Definition of Cloud Computing
● Cloud Computing is a term broadly used to define the ON-DEMAND
delivery of IT resources and application through the INTERNET with
PAY-AS-YOU-GO price.
● It enables you to stop thinking of your infrastructure as hardware
and instead think of it (and use it) as software.
In short,
Cloud computing is a method of providing shared computing resources,
including applications, computing, storage, networking, development,
and deployment platforms as well as business processes.
You should be getting the idea that cloud computing means that
everything — from compute power to computing infrastructure and
from applications and business processes to personal collaboration can
be delivered to you as a service. To be operational in the real world, the
cloud must be implemented with common standardized processes and
automation
From where the word cloud came?
● It was inspired by the cloud symbol that is often used to represent
the internet in flow chart and diagrams.
● It underscores the idea that any web- connected computer has
access to a pool of computing power, applications and files.
Application before Cloud Computing
● Conventional business application are costly and problematic.
● Companies required an entire team of specialist to operate, protect,
modify, set-up, analyze, install and configure them.
More about cloud computing over traditional IT infrastructure
● Assurance for employees working on the same file with similar
information by storing the files with shared permission
● Information saved in the cloud provide plan for disaster recovery
● Option to work remotely and still be productive
● Physically backing up of data is no longer necessary
● No need for specialist
Misunderstanding about Cloud computing
● Cloud system are not secure
● Absence of appropriate encryption in the cloud
● Intermingling of client data in multiple tenant cloud system
● Companies are no more accountable for data security
● Cloud is never out of order
Types of Cloud
1. Public cloud:The public cloud is a set of hardware, networking, storage, services, applications, and
interfaces owned and operated by a third party for use by other companies or individuals. These
commercial providers create a highly scalable data center that hides the details of the underlying
infrastructure from the consumer.
2. Private Cloud:A private cloud is a set of hardware, networking, storage, services, applications, and
interfaces owned and operated by an organization for the use of its employees, partners, or
customers. It sit behinds firewall as it is not available for public. A private cloud can be created and
managed by a third party for the exclusive use of one enterprise.
3. Hybrid Cloud:A hybrid cloud is a combination of a private cloud combined with the use of public
cloud services where the two cloud environments work together to solve business problems. The goal
is to create a hybrid cloud environment that can combine services and data from a variety of cloud
models to create a unified, automated, and well-managed computing environment.
4. Community Cloud:Community cloud is a cloud infrastructure that allows systems and services to be
accessible by a group of several organizations to share the information. It is owned, managed, and
operated by one or more organizations in the community, a third party, or a combination of them.
Goals of Cloud Computing
● High business growth that outpaces infrastructure
capabilities
● Low utilization of existing infrastructure resources
● Large volumes of data that are overwhelming your on-
premises data storage resources
● Slow response times with on-premises infrastructure
● Delayed product development cycles due to
infrastructure constraints
Challenges for cloud computing
1. Data security and privacy: Data security is a major concern when switching to cloud computing. User or organizational
data stored in the cloud is critical and private. Even if the cloud service provider assures data integrity, it is your
responsibility to carry out user authentication and authorization, identity management, data encryption, and access
control. Security issues on the cloud include identity theft, data breaches, malware infections, and a lot more which
eventually decrease the trust amongst the users of your applications. This can in turn lead to potential loss in revenue
alongside reputation and stature. Also, dealing with cloud computing requires sending and receiving huge amounts of
data at high speed, and therefore is susceptible to data leaks.
2. Cost management:Even as almost all cloud service providers have a “Pay As You Go” model, which reduces the
overall cost of the resources being used, there are times when there are huge costs incurred to the enterprise using
cloud computing. When there is under optimization of the resources, let’s say that the servers are not being used to
their full potential, add up to the hidden costs. If there is a degraded application performance or sudden spikes or
overages in the usage, it adds up to the overall cost.
