Cloud Computing Deployment Models-1: Private Cloud

Cloud Computing or clouds can be used for different purposes by different organizations. Enterprise can host  and employ cloud  depending on its business model. The tendency is cloud deployment is to start from private cloud to provide internal solutions to manage local infrastructure and the amount of requests to ensure availability of highly requested data. This is due to the fact that data centers initiating cloud capabilities made use of these features for internal purposes before consider selling the capabilities publicly. Only recently the provides have gained confidence in publication and exposition of cloud features to outsiders. This movement from private via public to combined solutions is often considered a "natural" evolution of clouds. Here is the first kind of cloud deployment: Private Cloud

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Private clouds are typically owned by the respective enterprise and or leased. Functionalities are not directly exposed to the customer. However, often in some cases services within cloud enhanced features may be offered .   

Cloud Computing Role 5: Tool Providers

Cloud Tools providers don't actually provide cloud capabilities, instead provide supporting tools such as programming environments, virtual machine management and more. Vendors introduced cloud-related products and services in 2012 are aimed at helping organizations move to the cloud or designed to help them expand their cloud capabilities.

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Cloud Computing Roles 4: Consumers and Users

Cloud Computing consumers or users make direct use of the cloud capabilities - cloud services or systems- as opposed to cloud re-sellers and cloud adopters.  

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The purpose of users is not to improve the services and capabilities they offer, but to make use of services as they are. These service may include - execution of complex computations or to host a flexible data set. In general a cloud user consumes a service as it is without adding any value to it. However the future developments may enable the user to become provider and consumer at the same time- a phenomenon usually called "prosumer" 

Cloud Computing Roles-3: Cloud Adopters or Service/Software Vendors

Cloud Adopters or cloud service or cloud software vendors enhance  their own services and capabilities by exploiting cloud platforms from cloud providers  or cloud re-sellers . This enables them to provide dynamic services that can scale. This is particular for new business entries who can not estimate the uptake/demand of their services as yet. The cloud enhanced services thus effectively become Software as a Service ( SaaS) providers.

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Cloud Computing Roles-2: Aggregators or resllers

In cloud computing environment individual roles can identified similar to the typical role assignment inservice oriented architecture(SOA) or in particular in business oriented organization such as database management roles. The roles relate strongly to the individual business models and it is imperative to have a clear distinction of the typical roles involved in order to ensure common understanding.  Here is the Second Role

Cloud Aggregators or resellers

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Cloud Aggregators or resellers aggregate cloud platform from cloud providers  to either provide a larger resource infrastructure to their customers or to provide enhanced features. This often relates to community clouds in so far as the cloud aggregator may expose a single interface to a merged cloud infrastructure. They would compare the economic benefits of global cloud infrastructures with understanding of local customers needs by providing highly customized, enhanced offerings to local companies and world class applications to global customers. 

Cloud Computing Roles-1: Providers

In cloud computing environment individual roles can identified similar to the typical role assignment in service oriented architecture(SOA) or in particular in business oriented organization such as database management roles. The roles relate strongly to the individual business models and it is imperative to have a clear distinction of the typical roles involved in order to ensure common understanding.  Here is the first role.

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Cloud Providers: offer cloud to the customer. The clouds are offered either via dedicated APIs (PaaS), virtual machines and / or direct access to the computing resources ( IaaS). It may be noted that hosts of cloud enhanced services ( SaaS)  are typically considered as service providers, although some consider them as cloud providers. 

Types of Cloud-3: Software as a Service (SaaS)

The third major type of cloud computing service is Software as a Service ( SaaS). It is also called Service or Application cloud. SaaS services are offering implementation of specific business functions and business processes that are provided with specific cloud capabilities. SaaS provides applications or services using a cloud infrastructure or platform, rather than providing cloud computing features themselves. For example, it provides a scalable application rather than Scalability itself. SaaS are usually offer a standard application with general set of functionalities and features. example email or word processors etc.

Some example companies offering SaaS

SAP Business by Design

Google Docs

Salesforce CRM

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Types of Cloud: 2. Platform as a Service (PasS)

Platform as a service (PaaS) is the second category of cloud computing. It provides computational resources via a platform upon which applications and services can be developed and hosted. PaaS usually makes use of dedicated API's to control the behavior of a server hosting engine which executes and replicates the execution environments according to user requests. As each provider exposes his/her own API according to the respective key capabilities, applications developed for one specific cloud provider can not be moved to another cloud host. However there are attempts to extend generic programming models with cloud capabilities.  Examples of PaaS providers.

