“Cloud computing” – the next leap to the digital world communism “matrix” or a heavy step towards total control over the information? What can we expect in the near future, and what is happening right now on the other side of the monitor?

How It All Began

To go back to the beginning of a generation ago, when many of us have walked under the table, the trees were big, and the computers occupied entire rooms in the Institute. At the time of tube computers, computer was a set of huge cabinets that were calculating, recording and storing the information.

Access to these so-called “mainframe” was carried out with the device as input (keyboard \ card reader) and output (monitor and \ or printer) user space, which in common parlance was called “terminal”. Such terminals in one mainframe could be a few, all depending on the system performance. The user, when he had to calculate some data, received permission to use the computer, and entering the terminal through its program, waiting for processing and output the result.

Since then, dozens of years have passed, along with the development of electronic computers (there was a) decrease in size and is now one of the computing power of the mainframe fits into the normal cell phone. It would seem so much more? What can be improved in this situation?

It turned out there was more to aspire for. Indeed, with increasing computer power grew and the volume of tasks that they had to perform. Previously, a large computer center expected to fly to the moon, and today millions of navigation devices count your way through urban traffic jams.

And if you combine the power of these devices in a large computing center, and expect to get the path of a specific vehicle, and the movement of all vehicles in the city, and if the system receives a signal failure of traffic lights – ensure that the problem is updated to the repair team.  For such purposes, we again need to create computer centers that have huge capacities.

Cloud Computing

But these powers in full will be used only during peak hours, and for example at night time in the equipment which is considerably idle and without much work load. Here to help us, there is a new trend in the computer industry “cloud computing”. Cloud computing is a term defining the shape of a group of powerful server computers that are not constantly engaged in the processing of a particular problem, and provide the resources to different “virtual” services according to their needs.

For example, in the afternoon, 90% of resources will be given to the regulation of road traffic, and at night will receive priority to processing tasks such as the results of the exam, and etc.

Cloud computing can be applied in any field, as in the systems regulating the vital functions of metropolitan, and large enterprises for the processing of priority at a particular point of data.

What’s the difference between conventional computers and cloud computing services?

In the cost! The implementation of “mainframe” – “terminals” are substantial savings to the user’s computer as a terminal, to access the mainframe that does not need an expensive system that prevents the unit under the table, just connect to a monitor and keyboard, a miniature box, which will be on a local area network, transmit data input from the keyboard to the server and return back to the graphical information to the monitor.

Since in this embodiment, all data is stored on the server, it greatly simplifies the task of staff in the organization of data safety. Primarily and more – not only data is stored on the server, but also the software to work with them, so the user is no longer bound to a particular site, he only needs to remember the username and password to access the server of the enterprise.

As a result, he can happily go on a vacation, knowing that in the event of an emergency, from anywhere with an Internet connection you can get into your “workspace” and operate the necessary programs. A company gets more and saves money on licenses for the programs, because there is no need to install them on each user’s computer, just enough to purchase the necessary number of licenses based on the maximum possible simultaneous use of programs.

For home use

The undeniable advantages of this system has a home version of the application. Modern high-speed connection allows you to watch movies, “online” without downloading them to your computer. In the case of cloud all the movies that you bought, will be stored on the servers without taking up space on the shelves of your home, and can be accessed from anywhere. And also to play games, work with texts.

Many well-known companies have already taken up the idea of cloud computing and deploying them. For example Google.docs service allowing to collaborate on documents with people of different area, or eNlight Cloud from ESDS stores and host your files.

At the same time, some of the leading bookkeeping use such systems to store data in a safe place, often abroad, without losing the ability to work with them. The use of such offshore mainframe allows company executives to not to worry about their computers with all the accounting information.

The term web hosting, more commonly abbreviated as “hosting” means the practice of hosting one or more websites on a web server, accessible over the network and then viewed by online users.

The web hosting is a service provided by millions of companies worldwide who are called “Web Hosting Provider” or simply “hosting provider”. The owners of web hosting allow a website to have a space with certain characteristics (disk space, monthly bandwidth, email accounts, databases and other services). Within this space all web pages, images and general content required for the operation of the website are saved: a domain, such as www.esds.co.in is connected to this space so that the site is publicly accessible.

