Complete Cloud OS FAQ

For long, the geeks had discussed of the D-day when the OS would disappear and everything would be accommodated in a cloud. At this day,  Cloud computing is a throwaway word that includes everything from web mail to Facebook.  Amazon had an important role in the development of cloud computing by modernizing their data centers after the dot-com bubble. They found that the cloud architecture could significantly improve their internal efficiency and started offering access to their system through the Amazon Web Services in 2005 on a utility computing basis. Google, IBM, and a number of universities followed the suit getting involved in large scale cloud computing research project in 2007. A year later, a number of organizations started switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models. This marked the emergence of cloud computing. There are vague concepts on cloud computing circling the web. To clarify the concept we present a detailed FAQ on cloud computing.

What is cloud OS?

For many cloud operating system is still a jargon that requires a simpler introduction. Well, going head-on cloud OS is an Internet based operating system. That implies the applications that allow you to perform different computing activities are Internet-based and not present on your desktop.

Let’s take an example, say email. You might be having an email account in Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail. Again at office, you must be using Outlook or any other desktop-based email client. Here you can assume that Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail are cloud applications since the data(actual email messages) are stored on a cloud( it represents the Internet) and not on your desktop.

In the cloud OS you can perform various computing tasks apart from email like document writing and file, which can be stored over the Internet. So you don’t need a Word processing application in your computer neither do you need an external hard drive to store the document.

To be straight it means, your computer wouldn’t require a powerful configuration and that you would not have to store everything on a physical hard drive because all your things would be stored on a server.

What are the key benefits of cloud computing?

Cloud computing offers a better way to run businesses. With this system you can run your apps yourself, as they run on a shared data center. To use any app that runs in the cloud, you just log in, customize it, and start using it. Suppose you have done a job in your PC at home. Cloud OS would allow you to access your at Office as everything is saved on Internet.  That’s makes cloud computing so powerful.

Cloud computing technology boasts all the benefits of multitenancy, built-in security, reliability, upgradeability, and ease of use.

It provides out-of-the-box features such as offline access, and mobile deployment speed application development.

The only software you need to access the cloud is the browser that connects you to the Internet and allows you access to the web based applications like photos, music, email, video and word editing. For instance Google offers Writely, Spreadsheets, Google Calendar and much more.

The netbooks doesn’t feature high configurations, but they can easily run the browser that controls the web applications. The netbook are best to run with cloud OS.

What are top cloud computing services?

1. Amazon AWS

It’s an early bird in cloud computing. Currently, the company offers one of the markets longest menu of services. The core clouding proposition by Amazon is Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), it offers a virtualized cloud infrastructure that is designed to enable scalable computing, storage and communication facilities.

Amazon’s cloud computing tools include

• Simple Storage Service (S3), a persistent storage system

• Simple Database (SimpleDB) -It provides a remotely accessible database S

• Simple Queuing Service -It is a message queue service which also offers an agent for tying together distributed applications created by the EC2, S3 and SimpleDB combo.

2. Google App engine

It is an assemblage of complete development stack that uses common technologies to build and host web applications. It virtualizes the web applications across multiple servers and data centers. It allows you to write your application code, test it on your local machine and upload that to Google. Currently, the platform supports programming languages Python and Java. App Engine offers wider infrastructure to make it easy to write scalable applications. However, it is capable of running a limited range of applications designed for that specific infrastructure.

3. Microsoft Azure

This is Microsoft’s cloud computing service, also known as Windows for the cloud. It features four components

• Windows Azure that allows a scalable computation and storage to user applications and to other Azure Services Platform components.

• SQL Services providing ata storage for applications running in the cloud and data centers

• Live Services that allows the coordination of data across all of their devices and sharing selective data with friends and associates

• .NET Services that coordinate user login credentials across various security schemes and offers distributed infrastructure services to cloud-based and local applications.

4. Salesforce.com

It offers Platform-as-a-Service that includes company’s Apex programming language and former Apex platform that features a number of developer tools. It uses the cloud computing to integrate apps in the CRM & ERP systems with Force.com.  It’s cloud computing technology is empowered with point-and-click tools for administrators and business users to perform basic customizations themselves.

5. AT&T

AT&T Synaptic hosting provides the datacenters with the ability to manage applications, store data elastically and compute resources on servers. These can be scaled up and down as required. The hosted platform also offers dynamic security and storage facilities. In addition, it provides a Web portal to conduct maintenance, manage capacity and monitor performance and network service.

The services and resources of AT&T run within their own network which it claims provides more viability over server levels.

What are the advancements in cloud computing?

Yahoo, Intel Corporation and HP have created a multi-data center, open source test bed for the advancement of cloud computing research and education. It aims at removing the financial and logistical barriers through research in data-intensive, Internet-scale computing in collaboration with industry, academia and governments. The Test Bed would encourage research on the software, data center management and hardware issues associated with cloud computing on a larger scale.

Sun Microsystems cloud computing infrastructure at the CommunityOne provides an example for advanced cloud computing system which we had discussed in our blog.

Who should use it?

These days businesses have to run CRM, HR, accounting, and custom-built apps. Such business with various department to manage can find a single solution in cloud computing. The cloud-based apps enclose all the above functionalists. The IT departments are forced to spend a significant amount of their time on implementation, maintenance, and upgrade projects. The IT teams are increasingly turning towards cloud computing technology to minimize the time spent on lower-value activities. It enables them to focus on strategic activities with greater impact on the business.

Conclusion

Cloud computing is fast eliminating the problems of traditional application development. It is allowing the businesses to focus on developing business applications that deliver true value to their business. The cloud computing platforms enables the IT to innovate by eliminating the headaches with servers, software solutions, middleware, upgrades and the staff needed to manage it all. It is expected in near future that companies would effectively resort to cloud computing technology moving over traditional data centers. Still for many Cloud OS is still a pie in the sky