C L O U D C O M P U T I N G


Cloud computing is not just another ICT buzzword – it can deliver real benefits


the Itor ICt IndUstry loves buzz words. the latest to hit the radar is ‘cloud computing’. suddenly, ICt suppliers have something new to lure customers in commerce and subsequently, education and training. Cloud computing is a way of


providing an on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications and services that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management or service provider interactions.


It’s a way of increasing


capacity or adding capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel or licensing new software. Although this new feature of


ICT can offer huge benefits in terms of cost savings and rapid deployment, it does also present challenges to organisations such as schools and colleges. Planning, forward thinking and management of the move to the cloud, in part or in toto, must be handled with care.


UNIVERSITY STAGES


OPEN DAY TO SHOWCASE CNAP.me SOFTWARE


ENVIRONMENTS, SAYS NEWREPORT Circle No.E26


In the largest showcase of its kind so far, business and civic leaders recently joined computing experts and university representatives at Birmingham City University to see first-hand, ground-breaking technology that will lead to ‘virtual PCs’ being available to millions of remote users – from city centres toafrican towns. Highlighted in a recent national report as one of the most


CLOUD IS JUSTAS FASTAS CONVENTIONALHOSTING


the CloUd can be at least as fast as conventional hosting environments, says a new report by cloud performance experts Intechnica. The report, called How Fast is


the Cloud?, also highlighted that when the total cost of ownership is considered, the cloud is a competitive solution that businesses cannot ignore. Intechnica undertook the


research by installing an open source, e-commerce application onto four different infrastructures –Azure,AWS, VMWare and physical servers. The application was chosen,


since it represented the two-tier application infrastructure common in many business applications. The specification of each


environment was kept as similar as possible, and Intechnica


ensured they remained largely ‘out of the box’. After studying the findings,


Intechnica has made four key recommendations to organisations considering the cloud:


1 The cloud is different to conventional physical hosting environments, and it requires intelligent upfront and ongoing management to maximise the benefits and avoid the pitfalls.


2 Not all cloud solutions are the same. Consequently, they need to be considered separately and dealt with differently to achieve optimum performance.


3Applications need to be designed or modified specifically for the cloud – simply migrating conventionally hosted applications is likely to result in failure.


Technology in Education No.185 September 2011 42


4 The cloud is a liberating and enabling technology – organisations can have the confidence to conduct proofs of concept, and take greater risks with technology choices without the fear of large costs, significant deployment of resources and long-term commitments to third parties.


‘Good performance comes by design,


planning and good management,


not by accident’ Phil Horn, business


development manager at


Intechnica, said: “Our How Fast is the Cloud? report proves that the cloud can be just as fast if not faster than conventional hosting options. The exercise also demonstrated that good


performance comes by design, planning and good management, not by accident. “In our tests,MicrosoftAzure


and our VMWare public cloud both performed well, whilst Amazon EC2 (AWS) performed the least well of our four environments. This in no way suggests thatAWS is the least ‘good’ cloud option – in different test conditions using a different application,AWS is quite likely to outperform the rest of the group. In fact, with some minor changes to the environment taking just a few hours, we were able to improveAWS results by 57%.” The full report is available at


www.intechnica.co.uk/events/ how-fast-is-the-cloud


Circle No.E27 Check out our website: www.technology-in-education.co.uk


innovative initiatives in this sector, it has been developed in partnership by Birmingham City University, cloud computing specialists, cnaSoft and the African telecommunications firm Econet. The result is an award-winning, cloud-based platform called CNAP.me. What sets CNAP.me apart is its


unique ability to work both online and off-line, or in a combination Continued on page 46


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