Unused resources are one of the other main reasons why the costs
go up. If you turn on the services or an instance of cloud and
forget to turn it off during the weekend or when there is no current
use of it, it will increase the cost without even using the resources.
● Multi-cloud environment:Due to an increase in the options available
to the companies, enterprises not only use a single cloud but depend
on multiple cloud service providers. Most of these companies use
hybrid cloud tactics and close to 84% are dependent on multiple
clouds. This often ends up being hindered and difficult to manage for
the infrastructure team. The process most of the time ends up being
highly complex for the IT team due to the differences between multiple
cloud providers.
4. Flexibility: When an organization uses a specific cloud service provider and wants
to switch to another cloud-based solution, it often turns up to be a tedious procedure since
applications written for one cloud with the application stack are required to be re-written
for the other cloud. There is a lack of flexibility from switching from one cloud to another
due to the complexities involved. Handling data movement, setting up the security from
scratch and network also add up to the issues encountered when changing cloud
solutions, thereby reducing flexibility.
5. High dependency on network:Since cloud computing deals with
provisioning resources in real-time, it deals with enormous amounts of data transfer to
and from the servers. This is only made possible due to the availability of the high-speed
network. Although these data and resources are exchanged over the network, this can
prove to be highly vulnerable in case of limited bandwidth or cases when there is a sudden
outage.
Even when the enterprises can cut their hardware costs, they need to ensure that the
internet bandwidth is high as well there are zero network outages, or else it can result in a
potential business loss. It is therefore a major challenge for smaller enterprises that have to
maintain network bandwidth that comes with a high cost.
6. Lack of knowledge and Expertise: Due to the complex nature and the high
demand for research working with the cloud often ends up being a highly tedious task. It
requires immense knowledge and wide expertise on the subject. Although there are a lot of
professionals in the field they need to constantly update themselves. Cloud computing is a
highly paid job due to the extensive gap between demand and supply. There are a lot of
vacancies but very few talented cloud engineers, developers, and professionals. Therefore,
there is a need for upskilling so these professionals can actively understand, manage and
develop cloud-based applications with minimum issues and maximum reliability.
7 Performance challenge:Performance is an important factor while
considering cloud-based solutions. If the performance of the cloud is not satisfactory, it can
drive away users and decrease profits. Even a little latency while loading an app or a web page
can result in a huge drop in the percentage of users. This latency can be a product of inefficient
load balancing, which means that the server cannot efficiently split the incoming traffic so as
to provide the best user experience. Challenges also arise in the case of fault tolerance, which
means the operations continue as required even when one or more of the components fail.
How does cloud computing work
Assume that you are an executive at a very big corporation. Your particular
responsibilities include to make sure that all of your employees have the right
hardware and software they need to do their jobs. To buy computers for everyone is
not enough. You also have to purchase software as well as software licenses and then
provide these softwares to your employees as they require. Whenever you hire a new
employee, you need to buy more software or make sure your current software license
allows another user. It is so stressful that you have to spend lots of money.
But, there may be an alternative for executives like you. So, instead of installing a
suite of software for each computer, you just need to load one application. That
application will allow the employees to log-in into a Web-based service which hosts all
the programs for the user that is required for his/her job. Remote servers owned by
another company and that will run everything from e-mail to word processing to
complex data analysis programs. It is called cloud computing, and it could change the
entire computer industry.
In a cloud computing system, there is a significant workload shift. Local
computers have no longer to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to run
applications. But cloud computing can handle that much heavy load easily and
automatically. Hardware and software demands on the user's side decrease. The
only thing the user's computer requires to be able to run is the cloud computing
interface software of the system, which can be as simple as a Web browser and
the cloud's network takes care of the rest.
Cloud Computing Architecture
As we know, cloud computing technology is used by both small and large
organizations to store the information in cloud and access it from anywhere
at anytime using the internet connection.
Cloud computing architecture is a combination of service-oriented
architecture and event-driven architecture.
