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Cloud?… Computing?… What?…

Vaira — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:56:06 +0000

Cloud computing is the top buzzword of IT industry.

It is considered to be,

“Industrialization of IT where computing is manufactured in a mass scale and served over internet to users“

Some of the questions that may arise when you hear cloud are,

what is actually cloud computing?
Is cloud a new technology or Just an outsourced data center?
If using remote servers means cloud computing, then what would you call web hosting, mainframes and data centers as they were already in existence even before the term cloud was popularized?
what does cloud mean to an end user like you and me and how it changes personal computing?

Let me try to answer these questions.

What is Cloud Computing?

NIST definition goes like this. ( I suggest you to skip this)

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a sharedpool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction“

To put it simply, someone takes care of resources such as servers and storage for you. You don’t have to worry about managing them and you can just sit back and consume them.

Cloud computing is similar to consuming electricity. As electricity is generated and supplied through electric grid, computing resources are provisioned to end users through network.

Imagine if you have to generate your own electricity at home. You have to set up a power generator, fill the fuel, maintain it and the worst part comes when you fit an additional air-conditioner and you are out of capacity.

Imagine the same situation in computing. Cloud computing is all about scaling up and rapid provisioning of resources on demand. And resources are billed in pay-per-usage basis just like electric metering.

Rapid provisioning is like the extra electric capacity. It has to be just there when you finish setting up new AC. The demand in cloud can be increase in number of users, data traffic, data size etc. Since resources are not static, you will be charged more only when your website draws more users. In other words,

“Cloud is actually a business model which makes computing resources a commodity. Scalability, rapid & auto provisioning on demand, billing per usage are the main characteristics of cloud. Virtualization is the key enabling technology“

The Evolution in short

IT firms had a problem of scaling up their data centers when demand increased. They found out that adding or removing servers or storage incurred more time and cost and they wanted to increase the efficiency. Then they felt a need for flexible & agile computing resources which should be elastic (scaling up/down easily as needed). The key answer to this problem is virtualization of resources.

Virtualization is more like managing Hardware with software. It helps to add/remove any hardware resource easily without much impact on the total system. Then cloud pioneers like amazon felt the need of making it available as a service to larger audience and they came up with with a buzzword cloud computing to market it.

Now the situation is that anyone can rapidly go to market with their product focusing on their core business without worrying about setting up a data center. Some of the popular companies such as Foursquare, Reddit were able to catch up quickly because of cloud.

Types of cloud computing

In fact anything that starts like xxxx-as-a-service(xaas) is considered as part of cloud computing but following are 3 major categories.

Iaas – Infrastructure as a service

Providing basic infrastructure such as hardware resources, operating systems and interfaces to work with them. Amazon EC2 is the best example of Iaas provider.

Paas – Platform as a service

Providing a level above infrastructure, A platform on which applications can be directly developed upon without dealing with underlying OS and HW with the help of tools & APIs. Google app engine and Microsoft Azure are best examples of Paas.

Saas – Software as a service

Making the application itself avaialable on the cloud. This is the type a normal internet user come across everyday. All the Google products, social networking sites are examples of saas. Webapps can be considered as evolution of traditional web sites.

The cloud shadows upon personal computing

Saas into PC is wide-spread now so that use of mail clients like outlook has taken a huge hit. Only corporates insist their employees on using such programs through policies. User doesn’t have to deal with installing/uninstalling/updating apps and they are just there in saas model. Now selling storage to PC users is becoming major trend. Storage is not sold in raw form as GBs instead they are provided through applications such as photo app, music app etc.

Streaming of personal music from cloud is the latest of it. Big players such as Amazon, Apple and Google are fighting over it. Imagine you are ever-connected and you can stream your own songs no matter what device you are plugged in. Multitude of digital devices can share and sync your content just like that through cloud. Apple is becoming a major player in this space with the announcement of iCloud as its iDevices are in millions.

I can’t end this post without posting this amazingly simple video by saas pioneer Salesforce.

Filed under: General Technology

iPhone 4 Launch in India

Vaira — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:45:52 +0000

The launch

This time iPhone launch hits India strongly than ever before. It is visible all over the media. Carriers seem to have realized that iPhone has substantial market in India and poured crores of money in advertisements starting from full-page newspaper ads to bus stop hoardings to TV commercials. They might have bet on the buying power of urban people particularly of IT people and Airtel & Aircel want to show that they are cool and how they are ahead in keeping up with recent gadgets and technologies.

