Difference between Cloud Computing and Edge Computing

Posted on September 30, 2019October 18, 2019 by Idexcel Technologies

Cloud computing is on the rise as evidenced by CISCO, which notes that the cloud’s data is going to amount to 14.1ZB by 2020. As a result of this output, the IoT space has become the talk of the town, growing at a slow and steady pace. Cloud computing is all about making use of data from a centralized storage area.

However, despite its advantages, it also exists with its set of disadvantages. Since the cloud is responsible for handling and storing large datasets, there is often a concern surrounding its latency, which can leave something to be desired.

This is where edge computing differs from cloud, providing a better, handy solution to organizations and users alike. Let’s look at the differences between the two types of computing and further try to understand which one is better for businesses and users alike.

Edge computing vs. cloud computing

When one talks about cloud computing vs. edge computing, the main difference worth looking at is how data processing takes place. As of now, most of the data processing through the existing IoT systems is performed within the cloud, using a series of centralized servers. As a result of this, all the low-end devices, as well as the gateway ones, are used for aggregating data to perform low-level processing.

Edge computing differs as it follows a completely different approach. It moves the processing away from the centralized servers, and closer to the end users. By 2020, almost 45% of the world’s data will be stored and processed on the edge of the network, or perhaps even closer than this.

So the question arises: Why is cloud computing alone not enough?

The amount of data being processed every second is not adequately supported by cloud computing. Having spoken about latency within the cloud computing world, there is a lot that cloud computing does not provide to cloud-based applications. Given the amount of stored data within the cloud, there are two problems that transpire during the processing stage—latency in processing and high number of wasted resources. These issues exist especially in decentralized data centers, mobile edge nodes, and cloudlets.

When smart devices generate data, everything is piled on and transferred to the cloud for further processing. When this happens, the cloud’s data centers and networks are overloaded. Increased amount of latency and inefficiency can prove to be an unsurmountable challenge for cloud-based data.

Edge computing helps analyze data in a manner that is closer to the source of said data. Through this method, it helps not only to minimize data’s dependency on the app or service, but also helps speed up the processing of such data processing.

Edge computing and its finer details

The main difference between edge computing and cloud computing is that edge computing offers a flexible, decentralized architecture, which means that everything is processed on the devices itself. Instead of processing everything in the cloud, where you may find a data overload, the apps or devices are used for processing the stored data before sending it to the cloud. This means that everything is processed at a much faster pace, curbing the need to wait large periods of time for data processing.

There are two types of edge computing:

Cloud edge: The public cloud is extended to a series of point-of-presence (PoP) locations.
Device edge: When a software runs on existing hardware

The main difference between the two lies in the way they are priced, as well as their deployment procedures. The cloud edge is an extended form of the traditional cloud, which sees the cloud provider responsible for the working and maintenance of the entire model. Device edge exists primarily within the hardware, making it possible to process real-time data in a manner that is very speedy and accurate.

When thinking of edge computing, there are three ways in which the technology can be employed by and brought to end-users.

Fog computing: all the data is evenly distributed between a centralized computing infrastructure and devices.
Mobile edge computing: also known as MEC, this is an architecture that brings the cloud’s computational and storage capacities closer to the end-users’ mobile networks.
Cloudlet computing: this term refers to an infrastructure that uses smaller data centers for offloading data, bringing the cloud closer to the end-users.

Considering the benefits of edge computing, once could see why it would be favorable to choose edge computing over cloud computing. It is arguably one of the best of its kind, making it a perfect choice for people with data provision.

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Machine Learning’s Impact on Cloud Computing

Posted on January 18, 2018October 18, 2019 by Idexcel Technologies

Increasing dependency on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the (Internet of Things) have given new goals to cloud computing infrastructure administrators. The premises enfolding within this newly emerging subfield of Information and Technology are indeed very vast ranging from smartphones to robotics. Firms are developing new machinery requiring the least amount of dependency on human resources. Developments aimed at providing human-made mechanisms with levels of autonomy to become entirely independent.

To gain a level of autonomy over soft resources, developers have begun to depend on a mediator to assist ‘smart machines’ in increasing functional ability. As cloud computing is already taking over essential domains of human efforts such as data storage, this technological advancement will result in unprecedented impacts on the global economy.

