Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Common Characteristics
Virtually all cloud offerings have some common characteristics, which account for both
their appeal and their challenges:
Subscription model
The key driver for cloud computing is cost savings, and the key factor in that cost
savings is the subscription model. Normally, you would use a large portion of your
IT budget for initial capital expenses, including purchasing and installing hardware
and a variety of system software, as well as the software you will be using for a
particular project. With a subscription model, you simply pay as you go, with no
(or relatively few) initial costs. Subscription models also include the ability to cancel
at any time, although over time you may end up spending more overall when you
rent
rather than
buy
your IT resources.
Rapid time-to-value
This somewhat vague phrase is meant to encompass a wide range of features that,
taken together, mean that you can get to your desired end result of a cloud-based
solution faster. This characteristic includes rapid, self-service provisioning, highly
efficient configuration and deployment capabilities, and a variety of ways of in‐
creasing your operational productivity. All in all, it means the time from starting
on a project to realizing business value from that project is significantly reduced,
increasing the value of the cloud for you and your customers or business users. As
the initial capital expenditure disappears in the cloud, so too does the initial setup
delays to prepare an appropriate environment.
Universal access
Although universal access has been around, in various forms, for awhile, the cloud
essentially demands that you use Internet protocols to access the computing re‐
sources of the cloud. The use of the Internet as the communications level of the
cloud has implications for the Oracle database, as you will see later in this chapter,
but this type of access also has the important effect of making the location of cloud
resources transparent. You should not really care where these resources are located,
which means cloud vendors can use less costly locations for their infrastructure.
There are significant and real factors that undercut this transparency, such as reg‐
ulatory requirements and latency caused by distance, but the basic idea of trans‐
parency is central to a cloud solution. In the current environment, universal access
also means access to the same systems from a variety of devices, from personal
computers to tablets to mobile devices. Once this type of interface transparency is
built into your cloud systems, you have guarded against obsolescence caused by any
new platforms and user interfaces in the future.
Elasticity
One of the key factors for the cloud is the ability to scale usage of resources up and
down. The subscription nature of the cloud means that you will only pay for those
