Cloud computing

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a software applications data storage and processing capacity or access over the internet. The benefits of cloud computing are being recognized in businesses and institutions across the board, with almost 90 percent of organizations currently using some kind of cloud-based application. The immediate benefits of cloud computing are obvious: cloud-based applications reduce infrastructure and IT costs, increase accessibility, enable collaboration, and allow organizations more flexibility in customizing their products both for their brand and for their audience. But cloud computing is having other affects as well, which have the potential to greatly change how education works, both in online courses and in traditional classrooms.

 1. No more expensive textbooks. It’s no secret that university-level textbooks are expensive. The cost of textbooks has outpaced the cost of virtually everything else in education, including tuition. As a result, many students are simply refusing to buy them. Cloud-based textbooks can solve this problem as digital content is significantly less expensive than printed content. This levels the playing field so that lower-income students can have the same access to quality learning materials as their higher-income counterparts. Currently, higher education institutions across the United States are piloting an e-textbook program involving 50 publishers and close to 30,000 textbooks.

2. No more outdated learning materials. In the K-12 arena, the problem of expensive textbooks means that many of the materials students are using are outdated. The average social studies book in elementary and junior high schools are seven to eleven years old, which means that the world maps in these books are no longer correct. With cutbacks in school budgets, many districts, especially in less affluent areas, simply can’t afford to replace these outdated resources. Cloud-based materials are easy to update in real time so that students always have access to the most current.

Three ways of cloud computing

IAAS      Application            Software (ERP)

PAAS    Operating system Platform

SAAS    Hardware Network Infrastructure

Software as a Service (SaaS) is defined as

software that is deployed over the internet.With SaaS, a provider licenses an application to customers either as a service on demand, through a subscription, in a “pay-as-you-go” model, or (increasingly) at no charge when there is opportunity to generate revenue from streams other than the user, such as from advertisement or user list sales
SaaS is a rapidly growing market as indicated in recent reports that predict ongoing double digit growth. This rapid growth indicates that SaaS will soon become commonplace within every organization and hence it is important that buyers and users of technology understand what SaaS is and where it is suitable.

Characteristics of SaaS

Like other forms of Cloud Computing, it is important to ensure that solutions sold as SaaS in fact comply with generally accepted definitions of Cloud Computing. Some defining characteristics of SaaS include;

• Web access to commercial software
• Software is managed from a central location
• Software delivered in a “one to many” model
• Users not required to handle software upgrades and patches
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow for integration between different pieces of software

Where SaaS Makes Sense

Cloud Computing generally, and SaaS in particular, is a rapidly growing method of delivering technology. That said, organizations considering a move to the cloud will want to consider which applications they move to SaaS. As such there are particular solutions we consider prime candidate for an initial move to SaaS;
• Applications where there is significant interplay between the organization and the outside world. For example, email newsletter campaign software
• Applications that have a significant need for web or mobile access. An example would be mobile sales management software
• Software that is only to be used for a short term need. An example would be collaboration software for a specific project
• Software where demand spikes significantly, for example tax or billing software used once a month

SaaS is widely accepted to have been introduced to the business world by the Salesforce  Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product. As one of the earliest entrants it is not surprising that CRM is the most popular SaaS application area [11], however e-mail, financial management, customer service and expense management have also gotten good uptake via SaaS.

Where SaaS May Not be the Best Option

While SaaS is a very valuable tool, there are certain situations where we believe it is not the best option for software delivery. Examples where SaaS may not be appropriate include;

• Applications where extremely fast processing of real time data is required
• Applications where legislation or other regulation does not permit data being hosted externally
• Applications where an existing on-premise solution fulfills all of the organization’s needs

Software as a Service may be the best known aspect of Cloud Computing, but developers and organizations all around the world are leveraging Platform as a Service, which mixes the simplicity of SaaS with the power of IaaS, to great effect. 

Launched in November 2008, Groupon  features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat and buy in more than 500 markets and 40 countries. The company has thousands of employees spread across its Chicago and Palo Alto offices, regional offices in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa with local account executives stationed in many cities. Groupon seeks to sell only quality products and services, be honest and direct with customers, and provide exceptional customer service.

“Within a few months of our founding, our customer base exploded,” says Joe Harrow, Director of Customer Service, Groupon. “At first, I was spending 10 percent of my time responding to customer requests. It gradually became a job for several agents. We realized we simply couldn’t go on without a real ticketing solution.”

Convinced that Groupon’s rapid growth would continue, Harrow researched several enterprise-level support solutions. But he didn’t find a good fit.

“The enterprise-level solutions seemed complicated and difficult to set up,” Harrow recalls. “They would have increased our efficiency, but at the cost of hampering the customer experience.” Harrow then searched the web for online support software and found Zendesk [14]. After a quick evaluation of Zendesk, Harrow knew he had the right solution.
“Right off the bat, Zendesk was intuitive to use,” Harrow says. “It seemed more powerful and robust than other online support solutions, and it had been rated very highly in reviews we’d read. Plus, we knew that because it was a web-based solution, it could easily scale to support our increasing volume.”

