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Let us consider the old traditional telephone.All telephones are connected  by overhead wires(carried over telephone poles on the road side) to the area  telephone exchange. Previously a man used to give connections between two  phones by manually linking the sockets of the two phones inside the exchange  building with a small wire.”the telephone exchange” is the leader of that  group of phones. There must be at least a few hundred thousand such little  exchanges covering our entire Earth. All these exchanges are linked by  unbreakable connections( by wires/cables/optical cables or wireless).In  achieving this connectivity whole groups of exchanges should be connected to  a very powerful central exchange serving half a country . All such central  exchanges will again be connected to just a few dozen “back bone” exchanges  so that every one of the hundreds of millions of phones on earth can be  linked to any other phone working in any faraway corner of the earth.

Now a days  an unimaginably big mesh of strong and durable  thick metal  wire “coaxial” cables and  far more powerful optical fibre cables covers  entire earth. (optical fibres can provide a hundred thousand two way channels  through a single optical fibre cable).Some of these metal/optical fibre  cables are laid for part of the route for hundreds of kilometres on ocean  floors encased in very strong rubber and metal casing to last for at least  half a century. But this is only half the story about telephones.

Nowadays two way all weather foolproof radio channels are linked by the  fixed “geostationary satellites” circling  20000 miles over the earth which  relay the radio signals to any part of earth.  These satellites are  geostationary i.e the stop over our heads 20000 miles above without moving  and work in effect like 20000 mile high towers!these satellites have inside  them powerful recieving and tranmitting electronic automatic instrument  systems. On the earth in every country very powerful recievers and  transmitters are fixed on high “tranmission towers” to recive and relay  incoming signals or to transmit outgoing signals recieved from the phones  linked to faraway exchanges.In this way every phone can be linked to any  other phone on earth in fraction of a seond automatically by “direct  dialling” by the users. the cell phone is a small size two way radio phone  linked to all places on earth by unbreakable all weather radio link through a  most modern technology. The land phones in our houses are linked for just  four or five miles by the overhead telephone wire over the telephone poles  and after that they too are linked to the international radio/optical  fibre/coaxial metal cable link. Though this high technology is used engineers  still follow the good old rules of”central tephone exchange”.However now all  data i.e.all our conversations are converted into  strings of billions of  01010101s.the strings are devided into neatly cut “data packets” each  containing about 20000 zeroes and ones eqivalent to about 50 sentences of  printed alphabets.In this way telephone technology is working wonders and  turned entire earth into a small village. .We can talk to a person in america  or afica as if he is sittin next to you in your room.

Now we have come to a stage sufficient to discuss how computers in your  office,in your town, in your country are connected to a faaraway computer in  another part of the world just like phones. we should note that in new  technolgy there is no difference between phone and computer.Both work with  billions of 01010101s only .in fact cell phone is also a very powerful  computer with a powerful “microprocessor chip” inside it containing software  to implement the “tcp/ip technlogy “which is the life breathof modern digital  networking technology.
due to such modern technology computers in our houses,offices,business  establishments can be interconnected with any other computer both within our  town  and also with computers in any part of the world just like  telephones.If a computer is connected with any other computer (in the proper  prescribed way through software commands)  whole books,songs,vedeos etc lying  in your computer’s memory can be sent to any other computer just in fraction  of a second. With the most modern optical fibre technology and “broad band  internet”  matter inside all the books in a big library (if kept in memory of  a computer) can be sent into memory of another far away computer in a second!  a connection with a strong fat wire called coaxial cable is enough to do this  unbelievable feat.

When we want to know about the technology of connecting computers we shold  have clear understanding about technology phone networks.Actually modern  computers and phones are closely related in technology of networking.it  closely follows the old telephone exchange technology.Modern cell phones are  actually powerful computers though small in size with two way radio  tranmission facility. Cell phones work only on the  digital radio technology  where all information is sent/recieved only by wireless(radio) and where all  information(i.e human conversation or any other data) is sent in units called  data packets. The cell phone towers  relay the radio sigals from and to the  cell phone.originally every computer worked alone all by itself unconnected  to any other computer(“stand alone computer”) to carry out tough mathematical  caculations for business houses,government departments and universities.but  prices of computers came down drastically due to researches in transistor and   silicon chip/ printed circuit technologies. After introdction of   automatic   self-managing “disc operating system” inside computers  small computers  became very popular.every industry,college,hospital,business etc started to  purchase not one but a dozen computers. All computers inside one campus were  interconnected to share the huge data in each of “main memories” or  “secondary memories”.the technology of linking  computers began.a very  advanced technology called lan technology to link computers inside same  campus was introduced.All the computers in a campus were linked by a long  coaxial cable and had to obey orders from a “leader computer” called  “server”. Only the two computers selected by server can communicate and share  data and all others had to wait and keep quiet.   Computers in a lan are  connected to other lans (in a faraway part of city or in another town)  through “wan” (wide area network) technology much like trunk telephone  exchange technology. inside each lan one computer was selected as”router”i.e.  a group leader which granted permission to a lan memmber(computer) to talk  with a computer of another lan . The routers of all lans in a area were  connected to the head router which controlled the wan. the head routers of  several wans were connected to  routers of still bigger wans  which covered a  whole country. It is  all just like old telephone exhchange system but with  “digital packets” transmitted in the routes.

