An analysis of the cloud computing platform

Abstract

A slew of articles have been written about the fact that computing will eventually go in the direction of electricity. Just as most software users these days also own the hardware that runs the software, electricity users in the days of yore used to generate their own power. However, over time with standardization in voltage and frequency of generated power and better distribution mechanisms the generation of electricity was consolidated amongst fewer utility providers. The same is being forecast for computing infrastructure. Its is being touted that more and more users will rent computing infrastructure from a utility or "cloud" provider instead of maintaining their own hardware. This phenomenon or technology is being referred to Cloud Computing or Utility Computing. Cloud computing has been in existence in some form or the other since the beginning of computing. However, the advent of vastly improved software, hardware and communication technologies has given special meaning to the term cloud computing and opened up a world of possibilities. It is possible today to start an ecommerce or related company without investing in datacenters. This has turned out to be very beneficial to startups and smaller companies that want to test the efficacy of their idea before making any investment in expensive hardware. Corporations like Amazon, SalesForce.com, Google, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and many more are offering or planning to offer these infrastructure services in one form or another.

(cont.) An ecosystem has already been created and going by the investment and enthusiasm in this space the ecosystem is bound to grow. This thesis tries to define and explain the fundamentals of cloud computing. It looks at the technical aspects of this industry and the kind of applications where cloud can be used. It also looks at the economic value created by the platform, the network externalities, its effect on traditional software companies and their reaction to this technology. The thesis also tries to apply the principle of multi-homing, coring and tipping to the cloud-computing platform and explain the results. The hurdles for both users and providers of this service are also examined in this thesis.