Windows Azure

The Windows Azure operating system is used for

running cloud services on the Windows Azure platform, as it includes necessary features for hosting your services in the cloud. It also provides runtime environment that consists of Web server, computational services, basic storage, queues, management services, and load balancers. The operating system provides development. Fabric for development and testing of services before their deployment on the Windows Azure in the cloud.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing makes computer infrastructure

and services available "on-need" basis.

The computing infrastructure could include hard disk,

development platform, database, computing power or complete software applications.

What is Cloud Computing?

To access these resources from the cloud vendors,

organizations do not need to make any large scale capital expenditures.

Pay per Use: Organization need to "pay per use" i.e.

organization need to pay only as much for the computing infrastructure as they use. The billing model of cloud computing is similar to the electricity payment that we do on the basis of usage.

What is Cloud Computing?

The cloud computing is the computing which is

completely based on the Internet. It can also be defined as the next stage in the evolution of the Internet. The cloud computing uses the cloud (Internet) that provides the way to deliver the services whenever and wherever the user of the cloud needs. Companies use the cloud computing to fulfill the needs of their customers, partners, and providers. The cloud computing includes vendors, partners, and business leaders as the three major contributors.

What is Cloud Computing?

The vendors are the one who provide applications

and their related technology, infrastructure, hardware, and integration. The partners are those who offer cloud services demand and provide support service to the customers. The business leaders are the ones who use or evaluate the cloud service provided by the partners. The cloud computing enables the companies to treat their resources as a pool and not as independent resources.

What is a cloud?
A cloud is a combination of hardware, networks,

storage, services, and interfaces that helps in delivering computing as a service. It has broadly three users which are end user, business management user, and cloud service provider.

What is a cloud?
The end user is the one who uses the services

provided by the cloud. The business management user in the cloud takes the responsibility of the data and the services provided by the cloud. The cloud service provider is the one who takes care or is responsible for the maintenance of the IT assets of the cloud. The cloud acts as a common center for its users to fulfill their computing needs.

Characterstic of Cloud Computing

On demand self services: Computer services such as email, applications, network or server service can be provided without requiring human interaction with each service provider. Cloud service providers providing on demand self services include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, IBM and Salesforce.com. New York Times and NASDAQ are examples of companies using AWS (NIST). Gartner describes this characteristic as service based

Characterstic of Cloud Computing

"pay-per-use" Billing model: Cloud billing model are very different when compared to traditional IT billing techniques. Typical billing models include per user billing, per GB billing or per-use billing (i.e. an organization is billed on each usage of the computing service).

Characterstic of Cloud Computing

Does not involve long-term commitment : Cloud computing typically does not involve longterm commitment to use the computing infrastructure. The vendor does not enforce longterm usage of services.

Characterstic of Cloud Computing

No capital expenditure : Cloud computing does not involve any significant capital expenditure for the organization. Unlike traditional IT infrastructure, in cloud computing organizations just use the computing services without procuring it. In some sense cloud computing involves renting the computing resources instead of buying them. Cloud computing requires no capital expenditure to acquire initial computing resources.

Characterstic of Cloud Computing

Services over the web: Cloud computing vendor provides services over the web, these are available from any location.

Characterstic of Cloud Computing

Broad network access: Cloud Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote

use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms such as mobile phones, laptops and PDAs.

Types of cloud computing

Cloud computing is typically classified in two ways:
1. Location of the cloud computing 2. Type of services offered

Location of the cloud

1. Public cloud: In Public cloud the computing infrastructure is hosted by the cloud vendor at the vendors premises. The customer has no visibility and control over where the computing infrastructure is hosted. The computing infrastructure is shared between any organizations. 2. Private Cloud

Location of the cloud

3. Hybrid cloud: Organizations may host critical applications on private clouds and applications with relatively less security concerns on the public cloud. The usage of both private and public clouds together is called hybrid cloud. A related term is Cloud Bursting. In Cloud bursting organization use their own computing infrastructure for normal usage, but access the cloud for high/peak load requirements. This ensures that a sudden increase in computing requirement is handled gracefully

Location of the cloud

4. Community cloud involves sharing of computing infrastructure in between organizations of the same community. For example all Government organizations within the state of California may share computing infrastructure on the cloud to manage data related to citizens residing in California.

Type of services offered

Based upon the services offered, clouds are classified in the following ways:
1. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) involves offering hardware related services using the principles of cloud computing. These could include some kind of storage services (database or disk storage) or virtual servers. Leading vendors that provide Infrastructure as a service

Type of services offered

2. Platform as a Service (PaaS) involves offering a development platform on the cloud. Platforms provided by different vendors are typically not compatible. Typical players in PaaS are Googles Application Engine, Microsofts Azure, Salesforce.coms force.com .

Type of services offered

3. Software as a service (SaaS) includes a complete software offering on the cloud. Users can access a software application hosted by the cloud vendor on pay-per-use basis. This is a wellestablished sector. The pioneer in this field has been Salesforce.coms offering in the online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) space. Other examples are online email providers like Googles gmail and Microsofts hotmail, Google docs.