Actually Cloud computing is the convergence of three major trends, which are:
- Virtualization- which means the applications are separated from the infrastructure
- Utility computing- where is it available as a shared priced service
- Software as a Service- applications are available on the web on a subscription basis
It is a known fact that after the development of the internet, broadband was very cheap.
But people realized that everyone didn’t have a building house data center, so the computer running the application can be pretty far away from the person who is using it.
As a result a fast internet connection was needed between them to solve this problem.
So this is what lead to ‘Software as a Service’, where a fast machine and someone else’s data centers runs the applications, and we use it through our web browsers.
Basically someone else owns the applications and we pay a fixed subscription fee.
This had lot of advantages that time. The main advantage was, people didn’t have to worry about the machines running the applications, because they didn’t own them and they were someone else’s. And the people using the application do not have to devote time and resources in developing and maintaining the applications.
Just like the advantages, there were some disadvantages as well. Main disadvantage was that SaaS did not work with large organizations which had complex requirements. And some companies did not like the idea of keeping the important information outside their firewall. Most importantly the SaaS model did not align the cost to the usage.
What organizations really expected was a combination. They wanted the convenience and simplicity of SaaS and the flexibility of traditional computing.
So this is when virtualization came in, which was better than SaaS. With virtualization the applications and infrastructure were independent. Virtualization allowed services to be easily shared by many applications and the virtualized applications to virtually run anywhere.
Virtualization simply means packaging the application with everything that it needs to run; including the databases, middleware, and operating systems.
And this unit of virtualized application has the ability to run pretty much everywhere. So this does not have to be running in your application provider’s data center or yours. It can simply run on the Cloud.
Cloud is simply the computing service that charges you based only on the amount of computing resources you use. This ‘pay as you go’ feature is the most famous feature of Cloud computing in today’s business market. And it is the main difference between SaaS and Cloud.
Why do companies like Cloud computing this much and why do they adopt?
The main reasons are the business goals which are to reduce costs while increasing sales.
But in today’s business world these are dependent on business applications and it’s the most effective way that they can achieve their goals.
However these business applications are too expensive. And most of the time there is a world of complexity behind each of these applications. Because they mostly need a data center with office space, power, cooling, bandwidth, network, servers and storage, complicated set of software and an expert team to run these software and etc. etc.
And when new upgrades or versions come, it will bring the whole system down most of the time. This is the situation for only one application but businesses need many applications like this for their success.
So Cloud computing is a better way to run your applications. This will help you to run applications on a shared data center instead of running them yourself. It is just simple like plugging in and using which makes it fast to get started and which costs less. And this does not need storage and servers, no technical team is needed to run it and no upgrades are needed.
Any application that runs on Cloud will only require logging in, customizing and starting to use it. This simply changes the way we think about software as well.
Businesses prefer running many types of applications on Cloud, due to many reasons. One of the reasons is because the application can be up and be running in just few days, which is impossible in traditional business software environments.
And they cost less because you don’t need to pay for all the people, products, and facilities to run them. They are more scalable, more secure and more reliable.
However Cloud computing has many disadvantages. The main is that it needs a constant internet connection and it will be impossible if you cannot connect to Internet. Also it will be impossible with low speed Internet connections such as dial-up connections. But web based applications usually require lot of bandwidth, so it might take ages just to go through pages in a document, if the user has a low-speed internet connection.
Cloud computing is secure, but the data will be stored on the Cloud and will be in the hands of an external provider, therefore the companies will be facing a security risk due to this reason.
From a research it was found that 45% of the people believe that the risks of Cloud computing overweigh the benefits, but Cloud computing has become a buzz word in today’s world and every company is trying to adopt this model in some way.
So this is how hSenid has done it, putting the SDP on the cloud. This brings many benefits to the operators and also to the developers.
Cloud SDP will basically reduce CAPEX and OPEX since there is no need for new hardware or people to run the cloud based applications. And also the operator doesn’t have to pay for an entire system, they only have to pay for what is needed and if it’s successful and if they want more computing power they can pay more or else not.
In traditional market it takes a huge time to put an application to the market as it needs to go through testing, integration etc. which is a bit of a difficult task. But with Cloud SDP, you can do the testing while developing and building the application and you will be able to put the applications to the market very fast.
And most importantly it’s highly scalable. When more computing power is needed Cloud enables you to scale up as much as you need and if the acceptance of your application reduces, you can reduce the servers and pay only for what you need.
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