Finally let us reember the main parts of a modern computer to better  understand how it can be linked to other computers. in each computer there is  a most important part called “main memory” .The data sent into computer  through keyboard/ mouse/cd is sent first to the main memory before being sent  to processors inside computer. If an answer data is sent out from computer to  monitor screen,printer,sound boxes etc,first it reaches the main emory from  the processors inside computer. The memory is like a black board in the  class room .However the controlling part of computer is the microprocessor.It  gives orders to main memory and  smaller processors how to process  incoming/outgoing data the microprocessor is like the central brain,the  commander-in-chief

We come to the last point.when a computer” x “is connected to  computer “y “which is ten miles away in another town and we have to send  data(written data,sounds like songs,speech or vedeo i.e moving pictures) from  x to y what happens?the written data in the main memory of x can be seen in  monitor screen of y. the songs and conversatios recorded in main memory of x  can be heard though speakers connected  to y. Similarly the vedeo files kept  inside main memory of “x” can be seen only through monotor screenof”y”. Thus  simply by connecting two computers through a cable all data(written  data,audio,vedeo)can flow from one to the other.Nowadays hundreds of  computers are connected. for data(writtentext,audio or vedeo) to flow to  another designated faraway computer,the rules of lan/wan/internet have to be  followed very strictly and prescribed software requests/instructions/commands  should go between the routers/requesting computers. For this purpose each  computer in a netwok is alloted a  permanent identification coded number.It  is recorded in all computers and routers and is like a telephone directory  inside each computer.

The main ” thinking part” of  the modern computer is  called ” microprocessor”. It   is just  of the  size of a shirt button and is  encased in a postage stamp- size frame and  contains millions of submicroscopic  parts called transistors. These transistors can conduct electricity only in one direction and so can be used to switch on or switch off currents  a million times per second. Such a “superfast”  speed is required in modern computers.  Due to logic circuits(mathematical circuits) constructed with these transistors  a computer  can  solve  problems like 2+3=?,10-7=?, 4×5=?,30/8=? at the speed of a million problems in one second!  The newest  computers can do about a thousand million operations per second!

 The reason for such speed is this. Electric currents which flow at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second do the mathematical work in the computers at such terrific speed. A computer’s brain  needs a superfast clock and a superfast switch. The transistor  is that switch   and is also used to assemble tiny ” clock circuits” which can produce extremely accurate clock signals. In coordination with the clock signal which  divides a second into a hundred  million tiny time units  all the mathematical  operations inside computer take place.  The step by step operations  going on in the  electronic parts inside computer fall in line with the pulses of the clock signals  like the movement of soldiers in a military drill( The pulses are produced at the rate of millions of pulses per second).  The transistor can work as a perfect switch because it alows current in one direction only  and stops current when it enters in reverse direction.

 Just as we use bricks to build  walls,rooms, canals,cupboards and  then entire multistoreyed houses we use” transistor” as the brick  to build all the” thinking parts” of the computer. First the parts called “logic gates”  using 20 or 30 transistors are built. . In each logic gate  a ” voltage”(current at a certain fixed level)  designated as “  0 ” or “  1 “  level   can  stay for a long time. This is made possible  by making  the tiny electric  currents circle indefinitely inside the logic gates like water in a  whirlpool.  These “logic gates” are used to build   very fast data- forwarding parts called “registers”.The register contains a row of 8,16,32 or even 64 logic gates like police barracks. If  number of logic gates in a “register”  is large the calculating  power of computer also is large.  The primmary  unit for data storing has eight serial chambers . Millions of such data storage units exist in a  most important part called “main memory” inside the computer..”Main memory “is  like a big township with serial numbers for each data storage unit just like house numbers .

We have noted that the” register” is the smallest unit of data processing and exists in side the “processors”. The processors are the   real decision taking parts and are just big groups of registers .Each register  specalizes in processing a certain category of data  There are many processors inside the “microprocessor” each working like an office or bank .doing specialized service. the registers  dispose off incomoing and outgoing data  within a processor very fast. The register is  like a clerk  in a  bank or office.  In contrast a” processor” containing a few dozen registers  inside  is actually a specialized logic circuit.  It is is like a government office, bank.post office ,hospital,police station etc where a citizen can get a particular type of service. There is   chief   processor called the” microprocessor” overseeing work of all the other processors inside the computer.. This is  just like  a princpal  of a college guiding and controlling other proffessors.Thus we have one ” processor”  for mathematical work,  one for networking of  computers and one for  monitoring the  internal electric circuits of computer every second  etc.

. The   different processors  containing highly specialized registers  can do complcated  mathematical work, move data between different locations, process data for printing , rearrange words ,sentences and paragraphs in a page , adding color and editing color,searching for particular data in a big database etc.   Any of these works is done step by step extremely  accurately at terrific speed at the rate of  millions of steps per second. . The set of standardised  software instructions prepared by expert software enginners  in coded computer languages  are recorded on magnetic and optical discs.Such recorded discs are also sealed inside computer at time of manufacture. Such a bundle of discs sealed inside computer is called   “hard disk”.

These instructions written on discs in specially coded computer language run into tens of thousands of lines or even hundreds of thousands of lines.When we switch on the modern personal computer  and give a special command(i.e. coded language instruction) to it the software which we want is automatically copied from the hard disk to the “main memory”.   The “microprocessor” is the heart and brain of  the modern  computer. It is made of millions of transistors  and is actually a huge city of thousands of  smaller processors( the  decision making units) and millions of data storing units( like houses in a city where data are stored in unit sizes for further processing). This entire “city” exists on a single thin silicon chrystalof the size of a shirt button!