The web hosting services are hosted on servers, and these in turn reside in particular physical structures called Data Center, designed to have low temperatures and ensure continuity of service, so that websites will always remain visible.

The web hosting providers usually provide different levels of web hosting services that include:

• Dedicated Server
• virtual servers
• colocation web hosting services
• cloud hosting and applications hosting

How Many Web Hosting Companies Are There?

Currently in India, as well as in the rest of the world, there are thousands of companies that provide web hosting services: the distinction between them is mainly due to the fact that each decides to host their servers in a different nation.

These are real companies that work with staff specializing in providing customer service and maintenance of servers online: this type of activity is not performed with the same quality from all operators, and this leads to a differentiation of solutions and prices in the web hosting market.

Please refer to the section on choosing a web hosting company for all information and advice when purchasing a web hosting service.

Key Features Of  A Web Hosting Service

We conclude this brief introduction to web hosting services, listing what are the elements that are usually included in a web hosting service. A web hosting service is built with a number of features and technical elements:

Domain name: (such as www.esds.co.in) to associate the web space (website)
Web Space: 50 MB up to 20/30 GB of space to publish the files
Monthly bandwidth: the amount of bandwidth that we can use for our account
Subdomains: it is shaped as webhosting.esds.co.in, restricted or limited in number
Control Panel: software that allows you to manage your account
E-mail boxes: vary in the number and size available (these services usually also include Antivirus and Antispam)
Databases: MySQL, SQL Server or other types used
Statistics: a tool to monitor the access and visits to the pages of our website
Supported languages: PHP to Ruby on Rails, specify what types of programming languages that we use to write the pages of our website
WebMail: A tool to view your email online, in your browser.

Conclusion

In this article we have seen what is meant by web hosting. Services are often very complex and within them, as we have seen, there are dozens of different characteristics. Use our search engine, on top of this page, for the information and terms that you are not clear about.

Cloud services are very serious alternative to traditional models of access to IT, and their popularity among companies is growing rapidly. The advantages of such services may be to reduce overall costs, increase scalability, quick to provide solutions and simplifying management. On the other hand, to entrust the key components of technology to another company, then loosen control over them and create a risk that must be managed. The experience of outsourcing has led to a recognized approach to contracting to mitigate risks and maximize the benefits of using external services. However, the provision of services via multiple access cloud platform includes some of the nuances in the negotiation and conclusion of agreements. Therefore, CIOs should consider the following points.

1. Make sure that the terms of the agreement are under negotiation

Although the agreement in terms of the agreement during the negotiations may seem self-evident, many cloud providers do not usually allow you to make changes in its version of the agreement, arguing that the special conditions for various clients undermine model for community access and positioning service providers in the market. This does not mean that companies should not use the services on standard terms. But it is necessary to realize the risks involved.

With flexible terms of service you need to make sure that they are more beneficial than any standard agreement or such that you can only express my agreement by clicking the mouse. And also the fact that an agreement cannot be changed unilaterally. If these conditions are not met, your company must retain the right to terminate the agreement with a significant deterioration in its terms, without bearing any responsibility.

2. Make sure that the price structure does not preclude advantages of cloud solutions

Cloud services offer the possibility of rapid scaling-making, better asset utilization and overall cost savings. But the agreement may impose restrictions on these benefits. For example, providers of SaaS limit the number of available jobs, providers of IaaS – the minimum duration of use of infrastructure. You should ensure that the agreement do not restrict the company’s ability to control costs under proposed models of the clouds. Negotiations on the use of software needs to be carried out in accordance with established practice, and you assume discounts depending on the amount or term of the contract, the differentiation of licenses in accordance with user roles and limitation of price changes in the future.

3. Develop a service level agreement with the light of experience

Service level agreement (SLA), as is the case with any IT service should reflect the full range of services. For example, because the cloud provider will be responsible for Internet connectivity and infrastructure, availability of services should not be determined by monitoring the server in data center. The agreement may specify a particular user interface and query performance, timeliness of the major package of tasks and response time / removal in case of failure.

