The Future of Cloud
Computing
Michael Turner
This is a research paper that explains what cloud computing
is, the basic concepts, pros & cons and how cloud
computing may look in the future.
4/29/2013
Introduction: What is Cloud Computing and how is it related to Virtualization
The term “cloud computing” is a reference to the computing services that are delivered over a
network connection. Usually the services provided are infrastructure related (IaaS) like servers, storage
devices, etc; development platforms (PaaS); and software applications (SaaS). This vague term “cloud”
describes a behind the scenes world of the internet, specifically referring to the data centers all over the
world that store the hardware needed to offer cloud services. Part of the reason for the popularity of
the cloud is the fairly recent explosion of virtualization technology, which is the basis of cloud
computing. (Cloud Computing 101, 2012)
Virtualization
So what exactly is virtualization? Virtualization is basically the concept that cloud computing
stems from, and refers to the use of “hardware and software to create the illusion that two or more
entities are present, when there is only one physical entity in existence.” (Jamsa, 2013) There are many
common uses of virtualization such as on servers where one server will have many virtualized operating
systems each designated as a completely separate server from the host operating system. Another
common method is desktop virtualization where a user can swap back and forth between different
operating systems using software like Parallels or VMware. An example would be a Macbook with
MacOS that uses Parallels to host a guest OS like Windows 8 or Ubuntu. Another form of virtualization is
using a virtual network where a network administrator can separate a network into virtual segments
making it seem like there is more than one network. Virtual networks can also be used as virtual private
networks (VPN)'s. With VPN access, a user is able to virtually connect to a private network and its
resources from a web browser. Virtual storage is another common use of virtualization where a user
can mount a storage drive, actually located on a server elsewhere (creating a D:, E:, F:, etc drive) onto
their computer through the network and save their files to that drive. “Virtualization increases device
utilization, simplifies device administration, and can improve business continuity and disaster recovery. “
(Jamsa, 2013) Cloud computing takes from and uses the foundation of virtualization and expands on it.
Cloud computing may stem from virtualization but the two concepts are not synonymous.
“Virtualization is a term that refers to the various techniques, methods or approaches of creating a
virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a virtual hardware platform, operating system
(OS), storage device, or network resources.” (Wikipedia) “Cloud computing, on the other hand, is a
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delivery and consumption model allowing organizations to purchase access to applications,
development and deployment platforms and either virtual or physical servers as a service and on a bythe-use model” (Chandras, 2010)
Cloud Service Models
There are 3 basic types of cloud computing services: Software as a Service (Saas), Platform as a
Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Each service model has a unique way of supporting
different client needs.
SaaS
Software as a Service refers to using a web browser to access software through the cloud. This
means that there is no software to install; all you need is a license and a web browser to use the
software. Examples of SaaS companies and software would be Microsoft Office 365 where Microsoft
has now made its office suite software web based; Salesforce which has created sales and customer
relationship management (CRM) software that help companies connect with customers and employees;
Apple’s iCloud which lets users store music, apps, pictures, and documents; and even basic email clients
like Gmail or Yahoo Mail are considered SaaS. This solution model is great for businesses because it
allows them to scale up or down the number of licenses as needed depending on the growth of their
company, allowing it to be a cost effective solution. SaaS is also great for home users who may use
iCloud for example, or something similar. Users would start with a free amount of space for storage but
pay for more as needed.
PaaS
Platform as a Service refers to an environment usually provided by a vendor where software
developers are able to build, store and deliver their web based services and apps. These PaaS vendors
will provide the developer with the tools needed to design, develop, test, deploy, and host their
applications. (Cloud Computing 101, 2012) PaaS solutions benefit businesses and developers because it
eliminates the need for them to worry about maintaining servers and infrastructure. Also, it’s easily
scalable so a company only needs to pay for the resources it consumes. Using a PaaS solution allows
businesses and developers to focus on their applications so they can deploy them more quickly and
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easily. (Jamsa, 2013) Some examples of SaaS solutions are Windows Azure, Google App Engine,
Force.com and Cloud Foundry.
IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service refers to a vendor supplying an entire infrastructure including servers,
network components, load balancers and block storage. Basically in the case of an IaaS, the provider
supplies the customer with hardware and the customer has complete control over the hardware
supplied and is responsible for managing and installing their systems remotely via the web. An IaaS
solution can be beneficial because the customer has full control which may address certain security
needs, there is no need for an on premise data center, and the resources are flexible enough so that a
customer would only pay for the resources they need instead of buying an excessive amount of
equipment expecting to eventually need all of it later as their company grows.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Cloud
Cloud computing is a fairly new, yet rapidly growing concept. As this model grows at an
exponential rate, many people are weighing between the pros and cons. To many people the
advantages are far too good to pass up on. With the clouds scalability, collaboration, disaster recovery
and the cost efficiency, it’s a very practical solution.
Advantages
One of the advantages of cloud computing is the fact that a customer can easily scale up or
down depending on their need. For businesses that means that as their company grows they can simply
add more resources on the fly and if they’re downsizing they can also decrease the amount of resources
as needed. Another advantage is that cloud services are cost effective. This goes hand in hand with
scalability; as your company grows or shrinks you pay for only the resources you need at that specific
time. Also it helps with costs because a company may not need as much IT staff since the cloud vendors
are the ones who manage, maintain, update and upgrade their equipment. Small and midsize
companies can leverage the cloud because it gives them access to sophisticated technology at low
prices. They can even share resources with other companies to cut on the costs of buying servers and
licensing software. (Holland) Since the cloud can be accessed at any time, this allows for the advantage
of employees of a company to easily collaborate from detached regions and locations. Another hefty
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advantage of cloud computing is that it provides disaster recovery and business continuity. Almost all
cloud vendors make sure to backup all of your data that is stored on their machines. There are even
cloud vendors like Iron Mountain whose services are specifically to data backup and management.
Disadvantages / Security Issues
As cloud computing has its many advantages, it also has some serious concerns. One of the
biggest concerns of using a cloud solution is security. When a customer’s data is located somewhere
remotely, there is always risk that that data can be compromised. A savvy cyber attacker can break into
almost any network and access private data. Along with security issues are privacy issues. There is no
guarantee that when sharing resources with other tenants they won’t be able to access your data by
accident. Another example of a privacy issue is remnants of data leftover from previous tenants.
According to CIO.com, a security consultant firm called Context Information Security was hired by a
business to test the integrity of data on the cloud. What the consultant found with some cloud solutions
like Rackspace and VPS.net, was remnants of data from previous tenants was still stored in unallocated
portions of disk space that were allocated for new tenants. (Olavsrud, 2012) Another big issue in cloud
computing is data integrity. “Potential problems that affect the integrity of a company’s data include
corruption, misplacement, accidental deletion, physical accidents, malicious acts, hardware failures and
a lack of proper policies.” (Cloud Computing 101, 2012) Downtime can be another problem. Although
most cloud vendors will give you a guarantee that their services will be up at least 95% of the time,
outages do happen and a vendor’s network could be brought down, depriving the customer of data they
may need during that time.
Issues in Migrating from On-site Network System to the Cloud
As companies big and small evolve their technology, they will likely consider migrating some or
all of their applications and data to the cloud. This may be a valid idea but how will the data get there?
Migrating data from onsite infrastructures is a major concern and the process can be very complex, time
consuming and expensive.
In order to migrate data it’s necessary to match the storage protocol with the cloud
infrastructure, which can be a major challenge. For example, “The enterprise may have data stored on
an iSCSI SAN, but the cloud environment may be Fibre Channel.” (Clark D. ) One of the biggest problems
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is that often it’s necessary to stretch the migration over several days or even weeks in order to have
acceptable performance while implementing the transfer. Without an efficient data transfer, costly
errors are likely to occur.
Performance, availability and flexibility are significant in support of cloud infrastructure. “A data
migration solution (DMS) is an appliance that provides a simple and effective way to provide multiprotocol translation and allow migration of all of the Fibre Channel-based (2Gb, 4Gb, or 8Gb) or iSCSIbased (1Gb or 10Gb) data that supports applications to be run in the cloud.” (Clark D. ) There are other
possible solutions to migrate data other than a DMS, but those solutions don’t have the capability to
convert between iSCSI and Fibre.
Migrating data is a time consuming and complicated task that is best done with a quality single
solution tool like a DMS which offers the capability and flexibility to move data through any
infrastructure.
