Technology, Money & Questions

A company may chose to use a service provider's cloud or build its own.

Public clouds are run by third parties, and jobs from many different customers may be mixed together on the servers, storage systems, and other infrastructure within the cloud. End users don't know who else's job may be running on the same server, network, or disk as their job runs.



Private clouds are built within an enterprise for their proprietary use. Private clouds are good for companies dealing with data protection and service level issues. Private clouds are on-demand infrastructure built and managed by single customer who controls which applications run, and where. They own the server, the network and disk and can decide which users are allowed to use the infrastructure.

Though initially enterprises start with their own private cloud by adding a layer of new technologies to their existing data-center systems and processes, in a long run they will likely want to run applications both in privately owned infrastructure and in the public cloud space as well. Thus we have the third model of clouds.

Hybrid clouds combine the public and private cloud models. Enterprises will own parts, and share other parts, though in a controlled way. Hybrid clouds offer the promise of on-demand, externally provisioned scale, but add the complexity of determining how to distribute applications across these different environments.

Money, the man made thing, I'd say, MONEY is the next big thing to GOD [OMG, Don't curse me now, if you're an atheist, call it as the next big thing to something you would fall back in case of a crisis].

Why MONEY is not 'the BIG' thing? Well, because of only one reason, Money is STILL not omnipotent. I can very well be a devil's advocate here, but the truth is, we, human beings still have a long way to go both scientifically and psychologically to make money omnipotent. In this 21st century, money has a very big say in everything. Money can easily solve majority of the problems of any common man anywhere in the world. You've got enough money, and still if you're not happy, I think, something somewhere went terribly wrong.

I need not emphasize the importance of money, it's one of the well understood concepts. We all know money is more important, and we are very privileged to live in the prime period of the information industry. Connectivity is never been like this before. The birth of the internet gave us a real virtual space to connect with everyone else in this world. And that, presents us with enormous opportunities and at the same time, we can easily get into a trap if we're not very careful.

There are ways to spend every single penny you earn, there are people out there to lure you to splurge. If you are not careful and educated enough [financial education], you'll have to dust up your resume when you're actually retired.

Don't be a miser, I'm telling you to be money conscious. Don't be an extravagant spendthrift [unless you are already a billionaire and you want to die as a common man], live frugally. Now-a-days, spending money on liabilities is a hundred and one times easier than earning that money.

Next time, think before you spend your hard-earned money on that extravagant watch, the nice leather hand bag you saw on a sitcom advertisement and more importantly, when you buy something in an offer. Everyone out there is waiting to become a billionaire on your expense. Be wise.

Cloud computing is not made up of a single technology, it is the evolution of various different technologies in their best of forms. It takes the best of a number of related technologies to provide a new style of programming. The Cloud computing model we visualize today is the cognitive diffusion of many radical technologies we already use or we already know of. Some of them are:

1) Traditional grid computing
Job scheduling across many machines for computational applications.
2) Virtualization
Virtual machines decouple operating systems from hardware.
3) Hosting
Computational infrastructure available for rent.
4) Software-as-a-service
Application availability through the cloud.
5) Utility computing
Packaged computing, application and storage as a service.

All of these technologies try to achieve various unique aspects with a single common base connecting them, they all presume the service based model. But, these technologies have their inherent disadvantages or rather, I'd say, shortcomings. For instance, if you take the traditional way of grid computing, it is very difficult to administer; Also, it lacks agility and robustness.

Because, cloud computing is at the convergence of many independent computing trends, any attempt to define cloud computing is relatively based on these existing technologies. To better understand the cloud, its characteristics and the expected behaviors, it is helpful to examine these technologies. While these technologies have contributed to the development of the cloud, they also fall short of the ultimate promise of cloud computing because of their inherent shortcomings.

We will discuss about all of these related technologies in detail.

