Cloud computing: coming soon to a network near you
It is hard to imagine an engaging, amiable personality like
Stephen Fry sparking a debate about new technology, but that’s just
what happened in October when the actor, presenter, Guardian
technology columnist and self-styled ‘dork’, took on the subject of
cloud computing.
Admittedly, coming up with a definition of cloud computing
greatly depends on whether you speak to a marketing man or a
programmer. Mr Fry bravely attempted to give a simple explanation
of the process and its evolution, and pointed out the advantages of
offerings like Google Apps, an office suite that allows users to
access and store email and other files via any internet-linked
device. As Fry pointed out, several services like Google Apps are
free (currently), easy to use and accessible by virtually any
device that reaches online since “all is in the cloud”.
But, for Alan Williamson, co-founder of software company AW2.0
Ltd., Fry and many others touting ‘cloud computing services’ miss
the larger picture. “There are two sides of the discussion,” he
argues. “Are you a consumer of cloud computing or are you a user of
cloud computing? Google Mail is a classic example; people keep
talking about it as a cloud application. It’s not, it’s merely a
service. It may not even be running on clouds. If you use Google
Mail all you’ve done is outsource your email.
‘You wouldn’t say that if software developers are based in India
they are in a cloud, just that you’ve outsourced your development.
Just because I drink milk doesn’t make me a farmer, and just
because my company uses Google mail it doesn’t mean I have put my
company on the cloud.” For Williamson, this type of
oversimplification “pollutes the cloud world,” which is why, he
says: “people like me are jumping up and down and saying: “No!
You’ve got that so wrong”.”
New flavour
So, just how does Williamson explain cloud computing? Really, he
admits, it isn’t really anything new: “It is utility computing, it
is grid computing, it’s just a different flavour.”
Essentially, it allows users to access massive on-demand computing
power by using the server and compute resources of online giants
like Amazon or Google. And access to this capacity is achieved
through the internet.
As Williamson sees it, from an end-user perspective, that is,
someone simply consuming applications from ‘cloud providers’, the
nuts and bolts of this new delivery mechanism doesn’t matter, as
long as it works the way you want it. (“If I buy a car, do I care
how the assembly line works or how many people worked on it?). But
for those responsible for innovation and application development,
particularly in a service-oriented company, he says, it is really
exciting.
Cloud providers, says Williamson, “give you a virtualised
server, just as if you had bought it. What you do with those
services is up to you. You can run data analysis, data processing;
effectively any Linux or Windows programme you have got within your
company will be able to utilise cloud computing.” It is this
interoperability that is a big advantage and the twist for this new
computing concept. It means that the barriers to entry are
incredibly low. There is no need to re-architect or redevelop
existing software to use this on-demand world.
For a service company or an entrepreneur looking to provide an
automated service via the web, this can mean that the time from
getting from an idea to a new offering is now slashed, and there is
much less risk. As Williamson describes: “Traditionally, you get an
idea for a site, you work up a guestimation, build up an
infrastructure and hope it will work.”
With cloud computing, an initial test can run on the provider’s
hardware, using the provider’s infrastructure. If it works, you can
choose to continue using the cloud configuration, or you might then
want to build your own infrastructure. This time, as Williamson,
points out, “based on what you need, rather than on what you think
you need. You can create new web companies in a heartbeat.”
If you are a company that could occasionally use some additional
compute resource or storage, without having to add in-house
capacity – and all the funding, planning and support that entails
– the option to access on-demand computing is tempting. Or,
you can develop with a long-term view to using the cloud world,
integrating it into the data processing element of your company,
for instance, and running the whole process through the cloud
provider. “You forget about load balancing, file systems, how to
configure a database,” says Williamson. “In this virtualised
environment, you can move away from all of the logistics, and
worrying about hardware failure, network failure, all of that
stuff.”
For Duncan Johnston-Watt, founder and CEO of Cloudsoft, this
interoperability also means greater choice and flexibility for
cloud users, or ‘subscribers’, as multiple providers make
available, or ‘publish’, computing resources: “You can say, “today
I’ll tap into it here and there, tomorrow I won’t need any
capacity, but in a week I might”. And rather than being tied into a
particular provider you can move from cloud to cloud. So there is
greater freedom of choice with this pub/sub model.”