The goal is to develop a limited set of metrics, which ensures that customer satisfaction is in complete constitute and not  a violation of SLA. For each metric should be removed with no clear exclusion criteria (eg, service interruptions caused by the need for urgent repairs, and the concept of “urgency” is not defined). Your company should pay attention not only to compensation for breach of SLA, but also a thorough analysis and eliminate its causes. Ultimately, your company must guard against downtime and have the right to break the agreement in the presence of chronic problems.

4. Consider the impact of collective platform for the company’s work

Your company must assess the impact of providing services through multiple access platform and proactively address potential problems in current operations. For example, the agreement with the provider should provide that your organization will receive a choice acceptable to its break in service for the technical work in advance and will be notified for all actions affecting the service.

Release Management procedures must comply with the company, which will be entitled to use the penultimate version of the software. It should be possible loss of functionality of the release (or a change of software packages as an optional feature) and to mitigate this by determining the minimum period of notice, the right to work indefinitely with the previous version and break the agreement without indemnity provider. Try to pre-assess the needs in the management of releases that may occur as a result of social integration, when agreeing prices for access to test environments. Otherwise, you risk on getting a big bill for reference.

5. Note the shift in the cloud computing and out of it

Deployment in the cloud and the expiration or termination of lease also requires careful attention. As for the transition to the cloud, then you must make sure that the actions of the provider are clearly defined, and agree SLA with installing and configuring applications, as well as the downloading of data. If you receive additional professional services to deploy, should ensure that by default, they were tied to key cloud services. When not to use the cloud provider should help in the organization of migration, including export data and schema in a consistent format. It should also consider the requirement to periodically archive data to mitigate the current or connected with the peculiarities of contract difficulties in the way of an orderly transfer. The best protection is a proven ability to easily switch to another provider at a different decision. CIOs should be aware that a lack of confidence in safe transition to another provider weakens the position of the company in negotiations and narrows the range of options available.

Public clouds become revolutionary innovation in IT which is not just for small and medium-sized businesses. At the moment, most companies are experimenting with public clouds as a resource for development and testing or for production applications with low requirements for security, protection of personal data and service levels. It is believed that large companies of public clouds may be of interest only in a specific niche, given their large investments in legacy systems and the critical role of such systems for their business. Nevertheless, a number of these companies see great potential in public clouds. They feel an urgent need to make a choice between pro-active work with the public and the clouds behind the competition.

We talked with many of the companies to begin with development of public cloud services providers. Naturally, the applications that these companies would like to move to public clouds being studied to determine their cost-effectiveness in this model. We propose a generalization read reviews over the ten kinds of hidden costs in the public cloud. We have split these costs into four broad categories:

• one-time cost of migration
• limitations of the model of billing
• residual costs of management
• risk premium

Single migration costs

Its costs are associated with moving existing applications to the traditional, physical infrastructure in the public cloud, including costs to modify the application and transfer of server systems, and associated with writing off the cost of equipment depreciation.

In this category there are two types of potential costs, for which you need to watch.

Rewriting applications. In a typical company, the most used applications are not yet ready for transfer to the cloud. Certain applications that already run on virtual machines or developed in accordance with the standards of the cloud platform, are well-tolerated. But most require significant processing or rewriting code to ensure compatibility. This is especially true for legacy applications. Organizations need to assess the economic feasibility of the transfer of such applications. It may be cheaper to keep them in original form or to completely abandon them in favor of new ones.

Promoting standards of cloud platform and justification of the need to update technology invariably are difficult for application developers. This should be taken into account when considering the use of public clouds.

Write-offs for depreciation. Companies that choose to update the application or infrastructure to accelerate the transition to the use of public cloud, could face the impossibility of further depreciation of existing equipment for depreciation. This explains why many companies intend to begin the study of clouds, when the time comes to change equipment.

Limitations of the billing model

The current model of billing in relation to a public cloud computing has three features that may not correspond to the nature of your enterprise applications.

Award for flexibility. One of the most lauded features of public cloud is the payment of actual consumption, which allows companies to handle peak loads. Because prices are set properly, it could mean an additional fee for applications that are constantly in the public cloud and are subject to bouts of activity. What is important is the right choice with regard to each application. Applications that use smooth or predictable demand, would be economically efficient in the use of models for providing computing power on demand.

