The Future of Cloud Computing Patrick O. Eronini
Abstract
This paper examines the evolution of cloud computing and explores its future as potentially one of the significant advances in the history of computing. The phenomenon known as cloud computing represents a fundamental paradigm shift in the way services are innovated, financed, developed, launched, scaled, and maintained. Cloud computing holds a lot of promise but for it to realize its potential, there must be a firm understanding of both its history and its current state. In this paper, a basic introduction to cloud computing and its history are presented. That
foundation is followed by a discussion and analysis of the current state of cloud computing. Key elements and potential applications of cloud computing are analyzed in addition to strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of this technology. Finally, the future of cloud computing is outlined. Key issues discussed include the integration of applications, security improvements, and other ongoing developments in cloud computing.
Keywords: cloud computing, pay-per-use, software as a service, software-define-networking, on-demand computing, virtualization
The Future of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing, by making software even more appealing as a service and impacting the way hardware is laid out, has the ability to the transform the IT industry. Innovators with fresh ideas no longer need large capital for hardware expenses or the human costs to maintain it. Additionally, developers no longer need to worry about over-provisioning or under-provisioning for a service, because of the elasticity afforded by cloud computing (Armbrust et al., 2010).
The revolution of cloud computing represents a double-sided blade that fully empowers end users but also strips IT of many of its traditional responsibilities. The cloud will bring with it a new set of advantages, challenges, risks, and opportunities. The biggest aspects of cloud computing involve “(1) moving the data center offsite to a third party and (2) buying services rather than maintain on-site applications” (Lillard, Garrison, Schiller, & Steele, 2010)
Numerous studies, papers, and articles have been published on the various facets of cloud computing. A plethora of these resources were gathered from online journals, online databases, and the Northwestern University library for review. The goal of this paper is to clarify various aspects of cloud computing and to analyze its future and potential applications. This paper seeks to explore what cloud computing is, the elements of its current state, what it holds in its next chapter.
Cloud Computing: What’s Old is New What is Cloud Computing?
Much confusion exists about what exactly cloud computing is and when it’s helpful. In Armbrust et al.’s (2010) article, cloud computing is defined as both the software applications via
the internet and the hardware/systems software in the datacenters that provide the service. It is a new name for the old idea of computing as a utility. Armbrust et al. (2010) state that
“The services themselves have long been referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS). The datacenter hardware and software is what we call a Cloud. When a Cloud is made
available in a pay-as you-go manner to the general public, we call it a Public Cloud; the service being sold is Utility Computing. We use the term Private Cloud to refer to internal datacenters of a…organization, not made available to the general public. Thus, Cloud Computing is the sum of SaaS and Utility Computing, but does not include Private Clouds.”
According to Viega (2009), “Currently developers work with three major cloud systems categories: software as a service, platform-as-a-service, and infrastructure-as-a-service.” Software as a service (SaaS) is the system that consumers will be most familiar with. In SaaS, like Google Docs, the user purchases a subscription to software, but the data and code reside remotely (Viega, 2009). SaaS is at the core of cloud computing. “Whether the underlying software is an application, application component, platform, framework, environment, or some other soft infrastructure for composing applications to be delivered as services on the Web, it’s all software in the end,” says Erdogmus (2009).
Cloud computing promises to deliver the functionality of existing services, while it reduces upfront costs that often deter organizations from deploying cutting-edge services. The catalyst for change can be viewed from a costs perspective, because organizations are
two trends, IT efficiency and business agility (Marston, Li, Bandyopadhyay, Zhang, & Ghalsasi, 2011).
History of Cloud Computing
Armbrust et al. (2010) argue that the key catalyst in Cloud Computing coming to the forefront was the “construction and operation of extremely large scale commodity-computer datacenters.” According to Lillard et al. (2010), the cloud computing first came about in the late 90s with the development of web applications such as Salesforce.com. Its development has been driven by a faster internet that is also cheaper and more reliable. The rise of cloud computing was hindered by the dot com crash, but that enabled the strongest players to survive and today, Google Apps and others are again offering users cloud computing services (Lillard et al., 2010). Lillard et al. (2010) further explain that “web-based applications are a key part of the cloud, but they are not the entire picture. The cloud also includes the use of low-cost raw servers that are available on demand.”