. The tiny transistors on the silicon crystal are  invisible to the naked eye and exist in three dimentional layers in geometrical patterns. Most  of them are interconnected by submicroscopic “wires” which are themselves not real wires but electronic designs also printed in neat geometrical patterns . The “inhabitants” in the rooms(logic gates) of these “memory houses” are the millions and billions of 0′s and 1′s.  (The 0′s and 1′s stay for only a limited time and new 0′s and 1′s come in their place in the next instant.) The “memory houses” too  like real houses have “house numbers” which are recognised by the computer programme .

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But let us think of the times which we can call the” stone age” of computers i.e the period of  the very first electronic computers ( built with  about twenty thousand hot filament diode valves in each calculator)  I used the word “stone age” with great regard and affection for these old electronic wonders which did the mathematical work at hitherto unheard of speeds..The first electronic computer like  ENIAC( 1946),  the EDSAC(1946),  UNIVAC(1951) were no doubt very efficiet giants but were  very   clumsy compared to the cute  little  personal computers  of today. The old computers  faltered every few hours  due to fusing of  dozens of  diodes every hour. Twenty four hour airconditioning was required.

As already mentioned the total  equipment  in each such computer required a dozen or more almirahs and required  a big airconditioned hall  for each computer. But they were magical machines which proved the scientific theory behind electronic computers and could do complicated mathematical calculations in  less than  thousandth of a second. There were hardly half a dozen such huge experimental installations each costing tens of millions of dollars.research on them was commissined only by the U.S.Defence department . The U.S.Army required almost  instantaneous mathematical data for sending american missiles in to the sky to attack incoming enemy rockets and destroy them in the skies.

( Of course radar signals were sent continuosly day and night every day to detect incoming enemy rockets by studying the reflected radio signals.Then the computer calculated within fraction of second the trjectory of incoming rocket,the required trajectory for the outgoing american rocket ,required quantity of fuel,engine speed etc  in thousandth of a second!)

.The diode is the first  electronic devise which could be used as a very fast switching devise required in computers of first generation.. The diode could switch on or switch off small electric currents million times per second! It proved by its fast  switching power that electric currents  can be used to create fast mathematical machines. Each of these electronic giants perhaps looked like the famous  ” Time Machine” of H.G.Wells in science fiction with  hundreds of  switches,red/green/yellow indicator bulbs ,kilometers of  connecting wire,the  beep beep sounds  and blinking lights

. All the inputting of data(sending data to computer’s brain) was  perhaps done with the help of  rows of electric switches  and the outputting  (getting answers out of computer) was done perhaps by decoding with help of photo electric detectors The  output  data punched on  fast rotating paper tape .both the input and output were  in the form of long rows of 0′s and 1′s.  Only expert engineers and mathematicians could decode them. The  bizarre endless strings of “0”  and “1″s confused even the best electrical engineers and mathematicians sitting at the computer..

An interesting fact is that the calculating power of a pocket calculator of today is more than that of any of these ” first generation”  computers! The reason why they are classified as the first generation is that they used the “electronic parts” called  diodes (as in radio and tv)  and not the electro- mechanical parts like mechnical wheels  rotated by electric motors..

But still the computer was a very mysterious scientific device whose secrets were known only to big army generals,proffessors and seniormost engineers. Untill the great “transistor ” was invented and its great potentialities to replace the diode valves in computers were proved by engineers and scientist the computer did not  attract  the attention of ordinary citizens ,college and university students etc

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The invention of” transistor” was indeed a great event in history of computors.It is also the basic buiding block in radios,tvs,recording devices,radars etc.  The transistor is nothing but a tough solid semiconductor chrystal of the size of a sand particle.  After its electronic properties and great potentiality became known it almost entirely replaced the diode volve in computers,radios,tvs and all other electronic eqipment. The  lilliputian Transistor became  the ” brick” and basic building block for the assebly of logic circuits,registers and processors . It completely drove out the big hot filament diode valve in a few years. By 1955 thousands of transistors were connected into the electronic circuits of the computer and they performed exactly like the big hot filament diode valve .

The tiny transistor simply revolutionized the architecture of electronic computers. In the first days single individual transistors were used  to construct the logic circuits,registers and processors in computers just as in radios,tvs and other electronic eqipment.Individually and singly. the “  transistors”  were  connected into the electric circuits  of computers by means of thin wires called “cat’s whiskers” firmly attached to the  transistor and outwardly visible.

Perhaps ten thousand to twenty thousand  big size individual transistors  were used in a computer with outwardly visible wire connections. These  clumsy fully transistorised computers are called the ” second generation computers”. These computers were also quite big  in size though not so big as the unwieldy” first generation” computers of 1950s made from diode valves     We can say that only since the second  generation  the  shape and  standard basic architecture of  the computer became clear and its  great potentiaities   were properly understood. The second generation machine soon attracted the attention of engineers,technicians,mathematicians,  businessmen etc. But it was a clumsy machine by modern standards.

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 At about  1965  other extremely significant and path breaking developments took place in transistor technology.  Entire sets of  transistors along with the electrical parts called  resistances and capacitors  required in every electronic eqipment like radio, tv  and computer were “grown” on a single thin silicon crystal  by chemical and heating processes.Even the electric leads (in place of wire connections) were also “grown” on the silicon crystal base.  This technology is called “integrated circuit” technology. In the begining only a group of ten or twenty transistors arranged in a particular logic circuit and its  electric connections ,resistances,capacitors etc were   ” grown” on a single silicon chip. Such basic units were used to assemble registers,processors etc.

