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Living with a cloud – paradigm shift in the way we work Part 3

In this third post in this series, I will discuss abstraction more in detail. The objective here is to ultimately lead to convergence of user and the technology.

Driving the cloud engine

Carrying forward the analogy of a car driver, let’s look at cloud adaptation. Assuming that an organization has not committed itself completely to the cloud, but has a mixed portfolio of online infrastructure – some dedicated servers and a bit of cloud services. Like I have said earlier, large enterprises like to move slowly and with reason. As such, the earlier order of things was organized, in the sense that dedicated servers were reserved for specific activities. As a result, one part of the enterprise did not know what the others were doing, though infrastructure may have been controlled centrally by the technology group. Everyone was happy with this setup.

Cloud Changes The Order

Enter the cloud and there is bound to be disruption in the way things are organized. There are no dedicated servers reserved for a specific activity and this means relinquishing control of infrastructure. Moreover, management has to get used to driving the car without really understanding what is happening under the hood. This may look like a simple problem but the psychological effect can be devastating. Not knowing the mechanism of operation is something the management has the live with. This is an abstraction layer which the cloud has unwittingly introduced into the system. Instead of giving instructions to the driver, the management itself has taken over the wheel. It will take time for management to adjust to the new way of doing things.

The cloud abstraction

There is no doubt that the cloud will win. Meanwhile, managements are going to struggle with the changed order due to the introduction of cloud. The management will be forced to become the driver which is great for enterprises. They can now focus on their primary activity – that of selling their products and services rather than spending enormous amount of time managing the infrastructure. This is where a paradigm shift in the role of management will occur. Those organizations which successfully maneuver their mindset and way of working will transition smoothly into the cloud, leading to massive savings in infrastructure costs. Looking at it from a different angle, those organizations which try to balance the old way of working with the new will totter. Neither will they be able to fully absorb the new management culture, nor will they save from redundancies created in their technical setup. This is where organizations need to focus. A reorientation and revamping of roles within the management must happen along with adaptation of cloud technology.

Facilitating the changeover

Here I foresee the emergence of a new breed of consultants. They would facilitate enterprises to appreciate and adapt to operations which are more abstract and happen under the hood. There is no reason for the drivers to know the mechanism but yet feel completely in control. What happens if their motor stalls during their journey? They would do the same as you would, if your car stalls – call the mechanic.

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About the Guest Author:

Sankarambadi Srinivasan, ‘Srini’, is a maverick writer, technopreneur, geek and online marketing enthusiast rolled into one. He began his career as a Naval weapon specialist. Later, he sold his maiden venture and became head of an offshore Database administration company in Mumbai. He moved on as Chief Technology Officer of one of the largest online entities, where he led consolidation of 300 online servers and introduced several Web 2.0 initiatives. He holds a Master’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication.

How to Calculate Cost Savings When Migrating to Cloud Platform

There are still a few misconceptions about cloud computing. Because of this, company managers often veer between two extremes: they either embrace the cloud totally or simply disregard it. The problem generally occurs when the CTO of a company focuses on the infrastructure cost savings instead of taking a holistic approach. Here are a few areas which organizations must look at before migrating to a cloud platform.

Hardware and software costs

This aspect of cloud infrastructure is obviously the beginning point. In the case of dedicated servers, we have to look at the actual expenditure. This includes the hardware, network and data center expenses and the cost of spares in case of emergency. The software expenses would include operating systems, applications and specialized tools. The hardware and software expenses must be calculated on an annual basis.

Cost of scaling and flexibility

Many online enterprises like gaming portals, e-commerce, music streaming and download sites experience fluctuating loads. The cost of adding or eliminating hardware (servers) annually must be calculated. We must keep in mind that opportunity costs must be arrived at using reasonable assumptions.

Salaries to technical staff and maintenance cost

Technical staff salaries are higher compared to other vocations. We must remember that technical staff can be replaced or augmented by using resources provided by cloud vendors, which can be a big plus. Learn more about facilities which can reduce the cost of employing permanent technical staff.

Downtime and efficiency

Online entities cannot afford any downtime. However, traditional data center operations fall prey to error conditions and failures due to several factors. Server overload can lead to deteriorated user experience leading to poor fulfillment. The cost to the company, in such circumstances, cannot be easily determined.