Current State of Cloud Computing
The cloud is used by companies and organizations of all sizes. Cloud usage is “…driven by the innovative applications it provides and much less by the technical aspects of the cloud” (Lillard et al., 2010). End users want a quick solution and they want it now. As always, “the applications drive the platform and each new platform enables new applications – the two go hand-in-hand” (Lillard et al., 2010).
Elements of Cloud Computing
Three components are instrumental to the power of cloud computing. First, “The illusion of infinite computing resources available on demand” means that users of cloud computing do not need to provision far in advance. “The elimination of an up-front commitment by Cloud users” allows developers and organizations to start small and scale up hardware resources as needed. Additionally, “the ability to pay for use of computing resources on a short-term basis as needed” means that resources are freed as required and conservation is rewarded (Armbrust et al., 2010).
The modern cloud is optimized by virtualized servers. Now linked to an ever-faster Internet and always-on, always-connected devices, the cloud enables end users to create more servers and use more cloud-based applications (Lillard et al., 2010). Lillard et al. (2010) note that “the ability of the cloud to solve the challenge of allowing end users to fully leverage the benefits of technology while lowering costs to the business is a game changer.”
Virtualization allows the cloud to readily create server space based on demand from end users. It does this by running a new instance of an operating system on an existing server (Lillard et al., 2010). Essentially, this means that servers become services. Virtualization in the cloud allows a virtual server to run different operating systems on the same piece of hardware (Lillard et al., 2010). Additional benefits of this include the ability to constantly manage servers as their usage fluctuates and quickly restoring images on hardware when current hardware fails (Lillard et al., 2010).
Armbrust et al. (2010) make some observations about economic models concerning cloud computing. The authors note that “…the fine-grained economic models enabled by cloud
computing make tradeoff decisions more fluid, and in particular the elasticity offered by clouds serves to transfer risk” (Armbrust et al., 2010). Ambrust el al. (2010) observe that “…although hardware costs continue to decline, they do so at variable rates…Cloud computing can track these changes…resulting in a closer match of expenditure to actual resource usage.” Finally, Ambrust et al. (2010) deduce that
“…one must additionally examine the expected average and peak resource utilization, especially if the application may have highly variable spikes in resource demand; the practical limits on real-world utilization of purchased equipment; and various operational costs that vary depending on the type of cloud environment being considered.”
Implementations and Applications of Cloud Computing
Every application must have a model of computation, storage, and communication. At one side of the spectrum sits Amazon EC2 whose instances appear very much like physical hardware and enables users to control most the software, down to the kernel. However, Amazon struggles to offer automatic scalability and failover with EC2, because its management issues are very application-dependent. On the other end of the spectrum is Google AppEngine, which is an application domain-specific platform. Google AppEngine possesses a structure that firmly separates a stateless computation level from a stateful storage level. It also strong automatic scaling capabilities and is highly available. Microsoft’s Azure is a middle ground between virtual machines like EC2 and applications frameworks like AppEngine (Armbrust et al., 2010).
Large companies and federal agencies will likely use private clouds because they have all the benefits of a public cloud hosted within a firewall. Lillard et al. (2010) explain, “Full control of who has access to data is maintained while all the benefits of the cloud are realized. End users
simply buy their cloud services from the private cloud...”Another key component of the cloud is collective intelligence, which is “the ability of cloud applications to know what everyone in the community is doing and using this information to make the community work better” (Lillard et al., 2010). Amazon is great example of this. Collective intelligence has high value in any type of online community, and it will likely continue being a strength of the cloud as time passes.