Cloud computing architecture is divided into the following two parts -
○ Front End
○ Back End
Front End:
The front end is used by the client. It contains client-side interfaces and
applications that are required to access the cloud computing platforms.
The front end includes web servers (including Chrome, Firefox, internet
explorer, etc.), thin & fat clients, tablets, and mobile devices.
Back End:
The back end is used by the service provider. It manages all the
resources that are required to provide cloud computing services. It
includes a huge amount of data storage, security mechanism, virtual
machines, deploying models, servers, traffic control mechanisms, etc.
Components of Cloud Computing:
1. Client Infrastructure:Client Infrastructure is a Front end component. It
provides GUI (Graphical User Interface) to interact with the cloud.
2. Application:The application may be any software or platform that a client
wants to access.
3. Service:A Cloud Services manages that which type of service you access
according to the client’s requirement.
3 types of services: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS
4. Runtime Cloud:Runtime Cloud provides the execution and runtime
environment to the virtual machines.
5. Storage:Storage is one of the most important components of cloud
computing. It provides a huge amount of storage capacity in the cloud to store
and manage data.
6. Infrastructure:It provides services on the host level, application level,
and network level. Cloud infrastructure includes hardware and software
components such as servers, storage, network devices, virtualization software,
and other storage resources that are needed to support the cloud computing
model.
7. Management:Management is used to manage components such as
application, service, runtime cloud, storage, infrastructure, and other security
issues in the backend and establish coordination between them.
8. Security:Security is an in-built back end component of cloud computing. It
implements a security mechanism in the back end.
9. Internet:The Internet is medium through which front end and back end can
interact and communicate with each other.
Leverage of Cloud computing
Leveraging cloud technologies to reduce costs and overall impact of using an
organisation’s own resources/data centres is now commonplace in the market.
Cloud enables organisations to leverage highly available cloud infrastructure to
deliver business value without the need to consider underlying physical
infrastructure. Ordering servers/equipment, space planning for infrastructure and
expensive server/cabinet co-location costs are increasingly becoming something of
the past.
Benefits of leverage in cloud computing:
● Visibility of usage and consumption
● Greater Scalability
● Greater control over ongoing cost
Cloud computing can be leveraged in several ways:
● Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) allows your company to virtualize your
computing infrastructure.
● Testing and Development (Platform-as-a-service) Using a cloud environment to
develop applications is often a far more practical option than constantly
acquiring and installing new hardware and software.
● Applications (Software-as-a-service)
● Disaster recovery
● File storage
● Big data
Leveraging cloud technologies can help organizations reduce costs and overall impact
of using their own resources/data centers
.
Cloud enables organizations to leverage highly available cloud infrastructure to deliver
business value without the need to consider underlying physical infrastructure
.
Cloud computing can also provide greater agility within the team and for its leaders, in
creasing opportunities to respond to – and perhaps lead – industry movements
1. Infrastructure-as-a-service
IaaS allows your company to virtualize your computing infrastructure. While perhaps not as exciting as some
other cloud uses, IaaS is often a cost-effective and easily scalable solution that reduces the investment you
will need to make in physical hardware, making it an attractive option for almost any company. This is a great
place to start if you want to use the cloud to reduce IT and capital costs.
2. Testing and Development (Platform-as-a-service)
Using a cloud environment to develop applications is often a far more practical option than constantly acquiring
and installing new hardware and software. With PaaS your developers can simply log-in and access the full-
suite of tools needed to create the next great application. And with the wealth of PaaS options available, you
can have anything from a just-the-bare-bones set-up, to all the bells-and-whistles you can find.
3. Applications (Software-as-a-service)
Not surprisingly this is one of the most popular ways to leverage the cloud. According to IBM, as of June 2014,
21 percent of the software companies use today is delivered through SaaS, and that number is expected to
more than double in the next 5 years. SaaS can serve as a delivery model for an endless array of business
applications including email, CRM, ERP, HR management, etc. SaaS has grown explosively in the last 5 years,
largely because it allows companies to take advantage of economies of scale and reduce the cost of hosting
applications. If you want to take advantage of the cloud specifically to reduce costs, start here.