Integrated cloud services can be even more beneficial than current offerings. The contemporary usage of cloud involves computing, storage, and networking; however, the intelligent cloud will multiply the capabilities of the cloud by rendering information from vast amounts of stored data. This will result in quick advancements within the IT field, where tasks are performed much efficiently.

Cognitive Computing
The large amounts of data stored in the cloud serve as a source of information for machines to gain their functional state. The millions of functions that are occurring daily in the cloud will provide vast sources of information for computers to learn. The entire process will equip the machine applications with sensory capabilities, and applications will be able to perform cognitive functions, making decisions best suited for them to achieve their desired goal.

Even though the intelligent cloud is in its infantile age, the propositions are predicted to increase in the coming years and revolutionize the world in the same way that the internet had. Expectations of those who would utilize cognitive computing including those in the healthcare, hospitality, and business fields

Changing Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure
With the aid of the intelligent cloud, AI as a platform service makes the process of smart automation more accessible for users by taking control of the complexities of a process; this will further increase the capabilities of cloud computing, in return growing the demand for the cloud. The interdependency of cloud computing and artificial intelligence will become the essence of new realities.

New Dimensions for the Internet of Things
Just as we are now aware how the IoT has overtaken our lives and created an undeniable dependency on gadgets, cloud-assisted machine learning is almost increasing rapidly. Smart sensors that allow cars to operate in cruise control will grasp their source of data from the cloud only. Cloud computing will become the long-term memory for the IoT where they can retrieve the data for solving in-time problems. The web’s massive of interconnectivity will generate and operate on an enormous amount of data saved in that very cloud; this will expand the horizons of cloud computing. In coming years, cloud-based machine learning will become as meaningful to machines as water is for humans.

Personal Assistance
We have already seen assistants such as Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google perform well in the consumer market; it is not absurd to think that an assistant will exist in every modern home by the next decade. These assistants make life easier for individuals through pre-coded voice recognition that also gives a feeling of human touch to machines.

Current assistant responses operate on a limited set of provided information. However, these assistants are very likely to be developed more finely so that their capabilities will not remain so confined. Through the increasing use of autonomous cognition, personal assistants will attain a state of reliability where they can replace human interaction. The role of cloud computing will be supremely vital in this regard, as it will become the heart and brain of these machines.

Business Intelligence
The tasks of a future intelligent cloud will be to make the tech world even smarter – autonomous learning coupled with the capabilities of understanding and rectifying real-time anomalies. In the same way, business intelligence will also become more intelligent wherein along with identifying faults, it will be able to predict future strategies in advance.

Armed with proactive analytics and real-time dashboards, businesses will operate upon predictive analytics that process previously collected data, making real-time suggestions and future predictions. These predictions from current trends and recommendations for actions would make things easier on leaders.

Revolutionizing the World
Fields like banking, education, and hospitality will be able to make use of the intelligent cloud, enhancing the precision and efficiency of the services they provide. Consider, for example, having an assistant in hospitals which diminishes doctors’ customary load of decision making by analyzing cases, making comparisons, and promoting new approaches to the treatment.

With the rapid development of both machine learning and the cloud, it seems in the future that cloud computing will become much easier to handle, scale, and protect with machine learning. Along with those mentioned above, more extensive businesses relying on the cloud will lead to the implementation of more machine learning. We will arrive at a point in which we will have no cloud service that operates as they do today.

Top 10 Advantages of Cloud Computing

Posted on October 17, 2017January 6, 2021 by Idexcel Technologies

In simple words, cloud computing may be called as computing that is based entirely on the internet. As in the past, where people needed to run programs or applications from software which would be downloaded from a server or a physical computer, cloud computing services help them to access those applications through the medium of internet. When you make any status update on your Facebook account, you make use of cloud computing. When you check your bank account balance on the phone, again you make use of cloud computing. We can say that cloud computing services are becoming the new common.

The most trending cloud computing services are the AWS Cloud Services (Amazon Web Services). It is an evolving and comprehensive platform for cloud computing offered by Amazon. It offers more than three others varied services including RedShift, DynamoDB, and Mechanical Turk etc.

According to the estimates, 90% of the businesses in the United Kingdom are using a minimum of one cloud service. Have you ever wondered why so many businesses are moving towards it? It is simply because there are several advantages of cloud computing. It helps in improving the cash flow, increases the efficiency and numerous others. Have a look at these top 10 advantages of cloud computing.