The fee for crossing the cloud. The fee for incoming and outgoing data – an important factor that we must always remember, especially in case of heavily used applications. Anxiety also causes an additional delay that occurs in the cloud of server hosting when requests for the transfer of large amounts of data.

Storage costs. Virtual multiplayer server architecture complexity and costly storage, causing the need for optimization through storage virtualization, storage, fast devices only frequently used data and deduplication. Most companies are just beginning to familiarize themselves with the appropriate tools.
Residual management costs

It is important to remember that you will not be able to abandon old service, which will have to continue to provide within the company, even after the transfer of applications in a public cloud.

Attention is drawn to four areas of management

Security, in particular update the OS and antivirus management. Of course, there are the usual and enhanced security measures to be taken when working with the public cloud. There are basic costs associated with software licenses, upgrades and maintenance when installing patches and antivirus software. These costs are present regardless of whether the company chooses a public or private cloud or traditional uses its own physical infrastructure.

Back up

Most public clouds do not provide backup. This is one of the many reasons why businesses often do not even consider the possibility of using public clouds. A significant part of the companies need to continue to maintain all the internal infrastructure for backup and data recovery. This is another cost item that increases the cost of public services, the clouds over the face value.

The redistribution of the load and automatic scaling. These capabilities are required to handle requests to the system, the optimal use of resources and prevent overloads. They require specialized equipment and costly new software. These costs are often passed on to corporate customers, but not to the providers of cloud services.

Services for integration. They are necessary to ensure full compatibility with the client installed and deployed in the cloud systems. Organizations that tolerate application in public clouds must be purchased for this expensive software.

Reward for risk

Use of the public cloud enterprises primarily should always be prepared for worst-case scenario. You need to prepare for the costs of transfer services at its own site in case your provider of public cloud collapses, or you just do not want more use of its services. It is important to determine the extent of the costs of such migration.

Here we should pay attention to the plan out the clouds. Requires thought-out plan migration from public clouds back to their own equipment (which is highly unlikely) or in another cloud (more realistically). Drawing up such a plan requires additional time and effort, as well as extraordinary financing. The companies that have already endured the application of a private cloud in the public or had a case to learn the standards of tolerance, migration costs will be small. But most companies do not have such experience. Therefore, for the transition to a public cloud, they should provide funds for the organization of deliberate withdrawal.

If you go into a cloud environment, above all, prepare a checklist for a successful transition into the clouds. Without a doubt, the cloud has became a hot topic all over the world because of the mobility and flexibility at lower cost. Cloud Infrastructure is the next-generation platforms that can provide tremendous value to any business. Many companies are now moving to the advanced and cost-effective concept of cloud hosting.

Successful migration to the cloud requires a sober assessment of all pros and cons. Here we try to touch up on some of the considerations in the transition to a cloud environment to help you to decide whether you need a transition into the clouds or not. Here are a few basic steps before moving to the cloud.

First, assess how much in demand and popular your website is, and what time is an acceptable downtime for you.

What level of control do you expect?

If you want to have total control and you want to use all the resources in the network, select the personal cloud.

What are the options you have access to?

Determine your need for access in advance.

What applications do you have now? It sounds too corny, but to go to the Web, make sure that these applications are Web-based applications. You can choose a few simple tools to convert them when necessary. If your application was originally designed for. NET / Java, you must understand before the migration and technological aspects of the compatibility options for these technologies in the cloud, where you plan to migrate.

Do you interact with other technologies?

Make sure that these technologies are also supported in the clouds, in which you want to migrate.

What type of database do you use in cloud computing?

It is important to make sure that the targeted cloud infrastructure support your database. If not supported, please check whether you can change the database or run an application in the cloud using its used in the database.

Flexibility and portability in cloud solutions: Check whether you can move between cloud providers. If you have access only to a specific provider, after the application is deployed, it can impose restrictions on your ability to migrate to another cloud platform.

Scalability: Able to indicate whether you provide dynamic scalability and redundancy of your application server. If your application is not able to scale dynamically, should not go into the clouds.

Security risks in the cloud, above all, evaluate the conditions of the provider and its reputation. After that, evaluate the security risks that can be detected when the client is accessible from any system connected to the network.

