In the modern world, combined with the strong development in information technology, computers are becoming vital part of your life. Computers are available everywhere and they offered for various purposes such as working, studying, entertainment, looking for information, etc. It causes the actual fact that the increase of connectivity and amount of data requires a solution for this situation. Therefore, there must be a standard bank of information that helps stocking all kind of resources and promise that hosted data would exist long-term.
Back to days gone by, people used traditional way to maintain the info but it was sophisticated and often costs much. Besides, almost devices which include hardware and software are outdated. There should be also a whole team of specialist who can install, configure, test, run, secure, and upgrade them regularly.
In 1990, the benefits of internet designated a tremendous growth of the information technology and the term "cloud" was created to represent online. Mentioning the cloud processing, people think of a new advancement in technology that turn into a great help for information safe-keeping generally and business in specific. In other words, cloud processing is designed for obtaining network and delivering computer resources.
Now, cloud computing has received attention from not only each individual but also many organizations, business owners, etc. And it deserves such a great attention because of huge benefit from using it. Since then, cloud processing is common and applied in many fields such as collection and information knowledge, education, architecture and especially business. Certainly, cloud computing spread across the globe and become biggest turning point in this century.
2. Successes of cloud processing expressed by statistic data.
According to the ultimate record of International Data Firm (IDC) in 2011, cloud computing brings significant benefits especially in business. Statistic data estimations that cloud computing would add up to 250 Billion to EU GDP in 2020 and 3. 8 million jobs. Besides, the growth of cloud processing also reduces cost and expenses. Actually, 78% of those who've been using cloud services said that indeed it is just a cost saving. Not only the cost cost savings have been seen, but also people expect the more advantages have also been expected from cloud processing. The graph below illustrates more details about these facts:
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Business seen and expected advantage (IDC Final Statement, July 13th, 2012)
Cloud computing bring customers a huge variety of benefits that may be gained by using it. The capability of mobile working is undeniable; within Access to the internet you may use any cloud application by mobile devices. Furthermore, cloud computing enable you to start out new business, new location and enhance the productivity easier and much more logical. About the other gain expected categories as: standard processes, capital expenses (capex) for business and business amount, each of them presents for the promising of standard center process, reduce capital expenses and increase income.
The development of cloud processing is the wonderful potential for buying business. Hence, understanding related domains of cloud computing and how to use it in business would be an advantage. All the standpoints would be offered as below.
Cloud Computing and its own application
1. Definition of Cloud Computing
Actually, the term "cloud processing" has just been made an appearance recently. However, it is not the new tendency of it; they have only synthesized all the guidelines of the development of information infrastructure lately. In 2006, Amazon impulse the study and implementation of cloud computing (ComputerWeekly. com, 2009). Immediately after, with the involvement of big businesses such as Yahoo, Microsoft and IBM, cloud processing has had a very strong development which appeals to a huge investment in researching of many scientists, universities and companies of it. Thus, a great deal of meanings of cloud processing were released by experts. However, each research group defines cloud processing byits own understanding and methods such that it is very hard to provide the most basic definition. Here are some definitions of cloud computing:
"The cloud is IT as a Service, delivered because of it resources that are self-employed of location" (The 451 Group, 2008)
"Cloud computing is a method of processing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities are given 'as a service' across the Internet to multiple external customers" (Gartner, 2008)
Cloud computing is actually a processing model which uses computer technology and grows based on the internet. Inside the cloud model, all customers' requirements associated with information technology are provided by means of services which allow users to access and use technological services from a provider on the cloud without purchasing the equipment or infrastructure as well as knowledge of that technology. The primary job of cloud processing is to meet the users' computing requirements based on the internet. For example, Google App Engine unit service provides common web business service that can be reached from a browser, the rest of applications and data are stored in the server.
However, companies such as Gartner, The 451 Group and IDC are not companies that specialize in IT so these meanings target mainly on describing what cloud processing is on the view of commerce and predicated on their own experience.
According to scientific and technical point of view, there are also many different definitions, of which this is of National Institute of Expectations and Technology (NIST) is widespread in use; they define cloud processing as a model which has 5 essential characteristics (Grance, Mell, 2011):
Resource pooling: Cloud processing allows many users to share a typical provider's resource pool based on multi-tenant model. Cloud computing is dependant on virtualization technology so virtually all resources is exclusive resources which will be allocated dynamically in accordance with the changing demand of different customers. Therefore, the supplier can serve more customers than the traditional static source of information allocation.
Broad network access: With internet connection, customers may use and access the cloud applications from everywhere and anytime by using many types of devices such as smartphone, laptop, tablet.
