Introduction (What and Why)
Cloud had been one of the buzzwords of technology people for a long time, however, it has
been on the agenda of business users recently if you consider the current environment where
businesses must be agile enough to respond on time and smart enough to adjust their position
to the changes happening very frequently and in a very short period of time.
I have been writing technical articles and blog posts to share my knowledge with people interested
since I have started my career and learned the new concepts, their use case which is a
“never-ending-story” in the technology and development world. This is because new technologies
are invented or derived from each other so fast-because of the demanding world-, you have to be
proactive to learn and try them; and decide to or not to use them. However, it shouldn’t be too late
once you apply it. (Your competitors might have already done that or it’s too late, a new version of
the technology is published.
“I am using the cloud, of course”
Cloud is one of these areas, in fact, a very large concept that has many dimensions. Because of
this when somebody tells “we are using cloud”, it might mean one of many possibilities of the
“cloud scenarios and usage”. But which one? How do they use it? Can they extend it or use it better?
are the questions to be asked.
You cannot think of “Business and Technology” separately
Another thing is, that it’s not only technical people’s job to learn and know the cloud (of course they
should know better than the business users). Because technology and business are working so
closely now, it’s a necessity for business users to learn some of these concepts. This is because
business decisions are very much affected by the choices in the technology architecture and
vice versa. This is something that I see as very important in building the strategy, something we
can call #techforbusiness or #technologyforbusiness. Pay attention to FinTech companies where
the business model is based on technology and how small changes in their usage of technology
make results improve significantly.
!! Think of investing in areas to contribute the result more effectively, stop insisting on keeping
the status quo otherwise it might be too late.
Cloud computing can make a huge difference and should take a very important portion in these
decisions; for this reason, I see it as very important not only technically but also from a business
perspective.
I will publish some cloud-related posts and try to shed a light on the subject hoping that it will
help. In fact, I have published some fragments (will share the links and connect these subjects
to the ones that I will publish in the future). Please feel free to contact and recommend if you
would like to see other topics connected.
AGENDA
The first one of these posts is an introduction, the agenda will not be very technical, I will try to
explain what and why of cloud computing:
- What is cloud and cloud computing, definition and terms
- What are the reasons we need to prefer the cloud (Why Cloud)
Next chapters;
I, then plan to publish posts on topics like
- Deployment models of cloud (public, private, hybrid, etc.)
- Cloud use cases/scenarios
- Services that cloud providers / hyperscalers provide
- Technical details about cloud offerings & services for architects/developers
Let’s start with the subject:
What is cloud computing?
Many definitions from the cloud service providers are done which emphasize the same important
points. From simple to complex:
o Cloud computing is the delivery of different services through the Internet, including data storage,
servers, databases, networking, and software.
o Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases,
networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster
innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.
o Cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing resources (including servers, databases,
storage, platforms, infrastructure, applications, etc.) over the Internet. Cloud computing can be used
on a pay-as-you-go basis, which means you pay just for what you need.
o Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go
pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access
technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from
a cloud provider
Therefore, cloud computing is nothing “new” in terms of what it provides (sometimes it’s new though-
I will explain in future posts) however, it’s new in how it provides which is a game-changer in business.
The important points for all these definitions are the keywords like “over the Internet”, “on-demand”,
“pay-as-you-go”, “flexible” and “economies of scale” need to be considered. These keywords at the
same time define why businesses should and must use “Cloud”.
Why Cloud?
Agile – On Demand – Flexible & Scalable
Businesses that once mapped digital strategy in one- to three-year phases must now scale their
initiatives in a matter of days or weeks now. (Think about the last year with COVID-19). In this unique
moment, IT can lead the way to enable companies to learn and progress more quickly than ever
before. Businesses and companies have to respond more quickly than ever to the changes, new
regulations, and new players.
In order to enable this, cloud service providers give you the flexibility to add computing resources
(CPU, memory, storage, etc.) or other services from web-based panels within seconds with a few
clicks which were not possible in traditional systems. In this case, you can add new servers to your
application and handle the user load in busy periods, then release the resources once they are
unnecessary. This can even be done automatically within the rules that you define where you always
feel safe to handle the load without thinking about the lack of resources, and you can focus on your
core business decisions.
This is also true for investing in new technology areas (new physical technologies such as servers,
storage technologies, or software such as IoT, blockchain, machine learning, etc). These cloud
providers mostly switch to these technologies earlier than traditional businesses and supply these
tested-and-ready for you as a service on demand when you require them.