Speaking of iPhone 4

If you don’t know anything about iPhone, go see for yourself.

If you are the person who knows it but brings the topic of money, Ya! best things come at a price.

If you are the person who weighs between money and features, you may need to change your perspectives & iOS 5 is coming.

If you are an open source enthusiastic, iPhone is as opinionated as you are and apple developers are so happy.

iPhone 4 is completely factory-unlocked. You can switch to any carrier you like. The top things you’ll love is Retina display, FaceTime, AppStore, the amazing touch experience and the uber-cool UI.

iPhone 4 combined with 3G gives you true mobility. As 3G is now almost prevalent in cities, this is the right time to buy an iPhone and the social apps give you an ever-connected experience. Believe me. The price is really competitive with other top smart phones in the market.

Where to buy iPhone 4?

iPhone 4 comes in two colors. Black & White. White is hot-shipped from factory as it carries mfg month of april and latest iOS update 4.3.3. Black model needs to be updated after unpacking.

Multiple channels are available to buy iPhone. Carriers (Airtel & Aircel), Reliance iStore and some online mobile stores. iStore and carriers sell at a fixed price (INR 34500/USD 770 for 16GB) whereas online stores sell at a discounted price. This sounds a good deal for me. If you have HDFC card you can get discount of around Rs.2250 under HDFC smart buy program.

You don’t have to worry about warranty & repair when buying from online stores as long as it is within India. Service aspect of iPhone is very good here at Chennai. These are the apple authorized service centers.

Among them, ample tech provides a professional service for apple products. You don’t even have to carry the bill if you’ve bought it from india.

Thanks for reading & Good luck with your iPhone.

Filed under: Gadgets Tagged: iPhone 4

A Paradigm shift in Human-Computer Interaction

Vaira — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:01:23 +0000

Once It was the era of giant, room sized computers when people used punch cards and typewriters to interact with computers. Then the world slowly experted in two-handed keyboards, two dimensional navigation and pointing with mouse.

This is being the situation for past few decades. The human-computer interaction (HCI) is not going beyond just keyboard and mouse. But recent developments show that this is changing.

HCI is turning to be more natural and intuitive rather than mechanical and artificial. HCI is going to be in coming years similar to the way we communicated by gestures at the very beginning of the evolution. Of course the more natural way of interacting with the computers would be to talk to them similar to the way we evolved to speak languages. But we are still far from perfecting natural language processing. So for now, Be ready to dance before the gadgets.

Recent technology demonstrations

1. Touch Screen Technology – iPad & Trackpad

Interaction is more personal when you use your fingers to touch and zoom in/out of a picture that is so personal and dearer to you. Ipad (generally apple touch products) is a significant device using this technology in a new dimension. Holding the device is like “Holding the internet in your hands”.

Apple also redefined the way computer mouse is designed. Using Apple trackpad, actions such as panning, scrolling, zooming, switching apps can be done just by swiping on a multi-touch pad.

2. Microsoft’s surface & Kinect

It is a computer with 30″ display specially designed for multi-touch, multi-user, gesture-based interaction. It also enables users to interact using real world objects.

Kinect – A total controller-free gaming console lets you do what they call body-gaming by tracking motions of around 20 joints. It talks to you, listens to you and do a lot more to play with your emotions.

3. Wii Gaming Console

A gaming console that changed the way people played video games. If you want to do drenching-exercise and to play tennis simultaneously inside your living room, that is possible only with Wii.

4. Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense

Another exciting demonstration exploring the possibilities of extending the interaction with real world objects that you come across every day.

5. G-speak – Realization of Minority Report UI

You might have seen Tom cruise playing with his hands in front of a big display in the movie Minority Report. What if the scene turns into reality? Will you be awe-struck? Then better don’t be. It is becoming real. The person who came up with the model of the system used in the Speilberg’s movie has actually co-founded a company and is giving a real shape to the concept.

All these stuffs make me think, Are we really becoming magicians trying to control objects? May be this is the reason why we portrayed magicians as gesture artists from the beginning!. When do we become real wizards having learned to control things by mind?

Filed under: General Technology Tagged: G-Speak, HCI, NUI