Rapid elasticity: This is the most visible and important feature of cloud processing. The system can level up or down automatically depending on user's demand with the addition of or minimizing resources. This functionality helps the provider manage resources better, take full advantage of the surplus resources and provide more customers. Moreover, the users can decrease the expenses because they pay just for the resources actually used.
On-demand self-service: When customers have a processing demand such as increase or lower storage space and server time, they just need to make a get on the provider's website and the system will fulfill their needs automatically without the connection with the cloud vendor.
Measured service: Cloud service automatically regulates and optimizes the use of resources such as space for storage, bandwidth, etc. Therefore the resources usage will be monitored and transparently are accountable to both company and users.
2. Services style of Cloud Computing
Nowadays, many cloud computing's suppliers provide different services for users and businesses. Hence, they need to understand extensively about the feature and function of every model to be able to apply the best model to the business. You can find 3 main services of cloud processing that are Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and System as something (PaaS) (Stanoevska-Slabeva el al. 2010)
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3 types of Cloud Services (http://technoster. com/cloud-computing-explained)
Software as something - SaaS: Before cloud processing is well known in IT circles, SaaS has actually appeared for a long period, the most popular service is email such as Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail. SaaS is a service model in which the supplier will provide its customers software as a completed service. Customers just need to choose a software application that matches their needs and run the application on the Cloud infrastructure. This service model frees users from the management of system, infrastructure and operation which will be managed and managed by the host in order to guarantee the application's availableness and stable operation. Currently, SaaS for businesses is highly developed such as office applications of Microsoft Office 365 like inside email and communication, applications in Customer Marriage Management (CRM) of SalesForce, Amazon's e-commerce applications.
Platform as something - PaaS: is a version of SaaS, but this service model offers a system as something which means that a company can build their own request on the provider's infrastructure and provides to its customers via the host's server. This business will not be completely free by bounds of design and technology. A few examples of PaaS are Make. com of SalesForce, Google App Engine unit, etc.
Infrastructure as something - IaaS: is a service model that provides users basic processing resources such as space for storage, server, network as well as tools to control those resources. Customer can install the operating-system, deploy the applications and also hook up to other components such as firewalls and weight balancers. Therefore, customers have to manage operating systems, storage area, applications and associations between the components; companies control basic infrastructure below and it is in charge of the operation and maintenance of the machine. Besides, one of the very most popular IaaS services that businesses and organizations often use is to lease a certain amount of tool for daily business operation and lease standby learning resource for unexpected demands. Because of this, it isn't necessary for businesses to invest massive amount in advance cost, they only need to pay the cost for the real demand. IaaS brings its customers monetary efficiency, especially in the case of demand for computing and storage space increased sharply in a short time, the investment in infrastructure and equipment will be wasteful; time of purchasing them may cause delay and influencing the procedure of businesses.
Cloud processing provides its customers variety of models with different characteristics. Thus, the organizations can choose to use cloud processing to supplement their existing processing infrastructure (IaaS), test and develop applications (PaaS) or take advantage of existing applications (SaaS) to timely meet up with the needs of businesses, reduce investment and opportunity cost. For the view of management, cloud processing allows companies and firms to copy IT outsourcing to the service provider to be able to focus on the introduction of the key business.
3. Deployments Style of Cloud Computing
There are 3 types of clouds that can be used for different purposes (Masiyev, 2012):
Public cloud: With this cloud, all cloud services is generally provided by the suppliers for the customers generally through the internet. Different applications show the learning resource pool of processing, storage area and network so the infrastructure is designed to ensure separating data between the clients. General public cloud focuses on serving a huge volume of customers so it can meet the flexible computing needs and offer lower costs to the client. Therefore, general population cloud's customers include all types of individuals and businesses whom can benefit from easily method of high-tech and high quality applications without any up-front cost. However, the complete data is situated on cloud which is monitored and controlled by the supplier; this make customer, especially big companies feel unsafe because of their important data when using cloud service.
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Public cloud (http://www. janakiramm. net/blog/the-tenets-of-the-cloud)
Private cloud: in this type of cloud, all the program and applications are create for the utilization of only 1 business or business. Private cloud can be run by a third party and the infrastructure can be positioned inside or beyond your owner. Therefore, it can help businesses to maximize the ability to control all data, security and service quality. Besides, private cloud can be built and supervised by the company's IT team or they can work with a company to undertake this work. Thus, although investment cost is high, this cloud allows business to regulate and manage its sensitive or critical data.