Run, run. Run my boy. Don't give it up on me now, you got to make it. I pushed myself as hard as I possibly could. I'm just a few yards away, two more minutes. Though, I could not see the finish line properly, I knew I'm gonna make it. Two more steps, I fell down flat, heaving and panting. I had a weird sensation, it was like a flashback or something. Train of thoughts. I was standing amongst a group of people, and I'm not aware whether all of them are gonna run with me in the race or even worst, I did not know if it's the beginning of a race. Because there were no formal lanes and some of the people were already worn out.

No clue of what's gonna happen next. Suddenly, there was an outburst, everybody started running, not necessarily in any order or following any rules. I felt like running in a race, only the race I'm in, was very uncivilized. No rules, every man is for himself, all you have to do is to out run someone else. I never thought I'd do something like that, true, I did not want to do it even now. Do I have any choice? I still remember running in that crowd like a mad man, not knowing where am going, not knowing whom I'm competing with, worst of all, not knowing whether I'm in a race actually.

I don't know how long I've been lying like that. When I opened my eyes, reality caught me. I saw that most of the people has started running already. I caught my breath, started running, shouting aloud, "Hell, I'm running in a never ending race". I woke up in my bed, sweating to the core in my real cold room and the darkness seems to eat me alive. I drank some water, tried to relax and I'm asleep even before I knew.

I woke up in the morning with a splitting head ache, mostly the adverse effect of a restless night. I wished I could go back to sleep in a blink of my eye, but I've a long day before me. I thought about the dream, only this time it doesn't feel like a dream. It is legible, and I could feel it like a memory. The crowd, the running, the effort, everything felt very real. I have no time to think about it dearly, has to get along with the routine. So, I followed my routine and got ready to go to the office. I thought about the dream on my way to office and I had to push it to the back burner once I reached the office.

I always have a bad day whenever I have scarce sleep and the day is no different. I felt really relieved when the clock struck six in the evening, I packed up everything and left the office. Strangely, I thought about the dream when I traveled back home, but this time I forced myself to look at it in the third person's view.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. Everything fell in place. The dream, of course, it is not a dream at all. It is the plight of my life's condition right now. The race I was in my dream, is actually my life, a haphazard race. Without even knowing, I've started running in a never ending race in my life. I'm running behind money, social status, good job, good life partner and what not. When did I become part of this race? Is it when I took up my first job? or when I completed my under graduation? or when I finished my higher secondary? I don't know. Hell, I really do not know.

All I know is one thing, I just cannot quit now and even trying to do that would cost me dearly. I've to keep running, but what for and to what extent? It seemed to be a larger than life question.

Now, I started to see everything in a new shower of light. Civilization, if not anything, has taught people to compete. Everyone out there, are competing with everyone else out there and at times, all of us trying to out run our own selves. In our quest to win the never ending race, we forget to take some time for ourselves and our dear ones.

We fill the jar initially with sand leaving no space for anything else. We should learn to prioritize and live. Anyway, we can never say, "I quit from the race". And it is a never ending race, the only advantage is even when you come back from a short break you will not be alone. You will still be in the race, but you might have to run with a different set of people. And if you have the enough courage, still you can make it to the league.

I was happy when I understood my dream, more than that I understood how my life works and what does it take to live my life. I just remembered the Red queen paradox, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep yourself in the same place".

I'm prepared for my next race, only this time I'm ready to take a break whenever I want. How about you?

What am I really made of? This is one of the questions in my holster, I should say that this question is really peculiar and very intriguing. What am I really made up of? I believe, this question questions more of my basic belief system rather than the basic building blocks of my body. We human beings, according to me, are all same and incredulously different at the same time. If we consider the outward physical appearance, apart from the obvious difference, fundamentally all of us are made up of same building blocks. The main difference lies in our basic belief system and the virtues we hold. Yes, what we have isn't important, what do we manage to do with what we got is important.

Every individual in this earth is different, no one is like the other. Most of the times, the difference is very obvious and at times, very subtle. I'm cynical, and I believe that it takes time to spot those subtle differences. Our virtues and beliefs are not the product of a brainstorming session. It is the product of the collective experience we gain all throughout our life. Since I said it as a collective experience, the environment and people the play a vital role in the process of building our belief system. Sure, they play an important role but they are not the deciding factors. Every human being has his/her unique identity, most of the times their belief system is built on top of these identity with inputs from the environment and people.

