Cloud Computing:

A general purpose utility suitable for all?February 15th, 2015

By 140024385

! What is cloud computing? For the majority of population, it is likely that people will recognize

the term but lack the exact definition. However, it is not their fault that they don’t know the definition. Twenty-five years ago or so , this wouldn’t have been a question since cloud computing didn’t exist before the internet. Overall, cloud computing describes the on demand service to utilize users own programs and application over the internet (Jamsa, 2011). With the cloud, individuals have the ability to access their own music, movies and data via the web and a screen instead of needing their own laptop with it’s own programs and data storage. In addition, businesses can run easily and successfully on the cloud without needing a large number of servers on site to accomplish their data processing tasks (Jamsa, 2011). With the rise of computer science and the further advancement of computing power in the past decade, cloud computing has been introduced to the public and has gained popularity among IT professionals and businesses. Indeed, the cloud has gained such traction that experts have argued that it will become a general purpose utility for the entire population. However, based on the literature so far, cloud computing will need to thoroughly address the weaknesses it has in order to become a utility like electricity for the public. Data-lock in, confidentiality and business continuity are only a few drawbacks of the multiple issues that face or will face the cloud. Aside for addressing the issues that are stopping the cloud from becoming a general utility for the population, the following paper will discuss what the main features of cloud computing are as well as describe the technologies that comprise cloud computing. Lastly, there will be a discussion on the views expressed in the literature on the adoption of cloud computing by both businesses and individuals.

Main Features Apple, Amazon, and Google are a few companies out of hundreds of companies who are incorporating and utilizing cloud computing as a major part of what they offer to consumers. Cloud computing is on it’s way to becoming a necessity for businesses to employ and offer to maintain the company’s position in the marketplace among competitors. To examine why cloud computing is on the raise in a wide range of industries, it is necessary to look at the features cloud computing has to offer to consumers in general. It can be argued that the main reason why cloud computing is becoming more

popular among brand businesses and notable individuals is because of the unique features cloud computing offers. The first feature of cloud computing is the on-demand computing power it provides. Companies are able to pay for computer power whenever they desire it as opposed to the old model of acquiring storage space and power (Jamsa, 2011). The old model consisted of buying more physical servers and wasting energy on server downtime subsequently creating higher costs for the company. Businesses now can pay to use the cloud to accommodate their needs with being able to buy additional service time or more storage at anytime which is efficient and cost-effective. Another feature of cloud computing is the elasticity it offers to consumers to when there is a sudden decline or surge in demand. Instead of rushing to buy more servers when demand escalates quickly, businesses now have the opportunity to ask their cloud provider for more server power to eliminate over and under provisioning (Jamsa, 2011). Without elasticity, companies wasted storage and power during non-peak periods when they over provisioned demand projections by underutilizing their own servers. On the reverse side, companies lost dissatisfied customers as a result from poor service and downed computing power when they under provisioned customer demand. Elasticity fixes these problems by enabling the company to rapidly accommodate demand fluctuation leading to more customer satisfaction and lowering the costs for computing power. Elasticity and the on-demand usability cloud are only a couple of differentiating features of cloud computing. Others include measurability, pooled resourcing and networking between devices (Jamsa, 2011). Like any other innovative product, each characteristic of the cloud provides a service that is hard to find anywhere else. Taken all together, these features will help grow the usage of cloud computing and help spur the cloud adoption as a general utility to the public if it happens.

Cloud technology and views about the adoption of the cloud by businesses and individuals Cloud computing could not be where it is now without the availability of high speed computing technology. A debate on the potential future of the cloud would be taking place years from now if software engineers hadn’t been advancing the knowledge of computer science. There are several technologies that are important to cloud computing, the major two that comprise cloud computing technologies are networking and virtualization. Each one plays a significant role in the providing of cloud computer power and storage easily and effectively. Since the introduction of the cloud, a main selling point of the cloud for users and businesses is the ability to collaborate on projects at the same time from different places. By syncing data over multiple devices via the internet, workers have the ability to work on the same document or presentation simultaneously without stopping the progress of others (Jamsa, 2011). Progress in a document is also automatically saved to prevent losing individual work. Team members can also use cloud based software