Upgrade costs: Check the different suppliers and packages that they offer, with detailed specifications. Weigh the costs and technical implications for updating your applications.

These are just some of the most important things you should consider before migrating into the cloudy environment. We hope that this will help you to choose the right kind of cloud hosting and help you achieve maximum benefit.

According to a study, international provider of ERP and enterprise software companies are increasing investment in technology, Cloud for back-office applications, but growth will remain stable this year.

The study was based on responses from 700 medium and large dynamic organizations from 12 countries.

Almost half of respondents (334) mentioned that at this time that they does not use any Cloud application  for back-office, and almost one third (222) said that between 1% and 25% of their back-office functions on Cloud. 32% of respondents believe that Cloud Computing will invest more this year and another 32% said it will invest at the same pace as in 2010.

The growth potential in the enterprise space is very important. Six respondents from companies of different sizes, geographical locations and sectors stated that their back-office functions are 100% based on Cloud.

An important point to note in this study is that there is no real knowledge of the functioning of cloud services, as the three main disadvantages perceived with Cloud Computing model are:

• Loss of control (51%)
• Internet Unit (54%)
• Difficult to customize (38%)

This clearly exposed the need to present a clear and unified concept, after presenting the different alternatives that allows for potential customers in this model can be identified easily.

Although 123 organizations of public sector mentioned that they currently use low cloud model, and although relatively few have been planned investment for 2011, 25% believe that this model represents between 25% and 50 % of its back-office applications in ten years, along with the 17% estimated to be between 50% and 75%. The main perceived advantage of Cloud technology, according to respondents in the public sector is its ease of maintenance.

According to the study, 24% of respondents are already using an application on Cloud for accounting , ahead of any other process, while little has been invested in other back-office applications, including managing the supply chain and production. Surprisingly, only 8% of respondents have invested in technology-based CRM Cloud.

Only 9% expected to remain at 100% applications in its facilities, while 8% expected to be completely based on Cloud. It seems that in the next 10 years, a hybrid approach will become the most popular model, and that 83% of respondents said they expected to have a technology mix that will combine applications and popular Cloud services.

As more becomes known, the Cloud model attracts more attention, but one of the challenges still unresolved is the issue of compliance. I’ve been thinking a bit about this and would like to share some ideas with you.

The spread of the cloud services often collides with the regulatory aspects. Some national laws such as the USA Patriot Act, affect the privacy of data and creates limitations for foreign companies to use cloud providers with data centers located in USA.

The Patriot Act empowers the FBI to require any organization to access your data, simply identify what information is relevant to an authorized investigation.

By using the services of certain providers of global cloud computing, that do not disclose where our data is stored, can be subject to local laws that conflict with our compliance objectives.

For example, European companies do not store their data in data centers located in U.S. territory because the Patriot Act directly conflicts with the demands of your privacy as defined by legislation (EU Data Privacy Initiative).

Another important point is that although cloud is a model of outsourcing, responsibly end the compliance is the company that uses the cloud service provider and not the cloud. And depending on the layer of cloud services contracted for, the degree of responsibility and control can vary greatly.

When hiring a IaaS service, the provider can take responsibility to ensure the integrity and compliance, data center and its hardware platforms and basic software. Moreover, this provider has no way to know the applications of its users and therefore cannot guarantee the compliance of the data from these applications. The control of adherence to the compliance rests solely with the user.

With the hiring of SaaS, the provider should take responsibility for compliance, since the user has no control over the application. But in both cases, the user is legally responsible for compliance and should therefore ensure that suppliers are adhering to avoid possible legal problems.

Imagine that the user should be adhering to the regulation PCI (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), and hires a cloud service. If the mode is engaged with IaaS, the provider must ensure only the compliance of the infrastructure.

The compliance of the application is on behalf of the user himself but if contracting is for SaaS, the provider should also provide compliance in the application layer. But the user should ensure with evidence that the provider is really compliance.

Another question still open is whether the laws of a country reaches other territories. For example, debate whether the Patriot Act achieves data centers located in territories outside the U.S., where these data centers are owned by American companies.

What to do before these questions? Ignoring is not the best alternative since the cloud has undoubtedly entered the business. So the best alternative is to study and legally analyze the issue.

