Cloud Computing in a 🥜🐚: The Definitive Elevator Pitch

Picture this, last night I'm catching up with my old pal Brian at the pub. The two of us are rehearsing for Jez Butterworth's play The Ferryman at my local theatre company (I'll spare you the details, but I can't resist the shameless self-promotion - follow me at http://www.pinnerplayers.com/ to dox my questionable 1981 Northern Irish accent). During the break, I begin trailing off about the projects keeping me busy and where I see the future of Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services (AWS) . A good while elapses when mid-flow I suddenly realise that much of what I'm telling Brian isn't making sense.

I didn't gauge my audience, and must've spent a solid 15 minutes talking at Brian rather than with him. To him, this conversation read like a refrigerator's owners' manual narrated by an impassioned Borat. In other words, solid babble. This is entirely my fault, having intensely wrapped myself up in the insular world of Cloud Computing meant that I forgot what an abstract & inaccessible industry this tech-bubble may sound like. After all, a mere few months ago it was me on that receiving end.

In light of this, I'd like to return to basics and dedicate this article to Cloud fundamentals. Inevitably, it's a conversation which I'll have countless times in years to come, making it crucial to rehearse this brief elevator pitch to folk as yet unfamiliar with Cloud. As a result, I'll have an easier time in deftly conveying the concept of Cloud and what it is I'll do as as a Cloud Architect.

-What is Cloud Computing?-

The first thing to note is that Cloud isn't way up there in the sky, but rather found across a worldwide lattice of data centres. Every major Cloud Provider (the likes of AWS, Azure, GCP, IMB Cloud etc) has each built up a network of servers to lease to paying customers. That's really it. Renting someone else's computer!

Smartypants here says they've got a computer at home, how else would Smartypants be reading this web page; what need do they have for an Cloud? 🙄

Well in 2022 it's nearly impossible to surf the web without signing-in to so & so. Just this morning, I've checked Gmail, had YouTube running in the background, bucked down on my Udemy course and sorted through some GoPro footage for an edit. A modern man, some might say. Now say that in a neo-luddite fit of rage we smash this computer to pieces, is all this data lost? Nope. Access those same sites on another device and find that my data persists within my account. It makes sense then that this data was never on my local drive, but redundantly stored across Cloud servers propping up that particular platform or website.

These are simple examples of public-facing cloud. The kind which we as end-users receive easily. This model has unanimously swept across internet services in the last decade, right under our nose because of how much it boosts users' experience. Clever methods enable us to easily access and share files whilst safeguarding our data. I may not have a Master's in business studies, but I sure recognise a crackin' offer when I see one. Chances are that if you've already experienced something similar, then you're already familiar with how the Cloud benefits us as end-users. Now let's switch tracks and see just what makes Cloud so lucrative to companies.

In the early days of Cloud Computing some 16 years ago, the industry mainly offered storage for files and big chunks of data. The year is 2006, there's a whale in the River Thames and everyone's dropping subtle hints to their partners by pre-ordering the Wii Fit. Here, Cloud was pioneered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as Amazon's cloud computing arm. Initially founded to offset the retailing giant's own running costs, they begun leasing excess storage space on their provisioned servers to other companies. But as as Cloud's capabilities grew, this drew investors' attention along with intensifying competition to become top Cloud provider.

"It's business time"- Cloud

For businesses, Cloud is vastly different to we get at home. In a nutshell: Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, namely data storage, networking and processing power, without active management overhead by the user.

Companies simply rent the infrastructure & software services as opposed to flat out buying the programs and hardware themselves. (My secondary school had its own dedicated IT sever room to house all the school's computer suites and power. Just two chaps behind the entire operation, always seemed stressed out. Incidentally, both named Tom).

Instead, it's the Cloud platform who subtracts the headaches of server maintenance, administration, troubleshooting, backups, and capacity planning instead of a company's IT attaché. As great as Tom² were in my school, they can't compete with the brainpower of thousands of networking engineers who develop and innovate the Cloud.

It's not unlike renting a hotel room for the duration of your stay, instead of building the entire edifice yourself. Leverage Amazon's deep pockets to do the heavy lifting for you, just focus on what's necessary to you and your business. This is the core message of Cloud offerings: Rent our web services. We've got the internet side of things covered, you do what you do best and focus on differentiating your business instead. And this is working.

To draw on this last point, AWS have handily laid out a few commandments which help us commit the advantages of Cloud to memory:

-6 Sacred Stones - Advantages of AWS Cloud-

[Commandment 1] - Trade Capital Expense for Variable Expense: — Pay for only what you consume. Resources can be monitored, controlled, reported and billed. No need to buy hardware or licences in advance, just go!