Most of the time we develop our belief system without actually knowing it. There are three different perspectives available for every human being:
1) What do I think of myself?
2) What others think of myself?
3) What am I actually are?

The first two perspectives are merely based on the past experiences. The third perspective comes as a surprise package and most of the times, these ah-hah moments reflects our actual identity. Our actual identity helps us in solving every moral dilemma we face, every contradiction we chose over. Of course, our decision might be a little skewed towards one end if our belief systems directs us that way. Most of us, allow our belief system or our basic set of characteristics to guide us in making our decisions in our childhood. As we grow up, we tend to see the situations in a different light and then on, its a different ball game altogether. We start taking cues more from our environment, people and our past experiences rather than letting our belief system to guide us.

We become very vulnerable over time, we allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to influence our actions and reactions. We shouldn't allow our external environment to take a toll on our unique identity. Our identity lies in what we really are, our core beliefs and virtues. There will be mishaps every now and then. There will be burglary, murders, irresponsible people every where. There will be psychopaths, murderers, terrorists amongst our own neighbors. But, Keep it in your mind, you're what you chose to be. You're what your belief system is. You're made up of your virtues. Don't allow anybody else to decide what you do. Keep your belief system clean, have good virtues, don't destroy your identity. Your identity is not what you own, it is what you are made of.

Remember, do not lose your identity and keep it as clean as possible.

In today's article we will discuss about the benefits of adopting the cloud way and the transitional barriers we face.

Benefits:
1) Economy of Scale
With infrastructure and platform as services, enterprises need not worry about building their own infrastructure anymore. The cloud will be able to provide the necessary resources on need basis without any hassles and the whole process will be very seamless. Also, actual provisioning of resources will not be a time consuming activity.

2) Pay per use
Utility charging is another important advantage of using the cloud infrastructure. The enterprises need not provision for the peak usages, rather they can consume all the necessary resources on need basis, and more importantly, pay-only-per-use. This would result in enormous cost savings for huge enterprises.

3) Speed to market
As we discussed earlier, the rate of evolution of a system solely depends on the rate of evolution of its sub systems. Immediate access to enough and stable resources will reduce the development time.

4) Focus on core activity
This is another fringe benefit of going the cloud way. I guess, there is no need to reiterate the reasons behind this benefit.

5) Efficient supply/demand balance
By using the cloud infrastructure, the enterprises need not worry about the supply/demand cycle and the necessary resources. Because, the cloud is capable of providing you the necessary resources on need basis and this allows rapid expansion.

These benefits are very lucrative, and we already have many mainstream service providers. For example, Amazon provides infrastructure clouds, Google provides their application engine as a platform cloud, etc,. Still, I'd say that cloud computing is an emerging technology and it has its own inherent risks.

Risks:
The major risk in using the services offered by cloud providers is the amount of uncertainty it brings along. Cloud computing is a relatively new technology and there are no standard policies yet. You're bound to take up the service continuously once you start mainly because of the different standards followed by different vendors.

Another key aspect is the traditional way of product selection based on features is not relevant here. If the features of a particular service [at least the infrastructure and platform layers] is not standardized, the consumers are left with no other choice. They are bound to use the same service, and mainly they do not have any backup since they cannot switch over to another service so easily because of the different features.

Once when we have standardized features across services, the consumers will have more independence and certainty, and they can select the service purely based on price and quality of service. Basically, we should take the clouds in to operational competition rather than feature competition. With this said, the following are the inherent risks associated with clouds.

1) Management

2) Trust in vendors

3) Transparency
3.1. Multiple relationships
Cloud computing in action might involve multiple providers than one might actually know. This essentially develops a pyramid of suppliers and consumers built on top of each other. A top level consumer will know only about his provider, he will not have any idea about the other providers who provide services consumed by his direct provider. So, he may not exactly know the involved parties or cannot exhibit any sort of control over them. The problem with any provider in the pyramid will impact all others sitting on top of that provider and our top level consumer will have no idea about the actual problem.

