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Cloud computing is transforming business by offering new options for businesses to increase efficiencies while reducing costs.
What is driving organizations to embrace the cloud paradigm are the
problems often associated with traditional IT systems. These problems
include:
-
High operational costs, typically associated with implementing and managing desktop and server infrastructures -
Low system utilization, often associated with non-virtualized server workloads in enterprise environments -
Inconsistent availability due to the high cost of providing hardware redundancy -
Poor agility, which makes it difficult for businesses to meet evolving market demands
Although virtualization
has helped enterprises address some of these issues by virtualizing
server workloads, desktops, and applications, some challenges still
remain. For example, mere virtualization of server workloads can lead
to virtual machine (VM) sprawl, solving one problem while creating
another.
Cloud computing helps address these challenges by providing
businesses with new ways of improving agility while reducing costs. For
example, by providing tools for rapid deployment of IT services with
self-service capabilities, businesses can achieve a faster
time-to-market rate and become more competitive. Cloud-based solutions
also can help businesses respond more easily to spikes in demand. And
the standardized architecture and service-oriented approach to solution
development used in cloud environments helps shorten the solution
development life cycle, reducing the time between envisioning and
deployment.
Cloud computing also helps businesses keep IT costs
under control in several ways. For example, the standardized
architecture of cloud solutions provides greater transparency and
predictability for the budgeting process. Adding automation and elastic
capacity management to this helps keep operational costs lower. Reuse
and re-provisioning of cloud applications and services can help lower
development costs across your organization, making your development
cycle more cost effective. And a pay-as-you-go approach to consuming
cloud services can help your business achieve greater flexibility and
become more innovative, making entry into new markets possible.
Cloud computing also can help businesses increase customer
satisfaction by enabling solutions that have greater responsiveness to
customer needs. Decoupling applications from physical infrastructure
improves availability and makes it easier to ensure business continuity
when a disaster happens. And risk can be managed more systematically
and effectively to meet regulatory requirements.
Making the transition from a traditional
IT infrastructure to the cloud paradigm begins with rethinking and
re-envisioning what IT is all about. The traditional approach to IT
infrastructure is a server-centric
vision, where IT is responsible for procuring, designing, deploying,
managing, maintaining, and troubleshooting servers hosted on the
company’s premises or located at the organization’s central datacenter.
Virtualization can increase the efficiency of this approach by allowing
consolidation of
server workloads to increase system utilization and reduce cost, but
even a virtualized datacenter still has a server-centric infrastructure
that requires a high degree of management overhead.
Common characteristics of traditional IT infrastructures, whether virtualized or not, can include the following:
-
Limited capacity due to the physical limitations of host hardware in
the datacenter (virtualization helps maximize capacity but doesn’t
remove these limitations) -
Availability level that is limited by budget because of the high
cost of redundant host hardware, network connectivity, and storage
resources -
Poor agility because it takes time to deploy and configure new workloads (virtualization helps speed up this process) -
Poor efficiency because applications are deployed in silos, which
means that development efforts can’t be used easily across the
organization -
Potentially high cost due to the cost of host hardware, software
licensing, and the in-house IT expertise needed to manage the
infrastructure
By contrast to the traditional server-centric infrastructure, cloud computing represents a service-centric
approach to IT. From the business customer’s point of view, cloud
services can be perceived as IT services with unlimited capacity,
continuous availability, improved agility, greater efficiency, and
lower and more predictable costs than a traditional server-centric IT
infrastructure. The results of the service-centric
model of computing can be increased productivity with less overhead
because users can work from anywhere, using any capable device, without
having to worry about deploying the applications they need to do their
job.
The bottom line here is that businesses considering making the
transition to the cloud need to rethink their understanding of IT from
two perspectives: the type of sourcing and the kinds of services being
consumed.
Cloud sourcing models define the party that has control over how the
cloud services are architected, controlled, and provisioned. The three
kinds of sourcing models for cloud computing are:
-
Public cloud
Business customers consume the services they need from a pool of cloud services delivered over the Internet. A public
cloud is a shared cloud where the pool of services is used by multiple
customers, with each customer’s environment isolated from those of
others. The public cloud approach provides the benefits of predictable
costs and pay-as-you-go flexibility for adding or removing processing,
storage, and network capacity depending on the customer’s needs.
For example, Microsoft Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Azure are
public cloud offerings that allow you to develop, deploy, and run your
business applications over the Internet instead of hosting them locally
on your own datacenter. By adopting this approach, you can gain
increased flexibility, easier scalability, and greater agility for your
business. And if your users only need Microsoft Office or Microsoft
Dynamics CRM to perform their jobs, you can purchase subscriptions to
Office 365 or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online from Microsoft’s public
cloud offerings in this area as well.