Advantages of Cloud Computing
The benefits of SaaS are well known by end users and service providers alike. “Service providers enjoy greatly simplified software installation and maintenance and centralized control over versioning; end users can access the service “anytime, anywhere”, share data and
collaborate more easily, and keep their data stored safely in the infrastructure” (Armbrust et al., 2010). Advantages of cloud computing include high availability, application integration and support, and high flexibility (Leavitt, 2009).
Giniat (2011) explains that the “cloud allows large organizations to move away from managing their own data centers to focusing their attention and resources…on their
competencies.” Organizations can deploy SaaS and scale on-demand – instead of provisioning datacenters – as a result of cloud computing. It allows organizations to pay for computing
resources by the hour, which leads to significant cost savings. This is also valuable when demand is not known ahead of time. Armbrust et al. (2010) state that “pay-as-you-go cloud computing can charge the application separately for each type of resource, reducing the waste of
underutilization.” Additionally, groups that execute batch analytics can complete calculations faster using the “cost associativity” of cloud computing. After all, “using 100 EC2 machines for 1 hour costs the same thing as using 1 machine for 1000 hours” (Armbrust et al., 2010).
In cloud computing, users can select a type of service much the way they might buy a book from Amazon. Cloud services are easily outsourced, which lowers business costs that come with “…maintenance, data centers, servers, compliance, backup and recovery, security, patching, virus protection, configuration management, bandwidth, and on-site support” (Lillard et al., 2010). Elasticity is a key component of cloud computing. It is equally valuable to both well-established and reputable companies as well as startups. The ability to add or remove resources, one server at a time in some cases, and with a time of minutes and hours rather than days and weeks allows organizations to better match resources to workload. Unexpectedly scaling down is usually associated with a financial cost, but cloud computing eliminates that. Additionally, as “…hardware costs will fall and new hardware and software technologies…become available,” cloud providers can pass on savings to customers (Armbrust et al., 2010).
Cloud computing helps the development and delivery of new applications. If a group wants to create new software, they can leverage a cloud provider and have instant access to a complete server environment (Lillard et al., 2010). During testing, the group can use the cloud to run hundreds of clients and can free up the servers after testing. As the software applications rolls out, the cloud provider “…automatically scale out the back-end databases, Web servers, and reporting and analysis tools based on customer demand” (Lillard et al., 2010). This means that using the cloud, the backend only has to increase when demand dictates it, and the development group only spends what is needed at any particular time.
Obstacles to cloud computing concern its adoption, growth, in addition to policy and business obstacles. This table of obstacles and opportunities for adoption and growth of cloud computing is drawn from a study by Armbrust et al. (2010).
Obstacle Opportunity
Availability of Service Use Multiple Cloud Providers
Use Elasticity to Defend DDOS attacks
Data Lock-In Standardize APIs
Data Confidentiality and Auditability Deploy Encryption; VLANs, and Firewalls; Data Transfer Bottlenecks Data Backup; Lower WAN Router Costs; High
Bandwidth LAN Switches
Performance Unpredictability Improved Virtual Machine Support; Flash Memory; Gang Scheduling VMs for HPC apps Lillard et al. (2010) and (Leavitt, 2009) discuss many of the same risks. The cloud has significant challenges that need to be understood and in some cases, accepted. These risks include services outages, security, and underperformance from vendors. Vendor lock-in of data is another significant risk. Selecting a well-known cloud provider is one way to reduce risk, but costs can increase when one vendor dominates the market with little competition (Lillard et al., 2010).
The Next Chapter in Cloud Computing
When push comes to shove, the benefits of cloud computing outweigh the risk, greatly. The future of cloud computing will involve large cloud providers who provide a large suite of services. Amazon provides wonderful operating systems as a service but not server support or managed services. Google, on the other hand, provides managed services, like e-mail. At the moment, no major vendor offers a full complement of cloud-based services but it is only a matter of time. As cloud computing matures, it will drive changes in how we view data, how programs are developed, and redefine what we view as boundaries.