Later  far  bigger sized “integrated circuits “  were grown on a single silicon crystal  successfully   The computers built using  the “integrated circuits”  were very sturdy and also quite small  resembling a  big size tv set. Such computers consumed only low quantities of electrical energy because like telephones they worked on low voltages like 10 volts and 15 volts.They did not heat up during functioning and worked for hours together without any break . What is more , the computing speed and memory capacity increased many times and cost decreased .( because silicon chrystals were very cheap  compared to the hot filament diodes.) . The  technologies  of today can “grow”  upto twenty million  transistors on a sigle silicon chip. This resulted in  increasing the processing capacity hundreds of thousands of times. The new technology showed the potential of a modern transistor based computer.

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The great American scientist and mathematicia  Dr.John  Von Neumann  can be called father of modern computer. It was he  who proposed in 1946 construction of “stored program” electronic calculators and proposed a detailed internal architecture consisting of a “main memory” from  which data and instructions(formulas) would go to the registers inside the main processor and necessory mathematical circuits would be switched on and answers  flowed back to a section of main memory.  Every  register played a predesignated role inside the processor. The main processor  processed  data only as per the instruction set loaded by the programmer on the main memory

.After  the incorporation of a seperate part called “main memory” in  the giant electronic calculators of those days,we can say that the modern electronic computer was born. But the entire computer was constructed only with hot filament diode valves. It is wonderful to note that even the latest computers  still  follow the  basic architecture proposed byDr.Von Newmann. The world should be greatly indebted to him. The “main memory” in computer is  a data storing part like a city with millions of buildings and neat streets with each house being alloted a specific house number.  It is also like the black board in a class room used by the maths teacher  to write the formulas,the maths problem,working steps and the answer. When the next group of students come  the teacher  rubs away all that is written for the previous group  on the black board. Then he writes new formula,new problem,new working steps and answer. When this group goes he repeats the procedure for next group.

 In the class room the mathematics problem has generally about ten steps in its working. But in the tough mathematical problems solved by computers there wiill be hundreds or even thousands of working steps. They are collectively called the “stored program” and are written on the part called”main memory” by computer engineers( by typing in data through punched tape or keyboard )in a coded form . The code is in the form of  rows and rows of  0′s and 1′s   and can be understood only by the computer engineer and the ” processors” of the computer.

To understand the meaning of ‘stored program” computer we should first understand  the difference between a computer and a tv (or radio). In radio/TV the far away   programmes are recieved through  radio waves from the far away  radio/TV station.  At the very instant after we hear/see those programmes   the signals disappear from radio/TV  without trace just as water poured into a bucket with a gaping hole flows  out from bottom( as soon water is poured at top).  The data of the just concluded programme disappears from the radio or TV .  But in Von Neumann model  of the computer,   the” computer programme” which is a set of   a few hundreds  mathematical steps  (just like working steps which  the teacher writes on the black board )is recorded in advance  on the black board  called “main memory” .

The” main memory” can also be compared to the white paper  note book which the student uses to write down the steps dictated by the teacher. The student  can read the matter even   a few  months after it is written as it is recorded. In ordinary language the word memory means our brain’s remembering capacity. But incomputer matters the word “memory” represents  ” the device like black board , white paper note book,  we use to record any matter  permanantly  so that we can utilise that  data  at a later time “.

Similarly we can also read old data in computer  even days or months latter by  cheking the part called “main memory” .  However in modern computers all the data lying on “main memory” is copied to files in the hard disk by giving the “save” command on key board. “Save” means “preserve permenantly”.. The main memory is automatically ” wiped clean” when  we switch off the computer.  Next time when we switch on the computer we can give command to computer to bring a particular file to main memory.

   “The commanding and controling part in computer”(the CPU) studies whatever”instructions” from human operator/engineer are recieved (as found on the part called “main memory”) and processes them. The “instructions “given by an engineer to computer are in a  highly coded computer language like “c” or “c++”  with not even an extra comma or full stop permitted. They are actually a kind of mathematical code with “reserved words” which can acess and activate huge central electric circuits inside computer. We can bring  hundreds or even thousands of commands or instructions onto the main memory  from the files in the hard disc  by giving proper commands

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   As already said even before arrival of first generation computers there were a few dozen electricity based calculating machines. They also performed well but could not store any data (like radio/tv )as explained above. What was the idea behind construction of  those old calculators which existed before the first generation machines? Many electrical engineers and mathematicians had  for many decades pursued  an exciting idea. Electricity travels in wires at speeds of 200,000 kilometers per second or more. Electricity has two states i.e “switch on current” and  “switch off current”.  Let us represent “switch on state ” of an electric bulb as “1″ and” switch of state” as “0″.

The electric engineers and mathematicians argued  as follows . Suppose  we  represent  all numbers in a 8-digit code  having different combinations of  “1″s  or “0″s  only.  We have eight independant parallel electric circuits in which only two specified levels of current can flow and these levels are represented as “1′ or “0″. All the eight currents (in only two varieties either “0″ or “1″) are controlled by a single switch i.e.  they start or stop at the same moment . Then can we   make numbers” flow” through electric wires  by giving each number a 8-digit code like “11010101″?.

Such a combination of eight 0′s and 1′s will circulate through the parallel paths seperately but will together represent a number like   0,1,2,3,4,…..9.. If numbers are sent through such binary code (i.e. the 0 and 1 code) and special mathematical circuits are developed  then electricity can be made to solve mathematical problems at speed of flow of electrons through wires i.e. at about 200,000 kms per second. The answer after about six,seven decades of research was the eletronic calculators invented in 1950s.

