform as a Service). PaaS is the next level up from IaaS and
layers development and deployment tools on IaaS, allowing developers
to rapidly deploy internet applications. Most PaaS platforms assume the
client is a browser, meaning that they are not ideal for mobile devices.
PaaS players include EngineYard and Salesforce Heroku

EMERGENCE OF THE CLOUD
 As SaaS matured and IaaS & PaaS emerged, the term Cloud became a
part of the lexicon, unifying all of the XaaS categories and meaning all
things virtualized and hosted
 Throughout this transformation, the browser has been the primary
access to the web. For web sites this has been adequate, but the
architecture has been limiting for web based applications
 As will be discussed in the following slides, new connected devices are
driving the next transformation
A major contributor to the popularity of the term is Salesforce.com who was one of
the earliest companies to rebrand around “cloud”

SO WHAT IS A “CLOUD”
 Generally when people refer to an architecture as a “cloud” it has the following
characteristics:
 Virtualized and centralized
 Applications are deployed as virtual machines and are developed and maintained on a
centralized server farm
 Hosted (however not always, see Private clouds)
 Elastic computing (additional compute power is automatically spun up to meet
demand)
 Self service provisioning
 Customers can provision their own applications without requiring IT’s involvement
 Pay as you go model
 In the XaaS world this refers to the ability to buy software services and utility computing
services based on usage, or an all you can eat subscription.
 In the corporate world this often refers to charge backs that are usage based.
 This differs by magnitudes from the enormous upfront investment of buying software and
hardware

SIDEBAR: PRIVATEVERSUS PUBLIC CLOUDS
 Private and public clouds are differentiated in a few ways
 A primary distinction is that private clouds are single tenant, meaning
there are no shared resources with other companies
 Private also often means that it is hosted within a companies data
center, aka “on-premise”
 In this latter case, it is differentiated from other IT implementation by
the basic component of a cloud architecture as described on the
previous slide
 Virtual, elastic, self service, usage based

PARADIGM SHIFT: CLOUD MIDDLEWARE
 Browsers were designed to browse content on the internet, which made sense
when the primary use was to browse web sites
 We are at the beginning of a shift to the internet being used as a gigantic application
server
 It is very similar to the shift from mainframe computing to client-server. Browsers
are similar to dumb terminals connected to a mainframe
 Tablets, phones, and wearables, are causing a similar disruption to the cloud as PC’s
did to mainframe computing
 The primary utility of these devices is applications, not browsing, which relegates
browsers to second class citizens. In fact many devices will not even have a browser
 The new paradigm is n-tier, with application components distributed on devices and
the cloud, communicating via a messaging system
 The dominant communication protocol between these components is REST APIs

SIDEBAR: SMARTVERSUS DUMB CLIENTS
 The first generation of the web was primarily dumb clients (underutilized PC’s) connected to
the web by browsers.
 Browsers communicate with servers via page generation, where the server does all
computation and then ships an HTML page to be rendered on the PC’s browser. When your
input something new in the browser, a new page is generated on the server and shipped back.
 In the modern web a client can be any device- PC, tablet, phone, meter, sensor, wrist band,
glasses…. These devices have unique local intelligence not accessible from the browser(e.g.
GPS location, Capture,Voice) that can be exploited.
 Legacy HTML Page generation approaches are no longer adequate for the modern web
 The appropriate model is service based, where the smart device and the server communicate
by exchanging services and splitting the execution of programs. You can think of this as Client-
Service as it is very similar to Client-Server computing models.
 The primary client technology is HTML5, native IOS (Apple), native Android (Google) and
Windows 8 (Microsoft)

THE MODERN CLOUD: CBE
 Cloud Back-ends are the newest generation of clouds leveraged as
middleware. CBE is purpose built for the modern web where smart
devices need to connect to the cloud
 CBE offers a set of services that enables rich clients to have cloud back
ends for storage, collaboration, app administration, tracking stats, and a
host of other capabilities
 CBE developers typically use a service based programming model, based
on REST APIs, versus page generation approach.
 Examples of CBE vendors include DreamFactory, Kinvey, and FaceBook
Parse

Web sites
SaaS
IaaS
PaaS
BaaS, mBaaS, CBE
CLOUD SERVICES POWER RICH DEVICES

The cloud transforms

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