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Public and Private cloud (http://blog. esds. co. in/while-using-public-cloud-services)
Hybrid cloud: As analyzed above, open public cloud is simple to create and use, low cost however, not safe in contrast, private cloud is better but costly and difficult to create. Therefore, if these 2 clouds can be blended alongside one another, the new model will take advantage of each type of cloud. That is the idea of Cross cloud. Similarly, the firm will outsource all insignificant business functions, data and use open public cloud to handle these data; on the other side, business will hold on to control of important information concurrently (Private cloud).
What is Hybrid Cloud Hosting
Hybrid Cloud (http://www. moderndignity. com/what-is-hybrid-cloud-hosting)
Businesses can make to deploy the application form on the general public, Private or Cross Cloud depending on specific needs. Each type of cloud has its advantages and weaknesses so companies need to consider carefully before choosing or they may use more than 1 model to solve different issues. The necessity of temporary applications can be put in place on the general public cloud since it helps the company avoid purchasing additional equipment for a short-term need. Similarly, the necessity of permanent applications should be integrated on Private or Cross Cloud.
4. Request of Cloud Computing
Based on the functions of cloud computing applications, they are really divided in a few of categories such as: processing pipelines; batch processing systems and web applications.
Processing pipelines: They include data are data-intensive and sometimes compute-intensive applications. For example: image handling (flickr. com), indexing, report control, email and interpersonal network (Facebook, Twitter. Presently, they represent a fairly large portion of applications which can be operating on cloud.
Batch control systems: The drawback of this type is the fact that it cannot be available for lasting. Subsequently, it can cause severe problems. A non-exhaustive set of batch control applications includes activities survey, purchase and summaries of organizations, inventory management of big companies, billing and payroll process.
Web applications: Another important application is web gain access to. Some types of internet sites only serve for momentary purposes (for example: website for event or discussion. )
The more robust the cloud processing develop, a lot more creative of cloud applications verify. With such an enormous benefit like this, cloud applications would become lively helper of cloud computing.
Cloud Processing in Business
"Is cloud computing suitable for all types of businesses?" It depends upon the size of the companies and the nature of businesses. Actually, for the firms where data is a vital part such as storage area system of a bank or investment company, they have to build their own operating-system and data center. However, Cloud processing is most likely a best answer for smaller businesses because they don't have to purchase initial infrastructure and also have a team for management and maintenance of operating-system (like the issue of upgrading the storage area devices or the condition of power use of the system). It cannot deny that outsourcing business system to the cloud provides a lot of great benefit to not only the companies but also its customers. However, you may still find some concerns that businesses have to handle with when they use cloud processing.
1. Good thing about using cloud computing
a. Cost saving
The most exceptional benefit of using cloud computing in businesses is monetary efficiency. Actually, whenever a business create its data and infrastructure on cloud especially general population cloud, it is unneeded to pay significant up-front cost for equipment, management and maintenance of IT system and manpower to use system. They can rent fully-made applications and storage space from the providers (SaaS) or build their own applications on a program (PaaS) as needed. Therefore, businesses only need to purchase what they really use (payg) which can cut down the set costs. (Chan el al. 2012)
Nowadays, increasingly more companies recognized the economic advantage of using cloud computing in their system and one of them is Sensata Systems - a major supplier of electric powered equipment and electric power solution with more than 9000 employees over the world. To be able to increase the company's operation, most employee's e-mail was shifted to the cloud by IT team. This decision helps Sensata to reduce more than a 1 / 2 of cost in discussion tool which is approximately $500, 000 after just 4 months. (Hodges, 2011)
b. Flexibility
Thanks to speedy elasticity of cloud processing, customer's system can scale up or down flexibly depending on requirements. Therefore, businesses are able to start with small size of system with low demand and then develop to a larger range with increasing demand (Marston, et al. , 2010). For example, in order to launch a fresh marketing campaign, a business needs to have an own server for uploading information from your client within per month. This server will be redundant when the advertising campaign finishes if a business buy a new server; but with the prevailing technology infrastructure, third party may grant or revoke this server easily. Furthermore, cloud computing allows employees to easily gain access to company's data from everywhere and anytime even when they are on holiday so long as they have web connection.
