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What is Cloud Computing?
The term ‘Cloud’ is a metaphor for the ‘Internet’. Cloud Computing refers to various IT resources (infrastructure, platform, applications) being delivered over the internet as a Service.
Cloud computing is a style of computing, gaining popularity month-on-month,
its foundation is the delivery of services, software and processing capacity using private or public networks.
The focus of cloud computing is the user experience, and the essence is to decouple the delivery of computing services
from the underlying technology. Beyond the user interface, the technology behind the cloud remains invisible to the user,
making cloud computing incredibly user-friendly. Cloud computing is often defined in three main categories;
infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service.
Cloud computing is an emerging approach and includes provision of on-demand access to
shared infrastructure in which large pools of systems are linked together in private or public networks to provide IT services.
The need for such environments is fueled by dramatic growth in connected devices, real-time data streams and the
adoption of service-oriented architectures and Web 2.0 applications, such as open collaboration, social networking and mobile commerce.
Benefits
- Enabling organizations to focus on core business activities rather than infrastructure
- Instantly add or reduce IT resources
- Capacity management and planning no longer a headache
- Scalability without the need to over-engineer capacity
- Capital & budget relief via flexible and predictable subscription
- Cost reduction by eliminating the on-going IT administration, trouble shooting of on-premise archiving, software, servers & storage
- Access from anywhere (Salesforce, Gmail, Google Docs, WebEx, WebOffice etc)
According to a survey carried out by InformationWeek Analytics, storage, business apps (such as CRM and ERP) are most likely to switch to the Cloud. Research firm Gartner predicts that the impact of on line services may prove to be greater than that of e-business.
Why should I consider cloud computing?
There are numerous reasons why many organizations, both large and small,
are moving away from traditional ‘IT thinking’ and toward the consumption of IT solutions and services that include cloud computing.
Firstly, cloud computing can significantly cut costs associated with acquiring and delivering IT services and provides a
real opportunity to reduce carbon footprint by reducing the size of traditional corporate data centres and
promoting the use of thin client devices over traditional desktop computing environments.
Simple cloud computing philosophy dictates that as an IT Manager, your organization can reduce both capital and operating
costs by obtaining resources only when you need them and paying only for what you use.
Additionally, by offloading some of the administrative overhead associated with managing various infrastructure resources across the enterprise,
technical staff can focus more on producing value and innovation for the business as opposed to simply “keeping the lights on”.
Finally, cloud computing models provide excellent options for business agility. For example, in a cloud-based IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) model, the entire IT infrastructure can scale up or down to meet demand, businesses can more easily meet the needs of rapidly changing markets to ensure they are always on the leading edge for their customers, internal or external.
Where does thin client sit in the cloud?
Thin client computing has been used successfully for around the last 20 years.
According to leading research reports, today, one in eleven commercially purchased desktop devices in Europe is a thin client.
Established providers, including Thinspace, have extensive experience in the industry providing technologically advanced,
fit-for-purpose business solutions.
The Thinspace product range supports all major “on demand, as-a-service”
provisioning methods from traditional terminal server computing through to published virtual desktops and cloud computing elements,
including Software as a Service, where businesses connect to off-premise, full solution software platforms using just a browser and
an internet connection.
It is the general availability of the thin client protocols that is so critical because cloud computing solutions are not
necessarily designed for traditional Windows desktops.
In reality, today’s cloud computing offerings are combined with other provisioning models,
which is why Thinspace equips its thin clients not only with Internet browsers including runtime environments (Java or Microsoft® .NET),
plug-ins like Acrobat Reader and media players, but also with typical server-based computing protocols, among them Microsoft®
RDP, Citrix ICA or VNC.
To summarise, today’s technological advances and the rapidly maturing cloud computing landscape is providing a
plethora of flexible options which could easily be deployed and used to access a range of services,
including an independent desktop that is hosted in the cloud, via which SaaS software, such as Google Apps, can be used both on and offline.
Key Technologies
The five key technologies involved in delivering effective cloud computing are Virtualisation, Terminal (this is where thin client comes in), Service Guarantees, Infiniband, and Web Acceleration.
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