Carefully review the aspects of privacy, jurisdiction, facilities and external audit forensic investigations, data retention period for legal ability and verification processes. It is important to select and cloud providers and work collaboratively with them on the issue of compliance.

Finally, there is always what to do, but do not keep doubts and fears about the use of cloud…

In a business world that does not forgive inefficiencies, the concept of value for the business becomes increasingly important and decisive in making executive decisions. Analyze the adoption of a technology or computer concept like cloud computing services, involves assessing their real value to the organization, whatever the valuation models, such as ROI (return on investment), ROA (Return on Assets), value the opportunity and so on.

Of course the value of technology depends directly on the importance of technology to business results. How quickly an application should be implemented to allow the creation of a new service or support the launch of a new product? The rate imposed by globalization and the Internet does not accept delays as found in the time of batch applications or client-server.

New technologies, speed and choices

Unfortunately most companies are not prepared to meet the demands at that speed. Allocating computing resources is not in the traditional models we have adopted to manage the technology infrastructure, a simple task.

Often it is necessary to enter into a process of selection and purchase of new dedicated servers. Other times, even when servers are available, you need an exhausting work of preparing the environment.

The infrastructure management models adopted by companies like Google, allow you to manage massive data centers automatically and efficiently. Why not use this model in enterprise data centers?

Models and solutions from the cloud providers

Consider the viewpoint of financial executives, the CFO (Chief Financial Officer). CFOs are keen to solutions such as cloud computing model and its pay-as-you-go “because this model exchange capital investment (Capex and Capital Expenditure) for opex (operating expense). The result is a cash flow, which is much better than the traditional model.

The CFO does not need to sign any checks before being able to have the computing power. Instead, he signs the checks as they consume computing resources.

The financial risk is also much lower, because, with the traditional model he spent the advance money on technology without knowing whether the result is even expected. In the cloud model, financial risk is monthly (use and pay) and he can more closely monitor how the money is being spent. Moreover, there is no depreciation of the asset. Finally, the CFO’s point of view, cloud is the model of your dreams.

Eliminating financial risks and benefits knowing

Although the economic appeal of cloud, converting capital expenditure (capex) in operational expenditure (opex) is very strong, the model of pay per use “pay as you go” quite adequately capture the economic benefit of the proposal.

The hours of computing acquired by a cloud can be distributed unevenly, i.e., we can use 80 hours of server today and tomorrow only 5, and pay only 85 hours.

In summary, the elasticity super provision eliminates the risk of excess or scaling (that generates under-utilization of resources) and sub provision (scaling down the requirements, creating bottlenecks) are differentiating factors and drivers of Cloud services.

Demand and possibilities

The ability to allocate resources and remove dynamically, in real time, to reconcile the demand with their resources adequately.

A simple example shows the benefit of elasticity. Suppose we estimate a demand in the peak period in 500 servers, but on the other hand, we also have a period of little use when we need only 100 servers.

The average use will be situated around a capacity of 300 servers per day, or 300 x 24, 7200 server times / day. But the cost of the servers, due to scaling the peak, is 500 x 24 or 12,000 servers per day. A factor 1.7 is higher than necessary.

In the cloud model, you pay only what was actually consumed. Gains can be substantial.

Another example. Suppose that 10% of users who receive poor service are online shoppers who drop out of the transaction and leave the basket, leaving the store. Business opportunities are lost.

The shop estimated a peak of 400,000 users (1000 users per server x 400 servers), but promotion has pushed demand to 500,000 users trying to access the site. In excess of 100,000 users who received a bad service, by our estimate, 10% or 10,000 have abandoned the transaction.

If this access profile is maintained, the store will be losing 10,000 transactions per hour, for a long time. In addition, negative ads, common in the Internet world, you can remove any new buyers.

In the model of cloud, the capacity fluctuates according to demand. There will be 500 servers when the store has 500,000 users, 400 servers when 400,000 users and 100 servers when only 100,000 users are accessing the store.

Do not lose customers and you pay only for what the shop demanded resources. That is, IT spending is directly related to the revenue of the business.