 (A)Let us consider an example of how a computer  makes mathematical calculations.

Example 4×1000 =?

It is solved by computer as 4+4+4+4+4+…1000 times.

it is done as follows

4+4=8

8+4=12…

12+4=16..and so on for 1000times. At the end it looks as below.

 3988+4=3992

3992+4=3996

3996+4=4000

For us it is a tedious way but for computer it is  a most easy thing. It can do million sums like   8+4=12 in just one second.

(B)  we can  represet numbers(1,2,3,4…etc)  by different combinations of “1″ and “0″ taken in a  groups of eight “1″ or “0″ symbols

ex:    0000 0001=1

        0000 0010=2

         0000 0100=4

         0000 1011=11 and so on

(C)  we can also suggest a code to represent alphabets like a,b,c,d etc or symbols like ?,+, %,& etc.To represent alphabets add two more “0″ or “1″ s to each eight group as a specially coded prefix( indicating a special electric circuit.)

ex:    01  0000 0000=a

         01  0000 0010=b

         01  0000 0100=c   and so on

(D)To represent ” special symbols “  we can add another type suffix(i.e.”10″ instead of “01″)

ex:  10 0000 0001 =”+ “

      10 0000 0010=” ?”

       10 0000 0100=”%” and so on

(note: The examples are hypothetical but computers follow only very similar logic)

The first computers  needed only binary codes(i.e. the 0,1 code)  for numbers.They did not use alphabets (a,,b,c,d .etc)or symbols like( +,-, ?.) They had only electric circuits  for  doing addition,subtraction,multiplication.division etc . They had no need for alphabets and special symbols. We should clearly understand that the first computers were only very fast  mathematical  calculators having no need for alphabets and any other symbols. Only later for electronic printing of textual data by computers and not for any mathematical work the above sbinary codes were standardized.

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 Modern computers  are thousands of   times more powerful than the 1st generation  “stored programs ” computers invented by Dr John Von Neumann. This is because the processor speed , memory capacity,data access speed and data transfer speed all have increased many fold after the silicon chip containing millions of transistors came into use. Modern computers can perform many other tasks like preparing engineering drawings for designing cars,airplanes,ships etc, composing and printing  pages of matter,composing and printing text books, taking a photo or vedeo and printing it instantly, playing films from recorded CDs  etc.Computers connected to Internet can upload or download printed pages, printed text books, photograpphs, audio and vedeo,lengthy  cinema films etc.

 What are calculators?The pocket calculator everbody now uses is   a most advanced  Von Neumann  model computer  doing only mathematical work. A big computer  of  1940s costed millions of dollars but the small calculator avalable with high scool students  costs only a few dollars and has more calculating power!

.What is a cell phone? It is  a very powerful network computer as powerful as personal computers used in banks and offices. It can connect to any cell phone or digital land phone or networked computer any where in world  in a second with the help of  very powerful softwares like TCP/IP.

What is a robot? It is one of the ultimate marvels  in “stored program” computers. It would take  at least three or four  years to load its brain with whole dictionaries,encyclopedias,formulas of mathematics and engineering.Some modern robots can  pour tea into cups,walk a few feet and serve the tea most carefully with out spilling a drop. Some can fight duels on a stage  falling,rising and balancing their bodies and fight.as long as you want.Some dance to recorded music which a guest from outside brings . Some can recieve guests,greet people and give answers . Robots have intelligence of two year old children ,

INTRODUCTION

The “Cloud”               

In the world of computing, clouds have always served a metaphorical – almost mystical role. They have been used traditionally to represent the Internet in a networked environment in diagramming and mapping operations.

Today, there is a new development – “cloud computing.” What is the cloud? The cloud model represents nothing less than a fundamental change to the economics of computing and the location of computing resources. With the growth in Internet usage, the proliferation of mobile devices, and the need for energy and processing efficiency, the stage has been set for a different computing model.

There has been a suggestion to define the concept using the name “cloud” as an acronym, standing for computing that is: “Common, Location-independent, Online, Utility that is available on-Demand.” The term “cloud computing” has at its core a common element – in that with the cloud model, computing services are delivered over the Internet, on demand, from a remote location, rather than residing on one’s desktop, laptop, mobile device, or even your own organization’s servers. For an organization, this would mean that for a set or variable, usage-based fee – or even possibly for free, it would contract with a provider to deliver applications, computing power and storage via the Web. The cloud can take on various forms, including: SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

The basic idea behind cloud computing is that anything that could be done in computing – whether on an individual PC or in a corporate data center – from storing data to communicating via email to collaborating on documents or crunching numbers on large data sets – can be shifted to the cloud. Certainly, one of the hallmarks of cloud computing is that it enables users to interact with systems, data, and each other in a manner that minimizes the need to be concerned about the underlying technology. According to the Cloud Computing Manifesto: “The key characteristics of the cloud are the ability to scale and provision computing power dynamically in a cost efficient way and the ability of the consumer (end user, organization or IT staff) to make the most of that power without having to manage the underlying complexity of the technology.”

