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NEED FOR CLOUD COMPUTING???????

1) Cloud computing is a compelling paradigm. Its mission is to make computing available on retail basis. Let me illustrate with an example. Just few years back, commodities such as coconut oil or shampoo were available only in relatively small quantities such as 250mg, or 100gm. It made sense for companies and also a large population to buy them in these quantities. However there are occasions where even these quantities become large. For instance, a traveler in different town for a day may need both coconut oil and shampoo in such a small quantities for that days consumption that buying a 250mg pack is not acceptable. This is where the idea of selling in small sachet became an interesting proposition. Once its practical importance is realized today every consumer product or service is available in sachets. The idea behind sachet is simple: Convenience for buyer and profitable for business. Sell or buy in quantities of you choice, at your location, and affordable prices. Mobile companies today use retail models where recharging is possible in quantities as small as few rupees. Now imagine if this is also possible in computing.
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Why do I buy a computer when I use it for only few hours a week? Why do I buy a printer when I need printing occasionally?

The answer is yes. And the name of model which is expected make computing available on retail basis is called cloud computing. Cloud computing intends to make the Internet the ultimate home of all computing resources- storage, computations, applications and allow end user (both individuals and business) to avail these resources in quantities of her choice, location of their preferences, for duration of their liking. In other world web become the provision store for all your computing needs. A business model built on this paradigm offers these resources as services - either on pay per use basis or rental basis 2) Everyone is talking about it now. Cloud Computing, Working in The Cloud, Move everything to The Cloud Every day I hear some astronomical number being spent by super sized companies on Cloud computing like today Time Warner Cable Buys Enterprise Hosting And Cloud Services Company NaviSite For $230M. So i thought I do a little research to work out if it is needed? or not? I also hear things like: "Cloud Computing is the next big thing in the IT world. The IT world couldnt survive without the next big thing. This is the first blog on this topic and probably the

next one will be more positive. Mostly the advocates of cloud computing have vested interest and their talk about benefits are fairly woolly and a rather weak business model like below:
     

Increased Revenue Reduced Costs Collaboration Constant Iterative Updates No Capital Expense Remote Working

Above list are from typical marketing type sales literature that is not based on sound theories. In my own experience whilst I find the Amazon S3 pricing for bandwidth to be exceptionally good. But I find their CPU usage not so good. have a look here at Amazon calculator and you will find that compared to say equivalent mini-cloud at 1and1.com you will see that even Amazon is way too expensive. Azure is even more expensive. I remember in 1970s it was all about the mainframe and centralized computing. The 80s rolled around and the IBM PC and then Macs came into the world and everyone found their independence with their own computer on their desks. We therefore went to the world of distributed computing. However, that proved to be too cumbersome. So there came the LAN and we could share data without having to carry floppy disks/media of some type from desk to desk. Then the internet revolution came and along with it increased connectivity. Although we have all changes were still living in a world of distributed computing. Cloud computing is the new buzz term for hosted services or offsite hosting. Bottom line is that ones data lives on someone elses servers, in someone elses data centre. Therefore, some valid questions come up: 1. Your data will be far from the people who use it Power users, & corporate data needs to be easy to access, fast and reliable. For optimal speed and reliability the rule has always been to keep data close to the people who use it most. Once data is taken offsite it will get slower because, not matter how much you spend, youll never be able to get wide-area or internet links as fast as local-area links. Also, when everything is offsite and your link goes down, you've suddenly lost access to aLL your data and your business is sitting idle. 2. Your data will be controlled by others and may be hackers Locally hosted data usually resides on your own servers in your own data center. When its offsite you can never be entirely sure where it is and who is controlling it. The company you've hired to host it could very well be reselling someone elses services. You become subject to the whims and issues of these companies. What happens if they go out of business? What If theyre taken over by a third party? If they decide to outsource part of their operation and have your data now hosted in someone elses data center? I guess they will always have some small print to protect them. But when was the last time you read the full SLA of your ISP?

3. Your data could be hosted overseas This is especially an issue outside North America. Since to my knowledge, there are not many cloud vendors the rest of the worlds, the majority are in the United States. When your data is being stored in the United States, it puts your company under a fair bit of US legislation. Whilst the cloud is going to be controlled by US companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft etc.. , it is still likely to be in data-centers in India or China so the question is that do those local governments respect the privacy and confidentiality of your data? 4. Shared resources mean shared risk The Cloud Data is usually stored on shared servers. This means that the servers with your data also contain data of your competitors. This can create all sorts of scenarios that I will discuss in details but some are obvious. 5. If you ever fall out with one cloud provider how easy would it be to move to another? Currently it is not so easy. What happens when you decide to change to a different provider for reasons of price, reliability, support or whatever? Will you be able to get your data back out? Can you get it in a format you can use? For example, our sites are running on a DotNetNuke Content Management System and let us say we fall out and want to move to Amazon. I would say that there is a chance that it will not run on the Amazon Cloud. 6. Increasing Broadband and bandwidth availability to Businesses The other problem I see with the fact that bandwidth availability to businesses and households are increasing. For example I had a broadband with 13 IP addresses to my house with 8 MB download and 1/2 mb upload speed for about 8 years. This week British Telecom increased the speed to 50 MB download and 10 MB upload at no extra cost. They are talking about 70 MB download and 15mb upload within a year. For most organizations this kind of upload speed is completely acceptable to run their internet sites in-house. Running the Intranet in a medium size organization is never going to be feasible on the cloud anyway? I agree that there are some sites or applications that need occasional high bandwidth or occasional high CPU usage. That means that yes there is definitely a case for Cloud technology. But I have a feeling that majority dont need that requirement. So the races by companies like Time Warner Cable to have a piece of this ever fast expanding bubble full of air rather than a piece of a juicy cake. Below you can see two perspective - one by SalesForce that I agree with because it suites large organizations with real need for managed cloud computing. but as I said 90% of people out there don't fit this video below. and the requirements are far more modest.