What is Cloud Computing?

I presented at the AITEC East Africa conference on November 20, 2013 (http://aitecafrica.com/event/view/95). This is a primer on what cloud computing is and why it matters.

Transcript

1. What is Cloud Computing? Adam Nelson adam@kili.io @varud
2. Cloud? • A compute or storage resource over which the user has no physical control but does retain strong logical control • It should be available on-demand - i.e. a Service • To the end user, the appearance of infinite scalability
3. Service? • Can a credit card, mPesa, bitcoin, or quota system (for private clouds) be used without interacting with a human? • Can more or fewer resources be allocated without interacting with a human? • Can it be managed programmatically via application programming interfaces (APIs)?
4. Software as a Service (SaaS) • Dropbox • Github • Gmail • Google Drive • Uhasibu (Kenyan accounting system)
5. Platform as a Service (PaaS) • Heroku • Salesforce • If corporate application developers can allocate and leverage databases without having to communicate with the DBA team
6. Infrastructure as a Service • Amazon Web Services (AWS) • Microsoft Azure • Piston (Private Cloud) • Kili (Kenyan Public Cloud)
7. Private? Public? • Public Cloud - Lives on the Internet, can be connected-to via VPN (or even tape over sneakernet) • Private Cloud - Lives in a private data center (Piston) • Community Cloud - Lives at a university, school, iHub, etc…
8. What’s the Point of Private? • Private clouds can follow existing IT rules around security and use that infrastructure • Private clouds can separate operations functions (air conditioning, hard drive replacement, server maintenance) from application delivery (high level networking, OS maintenance, programming)
9. What’s the Point of Public? • Totally outsource physical security (guards at the door, locked doors, access policy) • Totally outsource environmental security (data center grade fire suppression, air conditioning) • Totally outsource low-level networking (Internet uplinks, MPLS networks)
10. Hybrid • Private and public clouds can be connected • VPN to tunnel traffic between the two • Apps for a physical office building would live in the local private cloud while Internet apps would live in the public section
11. Why? • More secure - separate application security from physical and low- level networking to better match skill-sets • More organizationally efficient - App developers can deploy without a requisition form from central IT • More economical - Servers are typically closer to capacity when allocated by the hour than when purchased for 3-5 year installations • More scalable - Allocation of resources done via API and on a public cloud can dip into the large fleets of servers available • More extensible - Adding a service (caching) can be as easy as a few application changes without involving an IT department
12. Adam Nelson http://kili.io adam@kili.io @varud