The Business and Economics Impact of the Cloud
Companies are happily welcoming the cloud as there seems to be so many benefits to
implementing it. “It brings to the enterprise - agility, ease of use, scalability and, especially, lower costs
realized in the trade-off of capital outlays for ongoing, more digestible operational expenses.” (Shultz,
2011) Living in a time where budgets are tight everywhere, businesses are looking for a solution that
will save them money, yet also enhance their operation. The cloud is the answer. With the cloud, a
company pays a reasonable monthly or annual fee and can scale the resources up or down as needed
depending on the company’s growth. Also, it’s easy to use. The vendor maintains all the infrastructure
and hardware while the company sits back and enjoys the benefits of convenience.
Although the benefits are there, the cloud may not always be the right solution for everyone.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the savings or the worth of moving to the cloud. It’s not easy to compare the
costs of buying and maintaining your own data center or purchasing space on a public cloud. When you
try to factor in all the little details, comparing the two can be like comparing apples to oranges. "You've
got to do things like figure out how much you'll pay for per-use bandwidth as opposed to what you'll pay
when you strike a bandwidth deal. And, you've got to take into account the cost of maintenance and
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management of the IT infrastructure, including what's outsourced and what's not and what percentage
of IT headcount goes away with a move to the cloud.” (Shultz, 2011)
Cloud companies like Amazon always seem to be slashing their prices; these momentary price
cuts are often a tactic of cloud vendors to attract new customers to the cloud. "’The myth is that cloud
computing is always cost-effective," said David Linthicum, CTO of Blue Mountain Labs, a company that
advises businesses on moving to the cloud. "In many instances, it's not.’" (Gohring) Although briefly
cutting costs is a good way for vendors to bring in new customers, it’s also a tactic used to drive away
the competition. As vendors compete with one another, often the one who charges the lowest price
wins the customers.
More and more cloud companies are emerging out of the woodwork which is good because the
fierce competition between new cloud companies and the giant companies like Amazon, Google, HP and
Microsoft helps to keep the costs down. The cloud also provides a great solution for startup companies
who don’t have an IT staff or enough personnel to maintain an infrastructure or even the money to
house an infrastructure. Overall, companies migrating the cloud will see significant benefits and savings.
The Future of the Cloud
The cloud is growing at a rapid rate. More and more companies are adopting the cloud as a part
of their operation and more and more people are becoming accustomed to the cloud. According to the
Cisco Global Cloud Index by 2016 nearly two-thirds of all workloads will be cloud based. “A workload is
the amount of processing a computer or a server undertakes to execute an application and support a
number of users interacting with that application.” (Cisco Global Cloud Index Forecasts Cloud Traffic to
Grow Sixfold by 2016, 2012) In 2011 the split between workloads for traditional onsite data centers
and cloud data centers was about 70% for traditional data centers and 30% for cloud based data
centers. Cisco predicts that by 2016 the workload will be split at 38% for traditional data centers and
62% for cloud data centers. This means that cloud data traffic will have grown “sixfold” by 2016.
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Chart 1 - (Cisco Analysis, 2012)
Future Concepts and Technology
With this mass growth of the cloud, what exactly will the cloud look like in the future? The
newfangled cloud market will probably resemble thousands of specialized clouds that will cater to all the
different types of users like businesses, consumers, developers and gamers. According to a writer in
Forbes, “Over the next few years a key opportunity within the cloud industry will be the creation of
federated cloud ecosystems. These marketplaces will be defined by interoperability among multiple
competing cloud computing providers and platforms using agreed-upon standards and application
interfaces. “ (Cohen, 2012)
Future Software
Eventually it seems that software will move away from hardware. As cloud computing grows, it
becomes more complex. “Software will be written in such a way that it goes through several filters
before it interacts with hardware. This means that front-end applications, or applications built on top of
a platform-as-a-service, will be hardware agnostic.” (Clark J. , Cloud Computing: 10 Ways it Will Change
by 2020, 2012)
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As an abundance of hardware becomes more and more available in the cloud, software will
eventually get larger and more powerful, taking full advantage of the technology available. It will
become important for developers to program modular software as these programs start increasing in
size and complexity. Software will need to be programmed in a way that it can intermingle within
numerous different clouds. Quality Service Level Agreements (SLA) will have to be put in place to
accommodate these compounded software bundles as pieces of them will need to move in and out of
different clouds.
