Cloud Computing

I. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Over the years many organizations have invested in massive in-house computing capacities and specialized Information Technology (IT) staff around the world in order to support their primary business processes or to achieve a competitive advantage. According to Porter and Millar IT creates competitive advantage by giving companies new ways to outperform their rivals. To gain competitive advantage over its rivals, a company must either perform these activities at a lower cost or perform them in a way that leads to differentiation and premium price (Porter & Millar, 1999). These days, organizations are looking for IT to operate more efficiently and help to reduce the overall costs. The concept of outsourcing has contributed to this development by transferring entire business functions to an external service provider.

A recent phenomenon in the domain of outsourcing is called Cloud Computing. "Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically re-configured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guarantees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider by means of customized SLAs" (Vaquero, 2009).

The arrival of the Internet has accelerated the commoditization of IT by providing a perfect delivery channel for generic applications. More and more, companies will fulfill their IT requirements simply by applying pay-as-go utility models, infrastructure services with value added platform services or fee-based infrastructure services with value-added application services (Zhang & Zhou, 2009). In essence, users of cloud computing "outsource" their data processing needs to a third-party (Jaeger, Lin, & Grimes, 2008). Thus, the computing world is rapidly transforming towards developing software for millions to consume as a service, rather than to run on their individual computers (Buyya, 2008). According to Gartner, cloud services will lead to the use of new business models (service aggregators, integrators, brokers, and franchises) and favor the growth of sourcing models based on multiple service providers, like selective sourcing and prime contractor/ service integrators (Gartner(c), 2009). So cloud computing is going to change the way IT is organized and will definitely have an effect on every organization that is using IT. The principle of cloud computing is perhaps clear in theory; the question is how this phenomenon can be adopted in practice, so in this thesis the researcher's major goal is to investigate cloud computing and to propose a convincing framework for an organization to migrate to the cloud.

1.2 Problem statement

Academic research on the migration of organizations to cloud computing and in particular adopting the best set of strategies required towards cloud computing is minimal and profuse. The cloud is a shift in computing architecture and IT philosophy that demands a serious strategic approach to understand where it fits within your overall technology deployment blueprint now and in the future. The majority of companies lack a cloud computing strategy, according to recent research from TPI, a sourcing data and advisory firm and a unit of Information Services Group. "Cloud Computing is widely seen as the next evolution of IT services, yet only a fraction of organizations have a strategy for dealing with it," said Kevin Smilie, Partner, TPI Cloud Computing Business Solutions. "Developing a plan to take advantage of this game-changing innovation should be at the top of every organizations agenda." Successful use of cloud computing requires a strategy and a step-by-step approach. To find out what these steps and strategies are we must first cover the subjects that are important elements of the processes underpinning cloud computing and consider what cloud computing is, the activities on the cloud and the benefits it offers to organizations wanting to migrate to the cloud, specifically in this thesis we will be comparing the set of strategies deployed by major players in cloud computing such as Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud computing to identify the best set of strategies for an organization to migrate to the cloud. A survey by Zoomerang Online Surveys and Polls shows that 13% of SMB's (Small Medium Businesses) are planning to migrate to the cloud this year. The researcher's goal is to propose a framework for an organization to migrate to cloud computing. To achieve this our proposed framework determines first of all the best set of strategies required towards cloud computing, analysis of cloud computing architecture, identification of CC technologies, identification of suitable infrastructure and platform within cloud computing, the security measures within the cloud, the failures that can happen and its recovery methods and finally the cost and risk analysis of migrating to the cloud. This thesis also specifically addresses and identifies the different activities on the cloud in various application domains. A survey by Zoomerang Online Surveys and Polls shows that 45% of IT workers in SMB's are not familiar with cloud computing at all, while 25% of them have heard of cloud computing but are not sure what it is, 18% of them are somewhat comfortable and have an understanding and only 10% of them have in-depth knowledge and understanding of cloud computing. To better understand what happens on the cloud, in this thesis the researcher will develop a java based application prototype to show a simulation of cloud computing.

1.3 Research Aims and Objectives

This project aims to investigate cloud computing sets of strategies, the various CC platforms and network layouts, CC tools and technologies, CC architecture, CC security problems, type of failures which could occur in the cloud including the methods to recover from them, CC cost and risk issues and the different activities on the cloud by various application domains. To aid with this analysis a comparative study between the top major players Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM will be conducted to find out their different strategies towards cloud computing. Once the foundation of the research has been conducted the core of this project aims to propose a framework for an organisation to migrate to cloud computing. To better understand what happens on the cloud, this project