How to deal with cloud computing correctly?

Today's economic pressures are growing, big and small, and companies are looking to cloud computing to help ease the pressure. The popular language can be seen everywhere: cloud computing can reduce costs, accelerate implementation, and expand rapidly. But this popular phrase is often irrelevant, at least when the manufacturer sells the product.

"As SOA is the hype of a vendor, it sounds more like a marketing term than an accurate description of the architecture," says Ross Mason, co-founder and chief technology officer of Mulesource, an open-source SOA provider. This scene is reproduced in the 2009 cloud. It's all about hype and light and practicality. ”

Of course, this is not to say that cloud computing is completely off.

"At the moment, when it comes to getting things done, ' cloud computing ' is the most echosign online buzzword," said Jason Lemkin, chief executive of the company. Having said that, I still think that cloud computing is actually still not strong enough, because cloud computing simply describes what the third generation of Web services can do, and this computing pattern radically changes the online business environment. ”

Motivation and Answers

The main drivers of cloud computing are basic economic factors. Cloud computing can drastically reduce upfront capital costs, allowing companies to pay only for the services they actually use. "In addition, cloud computing models can enhance standardization and automation and deliver applications and services more efficiently, reducing long-term operating costs," said Dennis Quan, head of IDBM's independent computing division. ”

It is a bit confusing to think that while the benefits of cloud computing are unanimously shared, it is hard for many people to define what really belongs to the cloud and which is not. This may explain why the business process management expert Peter Fingar's book, "Dot.cloud", is already a bestseller on Amazon. In fact, several books introducing cloud computing have reached record sales as demand for clear answers increases. Fingar admits that the definition of cloud computing is very different, but he says he explains the concept in two ways:

For technicians, cloud computing means grid computing, utility computing, software as a service (SaaS), virtualization, internet-based applications, autonomic computing, Peer-to-peer computing, on-demand processing and remoting, and a variety of combinations of these terms. These are aspects of Fingar's so-called "Information factory" (information factories).

For non-technical people, cloud computing is just a platform where individuals and companies use the Internet to access countless hardware, software, and data resources to meet most of their computing requirements, and in Fingar's words, "throw the trouble to a cloud service provider (CSP)."

In any case, it is not a technician or a non-technical person who struggles with cloud computing, but a CIO. Miko Matsumura is the adoption of SOA application fool's Guide (SOA-dummies), the deputy Chief technical officer of Software AG. "One of the great things about cloud computing is that you don't have to care about who is going to do it," he said. Unfortunately, the CIO does not find this so-called merit a big deal, because his task is to ensure that the work is done in a proper manner. ”

Worry from the top

CIOs are not the only managers who are worried about cloud computing issues. Larry Beck, senior executive of cloud computing strategy at Avanade, said: "A major result of our investigation shows that, despite the need to reduce costs, most companies are still not using cloud computing, even if they realize that cloud computing is a practical way to lower upfront costs and daily costs." Concerns about security and the loss of control over data and systems are impeding adoption. ”
Another is troubling: regulatory issues.

"If you want to use cloud computing, publish data that requires compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to the cloud," said Anthony Velte, co-author of the forthcoming Cloud Computing Manual, Cloud Computing Handbook. It is necessary to seriously consider whether this is in compliance with the regulations. HIPAA data may be mixed with data from another enterprise on the same server, which may cause the attention of observant HIPAA auditors. ”

Velte added: "If your data is subject to regulations such as the HIPPA or Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it is best to be cautious in developing plans to put data on the cloud." After all, if you publish the customer's financial data to the cloud, if there is a leak, will the customer find a cloud service provider or will you? ”

As it turns out, cloud computing is constrained by geographical boundaries. It may be illegal for you to publish your information to the cloud. Velte said: "If you are in Canada, you want to publish your data to the U.S. cloud, it may violate Canadian law." ”

The Government of Canada has announced that IT staff in government departments are not allowed to use Web services running within the United States. "The reason is that Canadian data stored on servers in the United States may be adversely affected under the Patriot Act," he said. The same is true of clouds running outside the United States. You may not know that the law regulates the privacy and protection of your data in foreign countries. ”

Recognize the nature of cloud computing

In fact, many enterprises face a large number of emerging cloud products. While some providers are playing tricks and even misleading customers, most are not. Right now, the user is confused. Michael Salsburg, a spokesperson for the global nonprofit group computer Measurement group and chief architect of the real time infrastructure of the company, said: "The terminology and ontology of cloud computing are still evolving." "But now you can confirm some of the clear features of cloud computing:

Elasticity-When an enterprise needs a very variable computing function, it takes full advantage of cloud computing. For example, suppose a company needs to double the number of Web and application servers several times in one months. They do not want to pay the extra cost of the server being idle on the site most of the time. In cloud computing, computing can increase or decrease flexibly. Companies pay by the amount they use.

Uninstall context-about 80% of the IT budget is dedicated to keeping the current infrastructure running, leaving little time or money for new strategic work. The "standard" computing environment/mission to the cloud environment, can free up upfront capital costs and operating costs. For small businesses, cloud computing provides efficient enterprise-class best practices.

Task content as a service-imagine, through a Web browser, a request to provide and configure a set of servers and storage devices to run a large application. This can be requested and managed as a set of service requests made by any browser, including a mobile phone. This lightweight, service-oriented approach is a feature of cloud computing.

The right approach to cloud computing

As the web quickly becomes a priority channel for business, the number of SaaS services has increased dramatically, Lemkin said. However, he cautions that many SaaS services are not real cloud services. "While we see reliable SaaS services in areas such as customer relationship Management (CRM), finance, contract management and electronic signatures, we do not see these services being integrated on the web," he said. Cloud computing allows services to be fully and 100% integrated on the web, without the need for installation, IT personnel, and the absence of difficult issues, rather than being integrated in isolation. ”

Because cloud computing allows data, applications, and core business processes to follow Internet users anytime, anywhere, in any application, the so-called "mash-ups" of the Web 2.0 era is becoming more important, he says.

"The challenge for cloud computing is that only a few applications are truly built as a Web 2.0 solution for cloud computing," said Robert Klotz, Technology vice President of Akibia Inc. Software as a service solution is close, but they are not real Web 2.0 solutions. ”

As some people think that the technology is not fully operational, many people think that the current performance of cloud computing is comparable to the internal deployment calculation (premise computing), including scalability. "Critics of cloud computing say the company's data centers can provide economies of scale as long as they are properly managed," said Paco Nathan, chief scientist at Sharethis (social networking sharing tool). But one public secret is that the company's data centres rely on prior procurement of rack space and power systems, and the purchase of multi-year amortization, which often fails, requires maintenance and replacement equipment, and requires large numbers of personnel and extensive training. Cloud computing does not need this. ”

In turn, cloud computing has a public secret. On-demand integration service provider Boomi's chief executive, Bob Moul, explains: "The multi-tenant (multi-tenancy) model is still a feature of the greatest economic advantage, so buyers should be careful: just because an application is hosted in a cloud, it does not necessarily mean it is SaaS." How do you know if this is real SaaS? It is now time to try and/or implement applications without the intervention of the provider. ”

In the end, deciding whether to switch to a cloud environment, to adopt a strong internal deployment calculation, or to adopt a mixed model will depend on your company's specific requirements. For now, cloud computing is just another set of tools, and don't use it to see the specifics.

SunGard, director of product strategy Don Norbeck explains: "In essence, the cloud computing concept represents a major shift for companies and service providers, from internal to external, from being tied to a portable shift, from physical security to virtual security, from isolation to joint change." ”