[Commandment 2] - Benefit From massive economies of scale: — Think about how much you save from bulk-buying at Costco. Apply that to the millions of users pooling their resources into AWS. You can share the cost amongst everyone, continually driving down prices and ensuring a low cost, pay-as-you-go model for all.

[Commandment 3] - Stop Guessing Capacity!: — With the finished product as your only objective, companies avoid under/overprovisioning resources. Much of Cloud is elastic, which means it can scale up/down in response to system load. Practically unlimited scalability, at a fraction of the cost and risk!

[Commandment 4] - Increase your organisation’s speed and agility: — What was once months' worth of slow and cautious assessments, the time to market is massively reduced. Just a few clicks, and you're off. Not happy? Terminate the service just as fast. Hardware hassles are now ancient worries.

[Commandment 5] - Stop Spending Money on Data centres: — Mentioned this one before, focus on differentiating your business instead of the laborious digital-end of your organisation. This is what's meant by the 'transform your business' key phrase: that your time, money and effort is better spent on your USP. Do good in the world, and get ahead whilst Cloud takes care of this side.

[Commandment 6] - Go Global in minutes: — And of course, to stay ahead in a globalised world, then make use of AWS’s Global infrastructure to launch your application for users all across the world. Take your customers out for a spin in a Lamborghini. not the slower and sketchy public internet cabling. Dazzle your customers with lower latency and faster response times, currying that competitive edge for an otherwise impossible cost to do yourselves.

We're on a roll here, so let's smash a few more Jargon-crunching home runs:

-Cloud flavours-

The 'infrastructure stack' contains multiple components which all form a complete service. Parts which you manage of course, as well as portions that AWS manages. Whatever's managed and used is charged as the 'unit of consumption'.

• [On-premises]: This is taking the brunt on by yourself. While it offers the widest range of flexibility to a business, it's also the most IT intensive and carries all the associated risks of carving out an IT solution all by yourself. For situations with strict compliance protocols, this might be the only option.
• [Infrastructure as a Service - IaaS]:The Cloud vendor manages facilities and pretty much everything related to servers up to the OS. The basic building blocks to make applications in the cloud, i.e. servers, VMs, networking, cabling, storage space etc. It's the most akin to launching applications on your own data centre
• [Platform as a Service - PaaS]: The developer's playground in which the unit of consumption is runtime. You manage the application & data, leaving the undifferentiated heavy lifting in deployment and underlying infrastructure in the hands of the Cloud Vendor.
• [Software as a Service- SaaS]: The applications used by end-users. This is the stuff consumed, such as Outlook or Netflix. Next to no risks or additional costs, but at the greatest loss of control.

Types of Cloud Deployment

So we've seen that Cloud is simply a shared pool of computer resources (servers, storage, programs, and so on). Getting your applications up and running is a snappy affair, and releasing them back into the wind is equally quick. The specific type of cloud environment depends on the organisation itself, as well as their leniency on cloud.

The location of the servers you're utilising, and for what purpose, dictates the overall shape of your Cloud infrastructure. For example:

• [Public Cloud] - Infrastructure is provided over the internet to major industry groups. It's still owned by the Cloud Provider, yes, but it allows applications to host services to their customers. Often you'll see storage backup & retrieval services offered for free, as a subscription, or on a pay-per use basis. YouTube, for example.
• [Private cloud] - The exact opposite of what's above. You're not sharing your hardware with anyone else, by instead focusing your application in a logically isolated networking environment. Here you have the ability to access systems and services within a defined organisation, protected by firewalls and other measures. As the sole owner of this turf, the responsibility in the cloud falls entirely on the host, along with complete command over service integration, policies and user behaviour. Again, strong for storing sensitive information to which only the right staff have access to (even AWS themselves can't peek in).
• [Hybrid cloud] - Best of both worlds, by bridging the public and private world. Host your apps in a safe environment while taking advantage of public cloud's cost reductions. Organisations can move data & applications between them through various methods (Storage Gateway, DataSync and even an 80foot Lorry for exabytes of data on Snowmobile).
• [Multi-cloud] - If you've gone Cloud loco, then deploy your application on public & private Cloud resources, across multiple Cloud providers! Lesson well learnt following the Titanic's maiden voyage - nothing's too big to fail. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are still companies after all, so perhaps a multi-cloud deployment strategy takes your availability and services that extra step further.

Alright that about wraps her up. Lots more to discuss of course, but there's not an elevator in the world slow enough to spew all this out in one take.

Have a good one! 🌤

As a parting bonus, here's another AI generated piece of artwork. Props to https://creator.nightcafe.studio/ - very cool tool to play on!

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