Cloud computing to create one lakh jobs in India: Study Indo Asian News Service, On Tuesday 19 July 2011,

10:24 PM Bangalore, July 19 (IANS) As the next technology wave, cloud computing by enterprises has the potential to create about 100,000 new jobs in India, a study said Tuesday. 'Of the projected $4.5-billion total cloud computing market in India by 2015, private cloud will account for $3.5 billion, generate about 100,000 additional jobs and save about 50 percent of cost of IT operations for Indian enterprises,' the study 'Private Cloud Landscape in India', by Zinnov Management Consulting and global IT firm EMC Corporation, revealed. In cloud computing, multiple servers are used as a single platform through a digital network (website) under secured environment with access to a range of applications and tools for reducing the cost of IT operations. Cloud computing is emerging as the next big IT service for its pay-as-you-go model, which eliminates capital intensive investment by companies, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in setting up IT infrastructure. Spend on using cloud by information technology and back office firms, telecos, BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), manufacturing and government organisations is set to increase to 8.2 percent over the next five years from 1.4 percent in 2010. 'There will be an increased preference of cloud adoption over the next five years in India. The total cloud market, which was about $400 million in 2010, is expected to growth by a whopping 60 percent annually with private cloud dominating the landscape,' Zinnov chief executive Pari Natrajan told reporters here. Though vendors with partnerships are better positioned to address enterprise needs, the survey noted that many Indian firms would have to invest in competency building to take advantage of cloud computing technologies as they were underskilled in meeting the growing requirement. 'Cloud computing will reshape the Indian IT market by generating new opportunities for vendors and driving changes in traditional IT offerings,' Natarajan pointed out. Companies and organisations, which have not adopted IT so far or invested in data centres and server farms will have the advantage of directly moving to the low-cost cloud model. 'For cloud computing to deliver its promise, customers need human resources with cloud computing competencies, both as vendors or as internal resources. Though there are vendors such as ours (EMC) offering the solution to customers for making

informed decisions, we need to build competencies to leverage cloud computing technologies,' EMC India president Manoj Chugh said on the occasion. The findings are based on a survey of over 100 chief information officers (CIOs) and IT decision-makers in India across industry verticals conducted during January-May 2011. Just finishing up the final touches on my first big cloud computing project, and there was much to learn here, some pitfalls and some promises in the cloud that might help you with your cloud computing project. As I wind down the infrastructure part of my first big cloud computing project, there are some rewards and risks, along with some pitfalls to cloud computing that you might encounter when you do your big project. Here is what I have learned. User Management not so easy, if you stick with the Amazon Web Services console, you are simply down to one person logging into the system. Using shared credentials is a big no no when it comes to providing security and accountability with your project. I did not find a software or product that would allow me to make multiple administrator accounts that would work for me. There are software programs that exist, but I found most of them lacking what I was looking for leaving me with the AWS console and access to the computer being shared by multiple people and one login. If anyone has a great tool that will provide the ability to audit, report, and provide multiple account support for multiple AWS images, then I would love to hear about it. Updates if you want to make sure your system is updated, then I would highly suggest you make your own AMI on a fully supported operating system (regardless of flavor). One of my biggest issues was finding out that YUM on Fedora would not update on the Amazon AMI, and kept on coming up with out of mirror errors. Fedora needs to step up to the plate and provide a fully functioning mirror, or better yet you should make your own AMI for AWS that provides the support you need for what you are trying to do. There is nothing more dangerous on the internet than an Operating System that cannot be patched or software that cannot be updated. If you are using a Windows AMI, make sure that everything is installed or that you have an I386 directory, there is nothing more amusing than being prompted to provide the installation disk when your OS is in the clouds. Socialization of the product Cloud computing is scary for many people, because it puts everything you have in someone elses data center. For some the concept must be killed now, for others they see it as a way to save money. Regardless of what your approach is, you have to make sure you have full executive support and buy in for what you are doing; otherwise your project will languish for weeks if not months waiting for people to grab onto the concept. You should be

