Introduction to

Cloud Computing

1
Part 1 Reference Text
• Thomas Erl, Zaigham Mahmood, and Ricardo
Puttini, Cloud Computing: Concepts, Technology &
Architecture, Prentice Hall, May 20, 2013, ISBN:
978-0133387520

2
Outline
1. A brief history
2. Definition
3. Motivation, Benefit, Risk
4. Concepts

3
Outline
1. A brief history
2. Definition
3. Motivation, Benefit, Risk
4. Concepts

4
Brief History
• Computer scientist John McCarthy publicly
proposed in 1961
 If computers of the kind I have advocated become the
computers of the future, then computing may someday
be organized as a public utility just as the telephone
system is a public utility. … The computer utility could
become the basis of a new and important industry
• Leonard Kleinrock, a chief scientist of the ARPANET
project, in 1969
 As of now, computer networks are still in their infancy,
but as they grow up and become sophisticated, we will
probably see the spread of ‘computer utilities’ …

5
Brief History
• Internet-based computer utilities since the mid-
1990s
 Search engines
 Email services
 Open publishing platforms: MySpace, YouTube
 Social media: Facebook, Twitter
• In the late 1990s, Salesforce.com pioneered the
notion of bringing remotely provisioned services into
the enterprise
• In 2002, Amazon.com launched the Amazon Web
Services (AWS) platform
 Remotely provisioned storage, computing resources, and
business functionality
6
Brief History
• The term “cloud computing” emerged in the
commercial arena in 2006
 Amazon launched its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
services
 “lease” computing capacity and processing power to run their
enterprise applications
 Google Apps also began providing browser-based
enterprise applications

7
Outline
1. A brief history
2. Definition
3. Motivation, Benefit, Risk
4. Concepts

8
Definitions
• Wikipedia
 Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous
network access to a shared pool of configurable
computing resources

9
Definitions
• NIST (National Institute of Standard and Technology)
 Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous,
convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of
configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers,
storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal management effort
or service provider interaction. This cloud model is
composed of five essential characteristics, three service
models, and four deployment models
• A concise definition
 Cloud computing is a specialized form of distributed
computing that introduces utilization models for remotely
provisioning scalable and measured resources

10
Outline
1. A brief history
2. Definition
3. Motivation, Benefit, Risk
4. Concepts

11
Business Drivers
• Capacity planning
 Process of determining and fulfilling future demands of an
organization’s IT resources, products, and services
 Lead Strategy - adding capacity to an IT resource in anticipation of
demand
 Lag Strategy - adding capacity when the IT resource reaches its full
capacity
 Match Strategy - adding IT resource capacity in small increments, as
demand increases
 Planning for capacity can be challenging
• Cost Reduction
 Cost of acquiring new infrastructure
 Cost of its ongoing ownership
• Organizational Agility
 Measure of an organization’s responsiveness to change
12
Benefits
• Reduced Investments and Proportional Costs
• Increased Scalability
• Increased Availability and Reliability

13
Risks and Challenges
• Increased Security Vulnerabilities
• Limited Portability Between Cloud Providers
• Multi-Regional Compliance and Legal Issues
 Some UK laws require personal data belonging to UK
citizens to be kept within the United Kingdom

14
A cloud consumer’s application has a decreased level of portability when assessing a
potential migration from Cloud A to Cloud B, because the cloud provider of Cloud B does15
not support the same security technologies as Cloud A.
Outline
1. A brief history
2. Definition
3. Motivation, Benefit, Risk
4. Concepts

16
Basic concepts: cloud
• A cloud refers to a distinct IT environment that is
designed for the purpose of remotely provisioning
scalable and measured IT resources

17
Basic concepts: IT resource
• An IT resource is a physical or virtual IT-related
artifact that can be either software based, such as a
virtual server or a custom software program, or
hardware-based, such as a physical server or a
network device

18
A cloud with IT resources

19
Cloud Consumers and Cloud Providers

• Cloud provider
 The party that provides cloud-based IT resources
• Cloud consumer
 The party that uses cloud-based IT resources

20
Cloud service
• A cloud service (or cloud product) is any IT resource
that is made remotely accessible via a cloud

21
Service-level agreement (SLA)
• Cloud service usage conditions are typically
expressed in a service-level agreement (SLA)
• A service contract between a cloud provider and
cloud consumer
 Describes QoS features, behaviors, and limitations of a
cloud-based service or other provisions
 Provides details of various measurable characteristics
related to IT outcomes
 Uptime, security characteristics, and other specific QoS
features, including availability, reliability, and performance

22
Cloud service consumer
• The cloud service consumer is a temporary runtime
role assumed by a software program when it
accesses a cloud service

Examples of cloud service consumers. Depending on the nature of a given diagram, an artifact labeled as a
cloud service consumer may be a software program or a hardware device (in which case it is implied that it is
running a software program capable of acting as a cloud service consumer).

23