1. Less Costs The services are free from capital expenditure. There are no huge costs of hardware in cloud computing. You just have to pay as you operate it and enjoy the model based on your subscription plan.

2. 24 X 7 Availability Most of the cloud providers are truly reliable in offering their services, with most of them maintaining an uptime of 99.9%. The workers can get onto the applications needed basically from anywhere. Some of the applications even function off-line.

3. Flexibility in Capacity It offers flexible facility which could be turned off, up or down as per the circumstances of the user. For instance, a promotion of sales is very popular, capacity can be immediately and quickly added to it for the avoidance of losing sales and crashing servers. When those sales are done, the capacity can also be shrunk for the reduction of costs.

4. All over Functioning Cloud computing offers yet another advantage of working from anywhere across the globe, as long as you have an internet connection. Even while using the critical cloud services that offer mobile apps, there is no limitation of the device used.

5. Automated Updates on Software In cloud computing, the server suppliers regularly update your software including the updates on security, so that you do not need to agonize on wasting your crucial time on maintaining the system. You find extra time to focus on the important things like ‘How to grow your businesses.

6. Security Cloud computing offers great security when any sensitive data has been lost. As the data is stored in the system, it can be easily accessed even if something happens to your computer. You can even remotely wipe out data from the lost machines for avoiding it getting in the wrong hands.

7. Carbon Footprint Cloud computing is helping out organizations to reduce their carbon footprint. Organizations utilize only the amount of resources they need, which helps them to avoid any over-provisioning. Hence, no waste of resources and thus energy.

8. Enhanced Collaboration Cloud applications enhance collaboration by authorizing diverse groups of people virtually meet and exchange information with the help of shared storage. Such capability helps in improving the customer service and product development and also reducing the marketing time.

9. Control on the Documents Before cloud came into being, workers needed to send files in and out as the email attachments for being worked on by a single user at one time ultimately ending up with a mess of contrary titles, formats, and file content. Moving to cloud computing has facilitated central file storage.

10. Easily Manageable Cloud computing offers simplified and enhanced IT maintenance and management capacities by agreements backed by SLA, central resource administration and managed infrastructure. You get to enjoy a basic user interface without any requirement for installation. Plus you are assured guaranteed and timely management, maintenance, and delivery of the IT services.

Even the few of these advantages of cloud computing might be enough to persuade businesses to move onto the cloud computing services. But when summed up all of these 10, it is accosting no-brainer domain.

Cloud Computing in Banking Environment

Posted on July 12, 2016January 13, 2021 by Idexcel Technologies

Cloud is a distinct IT environment that remotely provides measured and scalable IT resources, and relies on a pool of shared physical and virtual resources rather than deployment of personal or local software and hardware. Cloud deployment offers great choice in choosing the management required and level of security, and hence is suitable for almost any business. Although there is no magic bullet that can meet all the requirements, cloud computing offers several advantages to the financial institutions. These benefits include:

Cost-saving– The large up-front capital expenditure can be turned into ongoing, smaller operational cost without any bulk investments in new software and hardware.

Business continuity– In cloud computing, the service provider manages the technology, and banking firms can have higher levels of fault tolerance, data protection and disaster recover. Cloud computing also offers a high level of back-up and redundancy at lower cost.

Usage-based billing– Institutions can pick and choose the services based on pay-as-you-go basis.

Business agility– As the cloud is available on demand, the infrastructure investment is minimized, saving the time for initial set-up. The development cycle for the new products is reduced, leading to more efficient and faster response to the customers.

Business focus– Financial firms can move non-critical services such as software patches, maintenance etc. to the cloud, and can focus on their core business areas, not IT.

Green IT– Transferring banking services to the cloud reduces carbon footprint and energy consumption, and there is minimized idle time with more efficient utilization of computing power.

Cloud Service Models

Cloud computing offers more flexible business models to the financial institutions which lowers operational costs. However, it is essential to select the cloud service model that best matches the core business requirements. These models are:

BPaaS– Business Process-as-a-service- Used for general processes such as payroll, billing, human resources etc.

SaaS– (Software-as-a-service) – Users can access the software and data from their browser, and business software and related data are housed by the cloud service provider. Accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relation management (CRM), human resource management, invoicing, service desk management and content management software can be delivered using this model.