prepared to deal with fear, FUD, and other undesirable business ways of killing off the cloud computing project. Failure is going to happen make sure you snap shot your Cloud Computing system before you start tinkering with it. While backups are always a good idea, it is also an excellent idea to simply snapshot what you are doing before you make huge changes to the system. This is often easier than trying to back out a pile of changes and you have no idea which change broke what. Never ever hit Terminate Instance if you hit terminate instance, it is gone, gone for good, and you cannot get it back, pray you made a snapshot before you turn the computer off for the night. Otherwise you get to start from scratch on the whole thing. This will cause amusing chuckles from your co-workers, and bemused responses from your Project Manager. It might also set you back unless you made a snapshot. Logging make sure you have a nice way of getting logs back to the company, or that you are going to be able to process logs on the cloud computers. You will want this for compliance, and to know if someone is doing something unusual with your system. Syslog over the internet is not a great way to get logs off the cloud back to the company. You want to use a VPN to make this happen, and it is easy to set up regardless of chosen operating system. Documentation you want to make your own documentation on the project you are working on, do not rely on AWS documentation to help you, often the AWS documentation is difficult to follow, understand, or read. The approach to documentation is make your own, and do it in such a way that anyone can follow what you did, how you did it, and what they need to duplicate your processes. Like any good system design or development, cloud computing systems should be documented just like any other internal project.

Make sure you have a good ROI make sure that if you go into the cloud that there are obvious measurable cost savings in the offering. Some setups make no sense economically, while for some companies they do. Make sure you do not overspend on your project. Do not underestimate the amount of time required one of the biggest shortfalls of the project was incorrectly allocating time, or grossly under estimating the amount of time it would take to complete the project. In most projects I am usually dead on with time estimates, and found that I was under estimating time to completion for a first cloud computing project by upwards of 4X. If I thought it would take 30 minutes, it often took 2 hours to complete a task. Most of this is attributable to new technology, new ways of doing things, and general training ramp up time.

While not a barrier to use, it was a barrier to completing the project on time.

URLs and IP Addresses AWS will give you a temp URL to work with when you are prototyping your system, if you use that then assign an IP address later, then a Domain Name after that, and you did not program the base URL as a configurable item, then you will have to go back and change that. The temp URL with AWS does not work after you assign an IP address. It might be easier to have already set up and IP address and DNS entry before you let the developers at the system. Open Source Software is the best way to go here mostly because you do not have access to a DVD drive on the cloud, and software that wants a DVD to verify you own it, or needs a DVD to load is an oxymoron in the cloud. Otherwise, make your own AMI, and make sure that what you are building is able to work without a DVD drive, or disks, or other items we take for granted in the data center where we can touch physical items. Those are the big key issues and some interesting differences between being in the data center and working through the cloud. These are my own experiences working with Amazon Web Services over the last 60 days. Overall though I would say that the experience with AWS has been positive, but given the ramp up time, learning curve, and support issues, this project actually lasted longer by 75% than it was initially estimated to last. Most of that is again, attributable to learning curve, the promise of cloud computing for rapidly deploying a system should hold true for any other deployments that we will do in the cloud. But for the first big project, make sure you either already have trained folks in Cloud Computing, or that your project can go over time without detriment. Make sure you are ready to be audited as well, that includes log management, user accounts, and patching/updating. While I highly recommend you make your own tested AMI, some people will not do that and whatever AMI exists already for the project they are doing. You will want to make a careful risk evaluation of that stance depending on what you are using your cloud computing system for. If you fall under SOX, HIPAA, or anything else, you want to make sure you stay in compliance. Tags: Amazon, web , services, aws, experience, cloud computing, project, project management, interesting, project plan, estimates, time, yum, fedora, mirror, patch, disk, dvd, lol Though cloud computing is widely defined, it's difficult for those working with the technology to reach a common understanding around concepts that are important to the success of their projects. Here are five important ideas -- or perhaps just misunderstandings -- that those looking to move to cloud computing should understand.

1. Cloud computing is not virtualization. This seems to be a common misunderstanding, so it's worth stating: Virtualized servers do not constitute a cloud. Cloud computing means auto provisioning, use-based accounting, and advanced multitenancy, capabilities well beyond most virtualization solutions. Many of you need to clip this paragraph out and put it in your wallets or purses as a reminder. [ Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in the InfoWorld editors' 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ] 2. Cloud computing requires APIs. Those who put up websites and call them "cloud sites" need to understand that part of the value of cloud computing is API access to core cloud services. This means both public and private. Without an API, it's hardly a cloud. 3. Moving to a cloud is not a fix for bad practices. There is no automatic fix for bad architecture or bad application design when moving to cloud computing. Those issues need to be addressed before the migration. 4. Security is what you make of it, cloud or no cloud. While many are pushing back on cloud computing due to security concerns, cloud computing is, in fact, as safe as or better than most on-premises systems. You must design your system with security, as well as data and application requirements in mind, then support those requirements with the right technology. You can do that in both public or private clouds, as well as traditional systems. 5. There are no "quick cloud" solutions. While many companies are selling socalled cloud-in-a-box type solutions, few out-of-the-box options will suit your client computing needs without requiring a load of customizations and integration to get some value out of them. Sorry to burst any bubbles.