Cloud Computing: Back To The Future
Cloud computing is a back-to-the-future movement that makes running IT systems more flexible, more responsive and more affordable.
Around 75 people got the lowdown on the cloud from a variety of local experts in "2 Cloud or Not 2 Cloud: The Business Case for Cloud Computing," a seminar presented by Ann Arbor-based Online Tech Inc. at the Hilton Garden Inn in Southfield.
The simplest definition of cloud computing, Online Tech partner Mike Klein said, is to take an organization's existing servers and pool them into far fewer large super-servers, then use software to split up those super-servers into virtual servers -- and expand or contract the resources devoted to those virtual servers, instantaneously, as needed, using only the software, not changes in hardware, which takes longer.
"In a lot of ways, it's back to the future, 30 years ago when we were all in the mainframe business with time sharing," Klein said.
The characteristics of cloud computing, he said, are that it's on-demand, elastic, scalable, and rapidly provisioned.
There are several types of cloud computing -- the public cloud, computing resources offered by companies like Google on a pennies-per-hour basis. The drawback here, Klein said, is that "security is not a key characteristics." At the other end of the spectrum, the private cloud, in which hardware, network and resources are dedicated to a specific customer for a specific set of applications. Here, security is everything.
There are also variations or hybrids of those two extremes, including a managed cloud offering that offers a "slice" of a private cloud. It offers high availability, good security and a mix of managed services, but may not pass muster for users whose IT systems have to be certified under stringent federal or industry regulations.
Online Tech partner Yan Ness said the Ann Arbor company drank its own Kool-Aid and moved its internal systems to the cloud -- thousands of servers, hundreds of Internet connections and networkdevices and racks and cages, all of which has to work 100 percent of the time for its clients.
Through the project, Online Tech learned it had had 23 servers plus four database servers -- each only about 10 percent busy. All of that activity was moved into two Dell servers, either one of which could actually handle the load by itself.
The advantages? Since since apps can be quickly moved into unused areas of the new servers for testing or debugging, those activities move much faster. Uptime has increased, since struggling applications can always be moved without having to shut down a physical server. Upgrades, backup and disaster recovery capabilities all improved.
Online Tech is also saving substantially on its energy bill -- translated whimsically for the event, the switchover saves the company the amount of energy it would take to drive to the moon and halfway back every year.
David Barton, principal at UHY LLC, reiterated tha cloud computing offers elasticity, rapid provisioning and scalability; efficiency on the pay-as-you-go model; resource pooling, with shared expertise; and ubiquitous availability, with Internet connectivity.
Whether you compute on the cloud or privately, Barton said, the risks are the same -- data security, confidentiality, integrity and availability. Companies and institutions can't outsource those risks, but can only accept them, transfer them through bonding, or mitigate them by crerating controls.
Barton said the security benefits of cloud computing include economies of scale, since security resources are cheaper when implemented on a larger scale; being a market differentiator, since a business can take advantage of marketing the security capabilities of your cloud provider; and standardized vulnerability management, since virtual machines are generally prehardened and regularly updated with the latest patches and security settings.
The unique risks of cloud computing, he said, are the loss of governance and control, issues of data commingling and who gets first crack at resources during conflicts. There's also the risk your cloud provider will be acquired or simply fail.
Ness then described how a cloud reset worked in the real world for OTC, and Dean Scaros, CEO of Pay-Ease, and Tom Numbere Jr., president of PCG International, described how it worked for Pay-Ease, a kiosk self-service payment company. Rod Mach, principal at HyperLogic, described some of the challenges involved in moving to cloud computing.
More at www.onlinetech.com.
