Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

1. Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing Professor Kam-Fai Wong Faculty of Engineering The Chinese University of Hong Kong

2. What is Cloud Computing? Cloud Computing provides Computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services (cf. electric grid)

3. What is Cloud Computing? (cont’d) Cloud Computing supports • Resource sharing • Service oriented computing • Virtualization • Scalability • On-demand access • Green computing • Minimum maintenance

4. What is Cloud Computing? (cont’d) Cloud Computing architecture

5. What is Cloud Computing? (cont’d) Types of Clouds: • Private Cloud (large enterprise) • Public Cloud • Commercial (SMEs) • Community Cloud (NGOs) • School Cloud (schools)

6. Advantages (Public) Ability to offload the tedious and time consuming management chores to a third party. Leading to: • Shave precious capital expenditure monies • Accelerated deployment timetable • Business-oriented yet flexible, scalable • Availability (24x7) • Lower TCO, accelerate ROI • Efficiency - enterprises can focus on innovation and R&D

7. Disadvantage (Public) • Performance, latency and security issues • Acceptable response and service and support from the cloud provider • Third party risks (cf. resources and services outsourcing)

8. Tips (Public) • Carefully select a reputable, experienced third party cloud services provider • The cloud services provider must work closely and transparently with the corporation to build a cloud infrastructure that best suits the business’ budget, technology and business goals. • Expectation alignment with details SLA.

9. Considerations in Service Level Agreement (Public) • What types of equipments do they use? • How old is the server hardware? Is the configuration powerful enough? • How often is the data center equipment/infrastructure upgraded? • How much bandwidth does the provider have? • Does the service provider use open standards or is it a proprietary datacenter? • How many customers will you be sharing data/resources with? • Where is the cloud services provider’s data center physically located? • What specific guarantees if any, will it provide for securing sensitive data? • What level of guaranteed response time will it provide for service and support? • What is the minimum acceptable latency/response time for its cloud services? • Will it provide multiple access points to and from the cloud infrastructure? • How will financial remuneration for SLA violations be determined? • What are the capacity ceilings for the service infrastructure? • What provisions will there be for service failures and disruptions? • How are upgrade and maintenance provisions defined? • What are the costs over the term of the contract agreement? • How much will the costs rise over the term of the contract? • Does the cloud service provider use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to transmit data? • Does the cloud services provider encrypt the resting data to prohibit and restrict access? • How often does the cloud services provider perform audits? • What mechanisms will it use to quickly shut down a hack and can it track a hacker? • If your cloud services provider is located outside your country of origin, what are the privacy and security rules of that country and what impact will that have on your firm’s privacy and security issues?

10. Advantages (Private) • The biggest advantage of a private cloud infrastructure is that your organization keeps control of its corporate assets and can safeguard and preserve its privacy and security. Your organization is in command of its own destiny.

11. Private Cloud needs • Robust equipment that can handle the workloads efficiently during peak usage times • An experienced, trained IT staff that is familiar with all aspects of virtualization, virtualization management, grid, utility and chargeback computing models • An adequate capital expenditure and operational expenditure budget • The right set of private cloud product offerings and service agreements • Appropriate third party virtualization and management tools to support the private cloud • Specific SLA agreements with vendors, suppliers and business partners • Operational level agreements (OLAs) to ensure that each person within the organization is responsible for specific routine tasks and in the event of an outage • A disaster recovery and backup strategy • Strong security products and policies • Efficient chargeback utilities, policies and procedures

12. Potential Pitfalls (Private Cloud) • Decide which applications to virtualize • Vendor lock-in • Integration and interoperability issues

13. Remarks on Adopting Cloud Computing • Benefits versus Risks • Domain specific cloud services • Risk management program must be put in place • A straightforward service level agreement must be agreed upon, covering explicit expectations regarding • managing, • utilization, • storage and • availability of information • Requirements for business flow and disaster recovery must also be defined in the agreement. • Adjustment period to see employees turning to the cloud for information and services (may need training, e.g. data security) • Suggest: Government legislation

14. Thank You 