to conduct meetings over face to face video to present projects (Jamsa, 2011). There is little drawback to this technology that underpins cloud computing. Virtualization is another technology that improves cloud computing as a whole. Data centers would be less effective in storing data if virtualization wasn’t around. Essentially, virtualization creates a virtual copy of a physical operating system by using hardware and software (Jamsa, 2011). This allows the user to run multiple operating systems simultaneously, making disc space available to more users and the perception of a network connection. In addition, it decreases power consumption and improves the backup of data if a disaster occurs. Virtualization does have its disadvantages such as the need to train staff to become affluent with the virtualization process and for core-intensive applications that virtualization would effect negatively (Jamsa, 2011). Despite these minor flaws, virtualization will continue to deliver better and better computing power in the future. With the help of it’s features and technology, the concept of cloud computing has become a major topic in conversations which has lead to many opinions on where the cloud is going in the future. For some, the cloud represents an exciting and opportunistic outlook for both individuals and companies to become more interconnected and successful. For others, the cloud represents an overhyped platform that may create more problems than solutions down the road if the cloud does become a general utility service. From the literature and progress so far, cloud computing has more issues which need to be examined before businesses and individuals can fully adopt it as a public utility. The characteristics of the cloud have strong appeal to businesses and individual users. It can be argued that many individuals are already adopting the cloud as a general utility with the number of cloud services that are out there already like i-Cloud and Google Drive. In order to accomplish this appeal, the cloud came up with a user friendly and focused model, software as a service. SaaS describes the model of user independence between multiple devices and the collaboration between users it enables due to cloud storage (Jamsa, 2011). With all this data being stored on a virtual server, this allows users to work on the same document, dataset and program at the same time from multiple devices. SaaS also lets users access their programs, music and data storage from anywhere and anytime (Jamsa, 2011). In his article, Weiss suggests that software as a service will radically change personal computing by all the services the web will be able to provide (Weiss, 2007). If every user has their personal data on the cloud, individuals would only need a light device with a screen and a wifi connection to access their software. In his article describing their view about the cloud and it’s future, Armbrust describes both the benefits and drawbacks and thoroughly gives solutions to the obstacles the cloud faces (Armbrust, Fox, Griffith, Joseph, Katz, Konwinski,... & Zaharia, 2010). With the addition of the cloud, businesses are able to deliver their internet servers over a virtual network with little hassle and costs. Offering their service over the cloud eliminates the costs of acquiring on-site computers and the associated costs that come with it such as the administrative costs for maintenance and supervision of the servers (Armbrust et all., 2010). The cloud also gives businesses a tremendous amount of flexibility by paying for storage as they need it

to accommodate demand levels in cost effective ways. Lastly, businesses can focus more on the core aspects of their service such as innovating new ideas and finding ways to run their operations effectively instead of getting caught up in sever problems (Armbrust et all., 2010). On the contrary, the cloud is prevented from gaining widespread development from multiple issues: data transfer bottlenecks, performance unpredictability and data-lock in among others. Out all of the issues Armbrust examines, the major ones that prevent adoption are data-lock in, business continuity and cloud security. If a business uploads all their data to a certain cloud data center and decide to switch to another provider, data-lock prevents easy data transfer from provider to provider and user data in the cloud could be damaged. When a business imports data into a cloud provider, it increases the difficulty of extracting the data and programs to use on another provider if they are dissatisfied with the level of service. A consequence of the data transfer could be altered data or program with the lack of compatibility to the new cloud provider. To solve this problem, Armbrust suggests SaaS developers should “standardized application programming interfaces” so user data could be transferable to any cloud provider system (Armbrust et all., 2010). However, this might lead to cheap cloud pricing and less of a profit for cloud providers. Data security is another liability for the cloud considering the high level computer hackers that are out there. Leaving private and valuable data in the cloud puts the user at a huge risk for theft and businesses will be jeopardized if there is a data breach within the data center. Armbrust states that firewalls and data encryption are strong enough to prevent these breaches from occurring (Armbrust et all., 2010). Bryon agrees with Armbrust that security is a major weakness. However, he further suggests that the data stored in cloud such as trade secrets and customer data will need to be subjected to audibility and that will pose a problem to cloud providers (Brynjolfsson, Hofmann & Jordan, 2010). The third major obstacle that drive away businesses from cloud computing is business continuity if data centers suffer an outage. In addition, a worse scenario for companies is when storage providers go out of business, which leaves companies to rush to retrieve their data or risk loosing it all (Jamsa, 2011). For cloud providers to prevent this, cloud providers must team up with one another so consumers can have a backup if something happens to one cloud provider (Armbrust et all., 2010).

Conclusion Overall, the views expressed in the literature describe the great potential that cloud computing has as a general service utility and bright future that technology has. However, it still has a long way to go before it becomes utility suitable for all. Nonetheless, cloud computing will be here for a long time and there is no doubt that many businesses and individuals will continually benefit from the cloud in the future.

ReferencesArmbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, R., Konwinski, A., ... & Zaharia, M. (2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM,53(4), 50-58.

Brynjolfsson, E., Hofmann, P., & Jordan, J. (2010). Cloud computing and electricity: beyond the utility model. Communications of the ACM, 53(5), 32-34.

Jamsa, K. (2011). Cloud computing. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Weiss, A. (2007). Computing in the clouds. networker, 11(4).