With cloud processing, the company will forward most of the duty for handling system, infrastructure management, security to the company, so that the companies can help reduce costs and time, they only need to concentrate on the center business, nor have to worry much about control and management of system.
c. Environmental benefit
Cloud service helps the businesses reduce power usage a lot more than using its own data center. Power saving can make the surroundings greener because the less electricity is consumed, the less carbon is emitted. Besides, using cloud service allows companies to save much section of land use for troublesome database center. Matching to recent research about power ingestion and carbon emission of using cloud processing (Accenture, 2011), more than thirty percent of power can be preserved and about 32 percent of carbon emission may be prevented for the large companies when they move applications to the cloud; with small businesses, these statistics are even higher that are about 90 percent for each and every of them.
d. Improve performance
Cloud computing allows the company to access almost immediately to the pool of data which causes faster transactions in business. Moreover, it is simpler for the organizations to work in collaboration with companions because they can show and usage of the same data quickly on the cloud. On the other hand, the problem of space for storage now can be fixed with cloud computing, it is needless for the employees to keep the data in their limited hard drive which might be corrupted or lost because of computer crash or virus.
e. Automatic update
A great deal of companies spend few days or even little while on just improving their operating and security system which contains huge amount of data. However, with cloud processing, businesses need not revise their software or system by themselves; it is all done by the cloud supplier regularly when the latest upgrade can be obtained.
2. Challenging for Cloud computing
a. Security and privacy
The most regularly question about cloud computing is: "Could it be safe to move all business's data to the cloud?" Actually, when moving all data to the cloud, businesses lose relatively of capabilities of controlling their information; they need to lay their faith entirely on the cloud supplier to ensure the safety of this data. With some companies of which data is their lifeblood, it's very risky to put the control of these sensitive and critical data on the third-party hand, hacking or some varieties of episodes to the infrastructure may cause some adversely surprising implications such as data loss or corruption. Besides, privacy is also the top concern of using cloud computing. In fact, placing data on cloud can make organization's data more susceptible and it can be utilized by unauthorized people. Presently, a solution to fix this issue is the fact cloud users need to encrypt their data before uploading to the cloud and they have to decrypt it at the local computer when they would like to use that data.
For instance, according to Bloomberg, in Apr 2011, more than 100 million customer's accounts of Sony Corporation were compromised by hacker through Amazon cloud service; the Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity service had to shut down in nearly one month due to the cyber-attack. Hackers rented a server of Amazon's EC2 service as a program to release an assault to Japanese company and stole private information and credit, debit card information of their customers. After an incident, share's price of Amazon lowered 1. 7 percent from $206. 07to $202. 56 in currency markets, this drop of Sony is even more significantly, they lost nearly 23 percent of the talk about' price in 2011. (Alpeyev, et al. , 2011)
On the other palm, due to ability to damage and spread rapidly, computer virus is one of the major dangers of data security issues. The centralization of data on the cloud can reduce time and cost of virus removal, but the risk and impact of disease will not change or even flip more dangerous because of the reason that though whether in virtually any model, the detrimental purposes of the pathogen creator aren't changed, infections still have the aim of sabotage and fraud; the new variants of virus that adjust to the operating environment of cloud computing will promptly seem. Additionally, centralizing data on the cloud's server also helps computer virus multiply faster and sabotage stronger.
b. Availability
Another challenge of cloud processing is whether users can access and utilize their data and applications or not, there's a problem with the server system of the professional. With the firms which need to access their data and documents on a regular basis for procedure, this is undoubtedly a serious concern which may cause some critical consequences such as hold off running a business. Therefore, companies must have a plan providing against all possible contingencies such as backup system if problem occurs.
c. Cloud service provider lock-in
Today, cloud's applications are being improved the ability of discussion between different systems. However, when businesses build their program over a cloud infrastructure, it's very difficult to move that application to another cloud vendor in the future.
Furthermore, businesses become reliant on the technology and quality of companies which can reduce their versatility and imagination, they just have the to do what the cloud vendor allows. Furthermore, the latest information is often not well-timed up to date by the company while companies want to keep rate with the latest innovations, so they may feel dissatisfied start limitation.
d. Internet dependency
According to the definition of cloud computing, users will need to have internet connection to access the resource on cloud infrastructure, so the availability, quickness, quality and performance of internet may significantly have an impact on the business operation. Internet interruption might occur in the middle of transaction which means that action can be cancelled or postponed. Besides, without a high speed connection, it can take a lot of time to load huge amount of data through the internet
3. Future of cloud computing
In the recent survey of Gartner (2012), it suggested that there is a well balanced increasing in public cloud service. It also proves the fact that cloud processing become useful and being used widespread. In 2010 2010, public cloud services come to 75. 6 billion Dollars. Nonetheless it is predicted that in 2016 it could take into account 206. 6 billion us dollars. So, during 2011 and 2016, it could contribute compound gross annual development rate of17. 7%.
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Market size of public cloud services (Market Research and Statistic, Gartner2012)
In my opinion, cloud computing not only persists to truly have a strong impact on business with concrete focuses on including increasing profits and decreasing cost. But cloud processing can also bring us a great many other chances in different fields.
a. Advertising services.