4. Disaster recovery
In the tech age, no company can afford to have critical IT systems off line for long. Cloud-based disaster
recovery ensures faster disaster recovery during those critical moments. Cloud-based disaster recovery also
gives you the ability to store your business continuity plans off-site, so you can access them from anywhere in
the event of an emergency.
5. File storage
Do you use Google Drive? Or Dropbox? Then you’re already leveraging the cloud for file storage! This is
another great gateway into cloud computing, as most of us have already been exposed to a cloud-based file
storage environment. Instead of taking up the often limited space on your hard-drive, just store your files in the
cloud. A number of additional benefits are available depending on the platform you choose including:
collaboration, version-control, back-up, security and access, etc.
6. Big data
Who isn’t talking about Big Data these days? Your grandma, maybe, but that’s about it. Big data and data
analytics have the potential to transform your business and give you more insight into your operations, people,
or customers than you might want. But all that data takes up space. Cloud computing can power your big data
efforts through every stage: collection, storage, analysis, and archive.
Real-World Examples of Cloud Computing
Netflix, the video-streaming giant, is one of the best examples of how cloud computing can transform a
business. Netflix has been using Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure since 2009, which allows
the company to stream high-quality videos to millions of users around the world. Netflix has leveraged cloud
infrastructure to deliver an always-on, always available streaming service.
Cloud Economics
Economics of Cloud Computing is based on the PAY AS YOU GO method. Users/Customers must have
to pay only for their way of the usage of the cloud services. It is definitely beneficial for the users. So
the Cloud is economically very convenient for all. Another side is to eliminate some indirect costs
which is generated by assets such as license of the software and their support. In the cloud, users
can use software applications on a subscription basis without any cost because the property of the
software providing service remains to the cloud provider.
Economical background of the cloud is more useful for developers in the following ways:
● Pay as you go model offered by cloud providers.
● Scalable and Simple.
Cloud Computing Allows:
● Reduces the capital costs of infrastructure.
● Removes the maintenance cost.
● Removes the administrative cost.
Pricing Strategies of Cloud Computing
There are three different Pricing Strategies that are introduced by Cloud Computing: Tiered
Pricing, Per-unit Pricing, and Subscription-based Pricing. These are explained as following below.
1. Tiered Pricing: Cloud Services are offered in the various tiers. Each tier offers to fix service
agreements at a specific cost. Amazon EC2 uses this kind of pricing.
2. Per-unit Pricing: The model is based upon the unit-specific service concept. Data transfer
and memory allocation include in this model for specific units. GoGrid uses this kind of
pricing in terms of RAM/hour.
3. Subscription-based Pricing: In this model, users are paying periodic subscription fees for
the usage of the software.
Cloud Billing Account in GCP
● Self-serve (or Online) account
● Payment instrument is a credit or debit card or ACH direct debit,
depending on availability in each country or region.
● Costs are charged automatically to the payment instrument connected to Cloud Billing
account.
● The documents generated for self-serve accounts include statements, payment
receipts, and tax invoices, and are accessible in the Google Cloud console.
● Invoiced (or Offline) account
● Payment instrument can be check or wire transfer.
● Invoices are sent by mail or electronically.
● Invoices are also accessible in the Google Cloud console, as are payment receipts.
Payment Profile in GCP
● Individual
● You're using your account for your own personal payments.
● If you register your payments profile as an individual, then only you can manage the
profile. You won't be able to add or remove users, or change permissions on the profile.
● Business
● You're paying on behalf of a business, organization, partnership, or educational
institution.
● You use Google payments center to pay for Play apps and games, and Google services
like Google Ads, Google Cloud, and Fi phone service.
● A business profile allows you to add other users to the Google payments profile you
manage, so that more than one person can access or manage a payments profile.
● All users added to a business profile can see the payment information on that profile.