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-service) – Rather than purchasing software, servers, network equipment or data centre space, the businesses can buy these resources as fully outsourced services.

PaaS( Platform-as-a-service) – In this model, the cloud service provider offers a complete platform to the businesses to develop , run and manage their applications without engaging in the infrastructure complexities associated with application development and launch.

There are three types of commonly deployed clouds. Private cloud is operated specifically for a given company and is most secure of all options. The company may exist on or off the premises, and can be managed either by the company, or by a third party. Public clouds are for a large industry group or for the general public, and ownership lies with the cloud service seller. Hybrid infrastructure consists of two or more public or private clouds that are linked but remain unique entities.

Banking on the Cloud

Banking industry needs to address the ever-growing data input demands, and there is a need to explore the systems that do not rely on like-system migration so that infrastructure can be modified without any disruption. Banks have been slow in adopting cloud computing as there are apprehensions regarding lack of control and environment sprawl which can lead to reliability issues and security risks. Banks also want their financial data to be secured with controlled access. Public clouds come with the issues such as location, regulation, recoverability and liability, and this has led to slow adoption and deployment of cloud computing in the banking sector.

However, cloud computing can change the way consumers interact with banks, and migration to the suitable cloud computing model offer several benefits. Understanding the migration and entire process of migration can be quite beneficial in the long-term. The first step for the banking firms towards cloud computing adoption is opting for the private cloud as it gives banks more control, increased flexibility and reduced complexity. The banks can also alter their resource configuration to match the changes in the demand of their services. The risk of security breach in the private cloud is minimized as it is deployed within the firewall of the organisation. Using VPN (Virtual Private Network), the IT infrastructure of the company can be easily and quickly moved over a single private network. Using private clouds, banks can operate at high transaction volumes without slowing the processes and without overloading the network. The services become more efficient due to dedicated resources of each unit, improving the customer experience. Private clouds offer safety and affordability as the resources are rented, and not purchased. The total cost of ownership is reduced as the capital expenditure is converted to the operating expenditure. Private clouds are safe, affordable and enable easy transition in banking leading to long term success. Banking sector applications are very critical, private clouds provide increased security to ensure that the data is not misplaced or lost. Public clouds offer economies of scale, cost benefit and ROI, whereas private cloud offers high levels of security.

Given the concerns regarding control and security, banks can opt for incremental approach which involves using cloud computing to the non-core operations initially, and gradually move more and more operations and processes to the cloud depending on the benefits. Banks need to work on cloud reference architecture, and try to achieve business agility for business model transformation.

As there is no one-solution-fits-all option available, banks need to consider few key aspects. It is essential to thoroughly evaluate all the challenges and advantages associated with cloud computing with respect to their complete range of services- core and non-core. Additionally, geographic regulations, penalty clauses, business criticalities, interoperability and interface impact, audit requirement mandates, and technology are some of the aspects that must be thoroughly assessed. Choice of the cloud model must be evaluated based on the control of the governance and support provided by the service vendor. Non-core banking applications that do not need strict governance and stringent monitoring are suited for SaaS model, whereas IaaS is more suitable for the business critical applications that need to be closely monitored. Banks must keep in mind that the vendor must provide transparency in the security procedures and policies.

Conclusion

Banks these days offer a plethora of services, and hence they have varied requirements regarding the movement of applications to the cloud. Cloud computing can help banks create more agile and flexible business offerings for the competitive and growing markets, and help them transform their business processes. They can explore and grow into the new markets and sectors, and improve their services to the customers across different geographic locations, and integrate customer information and analytics.

Benefits of Cloud Computing – Idexcel Cloud Computing Roundup

Posted on May 13, 2016October 18, 2019 by Idexcel Technologies

1. Benefits of Cloud Computing

Based on Aberdeen Group’s Computer Intelligence Dataset, there are more than 1.6 billion permutations to choose from when it comes to cloud computing solutions.

So what, on the face of it, appears to be pretty simple is actually both complex and dynamic regardless of whether you’re in the market for networking, storage, servers, telephony, virtualisation or applications.