Unified communication

Usually IT infrastructure in any organization tends to be dispersed and distributed. The ownership of these systems and processes is also not clearly defined. This situation can be frustrating for actual users, since there is no accountability and no one is centrally responsible for the entire IT infrastructure. The cost due to this diffused operational condition can be considerable. When contemplating migration to a cloud platform, an organization must unify all operations and bring them under one single communication system. This will benefit the organization and lead to better efficiencies.

A collaborative platform for vendors and distributors

This is an era of collaboration – not only within an organization but also with others outside. Supply chain management systems work well only if the vendors from the purchase side and the distributors from sales are brought together to work closely as a team along with the organization. Cloud infrastructure provides an excellent environment for such collaborative practices.

Conclusion

The cost of running a traditional IT infrastructure is therefore not limited to hardware expense alone. When migrating to a cloud environment, we must always look at the big picture. New systems and processes must be exploited to derive maximum benefit from technology. New opportunities to consolidate diverse operations must be explored. Collaborative environment should be nurtured and consciously developed leading to better efficiencies. Embracing cloud computing is a matter of having a mindset geared towards advancement and future growth.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Sankarambadi Srinivasan, ‘Srini’, is a maverick writer, technopreneur, geek and online marketing enthusiast rolled into one. He began his career as a Naval weapon specialist. Later, he sold his maiden venture and became head of an offshore Database administration company in Mumbai. He moved on as Chief Technology Officer of one of the largest online entities, where he led consolidation of 300 online servers and introduced several Web 2.0 initiatives. He holds a Master’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication.

How Does the Cloud Benefit the Tourism Industry?

The versatile range of benefits offered by cloud computing technology has revolutionized practically every industry, and the tourism sector is no exception. While the travel industry is late in joining the cloud computing bandwagon, the amazing impact of the cloud on business performance is creating ripples. Here are some ways in which the cloud can impact the travel industry:

Scaling resources in peak seasons

With growing business demands, every industry needs to scale up resources. This is especially true of the tourism sector with its fluctuating demands. Festive seasons vary with location and culture, and travel agencies need to scale up resources during peak times and scale down resources on low days. It is not a feasible idea to purchase infrastructure and manage it equally all days. With a cloud-based infrastructure, travel agencies can enjoy highly scalable resources while paying only for hours used. For a better illustration, check out High Availability features of GMO Cloud Hosting.

Increased efficacy

To stay ahead of their competition, travel agencies need to provide high quality services that are quick, easy to use, efficient, and reliable. This is what cloud computing services offer. By moving to the cloud, travel agencies can afford to run robust networks that can handle huge traffic. In addition, travel websites need to depict the beauty and elegance of travel destinations and make them enticing to potential clients. Streaming audio and video requires high-end IT networks.

Today, travel agencies need to offer comprehensive travel packages. Right from booking flight tickets and local transportation to reserving hotel rooms, the travel agency needs to take care of every aspect of travelers’ needs. Visitors need to search huge volumes of data to design their tour programs. Cloud computing is the right solution, as the technology offers highly efficient data management solutions that can cater to businesses of all sizes.

Increased security

One of the most important requirements of a travel website is security. People use credit cards to book travel tickets, and when sensitive information is passed on to the site, it is extremely important that it passed through secured gateways. Even if you purchase secure network solutions (which isn’t really feasible), you need to monitor them and update them on a regular basis. With a cloud-based service, you don’t need to worry about security solutions. Highly secured networks are engineered and maintained to offer a robust network that is simple to use, efficient, reliable, and highly secure.

Intuitive software solutions

With a cloud-based service, the travel agency gets the flexibility to create highly intuitive software solutions at affordable prices. The cloud infrastructure offers an ideal platform to design intuitive software solutions for travel needs. Your website visitors can access web applications and book tickets from anywhere using any mobile device or PC. Businesses that embrace the cloud will stay ahead of the competition.

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About the Guest Author:

Kaushik Das is an engineer, research analyst and a technical writer in the areas wireless, IT, enterprise software, next-generation hosting, storage and renewable energy. He specializes in competitive analysis, market research, industry insights, white paper and actionable web content development.

Big Data Can Also Mean Big Errors!

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey back in the year 2000 generated more astronomical data in a few weeks than had been generated by astrophysicists in the entire history of astronomy. The Chile-based Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will generate this quantity of data every five days once it goes online in 2016.

If you think that this type of data can only be generated in space, think again. Wal-Mart handles more than a million transactions per hour and its databases are estimated to be about 167 times larger than all the books in the American Library of Congress. Similarly Facebook has 40 billion+ photographs, and the human genome with 3 billion base pairs — both examples of enormous data sets.