It’s also possible that soon software may behave similarly to that of social media such as
Facebook by “liking”, so to speak, certain applications or hardware. Chief economist of Hitachi Data
Systems, David Merrill says, "It will be a social-media evolution. You will have an infrastructure, it’ll look
like a cloud, but we will engineer these things so that a database will 'like' a server, or will 'like' a storage
array." (Clark J. , Cloud Computing: 10 Ways it Will Change by 2020, 2012) Basically what this means is
that software will be smart enough to automatically link itself with other software and hardware
according to what it needs.
Future Hardware
Facebook, Amazon and others companies are working on a project called the Open Compute
Project which is meant to produce open source hardware designs. The project was created by
Facebook to share the specifications used to build their 300,000 square foot datacenter in Prineville,
Oregon with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.07. (Clark J. , Facebook Opens Out Open
Compute Project, 2011) This is not too bad considering the average data center’s PUE is about 2.5.
(Rouse, 2009) The website for the project states,” We started a project at Facebook almost two years
ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest
possible cost… The result is a data center full of vanity free servers which is 38% more efficient and 24%
less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers.” (Open Compute Project) With
this project underway other companies will be able to optimize their data centers at a cheaper price,
keeping the cloud competition high and the prices low for consumers.
In about a year, ARM will be deploying their new low-power chips which can potentially handle
5500 requests per second, meanwhile only using up about 5 watts of power. Compared to a standard
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Intel Xeon E3 Server which was benchmarked at 6950 requests per second at 102 watts, these new low
power chip Arm-based servers have a significant performance per watt advantage.
Chart 2 - (Mao)
Dell and HP both plan on selling servers with the ARM chip. Once vendors start using these
extremely low-powered chips they will begin to save lots of money which in turn could lower the costs
of cloud services for customers.
More powerful datacenters will be communicating and moving at extremely high speeds
"possibly running at a speed in the low hundreds of gigabits per second”, meaning that interconnects
will get faster. (Clark J. , Cloud Computing: 10 Ways it Will Change by 2020, 2012) Cloud datacenters
will also likely become automated. Like a living organism, they will automatically patch and update
equipment.
Cloud Specialization
In the near future as the cloud continues to grow rapidly there will likely be more specialized
clouds. “According to the analyst group Forrester, we can expect things like 'middle virtualization tools'
and 'dynamic BPO services' to appear by 2020, along with a host of other inelegant acronyms. In other
words, along with some large providers offering basic technologies like storage and compute, there will
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also be a broad ecosystem of more specific cloud providers, allowing companies to shift workloads to
the cloud that would otherwise be dealt with by very specific on-premise applications.” (Clark, Cloud
Computing: 10 Ways it Will Change by 2020, 2012) By then, clouds may have a whole different set of
classes separating them.
Everything as a Service
XaaS, pronounced zass, is a service model that stands for “Everything as a Service”. Many
companies are deciding that the typical SaaS, PaaS and IaaS models are not defining well enough the
services they provide and many of these categories are starting to become popular. Some of these
newly emerging service models are UCaaS (Unified Communications-as-a-service), MaaS
(Monitoring/Management-as-a service), and NaaS (Networking-as-a-Service). Some people like CTO of
The Open Group, David Lounsbury, are not fans. He asks, "When does this stop being about a cloud
frenzy, and just settle down into being a practical way to do business on a day-to-day basis?". Other
people like Alan Cohen the VP of Niacara think this lesser known model will eventually take over. Cohen
says, talking about NaaS , "I think the idea of infrastructure as a service will disappear as both local and
cloud-based networking become simply, well, networking," No matter how people feel about it, the
XaaS service model seems to be growing. (Burns, 2012)
Next Generation
People have now already been exposed to the cloud and are finding more common uses for it
daily. Companies are looking more and more towards the cloud for better more efficient ways to
conduct business. As the next generation of leaders, bosses and CIOs come into the workforce; they will
expect everything to be available “as a service” and will be more prone and accustomed to leveraging
cloud solutions. The next generation will come into this world not knowing a world without the cloud.
It will be normal to them and pretty soon consumers may be cloud dependent if they’re not already.
Closing
The cloud is a service model that is rapidly consuming the market. With its many uses and
advantages, the cloud is finding its way into homes and businesses all over the globe and growing larger
every day. The near future of the cloud looks promising. The competition between vendors will be
fierce and the consumers will be ready. It’s going to be more optimized yet it’s going to be more
specialized. It’s going to be much more energy efficient yet there will be no lag in the operation. In fact,
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data flow may even be faster and smoother. But no matter what the cloud actually does look like in the
future, you can bet, everybody will be using it.
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