Payment Models: Subscription / Pay-As-You-Go
In cloud computing, you are not supposed to make the investment in the beginning and pay for
unused capacity or licenses. Most of the cloud services, infrastructure, licenses are subscription
-based. You can even use a model where you only pay for the exact time for the usage of the service.
For instance, you can use or design a function to make a complex calculation that needs a very big
computing power but you don’t want to make the investment because you / your users only need
this function for a total of half an hour during the weekdays. Why invest and pay in advance, and allocate
resources for a service that you don’t use 98% of the time?
Instead, you pay for “exactly how many seconds” that you use for the service, and whenever required.
Or start with a subscription model for a small capacity and add resources and extend your subscription
once your capacity requirements increase. This is similar to adding a new user to your licenses.
This model also allows companies to switch IT cost structure from a CapEx-based model to an
OpEx-based one which is mostly a preferred method for allocation, managing P&L, and budgets
more effectively.
Unlimited Resources – Unlimited Expertise – Reliability
In most cloud computing services, you don’t worry about the physical infrastructure or limits
of the usage (you don’t order storage and wait for it for 4 weeks to start your project). The cloud
service provider has a gigantic size of computing power ready for you to start within seconds.
Another thing is because there are hundreds of experts working for them in different areas of
managing this infrastructure such as networking, security, monitoring, auditing, etc.), you don’t
have to worry about hiring an expert for each of these areas.
CIOs’ and IT’s mission: Manage the expertise, focus on innovation, focus more on strategic
decisions and benefits.
Just an example to show the investment figures in one particular area; one of the cloud providers
invest 1 billion USD in order to prevent customers from cyber-attacks.
Up-time, SLAs, and reliability are other important points to consider. With respect to this cloud service,
providers use the principle of redundancy to guarantee a 7×24 high level of reliability.
Global Coverage – Accessibility / Many Locations – Ready for Disasters
Many of the businesses today are global having branches, production and distribution facilities,
businesses in different countries, or “planning” to provide services or make sales globally/online
which needs the IT infrastructure to be provided in many different locations. (services might be
different depending on the location & regulations as well).
Think of a scenario where your business will sell products in another country and you make the
arrangement physical investment. With cloud services, it will take a very small amount of time to
replicate your current Internet store to a new location on another continent, and serve the users from
there with the required capacity, requirements, and load. The level of service you will get is
the same and your business is up within hours depending on the complexity.
Another point is that as these services and infrastructure is accessible over the Internet (of course
within the security policy of your company), you can expand your services to “anybody” or access
from “any device” that has Internet access.
With the same approach, you can have operations in one country/continent and have a disaster
centers in another place which is 10000 km away from the main one.
Usage of Latest Technology / Industry Standards – Collaboration – Easy to Integrate
Cloud providers are investing in the latest technologies and industry standards; they test, improve
these assets and provide them as a service to their customers who then use these as enablers for
their core businesses. It is easier and more effective than your IT department to handle these
unnecessarily.
This is another point where IT participates in the strategic part of the business with innovation other
than being operational.
As the current environment forces us to do so, many departments, locations, and organizations,
therefore, applications need to be working together as one unit in order to provide better services
to our customers; which means integrations are one of the most important parts of the setup like
a central nervous system. Having this kind of setup is also one of the most painful parts of the
designed systems and one of the most failed parts of the projects.
Another advantage of the cloud is that from the beginning, cloud services are designed to have this
fact in mind. They are designed to be integrated to on-premises (customer’s own systems) or other
cloud services out-of-the-box, provide many integration services and therefore it’s easier/ quicker/
effective to collaborate many applications, systems, and users together within a complex business
environment with the cloud-based structure. Although this(cloud computing) looks like having a
more complex environment and more integration points; maintainability, agility, and the options
that it provides you will pay in the very short term depending on the requirements.
To sum up, the benefits, what I can say is; building this infrastructure, business models and
services are not an easy or a one-time job but we have to start anyway. As some of the providers are
in the cloud business for more than 15 years having lots of experience (good and bad), I ask myself
the question of “why reinvent the wheel” rather than letting them do their part. I then can focus on
my core business, focus on value-added decisions & innovation and request more from them
whenever necessary.
The next part will be about deployment models (private, public, hybrid.. cloud) which is one of the
key parts of cloud strategy and architecture.
Published by
SAP Integration & Development Consultant | SAP Integration Black Belt | Cloud, nonSAP&SAP
Development, Integration, Architecture & Strategy | Cloud solutions. SAP CPI, SAP BTP, SAP PO –
Process Orchestration