Economy in investments and according to the customer profile

Furthermore, as there is payment for the use, applications with different profiles of performance are collected in a much more appropriate. An example: an application that requires intensive CPU activity is low and I / O will be charged primarily by the cost of CPU time. Have another application, intensive I / O, will be billed by the volume of MBs transferred to and from the cloud.

There is another benefit of the Cloud hosting model through which it passes unnoticed: technological developments mean that the life of a machine as a server is relatively short. In a few years or months, a new server, with lower operating costs (such as energy and space) hits the market. In the traditional model, the cost of replacing the machines can be relatively high, preventing many companies from obtaining these benefits due to high capex required.

In the cloud , the provider (they have massive data centers) may replace equipment more easily and pass on these gains to customers due to competition in the market.

Let’s look at another positive point: the model of cloud company removes all the hassle and expense of administering all the technological stuff that usually is not their core business.

Operate and maintain a plethora of servers takes time and money. Offsetting this service to the cloud provider, the company concentrates its activities in IT in the business.

In the last two weeks I was involved in a 3 or 4 events on Cloud Computing. It is a subject that still generates much discussion. It’s inevitable, because cloud is a revolution in the way we deliver and consume IT. If this new way to see IT was understood immediately, there would be a revolution.

Today we will talk on : “How do I choose good cloud providers of cloud computing infrastructure, IaaS?“.

It’s an interesting point. Although there are several providers of IaaS, in some other nations and global, despite the similarities when looking at its marketing brochure, they are not created equally and the details show is totally different.

Each IaaS provider is designed and architected to meet market scales and different characteristics. Thus, some propose to serve large enterprises, highly demanding in terms of levels of service and compliance to regulatory issues, while others seek to serve small businesses, less demanding on these aspects. Their data centers are also designed with this scale in mind. To answer a few hundred customers, a data center will have characteristics different from others that should withstand a few million customers. Business objectives are also different, which will be reflected in investment and financial capacity of each provider.

The scale of the provider has an immediate impact on the flexibility and price offered to the market. The provider must first invest in a given computing capacity, capacity that will be offered to the market. That is, it must make an upfront investment to enter the market. If your customers have an average ticket too small, it will need much breath financially subsidize the business until their offerings for IaaS are profitable. Moreover, their range also influences the degree of elasticity that it can provide. For example, if your customers do not vary much in terms of computational and consumption, are near the limits of use of your data center, any increase in demand will require more investment and speed of service will take longer. In these cases it probably cannot guarantee that 100% of the funds accrued will actually allocated. On the other hand, providers with excess capacity and customers with significant variation in load, may offer different prices according to demand.

Data centers providers also deserve special attention

Some global companies are able to create multiple data centers with highly sophisticated security controls. Others, without this capacity investment, may have a data center more vulnerable to attack or even downtime situations.

The servers of these data centers are not the same. In general, a IaaS service is based on Intel-based servers and AMD with Linux and / or Windows. Does this issue concerns us? However, depending on the processor, it may or may not have virtualization capabilities built into the hardware, which improves the performance of virtual servers. Also make sure that the servers and clusters that make up the data center has redundant components, such as dual power supplies “or” dual network interface cards (NICs). The level of availability offered by the provider is affected by these characteristics.

Another technology being observed is virtualization. In general we find hypervisor VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM. If you’re worried about performance with a more detailed study will show which hypervisor is best for the level of expected performance and availability for your applications.

Depending on the virtualization technology and expertise of the provider, you may have different levels of availability. The worst thing is the crash of a physical server dropping all virtual servers that run on it. From there, it will be interesting to analyze how the provider will ensure availability: it can automatically remove the vitual server from one physical server unavailable to another, without affecting the operation of the users. And what is the cost of this level of availability?

As we talk about availability, we come to the point of disaster recovery. If the data center become unavailable, is there an alternative data center to continue operation of the provider? If so, how long the alternate data center can start operating?

Another point is the degree of automation and speed of the service provider provisioning user requests. If the provider’s provisioning process still require manual processes, the service may take several hours. Already a provider that offers automatic resource provisioning and self-service interfaces can meet the demands within minutes.

