Guide on CLOUD COMPUTING

For The 3rd ANNUAL CLOUD COMPUTING FORUM June 21 and 22, 2011 London, United Kingdom

Hon. Reynaldo V. Umali

Member for the Majority Committee on Information and Communications Technology

2011 Show Highlights include: 2 Day Conference on Cloud Computing and SaaS Over 2500 Attendees Anticipated Unique ABC approach - 3 theatres representing different Cloud themes - Approach, Build and Connect Featuring combined streams including SaaS, Virtualization, Social Cloud, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile Cloud Computing, CDN and Green IT

The ABC of Cloud Computing As easy as... Approach Build Connect With over 120 visionary speakers and some of the most respected organisations in the industry exhibiting, the Cloud Computing World Forum provides a unique insight into what is arguably the greatest IT revolution since the birth of the internet.

1. Keynote theatre featuring leading industry speakers 2. Breakout conference seminars covering all key questions currently being asked 3. Technical symposium for advanced level discussion This year, we have three theatres each focusing 4. More case studies than any other like event on a core topic vital to Cloud Computing s make5. Learn from the key players offering leading up: products and services 6. Breakfast briefing style networking and discussion Approach is about strategy. sessions With such rapid development in the IT sector over 7. CIO networking lounge the last 12 months, Cloud Computing is no longer 8. Benefit from our intimate conference atmosphere a buzz term but a reality. With the opportunity for within the larger surroundings of the main huge financial savings and on-demand Softwareexhibition floor as-a-Service (SaaS), migrating your IT services to 9. Pre-show online meeting planner the clouds is an opportunity that s hard to ignore. 10. Evening networking reception for all attendees

Cloud computing refers to the on-demand provision of computational resources (data, software) via a computer network, rather than from a local computer. Users or clients can submit a task, such as word processing, to the service provider, without actually possessing the software or hardware. The consumer's computer may contain very little software or data (perhaps a minimal operating system and web browser only), serving as a basic display terminal connected to the Internet. Since the cloud is the underlying delivery mechanism, cloud based applications and services may support any type of software application or service in use today. In the past, both data and software had to be stored and processed on or near the computer. The development of Local Area Networks allowed for a system in which multiple CPUs and storage devices may be organized to increase the performance of the entire system. In an extension to that concept, cloud computing fundamentally allows for a functional separation between the resources used and the user's computer, usually residing outside the local network, for example, in a remote datacenter. Consumers now routinely use data intensive applications driven by cloud technology which were previously unavailable due to cost and deployment complexity. In many companies employees and company departments are bringing a flood of consumer technology into the workplace and this raises legal compliance and security concerns for the corporation.

An analogy to explain cloud computing is that of public utilities such

as electricity, gas, and water. Centralized and standardized utilities freed individuals from the difficulties of generating electricity or pumping water. All of the development and maintenance tasks involved in doing so was alleviated. With Cloud computing, this translates to a reduced cost in software distribution to providers who still use hard mediums such as DVDs. Consumer benefits are that software no longer has to be installed and is automatically updated but savings in terms of dollars is yet to be seen. The principle behind the cloud is that any computer connected to the Internet and is connected to the same pool of computing power, applications, and files. Users can store and access personal files such as music, pictures, videos, and bookmarks or play games or do word processing on a remote server rather than physically carrying around a storage medium such as a DVD or thumb drive.

CLOUD COMPUTING ISSUES

Privacy The cloud model has been criticized by privacy advocates for the greater ease in which the companies hosting the cloud services control, and thus, can monitor at will, lawfully or unlawfully, the communication and data stored between the user and the host company. Compliance In order to obtain compliance with regulations including FISMA, HIPAA and SOX in the United States, the Data Protection Directive in the EU and the credit card industry's PCI DSS, users may have to adopt community or hybrid deployment modes which are typically more expensive and may offer restricted benefits. Legal Since 2007, the number of trademark filings covering cloud computing brands, goods and services has increased rapidly. As companies sought to better position themselves for cloud computing branding and marketing efforts, cloud computing trademark filings increased by 483% between 2008 and 2009. In 2009, 116 cloud computing trademarks were filed, and trademark analysts predict that over 500 such marks could be filed during 2010.