Charging Cycle
The charging cycle on your Cloud Billing account determines how and when you pay for your Google
Cloud services and your use of Google Maps Platform APIs.
For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your Google Cloud costs are charged automatically in one of two
ways:
● Monthly billing: Costs are charged on a regular monthly cycle.
● Threshold billing: Costs are charged when your account has accrued a specific amount.
For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your charging cycle is automatically assigned when you create the
account. You do not get to choose your charging cycle and you cannot change the charging cycle.
For invoiced Cloud Billing accounts, you typically receive one invoice per month and the amount of time
you have to pay your invoice (your payment terms) is determined by the agreement you made with Google.
Subaccounts:
Subaccounts are intended for resellers. If you are a reseller, you can use subaccounts to represent your
customers' charges for the purpose of chargebacks.
Cloud Billing subaccounts allow you to group charges from projects together on a separate section of
your invoice. A billing subaccount is a Cloud Billing account that is owned by a reseller's parent Cloud
Billing account. The usage charges for all billing subacccounts are paid for by the reseller's parent Cloud
Billing account. Note that the parent Cloud Billing account must be on invoiced billing.
A subaccount behaves like a Cloud Billing account in most ways: it can have projects linked to it, Cloud
Billing data exports can be configured on it, and it can have IAM roles defined on it. Any charges made
to projects linked to the subaccount are grouped and subtotalled on the invoice, and the effect on resource
management is that access control policy can be entirely segregated on the subaccount to allow for
customer separation and management.
Advantages of cloud computing
Cost Efficiency:
● Cloud computing eliminates the need for organizations to invest in and maintain physical
infrastructure. Users can pay for the resources they consume, leading to cost savings.
Scalability:
● Cloud services can be easily scaled up or down based on demand. This flexibility allows
organizations to adapt to changing workloads and requirements.
Accessibility:
● Cloud services can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. This enables remote
collaboration and facilitates access to resources on a global scale.
Resource Optimization:
● Cloud providers efficiently manage and optimize their resources. Users can benefit from high-
performance computing without the need for extensive hardware and maintenance.
Automatic Updates:
● Cloud service providers handle software updates, security patches, and maintenance tasks,
ensuring that users have access to the latest features and security measures.
Backup and Recovery:
● Cloud providers often offer robust backup and recovery solutions. Data is regularly backed up,
and recovery processes are streamlined, reducing the risk of data loss.
Collaboration Efficiency:
● Cloud computing facilitates collaboration among teams by providing centralized storage and
access to shared documents and applications.
Environmentally Friendly:
● By sharing resources in a multi-tenant environment, cloud computing can lead to a reduction in
overall energy consumption and environmental impact.
Disadvantages of cloud computing
Security Concerns:
● Security is a significant concern for some organizations. Storing sensitive data in the cloud
raises questions about data breaches, compliance, and the overall security of cloud services.
Downtime:
● Users may experience downtime if the cloud service provider encounters technical issues or
performs maintenance. This can impact productivity and accessibility.
Limited Customization:
● Some cloud services may have limitations on customization, making it challenging for users to
tailor the environment to specific needs or preferences.
Dependency on Internet Connectivity:
● Access to cloud services is dependent on a reliable internet connection. In cases of network
issues or outages, users may experience disruptions in service.
Data Privacy Concerns:
● Users may have concerns about the privacy and ownership of their data when stored in the
cloud. Compliance with data protection regulations is critical.
Potential for Vendor Lock-In:
● Users may face challenges migrating from one cloud service provider to another due to
differences in platforms and technologies, leading to vendor lock-in.
Limited Control Over Infrastructure:
● Users have limited control over the underlying infrastructure in a cloud environment. This lack of
control may be a concern for organizations with specific regulatory requirements.
Costs Over Time:
● While cloud computing can be cost-effective for certain workloads, costs can accumulate over
time, especially if usage increases or if there are unexpected charges for additional services.
