Cloud Computing Made Easy

In cloud terminology, the phrase “as-a-service” is extensively used, which simply means that a given cloud product (whether infrastructure, platforms or software) is offered in a way that it can be “rented” by consumers over the Internet. By “rented,” we are implying that you pay only for whatever you use. It is often described as an “on demand” service because it is available whenever you need it. There are two immediate advantages to the as-a-service model; first, up-front costs tend to be substantially less; and second, it affords a greater level of easy scalability. For example, if you store large amounts of data on premises, you’ll probably buy extra servers and storage (over-provision) to make sure that a shortage does not occur; and then when you do reach capacity, you must spend time purchasing and installing more. If you use storage-as-a-service, on the other hand, the need for over-provisioning is eliminated, and you simply purchase as much as you need on an ongoing basis, and the actual provisioning of it is transparent.

There are several methods of offering a cloud product as-a-service:

The most familiar model used by cloud software is a per user/month subscription. For example, a software provider may offer its collaboration product over the Internet for $30 per month for each user. Another approach is the advertising supported model, in which the offering is free, but you need to stare at advertisements. In such cases, the vendor receives revenues from the advertiser, rather than from the end-users. Facebook is a popular example of the seemingly free, but ad supported model.

Likewise, cloud platforms employ both the per user/month and ad supported models, as well as more creative models, such as assessing a fee per record.

Cloud infrastructure is a bit different, in that it employs the most creative as-a-service models of all, such as offering CPU time on a per hour basis, assessing for storage usage, as well as assessing for data transfers per gigabyte, often with differing rates for uploads versus downloads. Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) is a great example. Amazon EC2 offers a console for creating virtual machines on a per hour basis, with additional fees assessed for data transfers and storage.

NIST takes it a step further by asserting that true cloud offerings provide certain expected characteristics, which may not have been present in earlier Web-based software. These include such things as on-demand self-service, resource pooling and rapid elasticity. Naturally, on-demand simply implies that the service is available to turn on or off as needed. Resource pooling means that multiple users share a bank of servers (including storage devices and other computing resources) over the Internet, as an alternative to using dedicated servers. And lastly, rapid elasticity means the cloud offering can be dramatically scaled up and down as needed. As an example, let’s pretend that a guy launches his own dotcom, and next week he is scheduled to appear on the Oprah show. Should he buy ten new servers just in case? No! If he takes advantage of cloud infrastructure, he can offer his software as-a-service, and scale it up and down as needed. With as-a-service, you only pay for what you use, and you can use as much as you want.

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