The Growth of the Cloud

   Global IT spending hit .4 trillion in 2008, although the aggregate total is expected to decline for the first time since 2001 in the current year – and perhaps for 2010 as well.  Indeed, across the private sector, IT spending is under fire. In fact, due to the interrelated impacts of the recession and the credit crisis, capital budgeting and credit availability for large IT projects has declined significantly. Thus, the only areas of IT that are growing in the wake of the economic crisis are outsourced IT and IT services. Additionally, as new entrants, many of them tied to cloud services, enter the marketplace, the prices for outsourced IT are likely to decline over the next few years as competition intensifies between larger, entrenched competitors and these upstart firms.

Roughly ten percent of the approximately billion spent on business applications worldwide in 2008 was spent on cloud computing applications.  Many analysts, including Gartner, project growth rates for cloud computing in excess of 20% or more for years to come. The growth rate over the next few years could be as high as 30%, with analysts estimating that the global market for cloud computing services could reach billion by 2012. Gartner sees the cloud computing marketplace as an even larger market, and it predicts that the market for cloud services already surpasses billion today, and that it will grow to over 0 billion annually by 2013.

Why cloud – and why now? According to the results of the 2009 Cloud Computing Survey, surveying over 500 IT decision-makers, the shift to cloud computing can be seen as organizations are increasingly relying on new technologies to cut their IT procurement costs, but not their IT organization’s functionality. Cloud computing is also by no means an “all or nothing” proposition. Indeed, it has been seen in practice that cloud involvement often starts when organizations initially use cloud resources for part of their non-mission-critical applications or as resources for test projects.

Cloud Computing and Government IT             

Many analysts believe that the present economic situation – and its resulting financial strain placed on governments – will only serve to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing in the public sector. This is due to cloud computing’s ROI. Indeed, the benefits are so large that IT organizations have been willing—eager, even—to tolerate the challenges that accompany the technology. Indeed, a July 2009 Computerworld report found that the larger the organization, the greater the likelihood that it would be engaged in using cloud computing.

The economy and the resulting tightness of all governmental budgets – on every level – may indeed speed and heighten the rise of cloud computing. In this budgetary context, the forecast impact of cloud computing on just the U.S. federal government’s IT spending is certainly eye-opening. The public sector market analyst firm, INPUT recently projected that over the next five years, overall federal IT spending will grow at a compound annual rate of 3.5%, reaching billion by 2014. INPUT forecasts that federal cloud computing-related spending will grow almost eight times as fast, with a growth rate of approximately 30% annually over the same time frame. According to INPUT’s projections, federal spending on cloud computing services will triple over the next five years, growing from 7 million in 2008 to 2 million annually by 2013.  This would mean that by 2014, over billion of the federal IT budget would be devoted to cloud computing.  Projections from Market Research Media are even more optimistic, saying that cloud computing represents “a fundamental re-examination of investments in technology infrastructure.” Their market analysis projects a 40% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) for cloud computing spending in the federal sector and predicts that cloud spending will top billion annually by 2015.

While there are many significant positives to be gained by the increasing use of cloud computing, the shift raises a whole host of security concerns as well. This article explores the security issues facing public sector IT leaders as they consider shifting increasing data and computing applications to cloud providers.

SECURITY CONCERNS FOR PUBLIC SECTOR IT

Security is indeed a significant issue facing IT executives as they consider shifting data and processing to cloud providers. One of the principal concerns about cloud computing is the reliability question, and this is certainly a case where when a tree falls (i.e. an outage occurs), everyone hears the sound. Unfortunately, worries over cloud reliability and availability – or specifically, the lack thereof when such instances arise – are not just theoretical. There have been well-publicized outages of many of the most popular public cloud services, including Gmail and GoogleApps, Apple’s MobileMe service, and Amazon’s S3 cloud service. When service disruptions do occur, these events tend to paint all cloud services with a broad brush. As one observer characterized the September 2009 Gmail outage: “E-mail is a mission-critical application for business users — period. If customers perceive that Gmail isn’t reliable, they won’t adopt it. Every Gmail outage makes companies think twice before adopting the free e-mail solution.” Indeed, the security of cloud computing is an issue that will inevitably “blow-up” each time data breaches occur in cloud offerings and hit the media.  And, as once commentator astutely pointed-out, when cloud service outages or inaccessibility occur, “most of the risk and blame if something goes wrong will fall directly on the shoulders of IT — and not on the cloud computing service providers.”

When a cloud provider sees a data breach or service failure occur, this calls into question the efficacy of storing files and information online, causing huge security concerns for all affected users and not just the target cloud provider, but indeed, the whole cloud computing universe, which could be painted with a broad brush in such security matters.  Yet, as one computer security analyst recently observed, “Perfect security on the cloud is an illusory goal…and the vulnerabilities of the cloud will have to be weighed against (its) benefits.” Indeed, many security experts believe that the notion of putting more data and more applications on the Internet via the cloud model could present vast new opportunities for criminal activity through identity theft and misappropriating intellectual property, hacking, and other forms of malicious activities.

The degree to which any organization engages in cloud computing – whether outside or inside its own “four-wall” environment – will certainly depend on its need for security. Yet, some will see the risks of moving data outside their own four walls too great to ever consider a cloud-based option. For private sector IT executives, there is a reluctance to shift core, mission-critical data storage or applications to public cloud environments, even if the cost savings and efficiency arguments are there, over concerns about the reliability and security of cloud offerings. Take for instance the case of the Princeton, New Jersey-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the SAT and other standardized tests. While ETS uses SaaS platforms for non-core functions, the firm’s CIO, Daniel Wakeman, recently expressed his reluctance to shift data storage and processing for the tests themselves to a cloud environment. This is in spite of the fact that due to the highly cyclical nature of test administrations, scoring, and reporting around specific testing schedules throughout the year, ETS has an average server utilization rate of just around eight percent, making the firm a prime candidate for acquiring computing resources on-demand. Wakeman simply stated that due to security issues which have yet to be worked-out in what he and other perceive to be an “immature market,” ETS will monitor developments in the cloud marketplace and “not (be) putting anything up there that we really care about.”