An important aspect is the SLA (Service Level Agreement). In selecting the provider considers the desirable levels of service and select only those who can, can be proven to offer such agreements. Important to place in contract penalties for breaches of these agreements. Consider that the level of a hosted application service provider in public IaaS traverses the network, be it Internet (for which has not always control) or a private network, where the deal must be closed with the cloud providers and network. The agreements ensure that there is something that is referring to DoS (Denial-of-service), as there is the ever present possibility of a public cloud provider to be attacked by hackers. After all, it  concentrates on it’s data center and hundreds of different companies.

So … what is the best provider?

Depends on the needs of each company. Some require a level of demand that the limit selecting a provider of global scale. Some do not demand such requirements and can live with a provider that does not provide very high levels of availability and flexibility.

The image highlights the king of gods, Zeus, and loaded with some clouds in a thunderstorm, apparently, is not? It is more or less how I started this article, noting that the topic cloud computing often suffers a great time and many rays are shot at Cloud Services, even by people who “say” IT specialists, but …. are just myths!

“Cloud is unsafe, if you put your files in the cloud you will not know where in the world they may be, to migrate its internal system for cloud can be a big risk, if the client does not have access to increased resources in real time, cloud is not for real”, and so a lot of nonsense (in my view) that I hear about the technology of cloud computing. Okay, see this is normal in the forums discussion, after all many people say that’s the one (behind the computer) and not really know anything, there is just a non sense commenting and cause discussion, but from the moment I start to hear things like this from people who “say” IT experts, the matter becomes more serious. Experts?! Huh?!

Come on, I will comment only on some of these myths, in short (but giving to understand), but I have to write a book here and the size that would be the article eventually driving out many.

1) Cloud is unsafe because you do not know where in the world are your files, can be in another country and if problems arise you will open an international process.

We put the files of clients in real clouds, and they wander the planet, god knows where they are now! Of course it does not exist, if you subscribe to a free Internet service could perhaps be spread around the world, but anyone who uses an enterprise class application will sign a free service, is it?

We know, yes, exactly where the files of all our customers in cloud are:, in Nashik city, India, within a data center in the central and, more specifically, within the arrays of hard drives.

2) Depending on the case, to put the files in the cloud can be more expensive or cheaper than putting “discs.”

This sentence is correct on the one hand, yes, everything depends on the case and may be more expensive or cheaper place or not a cloud system, but the term “cloud x discs” just boggles the mind of many people on the technology works. Where client files are stored in cloud? As I said above, the arrays of hard drives. And what are hard drives? Discs, disc only, not clouds that wander the planet!

3) Migrate your internal system that only you have access to “the cloud services” is totally insecure, you are vulnerable to hacker attacks.

Whoa, come on! You’re talking about intranet extranet x not? What to do with the technology of cloud? Migrate an internal (intranet) for “the cloud” actually is referring only to migrate to the Internet (extranet), just that! A system hosted on cloud has the same risk of attack than a system hosted on dedicated servers, clustered, shared etc.

4) If the cloud service offered by the company gives access to the client to increase the resources in real time, is not cloud computing the truth?

Why a corporate client will want to stop focusing on business, worry about elasticity, if there is a team that specializes in design at your disposal? It can be a very good role, yes, depending on the customer profile that the company wants to achieve. The technology of cloud computing is basically to have multiple servers working together and forming a large cloud of resources, and automatically migrated to other servers if a server fails. The company that sells will have full access to increase or decrease the resources of each client, making it virtually in real time. Many customers do not care to give anything, just working and want to resolve it gives a problem!

5) What is the difference then put a site or system in cloud?

Basically, stability, resilience and economy. Stability, because as you’re working in an environment that has redundant servers if one fails, another will automatically take over without the customer being affected. Elasticity, because you can increase or decrease the contracted resources quickly, so if you suffer a boom hits, you can quickly upgrade to take the hit. Economy, as the service goes much more into account than to hire dedicated servers for that has clustered redundancy, and often the application does not consume nearly all of the resources of these servers. Have you hired cloud exactly according to your need, without wasting resources, power and space?

If you are thinking of migrating your site or application to cloud, do not be afraid of those things you were talking out there. Like everything else that comes to revolutionize, there are always some people who want to put this innovation down, invent problems and a lot of stuff. Cloud is here to revolutionize, and is already revolutionizing! The sales figures and investment firms are doing for themselves.