Getting Familiar with Cloud Terminology Cloud computing is a hot topic in today s IT industry. However, the technology brings with it new terminology that can be confusing. Although you don t have to know everything about cloud computing, a familiarity with the terminology will help you follow the trends and industry developments. New Horizons delivers training solutions from top vendors in the cloud computing industry each distinctively addressing your unique business architecture and needs. The journey to cloud has many paths beginning the journey without a clear understanding of the destination may lead to unexpected results. New Horizons can help meet all of your Cloud Computing needs: Our Cloud Training Resources & Vendors 401-654-5252 RISales@nhrhodeisland.com www.nhrhodeisland.com Cloud Dictionary Advertising-based Pricing Model A pricing model whereby services are offered to customers at low or no cost, with the service provider being compensated by advertisers whose ads are delivered to the consumer along with the service. Application Management One part of IT-Outsourcings: The customer gives away his application infrastructure, maintenance and application support, as well as first and second level support to an external provider. Blade PC A computer that is entirely contained in a thin, modular circuit card placed in a centralized, secure location such as a server rack. A cable connects the card to the user's display, keyboard and mouse. BYOD Policy A Bring your own Device (BYOD) policy is a set of rules governing a corporate IT department s level of support for employee-owned PCs, smartphones and tablets. Broad Network Access Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs). Cloud A metaphor for a global network, first used in reference to the telephone network and now commonly used to represent the Internet.
Cloud Broker An entity that creates and maintains relationships with multiple cloud service providers. It acts as a liaison between cloud services customers and cloud service providers, selecting the best provider for each customer and monitoring the services. Cloud Integrator A cloud integrator is a product or service that helps a business negotiate the complexities of cloud migrations. A cloud integrator service (sometimes referred to as Integration-as-a-Service) is like a systems integrator that specializes in cloud computing. Cloud Operating System A computer operating system that is specially designed to run in a provider s datacenter and be delivered to the user over the Internet or another network. The term is also sometimes used to refer to cloud-based client operating systems. Cloud Oriented Architecture An architecture where applications act as services in the cloud and serve other applications in the cloud environment. Cloud Portability The ability to move applications and data from one cloud provider to another. See also Vendor lock-in. Cloud Provider A company that provides cloud-based platform, infrastructure, application, or storage services to other organizations and/or individuals, usually for a fee. Cloud Storage A service that allows customers to save data by transferring it over the Internet or another network to an offsite storage system maintained by a third party. Cloudsourcing Replacing traditional IT services with cloud services. Cloudstorming Connecting multiple cloud computing environments. Cloudware Software that enables creating, deploying, running, or managing applications in the cloud. Cluster A group of linked computers that work together as if they were a single computer, for high availability and/or load balancing. Community Cloud The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns. It can be managed by the organizations or a third party and can exist on premise or off premise.
Consumption-based Pricing Model A pricing model whereby the service provider charges its customers based on the amount of the service the customer consumes, rather than a time-based fee. For example, a cloud storage provider might charge per gigabyte of information stored. See also Subscription-based pricing model. Content Delivery Network (CDN) A system consisting of multiple computers that contain copies of data, which are located in different places on the network so clients can access the copy closest to them. Customer Self-service A feature that allows customers to provision, manage, and terminate services themselves, without involving the service provider, via a Web interface or programmatic calls to service APIs. Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) Based on the concept that the product, data in this case, can be provided on demand to the user regardless of geographic or organizational separation of provider and consumer. Data Center Sometimes spelled datacenter, a centralized repository, either physical or virtual, for the storage, management, and dissemination of data and information organized around a particular body of knowledge or pertaining to a particular business. Desktop Virtualization The concept of isolating a logical operating system (OS) instance from the client that is used to access it. Disruptive Technology A term used in the business world to describe innovations that improve products or services in unexpected ways and change both the way things are done and the market. Cloud computing is often referred to as a disruptive technology because it has the potential to completely change the way IT services are procured, deployed, and maintained. Elastic Computing The ability to dynamically provision and de-provision processing, memory, and storage resources to meet demands of peak usage without worrying about capacity planning and engineering for peak usage. External Cloud Public or private cloud services that are provided by a third party outside the organization. Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) See Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Host-based Virtual Machine An instance of a desktop operating system that runs on a centralized server. Access and control is provided to the user by a client device connected over a network. Multiple host-based virtual machines can run on a single server. Hosted Application An Internet-based or Web-based application software program that runs on a remote server and can be accessed via an Internet-connected PC or thin client. See also SaaS.