-
Private cloud
The customer
controls the cloud, either by self-hosting a private cloud in the
customer’s datacenter or by having a partner host it. A private cloud
can be implemented in two ways: by combining different software
platforms and applications, or by procuring a dedicated cloud
environment in the form of an appliance from a vendor.
For example, customers have already been using the Hyper-V
virtualization capabilities successfully in the current Microsoft
Windows Server 2008 R2 platform, with the Microsoft System Center family of products, to design, deploy, and manage their own private clouds. And for a more packaged approach to deploying private clouds, Microsoft’s Private Cloud Fast Track program provides customers with a standard reference architecture for building private
clouds that combines Microsoft software, consolidated guidance,
value-added software components, and validated compute, network, and
storage configurations from original equipment manufacturer (OEM)
partners to create a turnkey approach for deploying scalable,
preconfigured, validated infrastructure platforms for deploying your
own on private cloud.
The private cloud approach allows you the peace of mind of knowing
you have complete control over your IT infrastructure, but it has
higher up-front costs and a steeper implementation curve than the
public cloud approach. As you will soon see, however, the next generation of Hyper-V in the
Windows Server 2012 platform delivers even more powerful capabilities
that enable customers to deploy and manage private clouds. -
Hybrid cloud
The customer uses a
combination of private and public clouds to meet the specific needs of
their business. In this approach, some of your organization’s IT
services run on-premises while other services are hosted in the cloud
to save costs, simplify scalability, and increase agility.
Organizations that want to make the transition from traditional IT to
cloud computing often begin by embracing the hybrid cloud approach
because it allows them to get their feet wet while remaining grounded
in the comfort of their existing server-centric infrastructure.
One difficulty with the hybrid cloud approach, however, is the
management overhead associated with needing duplicate sets of IT
controls, one set for traditional infrastructure and others for each
kind of cloud service
consumed. Regardless of this, many organizations that transition to the
cloud choose to adopt the hybrid approach for various reasons,
including deployment restrictions, compliance issues, or the
availability of cloud services that can meet the organization’s needs.
Cloud computing also can be considered from the perspective of which
kinds of services are being consumed. The three standard service models for cloud computing are as follows:
-
Software as a service (SaaS)
This approach involves using the cloud to deliver a single application
to multiple users, regardless of their location or the kind of device
they are using. SaaS contrasts with the more traditional approach of
deploying separate instances of applications to each user’s computing
device. The advantages of the SaaS model is that application activities
can be managed from a single central location to reduce cost and
management overhead. SaaS typically is used to deliver cloud-based
applications that have minimal support for customization, such as
email, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and productivity
software. Office 365 is an example of a SaaS offering from Microsoft
that provides users with secure anywhere access to their email, shared
calendars, instant messaging (IM), video conferencing, and tools for
document collaboration. -
Platform as a service (PaaS)
This approach involves using the cloud
to deliver application execution services such as application run time,
storage, and integration for applications that have been designed for a
prespecified cloud-based architectural framework. By using PaaS, you
can develop custom cloud-based applications for your business and then
host them in the cloud so that users can access them anywhere over the
Internet. PaaS also can be used to create multi-tenant applications
that multiple users can access simultaneously. And with its high degree
of support for application-level customization, PaaS can enable
integration with your older applications and interoperability with your
current on-premises systems, though some applications may need to be
recoded to work in the new environment. SQL Azure is an example of a
PaaS offering from Microsoft
that allows businesses to provision and deploy SQL databases to the
cloud without the need of implementing and maintaining an in-house
Microsoft SQL Server infrastructure. -
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
This approach involves creating pools of compute, storage, and network
connectivity resources that then can be delivered to business customers
as cloud-based services that are billed on a per-usage basis. IaaS
forms the foundation for SaaS and PaaS by providing a standardized,
flexible virtualized environment that typically presents itself to the
customer as virtualized server workloads. In the IaaS model, the
customer can self-provision these virtualized workloads and can
customize them fully with the processing, storage, and network
resources needed and with the operating system and applications the
business requires. By using the IaaS approach, the customer is relieved
of the need to purchase and install hardware and can spin up new
workloads to meet changing demand quickly. The Hyper-V
technology of the Windows Server platform, together with the System
Center family of products, represents Microsoft’s offering in the IaaS
space.
Did you know the following facts about Microsoft’s public cloud offerings?
-
Every day, 9.9 billion messages are transmitted via Windows Live Messenger. -
There are 600 million unique users every month on Windows Live and MSN. -
There are 500 million active Windows Live IDs. -
There are 40 million paid MS online services (BPOS, CRM Online, etc.) in 36 countries. -
A total of 5 petabytes of content is served by Xbox Live each week during the holiday season. -
A total of 1 petabyte+ of updates is served every month by Windows
Update to millions of servers and hundreds of millions of PCs worldwide. -
There are tens of thousands of Windows Azure customers. -
There are 5 million LiveMeeting conference minutes per year. -
Forefront for Exchange filters 1 billion emails per month.
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