CLOUD COMPUTING ISSUES

Open standards Most cloud providers expose APIs which are typically well-documented (often under a Creative Commons license) but also unique to their implementation and thus not interoperable. Some vendors have adopted others' APIs and there are a number of open standards under development, including the OGF's Open Cloud Computing Interface. Availability and performance In addition to concerns about security, businesses are also worried about acceptable levels of availability and performance of applications hosted in the cloud. There are also concerns about a cloud provider shutting down for financial or legal reasons, which has happened in a number of cases. Sustainability and siting Although cloud computing is often assumed to be a form of "green computing", there is as of yet no published study to substantiate this assumption. Siting the servers affects the environmental effects of cloud computing. In areas where climate favors natural cooling and renewable electricity is readily available, the environmental effects will be more moderate. Thus countries with favorable conditions, such as Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, are trying to attract cloud computing data centers.

CLOUD COMPUTING ISSUES

Security As cloud computing is achieving increased popularity, concerns are been voiced about the security issues introduced through the adoption of this new model. The effectiveness and efficiency of traditional protection mechanisms are being reconsidered, as the characteristics of this innovative deployment model, differ widely from them of traditional architectures. The relative security of cloud computing services is a contentious issue which may be delaying its adoption. Issues barring the adoption of cloud computing are due in large part to the private and public sectors unease surrounding the external management of security based services. It is the very nature of cloud computing based services, private or public, that promote external management of provided services. This delivers great incentive amongst cloud computing service providers in producing a priority in building and maintaining strong management of secure services. Security issues have been categorized into sensitive data access, data segregation, privacy, bug exploitation, recovery, accountability, malicious insiders, management console security, account control and multi-tenancy issues.

'Cloud' computing market 14 bln dollars by 2014: Gartner

November 9, 2009
Revenue from businesses using software programs hosted online as services in the Internet "cloud" should tally 7.5 billion dollars this year, a 17.7 percent leap from 2008, according to Gartner. The trend toward cloud computing, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), has accelerated during the economic crisis. Cloud computing lets firms essentially rent text, spreadsheet, calendar or other programs as needed and avoid the cost or buying, installing, updating and maintaining software on workplace machines. "The adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets," Gartner research director Sharon Mertz said, referring to business computer networks. Vendors are responding to the growing market by expanding the kinds of business computing services hosted online, according to Mertz. Microsoft on Monday announced a pact with Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Co. (CHT) to collaborate on cloud computing services. The companies will work together to "deliver a new generation of seamless, connected experiences that bring the power of cloud computing to consumers and to business" in Taiwan, said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer. Joint efforts will include a datacenter optimized to host online services for businesses and new cloud offerings for users of personal computers, smartphones, and televisions, Ballmer said in a statement. "We hope that our strategic alliance with Microsoft will result in a more convenient mobile experience for consumers," said CHT chief executive Shyue-Ching Lu. "The combination of Microsoft's innovative technologies and CHT's resources is intended to accelerate the application of cloud technologies on actual services, bringing consumers convenient services and fresh user experiences.

GLOSSARY
API
A particular set of rules and specifications that software programs can follow to communicate with each other. It serves as an interface between different software programs and facilitates their interaction, similar to the way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers.

APPLICATION
A computer software designed to help the user to perform singular or multiple related specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with documents. Apps may be bundled with the computer and its system software, or may be published separately. Some users are satisfied with the bundled apps and need never install one.

ASP
A business that provides computer-based services to customers over a network. Software offered using an ASP model is also sometimes called On-demand software or software as a service (SaaS). The most limited sense of this business is that of providing access to a particular application program (such as customer relationship management) using a standard protocol such as HTTP.