Network imperative
For those that have already invested in a robust network linking
to the internet, Johnston-Watt says,“you have already got the basic
infrastructure in place to make cloud computing a reality, because
without networking the whole thing falls apart. Central to this is
being able to provide the bandwidth and IO [input/output] to make
this possible.”
As cloud computing takes off, he believes, capacity will be a
battleground. “If you are relying on doing this just over the
public internet, one of the issues you are faced with is getting
data in and out of the cloud. If you’ve got large amounts of data,
just having the application start up doesn’t help; it doesn’t have
the data to work with. Without a high-quality backbone network this
stuff will definitely falter.”
So, whether you approach it from purely an end-user perspective
or from the developer or service provider point of view, it sounds
like this is potentially a great way for businesses to expand their
compute capacity and innovate pretty hassle-free. But sounding a
note of caution is David Hobson, managing director of Global Secure
Systems, who points out that the cloud world isn’t the right place
for everyone, right now.
If your business or application involves working with any
customer or personal data, he warns, “you have numerous obligations
and those are only going to get worse.” When the new Criminal
Justice and Immigration Act comes into force in November, he says,
it will allow the Information Commissioner’s Office to levy fines
of up to half a million pounds on directors where it finds a misuse
of data.
This will undoubtedly focus everyone’s mind on security, which
may take the shine off the cloud. “When you are storing data in the
cloud, you cannot ensure confidentiality, and that could be on a
number of levels,” says Hobson. “One is encryption of the data, you
could be sending out postcards that can be read on the journey
through. Second, you don’t know who has access to that data
wherever it is stored. The other issue is integrity, you can’t be
sure that someone is not going to play with, amend, or breach your
data when it is not in your control.”
For businesses, they need to assess the risk versus the rewards,
and for some small organisations, Hobson reckons the pros outweigh
the cons. For some, however, he feels there’s no room for
manoeuvre. “For the likes of an IFA, cloud computing really is a
no-no. For large organisations where maybe they are only
manufacturing widgets, there may be no problem for them – if there
are no IP issues and the need to store highly confidential
data.”
What concerns Hobson most is that people do consider the risks,
and he likens the situation to the ongoing credit crunch: “It is a
classic example of people going along thinking this is terrific way
to work, until all of sudden it isn’t. It’s like jumping out of an
airplane; it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop.
It needs to be regulated properly and people need to understand the
risks.”
But those large businesses that would like to use cloud
computing don’t need to be completely scared off, says Cloudsoft’s
Johnston-Watt. One solution, again suited to those with strong,
secure networks at hand, is to implement internal ‘cloudbursting’
and ‘cloud cover’, which means harnessing the benefits of cloud
computing inside of an existing company infrastructure – in
the words, creating a private cloud. It’s the kind of approach
favoured by, for example, investment banks, he says, who can see
the usefulness of pooling resources in a cloud configuration
– with the attendant advantages of increasing server
efficiency, speedy deployment of new applications or prototype
activities, and improved resiliency – but who don’t want to take
chances with the security of data by sending it out of house.
At least not until they’ve gained greater experience working with
cloud computing and are better able to quantify the risks
involved.
The concept could even be widened out so that groups of similar
organisations could pool their resources, within a secure
environment. Johnston-Watt points to the financial services sector,
where initiatives like central clearing and SWIFT arose out of the
need to provide core services and where cooperation made good
sense. Similarly, organisations like the NHS might be able to
realise cost and efficiency benefits by sharing hardware and
resources, with cloud computing as the enabling technology.
Are you ready to step into the cloud? The answer may lie in Alan
Williamson’s earlier distinction. If you are simply a cloud
consumer, who will look to others to lead the way, he says, it may
be better to sit back and wait for the terminologies to mature,
security and stability to be better addressed, and for market
leaders to pop up: “Shutting the door and not opening it for a
couple of years, is probably the best thing you could do.” If you
are a developer – what he calls a user – it offers some
incredible opportunities to innovate. The question then for you is,
can you resist?