Groupon now employs more than 150 customer support agents, who handle nearly 15,000 tickets per day. Zendesk’s macros, which are predefined answers to FAQs, are Groupon’s favorite Zendesk feature. These macros help Groupon train its agents to deliver one of the company’s customer service hallmarks: one-touch resolution.

Groupon has also found it easy to integrate Zendesk with other solutions. By integrating Zendesk with GoodData, Groupon has extended and enhanced its reporting – going well beyond the limits of its old spreadsheets. As an example of the sort of scalability that SaaS brings, Groupon recently processed its millionth customer ticket .

Platform as a Service

Platform as a Service (PaaS) brings the benefits that SaaS bought for applications, but over to the software development world. PaaS can be defined as a computing platform that allows the creation of web applications quickly and easily and without the complexity of buying and maintaining the software and infrastructure underneath it.

PaaS is analogous to SaaS except that, rather than being software delivered over the web, it is a platform for the creation of software, delivered over the web.

Characteristics of PaaS

There are a number of different takes on what constitutes PaaS but some basic characteristics include.

• Services to develop, test, deploy, host and maintain applications in the same integrated development environment. All the varying services needed to fulfil the application development process
• Web based user interface creation tools help to create, modify, test and deploy different UI scenarios
• Multi-tenant architecture where multiple concurrent users utilize the same development application
• Built in scalability of deployed software including load balancing and failover
• Integration with web services and databases via common standards
• Support for development team collaboration – some PaaS solutions include project planning and communication tools
• Tools to handle billing and subscription management

PaaS, which is similar in many ways to Infrastructure as a Service that will be discussed below, is differentiated from IaaS by the addition of value added services and comes in two distinct flavours;

1. A collaborative platform for software development, focused on workflow management regardless of the data source being used for the application. An example of this approach would be Heroku, a PaaS that utilizes the Ruby on Rails development language.
2. A platform that allows for the creation of software utilizing proprietary data from an application. This sort of PaaS can be seen as a method to create applications with a common data form or type. An example of this sort of platform would be the Force.com PaaS from Salesforce.com which is used almost exclusively to develop applications that work with the Salesforce.com CRM

Where PaaS Makes Sense

PaaS is especially useful in any situation where multiple developers will be working on a development project or where other external parties need to interact with the development process. As the case study below illustrates, it is proving invaluable for those who have an existing data source – for example sales information from a customer relationship management tool, and want to create applications which leverage that data. Finally PaaS is useful where developers wish to automate testing and deployment services.

The popularity of agile software development, a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, will also increase the uptake of PaaS as it eases the difficulties around rapid development and iteration of software.

Some examples of PaaS include Google App Engine , Microsoft Azure Services and the Force.com.

Where PaaS May Not be the Best Option

We contend that PaaS will become the predominant approach towards software development. The ability to automate processes, use pre-defined components and building blocks and deploy automatically to production will provide sufficient value to be highly persuasive. That said, there are certain situations where PaaS may not be ideal, examples include;

• Where the application needs to be highly portable in terms of where it is hosted
• Where proprietary languages or approaches would impact on the development process
• Where a proprietary language would hinder later moves to another provider – concerns are raised about vendor lock-in
• Where application performance requires customization of the underlying hardware and software.

Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a way of delivering Cloud Computing infrastructure – servers, storage, network and operating systems – as an on-demand service. Rather than purchasing servers, software, datacenter space or network equipment, clients instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service on demand.

As we detailed in a previous whitepaper, within IaaS, there are some sub-categories that are worth noting. Generally IaaS can be obtained as public or private infrastructure or a combination of the two. “Public cloud” is considered infrastructure that consists of shared resources, deployed on a self-service basis over the Internet.

By contrast, “private cloud” is infrastructure that emulates some of Cloud Computing features, like virtualization, but does so on a private network. Additionally, some hosting providers are beginning to offer a combination of traditional dedicated hosting alongside public and/ or private cloud networks. This combination approach is generally called “Hybrid Cloud”.

Characteristics of IaaS

As with the two previous sections, SaaS and PaaS, IaaS is a rapidly developing field. That said there are some core characteristics which describe what IaaS is. IaaS is generally accepted to comply with the following;

• Resources are distributed as a service
• Allows for dynamic scaling
• Has a variable cost, utility pricing model
• Generally includes multiple users on a single piece of hardware

There are a plethora of IaaS providers out there from the largest Cloud players like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace to more boutique regional players.

As mentioned previously, the line between PaaS and IaaS is becoming more blurred as vendors introduce tools as part of IaaS that help with deployment including the ability to deploy multiple types of clouds.

Where IaaS Makes Sense

IaaS makes sense in a number of situations and these are closely related to the benefits that Cloud Computing bring. Situations that are particularly suitable for Cloud infrastructure include;

• Where demand is very volatile – any time there are significant spikes and troughs in terms of demand on the infrastructure
• For new organizations without the capital to invest in hardware
• Where the organization is growing rapidly and scaling hardware would be problematic
• Where there is pressure on the organization to limit capital expenditure and to move to operating expenditure
• For specific line of business, trial or temporary infrastructural needs