By making the right choices for your cloud computing technology you stand to benefit from improvements in profitability, improved time to decision, improvements in complete and on-time delivery and reduction in downtime. Read more…

2. The dirty dozen: 12 cloud security threats

Enterprises are no longer sitting on their hands, wondering if they should risk migrating applications and data to the cloud. They’re doing it — but security remains a serious concern.

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The first step in minimizing risk in the cloud is to identify the top security threats. Read more…

3. IoT revenues up 15%; cloud computing a big driver

A new report shows healthy revenues for 21 benchmarked Internet of Things (IoT) companies in the last quarter of 2015, with revenue growing by almost 15% to levels approaching $7 billion. Cloud computing and IT infrastructure are especially potent drivers of IoT revenues, as vendors help companies cope with ever increasing rivers of data. Read more…

4. Why banks are finally cashing in on the public cloud

The financial services industry has avoided entrusting its data to public cloud vendors, even as Amazon Web Services quietly acquired thousands of business users. Banks and insurance firms feared rigorous regulatory scrutiny should their data become compromised in a breach at one of their cloud vendors. Read more…

5. Jay Greene on Cloud Computing May Be Hampering Tech Spending

The transition to cloud computing – at the current snail pace doesn’t warrant ‘transformation’ rhetoric – may be getting a goose because of tightening finances in the corporate world. A time when the purported risks of cloud computing are moderated by companies hungry for cost-cutting. And that may be part of the slow-down in tech spending right now. Read more…

Startup Sutra: To Scale Quick, Ride A Cloud

Posted on June 11, 2014October 18, 2019 by Idexcel Technologies

Small is Big makes a catchy label for a startup to stick at the office water cooler. But Small is Big with cloud computing makes for business gyan. To put it in another way, Startup + Cloud = Another Facebook kind of valuation in the works (read on to know how). So think big. Work smart. Keep it lean and mean. Deliver stuff that works straight off the shelf. That’s what the cloud is all about, particularly for a startup. Enabling anyone to do any work or any play anywhere, anyplace, anytime. Is that not why when people say they are on cloud, they mean they are on cloud nine, eight times out of nine?

Reverse the equation for a moment. What if you are a startup actually offering cloud services? Impossible is nothing! You can potentially set the investors’ pulse racing and have over-eager venture capitalists knocking on your doors! Workday, a young Californian firm selling cloud-based software hit pay dirt managing the back-offices of large companies and ended up with a valuation of nearly $4 billion at the New York bourses. Another company, Yammer that offers social networking software, was snapped up by Microsoft for $1.2 billion.

Let’s rewind to Ground Zero when you have just buckled your straps and are starting from scratch. As a startup, you cannot afford to be straight-jacketed. You need to keep your options open. Like, one door should open when another closes.

Suppose you start with investing big on creating an all-purpose fully loaded virtual architecture, and this model ends up as a white elephant? All the more sensible therefore that you keep your investment on virtual architecture lean and mean and to the minimum, and fully leverage Cloud Service to the maximum by using it for accessing application infrastructure, processing, storage, etc.

Unless you are starting your enterprise with a billion dollars (!) your number one concern will be about how to thread your costs thin. Remember Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) concept? It’s the same with startups using cloud service. You only pay per spend, or pay per user or per quantity of processing/storage.
With cloud services, your resources are “elastic”, and you enjoy out of the box mobility by way of easy and instant access to IT facilities from any suitably configured device, including faster access to latest software and hardware upgrades on the cutting edge. For instance, days after your new state-of-art server farm arrives on its pallets, the market is abuzz about the launch of a new server that has double the processing power and is available at half the cost of your server! But if you have adopted the cloud model, you are able to access up-to-date hardware resources and software functionality, and its newly added features, at little or no extra cost.

However, many startups would like to cross the bridge to the cloud only when it becomes par for the course and not when it is still a fashion statement.

For instance, in situations where data requirements are huge, working on a smart phone view is like watching the spectacular Avatar on a 9’ inch screen and writing a review of it!

When a startup relies on a network provider for most, if not all, its IT needs, how will it cope in the event of a network disruption? How will you ensure uptime in case you lose connectivity to your data? How will you manage your Windows Active Directory servers?

Cloud for startups has its advocates and critics and it would be fair to say that it is an idea whose time will not go for some time to come. Wish we had Steve Jobs to ask the right questions and provide better answers. Or is it that he is on cloud ??

If you want to bootstrap your way to scale, your ticket is a cloud away.