What is Cloud Computing?

What is Cloud Computing, and why would I want it for my business?

Like many things in Computing, Cloud Computing has expanded to mean a lot more than it originally did. As Cloud Computing became the next big thing, anyone doing Marketing and Sales wanted to associate their product or service with it. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of hype around what Cloud Computing is.

To explain what Cloud Computing is, let’s start off with a couple of definitions, and delve a bit in to the history of Cloud Computing.

“Cloud Computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer”.

– The Oxford Dictionaries

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cloud_computing

Or, my favourite:

“The Server is somewhere else”

For technology purists, there is the National Institute of Standards and Technology Definition:

“cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction”

From <https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=cloud+computing+is+a+model+for+enabling+ubiquitous+convenient&*>

A quick history of Computing Methods

Computing has moved through a series of cycles. Originally there was the big powerful mainframe computer, which did all the processing, connected to dumb terminals which let you enter information, and then view the end result. This method continued with Minicomputers, until the Terminal and the computer became one with the Micro PC (or ‘PC’). Originally Personal Computers were standalone, and over time computer became connected together (networked) and then networks became connected together in ‘internetworks’ – the internet!

In a sense web browsers make computers in to modern ‘dumb terminal’s – a lot of the processing is now done on the Web Server, somewhere else.

Common Examples of Cloud Computing

Some common examples of this include:

Online banking – the bank’s servers do all the work to look up your recent transaction history and display it on the screen;
Gmail – Google runs the Servers that hold your email, and display it when you log in
Dropbox – let’s your store files on Dropbox’s Servers and access them through a webpage or synchronise with your PC
Xero – Let’s you do your business accounting online, including saving copies of receipts and invoices, and your Accountant can log in – no need to send them the latest file.

Online Banking, Gmail, Dropbox and Xero are all examples of ‘Software as a Service’. They are delivered purely through a web browser. There are many other kinds of Cloud Computing, which we’ll touch on later.

Real World Example

Let’s look at a real world example of what this means for a business. The Wholesale Lemonade Company sells high quality lemonades and other fruit drinks to the greater Brisbane region. The Wholesale Lemonade Company operates three Windows Servers in their office. One is used to store their files, another their emails, and a third has the database for their Sales and Accounts systems.

Wendy, the owner of the Wholesale Lemonade Co knows she needs to replace two of the Servers soon, and also wants to enable her Sales staff with a mobile ordering system, which the current Sales system can’t do.

Wendy does research in to her options, and talks to her IT Guy, and the Vendor of the Sales and Accounts Programs. She embarks on a Project. Moving most of her companies’ files in to Sharepoint, Email in to Exchange Online, Sales data goes in to Salesforce and Accounting in to Xero.

Now her staff can access Company email and files almost anywhere, the Sales Staff can look up customer information on the spot, and send through orders without having to go in to the office. She now doesn’t have to worry about upgrading her Servers or changing the backup drive, and her Sales and Accounts Systems are more integrated than before. Wendy finds she and her staff are able to spend more time visiting clients.

Some key benefits

No big hit IT purchases
Less ongoing maintenance of Servers and Systems (possibly none)
Backups are less common
Monthly fee, often per person – Opex not Capex
No updates to be done
Vendors can spend more time improving their systems and interoperating, rather than sending out update CD’s and providing technical support
More focus on doing the work, rather than on IT

Some disadvantages

Your Internet connection is far more important
Browser Hell – having to use more than one browser as one site requires chrome and another requires Internet Explorer or Firefox
Your Data is somewhere else
If the Vendor closes up shop, you lose your service and possibly your data

Other examples of cloud computing

Infrastructure as a Service – providing hosting for Servers somewhere else
Commonly used with Terminal Server / Co provide remote access to legacy applications in a Cloud Environment

Platform as a Service – Often used by developers to build and run their Cloud Software. Provides a variety of Services like database as a service and storage as a service to help with this.
Software as a Service – a complete application delivered through a web browser
Private Cloud – using cloud technologies to provide access to IT Services privately (to your company only)
Public Cloud – Cloud Services available to anyone

Conclusion

Hopefully you now have a bit more insight in to what Cloud Computing is. Cloud Computing can be a powerful enabler for your business, but it also has it’s pitfalls and perils. Like other business decisions, with careful planning and though it can be a great success.