Evolution of Cloud Computing

Berkley spent six month brainstorming on cloud computing -the outcome was a paper 'Above the Clouds'. Join us in this video conversation about cloud computing between professors Armando Fox, Anthony Joseph, Randy Katz, and David Patterson.

Cloud computing is the ability to:

• I migrate the computation that used to happen at the edges into a cloud network
• Ability to provide 'pay as you go' services
• Need to have extremely large data center to multiplex high number of users
• Drive additional revenue from productising

The impact of cloud computing has emerged through the confluence of

• Open source software stack is very rich - many stacks mean easy to get lots of applications
• Ever increasing commoditisation of the hardware
• Zed and VMare provide the capability to slice up a single machine
• Need for rapid scale up suits highly dynamic market

Drivers of Cloud Computing

There have been several major drivers towards cloud computing:

• First generation need for own websites to provide elasticity - may be seasonal demand driven
• Exploit additional revenue by website application owners - such as Amazon. Allows owners to provide excess capacity to third parties
• Additional profit for large data centers
• Enlarge successful franchise, such as Microsoft - allow it to become more capable in the cloud, such as Excel can act as gateway for BI services run in the cloud

Future of Cloud Computing

1. Why did this happen now
2. Who will provide cloud services
3. Who will use cloud services

Why Now

Dotcom companies that survived the bust have been forced to provide additonal services - had massive data centers, which could be used by third parties. It is more efficient to have thousands of machines in one center, than ten centers with hundreds of servers. Now that the cost of servers is so low, economies of scale are significant.

Who Will Provide Cloud Computing

Cloud computing service providers will rise from both the hardware and software application levels:

Data centers - deploying a single homogenous environment, rather than multiple environments is more efficient and cost effective. Each cloud operator has own unique environment - so it makes sense to hold your data and applications in multiple cloud providers. This is currently rather complex, but possible

Application Developers - Writing software on the desktop to be distributed over the cloud. Need to make applications horizontally scalable - so it may be run across multiple machines.

The virtue of cloud computing is that one can buy and discard instances of applications to be used by different users.

The enabling ability of cloud computing will likely drive a higher production of software development for hosting within the cloud environment. This will in turn, drive more emphasis on Software as a Services [SaaS].

Users of Cloud Computing

Users will come from large and small businesses alike. Already, SaaS providers Salesforce.com are providing SFA/CRM applications in the cloud computing environment. Google Apps brings normal office applications into the cloud.

• The benefits for SME's for cloud computing is that now, not only will their accounting, CRM and business intelligence applications be available over the Internet, so too will standard desktop applications
• Large corporates seeking to focus on core business will be able to refocus their IT resources from keeping the lights on, to more innovative technologies that will provide a competitive edge to future business.

Cloud Computing Going Forward

Cloud computing will transform the IT industry. Not only must software and hardware developers need to be adding the cloud element into all development from yesterday forward. It is the type of paradigm shift that happens every few years

1980's it was the Client-server computer

1990's Internet style computing and web access

2000's is about the platform of cloud computing.

Challenges

There are still significant technical and policy challenges going forward.

• A confluence of technology trends provides a new way of resolving a number of outstanding problems. Very large scale clusters of commodity components has been roadmapped for the past ten years. Cloud computing takes this to the next level.
• How IT resources will refocus their skills? - will it mean that a large number of jobs now move out of corporates and into data centers and those IT resources retained in house focus on monitoring performance SLA's and moving up the foodchain to work closer with business to identify new computing and technology needs?
• What impact will the self healing, intelligent cloud operating system vSphere developed by VMWare have on current cloud computing environments?
• How reliable is cloud computing - cloud computing experts currently maintain that businesses should not rely on cloud as sole data source, especially until persistence is sorted out. This in one of the inhibiting factors that is holding back cloud computing. Corporates will not let their data be held captive, with over complex issues in moving

For more information on this study and report.

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