While it is fashionable to say that analysis of big data hold all the possible answers, there are a number of issues that need to be understood. When large amounts of data are analyzed, many correlations emerge, i.e. a situation when A implies B. In such a situation, if A increases, then B increases as well. However, as the number of variables increases, the number of chance correlations increases as well. A chance correlation is just a random coincidence. N.N. Taleb, in his book “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, describes how the number of spurious correlations grow as the number of analyzed variables increase.

This, Taleb says, is the problem with big data. The number of spurious results can be larger than the number of accurate results by a factor of as much 8 times!

Should we dismiss big data then? Does it have no value if the spurious results are so many?

Fortunately, the answer is no, but it does point to the pitfalls of using statistics recklessly. With the growing use of big data and its possible correlations, statisticians are suddenly back in demand. I previously discussed a situation where a retail store chain was using its vast databases to determine if a customer was pregnant. Statistics played a big role in that research and even more powerful statistical analysis is now being brought into play. Fortunately, the inherent power of the cloud means that more and more complex analyses are now possible, if only one knows how to do it.

What this means is that statistics as a career option is becoming increasingly popular too. Cloud computing and big data have ensured that the nerd who really understands statistics will be able to command his or her own price. The CIO in companies is now becoming an integral part of strategy meetings. Since this analysis is such an integral part of company strategy, it is critical that the cloud infrastructure companies use is robust and reliable. For an example, check out GMO Cloud’s High Availability page. CIOs are careful to choose great statisticians and great cloud service providers. Both are essential for a good night’s sleep!

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About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.

Commercial Cloud Storage for Everyday Consumers

A quiet revolution in data storage has occurred in recent years, with consumers all around the world enthusiastically adopting cloud storage services for their daily needs. This year seems to be a pivotal year in this massive data migration. It is expected that by the end of 2013 nearly 615 million people will be using the cloud to store their personal data. This is amazing when you consider that at the end of 2011 there were about 150 million people storing their data on consumer storage clouds. The number could reach 1.3 billion people in the next four years.

What is causing this massive migration to consumer cloud storage?

One of the most important factors that has benefited cloud service providers and consumers is the wide availability of mobile broadband and high speed online access. We have reached a point where it is often more practical to store data in the cloud and to have nearly instant access to it from anywhere. The most important technology firms such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple have followed this trend, delivering virtualized services to expand their markets rapidly. Many cloud storage providers that have popped up recent in years as well, the most notable of which are probably Dropbox, Mozy, and Carbonite.

Today it is possible for most consumers to get at least two to five gigabytes of free cloud storage from most providers, which have adopted a freemium model with different tiers depending on the amount of storage. Is this cost effective for these cloud storage providers? Perhaps not in the long term.

Many of these transactions continue to lose money for the companies in question. However, the potential for monetization lies in the ability of these companies to partner with mobile and cloud service providers in order to provide other services that can go well with data storage. Like GMO Cloud, there are other services these companies can subscribe to that everyday consumers can benefit from.

Cloud traffic in the Asian market to grow enormously by 2016

Nowhere is this consumer adoption of cloud services more obvious than in the Asia Pacific market. Studies show that the APAC region is set to process more data in the cloud than many other place in the world. By 2016, it is expected that nearly 40% of cloud workloads will occur in Asia. Leading this trend are five countries: Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. These countries’ combination of advanced IT infrastructure, high broadband speeds, and adequate government regulation have resulted in an environment conducive to the development of a robust consumer cloud storage and cloud services market.

However, the real strength of the Asia Pacific market lies in the fact that many emerging economies in this region are also making a strong investment in technology and cloud computing. Countries like China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Thailand are set to contribute to the growth of consumer cloud storage and other services in the region.

The year 2014 will be a pivotal year, it will be the first time when more than half of all computing in the region is done in the cloud rather than by traditional means. This trend is occurring worldwide. It is predicted that by 2016, the global computing processing traffic in the cloud will quadruple, mainly in the areas of data storage, and in the areas of production and development. About 17 percent of cloud traffic by 2016 will be directly fueled by consumers using the cloud for storage or things like video and audio streaming. While the Asia Pacific market will lead the way in the development of the cloud, it is important to remember that this is a global trend which will also see growth in places like Africa, South America, and the Middle East as well.

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About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.