The security debate is perhaps even more intense when it comes to public sector IT. Take for instance the stance of Chiu Sai-ming, who serves as the Chief Assessor at Hong Kong’s Inland Revenue Department. While Mr. Sai-ming believes it vital to take advantage of new technologies, he believes that the very notion of housing taxpayer data outside of his ministry is “out of the question.” Many in public sector IT will echo the concerns expressed by Ray Roxas-Chua, who serves as the Chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) for the Government of the Philippines. Cabinet Minister Roxas-Chua recently stated that: “The ‘inherent risks’ of cloud computing need to be addressed before government embraces it is a viable way of managing information.”

Certainly, how to make cloud computing secure is one of the biggest issues for making it viable for the federal government – or for any government agency. As with prior shifts in information technology with the advent of the Internet and the Web, the introduction of e-mail, and the explosion of social media, their growth and adoption rates have been slowed by initial fears – some justified and some very unjustified – over security concerns and the loss of control over data and operations. Certainly, privacy and security questions will need to be addressed as public data and applications move into a cloud environment. As Adrienne Thomas, who is the Acting Archivist of the United States, plainly stated recently “It’s a very big issue for government in terms of someone else to have control of our stuff.” Yet, as Arun Gupta observed, in order to succeed today, “You have to have the confidence to say, ‘I don’t need to control everything.’ That’s very much a Web 2.0 mentality.” Linda Cureton, NASA’S CIO, urged IT decision-makers in government that it is imperative when considering a cloud-shift: “Don’t confuse control and ownership with security and viability.”

The widely-held perception that cloud computing and SaaS applications are less secure and less reliable than applications housed on an organization’s own network appears to be nothing less than a “myth.” Indeed, cloud offerings may be significantly more reliable that an organization’s internal offerings. The difference is that when a company’s email server crashes or a power outage disrupts operations at its data center, these internal failings do not make media headlines, as is the case anytime there is an outage or data breach with a Google, an Apple, or an Amazon cloud offering. Indeed, large-scale cloud providers are often-times more secure than a government agency’s or private sector company’s internal IT operations simply because they have the “talent, resources and focus” that their customers – and their smaller counterparts – do not have. Still, IT executives stridently believe that their own, hosted systems are far more secure than cloud-based resources, and public sector IT managers stridently believe that their internal operations are more secure than a private sector vendor could provide.

   One public sector expert recently characterized the need to retain control and protection of sensitive, private data – in an age of information sharing – the “Catch-22” for government IT in regards to cloud computing. However, Ron Ross, NIST’s Director of Security, observed that it is important to consider the sensitivity of the data in question and develop and employ “a range of security controls (that) will be appropriate for differing levels of data sensitivity.” Data security questions then are dependent on the nature and sensitivity of the data involved. Major Larry Dillard, a program manager in the Army’s Office of the Chief Marketing Officer, recently commented on overcoming the security concerns of his superior by stating: “All data is not created equal…(and) all the challenges we’ve faced have been self-imposed. We’re not putting nuclear launch codes on Salesforce.com, we’re putting the street addresses of 17-year-olds.”

One of the complicating factors in the shift to a cloud computing environment will be federal requirements for agencies to certify the security of their IT contractors’ systems – with no cloud-specific security standards in place. From the perspective of NIST’s Peter Mell: “Compliance is going to be tricky in the cloud space for several reasons, but one reason is that clouds are likely to use new security technologies that aren’t well understood or widely adopted, and that will make it difficult to prove the required level of security to auditors and to authorizing officials.” Some have questioned whether the federal government would be precluded – from a regulatory standpoint – from using cloud-based services for such reasons.  In fact, it has been commented that: “For many agency applications, stringent compliance requirements in areas such as privacy, financial controls, and health information will preclude use of public clouds, regardless of the actual security controls of the provider.” Analysts have already voiced concern that cloud providers methods of logging activities and document reads/access are presently insufficient for meeting the needs of government agencies to assure their compliance through audit controls.

Analysts have stated that one of the benefits for small companies is that they may, in fact, be able to raise the level of their computing security by moving more data and applications to the cloud. This is simply because cloud providers will have more resources to spend on security for their operations than most individual firms. Plus, their investments in security can be spread over their entire present – and prospective – clients (perhaps hundreds or thousands of firms), producing far greater results in improving computer security than individual firm’s investments in such efforts. The same principle will hold true for government clients as well, especially those at the state and local levels. Yet, analysts have said that this may also be true even at the federal level, as large cloud providers – whose business depends on secure operations – may provide better security than internal federal operations.

What are the other benefits of cloud computing in the security area? One of the best ways to improve security is to have a single-point of access, controlled by the organization, and mandating users follow their procedures and policies for access privileges. However, while such access controls return power to the client, they may well serve to defeat some of the robust advantages for remote access fundamental to the cloud computing model. A recent study from researchers at the University of Michigan showed that by shifting virus protection from individual PCs to the cloud that connected them by raising the level of protection to the network, significantly improving the ability of antivirus software to detect viruses and malware.

