"Cloud Computing" has gained popularity in recent years and it looks set to continue to make significant in-road in replacing the traditional model of building an IT infrastructure using costly and dedicated servers. "Cloud Computing" is not merely a new buzzword or another hype in the computing industry, it actually delivers significant benefits to businesses both big and small when used correctly.

Kiong Software has been using cloud computing technology since the early days of cloud computing and we know how it works. How do we know? Because we put the money where our mouth is – Kiong Software hosts all the computers of our IT infrastructure in the "cloud". With our in-depth knowledge of the "cloud computing" technology, we have helped many of our clients reduce operating costs, increase productivity and efficiency with the clever use of cloud computing services.

Imagine how costly and inefficient it will be if every business has to buy, install and manage its own electricity generator to supply the electricity that it needs.

Now imagine how costly and inefficient it is if businesses use the same model to build its IT infrastructure. Unfortunately, this was, and in many cases, still is how many organizations build their IT infrastructure. With this traditional model, businesses pay high upfront costs for dedicated computers to serve their IT needs. In many cases, businesses actually buy more than what they need in anticipation that they will need the extra capacity when the business grows. Big organizations with deep pockets may be able to justify building their IT infrastructure in such a costly manner but small and medium size businesses are likely to find that it is too costly for they to own a high performance and reliable IT infrastructure using this old way.

cloud /klaʊd/ noun

You will find as many definitions to the phrase "cloud computing" as there are people attempting to give the defintive definition. And here is our attempt based on our experience from using cloud computing.

The word "cloud" in "cloud computing" actually defines the paradigm shift in computing. In "cloud computing", the users do not need to know where the computing resources (e.g. CPU, disk space, etc.) that provide the computing services are located – the computing resources could be located as near as the next building or as far as the other side of the world. In this sense, the computing resources are located in the "cloud" – the exact location of the computing resources is fuzzy, they are on the web, they can be here, there, everywhere and anywhere. The computer resources in "cloud computing" do not take any finite shape or form and they can change unpredictably – like the cloud in the sky. What is important is that the users will get the computing resouces they need from the "cloud" when they need them.

 

Advantages of "cloud computing"

Low cost

With "cloud computing", not only are customers not required to pay the full up-front cost of purchasing a dedicated server, they can get the same level of capacity, performance, and reliability at a fraction of the cost of the server with similar configuration. The main reason for the low cost of cloud computing services is that they are provided by companies like Amazon^® and Rackspace^®. These companies have a massive amount of computing resources and data storage space that they can sell to the customers at a low price. This concept is similar to a wholesaler who can sell goods at a cheaper price than a retailer.

For example, Amazon^® sells 1GB of data storage space for $0.14 per month¹. This data storage service is designed for 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability² of the data, which means it is highly unlikely the customers will lose the data stored in the Amazon's "cloud". This translates to only $14 per month to store 100GB of data in the cloud. Businesses will be hard pressed to find a cheaper option to store the same amount of data with the same level of reliability using traditional storage solution.

¹ Price published by Amazon as on January 2011.
² Data published by Amazon as on January 2011.

 

Reliable

Leading cloud computing service providers like Amazon^® and Rackspace^® have invested a lot of resources and effort into making their datacenters very reliable and robust to prevent outages caused by natural or man-made disasters. These facilities typically have multiple redanduncies that prevent a single event from causing outages to the services. It will almost be too cost prohibitive even for the large businesses, let alone small and medium size businesses, to build and manage their own datacenters which offer the same level of reliability and redundancy as those offered by the leading cloud computing service providers. Therefore,by hosting the IT infrastructure in the cloud, customers can take advantage of the high level of service reliability offered by the clould computing service providers.

 

Flexible

The computing resources (e.g. CPU, disk space, etc.) in cloud computing do not take any finite shape, form or size and this unique feature makes it easy and flexible to change the amount of computing resources needed on-the-fly.

In the traditional computing world, businesses usually buy servers outright to meet their IT needs. If the business needs a new server, it needs to order the server and wait for the server to be delivered. This process can take days or weeks. Furthermore, the newly purchased server cannot be returned if it is not needed anymore.

In the cloud computing world, customers do not need to buy any physical servers. To meet their computing needs, customers launch "virtual" instance of a server (virtual server). Other than the fact that the virtual server does not have a finite shape or form, it operates exactly the same as a traditional physical server. In cloud computing, the customer connects to the virtual server using the DNS name or IP address of the virtual server as issued by the cloud computing service provider.

Virtual server in the cloud can be launched and stopped in a matter of minutes and this feature alone offers the customers a very high level of flexibility. For example, if a customer needs extra processing power to cope with a sudden surge in workload, the customer can launch a new virtual server in a matter of minutes, as oppose to the traditional computing world where the customer has to order a new server and wait for days or weeks for the new server to be delivered. But that is only part of the good news, the knockout punch of a virtual server is that it can be stopped when it is not needed and the customer will no longer be charged for its usage. In the traditional computing world, the customer cannot return the newly purchased server if it is not needed anymore.

The inherent flexibility of operating a virtual server in the cloud allows businesses to cope with the changes in their IT needs more swiftly. For example, a development team can launch and run a few virtual servers for a few days to perform some proof-of-concept tasks and then shut them down when they got the results. It is not hard to see the amount of time and cost saved by using virtual servers in this simple example.

 

When to use "cloud computing"

While cloud computing offers many opportunities and benefits, businesses need to understand when to use cloud computing services before jumping onto the "cloud computing" bandwagon. Below is a general rule of thumb on when to use cloud computing services:

• 1. Cloud computing services are hosted on the Internet. To benefit from cloud computing, customers need to have a reliable and a reasonably fast connection to the Internet. If the business does not have an Internet connection (highly unlikely in today's world), then the business will not be able to use any cloud computing services.
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• 2. Small and medium size businesses (SMB) will typically see big benefits in using cloud computing services. This is because SMB usually do not have very complicated requirements for their IT infrastructure and the cloud computing services available today should be more than sufficient to meet the IT needs of the SMB. This is not to say cloud computing is not for large companies. In fact, companies of all sizes will likely benefit from using cloud computing services but they need to evaluate their IT requirements unique to their business and choose the services that are appropriate and relevant to their businesses.

 

Let Kiong Software help you with "cloud computing"

There are much more to be said about cloud computing that what has been mentioned in this article. Kiong Software has many years of experience in using cloud computing services and we can help you understand how cloud computing can benefit you. Please contact us if you have any enquiries about cloud computing services. Contact Kiong Software