A majority of technology experts believe that by 2020, “…most people will access software applications online and share and access information through the use of remote server networks…cloud cloud computing will become more dominant than the desktop in the next decade” (Anderson & Raine, 2010).
Integration of Applications
Applications that integrate the services of multiple cloud application providers will be featured in the future of cloud computing (Lillard et al., 2010). This will make it easier to create new, robust applications for end users. On the other side, data will be difficult to track and manage because it will be “….stored at multiple vendors, with each vendor likely to store the data at multiple sites, and the data will likely keep moving” (Lillard et al., 2010).
Security Improvements
Lillard et al. (2010) describe account control and data control as key items that will be fixed in the future. Controls such as secure sockets layer (SSL) and security login tokens will be used. Critical data will be stored encrypted as a requirement, and the keys for encrypted data will only be available at the customer’s site. Additionally, data will not be able to move about
geographic area with ease because it will be tagged with the locations where it can be stored. Furthermore, data will be exportable in accordance with specific standards to facilitate data backup and restoration of cloud-based data across vendors (Lillard et al., 2010).
According to Lillard et al. (2010), “A cottage industry of third-party data storage and restoral can be used to manage these backups in the cloud.” Data retention will be dictated by end users rather than cloud vendors, in the future, because it is the users’ data. While these address many of the current challenges facing the cloud, new obstacles will surely arise.
Ongoing Developments in Cloud Computing
Where there lies an obstacle for cloud computing, there is also an opportunity. It is important that all levels of development in cloud computing “…aim at horizontal scalability of virtual machines over the efficiency on a single VM.” Application software should be able to scale down as quickly as it can scale up. Infrastructure software now runs on virtual machines and not physical machinery and its needs to be more aware of that. Hardware systems should be designed at the scale of the minimum purchase size. Moving forward, operation costs will match performance and purchase costs, thereby recognizing energy proportionality (Armbrust et al., 2010).
The cloud of the future will end the relational database. Lillard et al. (2010) state, “Relational databases have been the core of applications for over 20 years, creating a deep well of existing code and development know-how that must be redone and relearned.” These changes will have a strong impact on the future of cloud computing.
Cloud computing will make several classes of existing applications even more
compelling. These applications include mobile interactive applications, parallel batch processing, business analytics, and extensions of compute-intensive desktop applications. Services that respond in real time will be drawn to the cloud because they must be highly available and normally rely on huge data sets are often hosted in large data centers (Armbrust et al., 2010). Armbrust et al. (2010) believes that “cloud computing presents unique opportunity for batch-processing and analytics jobs that analyze terabytes of data and can take hours to finish.” The clouds “cost associativity” is a game changer that users can leverage because using a few
computers for long time is costs the same as using hundreds for a short time (Armbrust et al., 2010).
The complete package in cloud computing may come from giants like Microsoft, small startups, telephone vendors like Verizon, internets behemoths like Google, or the mobile world of Apple (Lillard et al., 2010). According to Lilllard et al. (2010), “Whoever secures this new market as the leader must provide full server and application management.”
Summary and Conclusion
Computing as utility has finally emerged as cloud computing. The elasticity of cloud computing matches the requirements of businesses providing services over the Internet, as workloads can increase and decrease so quickly. The construction of large datacenters
contributed to the possibility of a pay-as-you-go model for resources, while allowing profits to be made by multiplexing among a large group of customers.
In the long term, cloud computing will flourish as providers exploit opportunities by overcoming challenges and obstacles that currently beset cloud computing. Cloud computing will enable end users to run the client/server similarly to how the PC revolution allows users to run the software of their choosing.
The cloud has many key components to be successful. It makes end users more efficient, it lowers expenses, and is supported by many large software companies and the federal
government. There is no dominant champion in cloud computing right now. If it the industry stays open, then it may facilitate a degree of innovation similar to what is occurring with cell phones. This will only serve to help the cloud become more robust.
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