The combination of advertising services and cloud service can become more efficient. It has become a trend with many useful online tools. Now, both main part of cloud advertising market are paid search and online screen advertising. This form of advertise is simpler and quicker which can get people's attention better. Businesses could save big money for the price tag on producing advertising products. Besides, it fits the requirements of customers who do not need to spend enough time to consider information in normal ways (publications, leaflet, booklet. . . ). All of them now always can be found on Internet within few clicks.
b. E-commerce services.
Shopping online is very popular and convenient. Actually, online retail is not regarded as cloud service. But, the provision for retail online service from one to the other which can gain income is a kind of cloud service. Amazon is a typical example for the amazing successful of E-commerce. By doing E-Commerce, businesses can expand the wide selection of customers and understand the style of specific customer teams (through statistic numbers) which all lead to the fantastic accomplishment in increasing income.
Case study
1. Overview
Royal Mail Group is one of the biggest postal organizations in UK that is in charge of mail and parcel delivery and related businesses, about 70 million items are provided by Royal Email around UK every day. However, the increasing numbers of competition in this sector are adding increasingly more pressure on Royal Email which causes them to truly have a rational technique to compete with private companies, this obstacle is a great deal larger for the info technology product in the company who always need to up grade the system to make it operate successfully. To be able to offer with this concern, in 2008, Royal Email Group decided to replace the IBM Lotus Notes which is out-of-date and costs too much by a new cost-effective service model, it is cloud processing. (Jaques, 2011)
2. Cloud processing in Royal Email Group
Royal Email spend no more than 8 weeks to use this new model called Microsoft Business Productivity Online Collection (BPOS) which is more flexible and scalable than the old one without paying plenty of money every year. More than 28 thousand accounts of employees are changed to the cloud proving them many useful tools of communication such as instant communications, audio and video discussion which helps them work more efficiently. Server, space for storage, application are actually provided on demand by CSC and Microsoft so that they only pay as they use and can simply range up or down their system in each time frame. For example, Xmas is usually the peak time of Royal Mail which requires the company to operate at full capacity, so the cloud service allows the organization to grow their system in order to meet the demand and reduce in the off-peak time. The advantage of applying new cloud service is more impressive according to cost-effective perspective. In fact, Royal Mail can save about 15 percent of only maintenance cost which is now the duty of provider (Tabbitt, 2011). Based on the mind of infrastructure management of Royal Email - Adrian Metallic, the business may save about 1 million during the 4 years agreement with CSC.
Conclusion
This dissertation has turned out the significant role of cloud computing in businesses and its common development in near future. The appearance of cloud processing brings the solutions for businesses' questions related to build a datacenter with low-cost, high profit, security and sustainable.
Many years back, it takes enough time for business to build up and attract millions of customers. Nowadays, cloud computing make all dreams of using computer and Internet as a powerful tool becomes functional and realizable. The target of deliver services to hundreds of thousands customers through Internet with faster swiftness now can achieved for weeks. In both viewpoints of businesses and customers, they all received the power from cloud processing directly or indirectly. With different cloud computing services models and 3 types of cloud, they allow businesses consider and choose which model would be most ideal for businesses. Each of services models and cloud type has its advantage and downside characteristics. Therefore, understanding basic knowledge of them is quite necessary.
Businesses of different areas can apply cloud processing successfully such as newspaper like Washington Post, internet search engine like Yahoo Web Search, online retail like Amazon or even movie companies like Pixar. By using cloud computing, businesses can get exceptional achievements that can be shown through growing earnings and good reputation. Besides, the relationship between businesses and customers would become more closed. It all serves for the sake of matching requirements for both sides. Predicated on the statistic amount, it is seemingly that cloud processing promote the economical growth generally speaking and running a business in particular.
With the increasing quickly in the amount of cloud computing users, there has to be some necessary steps to consider the challenging and obstacles from cloud computing. Hence, we can know exactly what should we do to prevent them then give some tips which would be helpful for both attributes: cloud providers and businesses.
For cloud providers' point of view: Providers have to forecast what could become risks from cloud computing. Therefore, providers would develop strategies that help enhance the cloud system. Besides, providers also have to give consideration at some main threads such as: availableness, internet independency and other moral issues.
For businesses' point of view: Businesses should put together carefully prior to making any decision that they need to migrate to cloud processing or not. Measure the internal and external force and the existing situation of business are also important. By doing that, they can know just what kind of cloud that their framework need.
Cloud computing gives businesses permanent benefit and makes the discovery in technology. It becomes most preferred choice for businesses and business. Cloud computing would give us a fresh chance, new hope for the planet that businesses will be packed with success specifically, and a world that economic can develop for the interest of everyone.