CIO
A job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. The title of Chief Information Officer in Higher Education may be the highest ranking technology executive although depending on the institution, alternative titles are used to represent this position.

CLIENT
An application or system that accesses a remote service on another computer system, known as a server, by way of a network.[1] The term was first applied to devices that were not capable of running their own stand-alone programs, but could interact with remote computers via a network.

GLOSSARY
CLOUD
A metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, service-oriented architecture, autonomic and utility computing. Details are abstracted from end-users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.[

DATABASE
An organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality (for example, the availability of rooms in hotels), in a way that supports processes requiring this information (for example, finding a hotel with vacancies). The term "database" refers both to the way its users view it, and to the logical and physical materialization of its data, content, in files, computer memory, and computer data storage. This definition is very general, and is independent of the technology used. However, not every collection of data is a database; the term database implies that the data is managed to some level of quality (measured in terms of accuracy, availability, usability, and resilience) and this in turn often implies the use of a general-purpose Database management system (DBMS). A general-purpose DBMS is typically a complex software system that meets many usage requirements, and the databases that it maintains are often large and complex.

DATA CENTER
A facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices. FISMA - The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 a United States federal law enacted in 2002 as Title III of the EGovernment Act of. The act recognized the importance of information security to the economic and national security interests of the United States. The act requires each federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security for the information and information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency, including those provided or managed by another agency, contractor, or other source.

GLOSSARY
HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. It was originally sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy(D-Mass.) and Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (R-Kan.). Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. INTERNET - s a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range ofinformation resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail. INTRANET - is a private computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network within an organization. Sometimes the term refers only to the organization's internal website, but may be a more extensive part of the organization's information technology infrastructure. It may host multiple private websites and constitute an important component and focal point of internal communication and collaboration. Any of the well known Internet protocols may be found in an intranet, such as HTTP (web services), SMTP (e-mail), and FTP (file transfer protocol). Internet technologies are often deployed to provide modern interfaces to legacy information systems hosting corporate data.

LAN
A computer network that connects computers and devices in a limited geographical area such as home, school, computer laboratory or office building.[1] The defining characteristics of LANs, in contrast to wide area networks (WANs), include their usually higher datatransfer rates, smaller geographic area, and lack of a need for leased telecommunication lines.

OS
A software, consisting of programs and data, that runs on computers, manages computer hardware resources, and provides common services for execution of various application software.

GLOSSARY
PCI-DSS
Defined by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, the standard was created to increase controls around cardholder data to reduce credit card fraud via its exposure. Validation of compliance is done annually - by an external Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) for organisations handling large volumes of transactions, or by Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) for companies handling smaller volumes

SOX
The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (Pub.L. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745, enacted July 30, 2002), also known as the 'Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act' (in the Senate) and 'Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act' (in the House) and commonly called Sarbanes Oxley, Sarbox or SOX, is a United States federal law enacted on July 30, 2002, which set new or enhanced standards for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms. It is named after sponsors U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and U.S. Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH).

SaaS
Refers to on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hostedcentrally (typically in the (Internet) cloud) and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.

SERVER
a computer program running as a service, to serve the needs or requests of other programs (referred to in this context as "clients") which may or may not be running on the same computer. a physical computer dedicated to running one or more such services, to serve the needs of programs running on other computers on the same network. a software/hardware system (i.e. a software service running on a dedicated computer) such as a database server, file server, mail server, or print server. In computer networking, a server is a program that operates as a socket listener.[1] The term server is also often generalized to describe a host that is deployed to execute one or more such programs.[2]

GLOSSARY
SOFTWARE
is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it. In other words, software is a conceptual entity which is a set of computer programs, procedures, and associated documentation concerned with the operation of a data processing system. We can also say software refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of the computer for some purposes. In other words software is a set of programs, procedures, algorithms and its documentation.

WEB
A system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via theInternet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them viahyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. At CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use "HyperText ... to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will", and publicly introduced the project in December

WEB BROWSER
A software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to related resources.

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