4) Transition
4.1. Security of supply
If a provider leaves the business, then all of the consumers of that provider will also get affected. Transition between providers is not so easy because of the obvious reasons we discussed earlier.

5) General risks in outsourcing
On top of these risks, all the consumers face the generic risks we all face whenever we outsource a subsystem.
5.1. Suitability
5.2. Pricing
5.3. Backup / switching facility
5.4. Lock-in

All of these risks are transitional barriers in the cloud computing industry.

Every industry goes through the commoditization phase. Every new innovation resulting in any new product, finally ends up as a commodity. Main reason being, any successful innovation always gets copied by all the competitors or all the providers in the business. Lets say, if an innovation leads to a new product, within no time of releasing the product, all the other competitors will also have such a product in their product stack.

In the initial stages, features provided in the product plays an important role in product differentiation and even manufacturers mainly market their products on the basis of the provided features. But, in due course, when the product gets matured and if there is nothing more to add to the product, the product becomes a commodity. Once a product becomes a commodity, feature becomes irrelevant and customers chose the products purely based on price and quality of service. We can see this life cycle in almost every different manufacturing industry.

Now we are going through a commoditization phase in our IT industry. Of course, not all products of the IT industry are mature enough in-order to sell as a commodity, at the same time, we just cannot deny the fact that some of the IT activities have become more common. These IT activities are ready to be served as commodities or services rather than products. This is what exactly cloud computing is about.

Cloud computing is not a thing. As we discussed earlier, cloud computing is a paradigm, a paradigm shift of providing these IT activities as a service over internet. As of now, we have clouds providing following IT services:

1) Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
2) Platform as a service (PaaS)
3) Application as a service (SaaS)

We just can't shun ourselves from this paradigm shift, we just can't continue with our traditional way of innovation and productization cycle when the whole industry is following a new approach. If we don't make ourselves ready for the change, we're clearly staying away from the competition.

Now we know what cloud computing means and where is it taking us to. So, it is time we think about the actual impact of this shift in the IT industry.

How does this impact IT?

1) Disruption
I strongly believe that cloud computing will be a hugely disruptive trend for the entire enterprise information technology market. With Infrastructure, platform and application as a service, the current trend of trade in information technology is surely going to get disrupted.

2) Accelerates development time
When any enterprise can readily get stable infrastructure, platform or any essential subsystem in a need basis, the development time of their product will drastically reduce. Enterprises no longer need to provision for peak times, rather they can consume all the services on pay-as-you-use basis. Hence, they get to scale their computing power up or down as needs dictate. More than that, all they need to worry about is their actual product. Because of this commoditization, they need not worry about the necessary infrastructure or the platform.

"The rate of evolution of a system solely depends on the rate of evolution of its subsystem".

3) Relationship between the business actors
The total business model gets impacted because of this paradigm shift. currently, enterprises have their own Infrastructure, platform and applications. Most of the time we outsource some part of the application subsystem to a third party and the communication required is very minimum. Whereas now, the enterprise can outsource the total infrastructure, along with the platform and the application subsystem to some one else . This approach takes the relationship between the vendors to a whole new platform. In SaaS world, an enterprise can outsource the application to the SaaS provider. Most probably, the SaaS provider would have outsourced their platform to a PaaS provider and in turn, the PaaS provider can outsource their infrastructure to an IaaS provider. This model introduces a whole lot of new dependencies and opaque relationships.

4) Choice
Actually no choice. Do we have any choice to not to get into this model? No. As I said earlier, we just have to make ourselves ready for the happening change in order to maintain our fitness relative to others in our information technology market.

Now, What is cloud computing?
With all these new light, I'd say that, "Cloud computing is not a thing... it is a term used to describe the disruptive shift from the product to commodity world... a move towards a service based IT economy..."

The benefits one can reap from cloud computing is really worth the change, but we'll have to consider the other side of the coin as well. We'll discuss about the benefits of cloud computing and the inherent risks, in my next article.