Hybrid Cloud A networking environment that includes multiple integrated internal and/or external providers. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Cloud infrastructure services, whereby a virtualized environment is delivered as a service over the Internet by the provider. The infrastructure can include servers, network equipment, and software. Integrators From the moment there was more than one manufacturer making computer hardware devices and software developers creating applications, there were integrators seeking to combine these products into superior solutions for themselves and their clients. Integration makes sense and brings value to information technology clients in that it creates choice at a component level, with the integrator leveraging lower cost and higher performance to create client satisfaction. Internal cloud A type of private cloud whose services are provided by an IT department to those in its own organization. Mash-up A Web page or application that integrates complementary elements from two or more sources. Measured Service Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service. Middleware Software that sits between applications and operating systems, consisting of a set of services that enable interoperability in support of distributed architectures by passing data between applications. So, for example, the data in one database can be accessed through another database. Multi-Tenancy An architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers. Network Integrators Network Integrators focus on the infrastructure that software applications require to run. This includes creating connections between local area networks at disparate locations, optimizing the communications between them, assuring the security of data in transit, and monitoring network functionality to assure business continuity and high-availability. Network Operation Center (NOC) A place from which administrators supervise, monitor and maintain a telecommunications network. Network Virtualization A method of combining the available resources in a network by splitting up the available bandwidth into channels, each of which is independent from the others, and each of which can be assigned (or reassigned) to a particular server or device in real time.
On-demand Service A model by which a customer can purchase cloud services as needed; for instance, if customers need to utilize additional servers for the duration of a project, they can do so and then drop back to the previous level after the project is completed. OS Streaming The operating system runs on local hardware, but boots to a remote disk image across the network. This is useful for groups of desktops that use the same disk image. OS streaming requires a constant network connection in order to function. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Cloud platform services, whereby the computing platform (operating system and associated services) is delivered as a service over the Internet by the provider. Pay-as-you-go A cost model for cloud services that encompasses both subscription-based and consumption-based models, in contrast to traditional IT cost model that requires up-front capital expenditures for hardware and software. Private Cloud Services offered over the Internet or over a private internal network to only select users, not available to the general public. Public Cloud Services offered over the public Internet and available to anyone who wants to purchase the service. Rapid Elasticity Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time. Resource Pooling The provider s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth and virtual machines. Rich Client A networked computer that has some resources installed locally but also depends on other resources distributed over the network. The rich client's configuration is somewhere between that of a thin client, which relies largely upon network-distributed resources, and a fat client which has most resources installed locally. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Cloud application services, whereby applications are delivered over the Internet by the provider, so that the applications don t have to be purchased, installed and run on the customer s computers. SaaS providers were previously referred to as ASP (Application Service Providers). Service Migration The act of moving from one cloud service or vendor to another.
Server Virtualization The masking of server resources (including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems) from server users. The intention is to spare the user from having to understand and manage complicated details of server resources while increasing resource sharing and utilization and maintaining the capacity to expand later. Service Provider The company or organization that provides a public or private cloud service. Service Level Agreement (SLA) A contractual agreement by which a service provider defines the level of service, responsibilities, priorities, and guarantees regarding availability, performance, and other aspects of the service. Shared Hosting Web hosting in which the service provider serves pages for multiple Web sites, each having its own Internet domain name, from a single Web server. Storage Area Networks (SANs) A high-speed special-purpose network (or sub-network) that interconnects different kinds of data storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of users. Storage Virtualization The pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console. Storage virtualization is commonly used in Storage Area Networks (SANs). Subscription-based Pricing Model A pricing model that lets customers pay a fee to use the service for a particular time period, often used for SaaS services. See also Consumption-based pricing model. Systems Integrators Those who link together different computing systems and software applications physically or functionally to act as a coordinated whole the focus is on bringing different software systems together to work in concert. Thin Client Sometimes called a lean client, a low-cost, centrally-managed computer devoid of CD-ROM players, diskette drives and expansion slots. The term derives from the fact that small computers in networks tend to be clients and not servers. Thick Client Sometimes called a fat client, a networked computer with most resources installed locally, rather than distributed over a network as is the case with a thin client. Utility Computing Online computing or storage sold as a metered commercial service in a way similar to a public utility Vendor Lock-in Dependency on the particular cloud vendor and difficulty moving from one cloud vendor to another due to lack of standardized protocols, APIs, data structures (schema), and service models.
Vertical Cloud A cloud computing environment that is optimized for use in a particular industry, such as health care or financial services. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) The practice of hosting a desktop operating system within a virtual machine (VM) running on a centralized server. VDI is a variation on the client/server computing model, sometimes referred to as server-based computing. Virtual Private Data Center Resources grouped according to specific business objectives. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) A private cloud that exists within a shared or public cloud, e.g., the Amazon VPC that allows Amazon EC2 to connect to legacy infrastructure on an IPsec VPN. Virtualization The creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources. There are three areas: Network Virtualization, Storage Virtualization and Server Virtualization. Zero Client Also known as ultrathin client, is a server-based computing model in which the end user's computing device has no local storage. A zero client can be contrasted with a thin client, which retains the operating system and each device's specific configuration settings in flash memory. New Horizons delivers training solutions from top vendors in the cloud computing industry each distinctively addressing your unique business architecture and needs.