• Force.com 

• Google App Engine

Windows Azure

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Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas)- Data, Storage and Compute clouds

Cloud Computing services fall into these three categories: Infrastructure, platform or software/applications. Cloud providers are identified based on the service they provide. A service provider may offer one or more or combination of all the above.  Here is the first category of cloud computing service.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):  An IaaS provider offers basic computing resources. For this reason, they are also call resource clouds. They provide managed and scalable resources as services to the user. They essentially provide enhanced virtualization capabilities. Resources provided include the following

Data & Storage Clouds are concerned with reliable access to data of potentially dynamic size with access requirements and quality parameters. Example companies that provide these are

Amazon S3

SQL Azure 

 Compute Clouds 
Compute clouds provide access to computational resources i.e. CPUs or processing power.  Cloud-enabled applications run by users can access these resources. Example companies are
Amazon EC2





Zimory





ElasticHosts 

Cloud Computing: Systems, Components, Perspectives

Cloud computing is a multi-dimensional entity with various usage scopes and consists of multiple perspectives. It has user,producer perspectives; it consists of different service offerings and range of benefits and challenges. Here is the pictorial representation of a cloud computing systems - with broad view- although not exhaustive

Source of Image:  The Future of Cloud Computing 

Understanding Cloud Computing 2- : Five Essential Characteristics of Cloud Computing

Five Essential Characteristics of Cloud Computing

The following five characteristics, as defined by NIST, are considered inherent in cloud computing services:

• On-Demand Self-Service: Customers can automatically provision computing capabilities and resources on their own when needed without necessitating any human intervention.
• Broad Network Access: Access and capabilities are available over the network through standard devices, such as cell phones, laptops, PDAs, etc.
• Resource Pooling: Resources such as network bandwidth, virtual machines, memory, processing power, storage capacity, etc. are pooled together to serve multiple customers using a multi-tenant model. That is, virtual and physical resources are dynamically assigned and reassigned based on need and customers’ demands.
• Rapid Elasticity: Depending on demand, resources and capabilities can be quickly and automatically deployed and scaled at any quantity and at any time.
• Measured Service: Customer usage of the vendor’s resources and services are automatically monitored, controlled and reported offering a high level of transparency for the customer and vendor.

It is possible that some vendors claim cloud computing as a service, but fail to provide one or more of the essential characteristics as listed above. For example, cloud computing vendors which fail to provide transparency (e.g. a detailed report of consumption per service) of your services consumed are not offering true cloud computing services.

Understanding Cloud Computing #4: Deployment Models

Deployment Models

These deployment models, as defined by NIST , are not defined by operator, location or physically but by the service offered and type of community. Similar to cloud service models, the deployment models are not mutually exclusive. Redmine  is an open source web-based project management tool which utilizes all of the cloud computing deployment models in a variety of ways. Examples of its use with each model are provided after each of the deployment models’ descriptions.

Source: Technet

Private cloud: This cloud infrastructure is managed by the organization or a third party and is operated solely for the needs of the organization. This may exist on or off premise. An example of this is Redmine, which uses its own VMware vCloud installation to deploy its system.

Public cloud: This cloud infrastructure is available to a large industry group or the general public and is owned by a vendor selling cloud services. Redmine subscribes to Amazon Web Services for cloud services.

Source: Marwin Britto

Community cloud: This cloud infrastructure is shared by more than one organization and support a specific community that has common considerations. This may be managed by the organizations or a third party. This may exist on or off premise. Redmine is a member of an academic consortium (open source), which entitles Redmine to use the academic consortium’s cloud.

Hybrid cloud: This cloud infrastructure is composed of two or more types of clouds listed above that remain unique entities but are connected via standardized technology that affords portability of data and applications. Redmine uses Amazon Web Services to maintain the interface and VMware vCloud for the MySQL database system.

It is essential to understand that the service models, deployment models and the five characteristics of cloud computing as described by NIST do not run independently but are necessarily interrelated and connected to each other. A visual  that displays these inter-relationships and necessary connections of the NIST cloud computing characteristics and models . This visual demonstrates that a cloud-based strategy can take on different configurations depending on the institution’s needs. It is not uncommon for institutions to begin with one service model, such as SaaS and a Public Cloud deployment model as a pilot, and then slowly scale if the pilot proves successful. It is also possibly to use several deployment models to support one or more service models 

Understanding Cloud Computing #3: Service Models

Service Models

NIST describes three service models:

• Cloud Software as a Service;
• Cloud Platform as a Service; and
• Cloud Infrastructure as a Service.

The differentiators among these three service models are the nature of the service and the level of customer-vendor control and engagement. Furthermore, it should be noted that these models are not mutually exclusive; organizations can and do employ different cloud service models on varying scales for different departments within the organization based on specific needs.

Source: Technet.com 

Cloud software as a service (SaaS): The vendor provides, manages and controls the underlying cloud infrastructure, including individual applications, network, storage, servers, operating systems, etc. The customer is able to fully access the vendor’s applications in the cloud via a variety of devices (e.g. cell phone, laptop, PDA). SaaS examples include MyErp.com, Salesforce.com and Workday.com. Google Docs, Twitter and Facebook also fall into this category.

Cloud platform as a service (PaaS): Similar to SaaS, the vendor provides, manages and controls the cloud infrastructure, except for applications, which the customer has control over. The vendor provides tools and resources allowing the customers to create and/or acquire applications to meet their specific needs. PaaS vendor examples include Wolf Frameworks, Dell-Boomi Atmosphere, Heroku, Google App Engine and Microsoft’s Azure 

Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS): The vendor provides, manages and controls the general cloud infrastructure but provides the customer control over operating systems, storage, processing, and networks on demand. IaaS vendor examples include Flexiant’s Flexscale, Rackspace and Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) and their Simple Storage Service (S3).