Cloud computing is also a relatively quick and easy solution to the significant problem of laptop theft, which poses a very real, intransigent security and financial headache for IT managers. This is because should a user lose his or her laptop, there would be no security threat, simply because the data would reside in the cloud, rather than on the machine itself. In fact, some have said this would actually mean that cloud storage would increase security for the federal government by reducing the security risk inherent with the hundreds of thousands of laptops in employee possession both inside and outside of federal facilities.

   Cloud providers have been characterized as addressing such security concerns by going “over the top” with their physical and data security measures. For instance, SaaS-provider Salesforce.com’s data center employs “five levels of biometric hand geometry scanners and even ‘man trap’ cages designed to spring on those without the proper clearances.” This is evidence that cloud providers are very much aware of and attune to both their clients’ concerns in the security area and the legal and regulatory risks that are being taken on by both the client and their firm by accepting a sizable portion of the client’s IT operations.

   There are signs that there is some backlash against cloud providers to improve their security safeguards and practices. For instance, in response to a data breach that occurred with Google Docs, The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Google’s privacy and security measures for Gmail and Google Apps. Likewise, the Constitution Project, concerned that a user’s personal information has weaker privacy protections in the cloud than when contained on a single device, has called for the cloud computing industry to set privacy standards and for the Congress to examine the privacy issues as well.

And for the concerns about security and privacy, centralizing operations in a cloud environment may not just make computing more secure, but make compliance easier – and cheaper – as well. From the viewpoint of Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, “When you look at security, it’s easier to secure when you concentrate things than when you distribute them across the government.”

Yet, as Bernard Golden recently observed, those who view cloud computing as too risky may be “overly optimistic” in their view on how well there own security and risk management efforts work – both in reality and in comparison to the cloud model. He remarked that: “This attitude reflects a common human condition: underestimating the risks associated with current conditions while overestimating the risks of something new. However, criticizing cloud computing as incapable of supporting risk management while overlooking current risk management shortcomings doesn’t really help, and can make the person criticizing look reactive rather than reflective.”

As ever-greater amounts of governmental and private sector firms’ work is shifted to cloud computing, could this shift in the locus of computation indeed be creating a national security risk? Ruven Cohen noted that: “Cyber-threats against the country and the government are growing exponentially, and the desire to connect agencies and make government open, transparent and interoperable makes it easier for hackers to carry out their attacks  — (thus) will openness and interoperability make us as a nation less secure?” He went on to note that government will have significant interest in protecting cloud resources for the private sector and individuals as well, noting the huge economic impact and disruption that can occur if a major cloud resource, such as Gmail, were to go down for an extended period of time or be lost forever. Such risks are not without precedent, as the government of Estonia was hit by a well-coordinated denial-of-service attack – suspected to be Russian in origin – during a period of tension between the two nations in 2007, and just this summer, several agencies in the U.S. government and sites in South Korea were cyberattacked by what was widely believed to be a scheme conducted by the North Korean government. Such a risk has led Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, to label this as the threat of a “Cold War 2.0” – and it is certainly an area where federal policymakers need to be concerned.

Conclusion

Security is undoubtedly a hard metric to quantify. And, all too often, the IT community has a somewhat damaging tendency to treating all risks – whatever the real nature of them – as the very worst case scenario and not judging the true impact – and likelihood – of their occurrence.

Analogies have been drawn between the advent of cloud computing today with the introduction of wireless technologies a decade ago. As Ron Ross, NIST’s Director of Security recently observed, “When wireless came along, we didn’t really know a lot about how to protect it, but we developed that understanding as we went forward, and now we do a pretty good job of protecting wireless.” However, Wyatt Kash recently warned that the shift to cloud computing could be slowed by what he termed as “a darker cloud of Internet security vulnerabilities.” John Garing, who serves as the CIO and Director of Strategic Planning for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), characterized the cloud computing security dilemma as the classic case of the “irresistible force versus immovable object,” where “the irresistible force is the incredible thirst for collaboration and information-sharing that Web 2.0 tools and many young people have brought on board and the immovable object is security.”

It is likely that governments at all levels will be a significant part of the cloud computing market, as the inherent advantages of cloud models, combined with economic pressures, will drive more and more IT procurement to cloud-based resources. As the cloud model advances, it will be incumbent on government IT leaders – and well as vendor executives – to be mindful of the unique security challenges facing the public sector use of cloud computing resources. Certainly, there are a whole host of legal, privacy and workforce issues that will need to be dealt with as well. Thus, the governmental IT marketplace will be an important focus for much activity – and discussion – for the next decade.

INTRODUCTION

A Different Way of Computing 

I need a computer. Actually, I need the processing power of hundreds of computing hours. Heretofore, if I was a researcher running data or testing a model, that meant using solely the computing power available on my campus computing system. For a major operation, that might mean waiting behind other faculty and student projects, and then having to run my data over days at a time. Today, that computing power can be had at my fingertips in a matter of minutes – or even seconds.

Likewise, my email, my files, my programs were all formerly on my computer – or on my campus’ mainframe. Today, those operations – and my data – may reside on servers in Washington State – or in Bangalore.  And this may not just be for my computing needs. Today, it may be for my entire campus and all of the institution’s students and faculty.

Welcome to the world of cloud computing!

The Cloud Computing Concept 

The Economist reminds us that: “Computing has constantly changed shape and location—mainly as a result of new technology, but often also because of shifts in demand.”  We have seen revolutionary computing technologies – truly “game changing” concepts – come about roughly once each decade in the “modern era” of computing since around 1945 when computing came to mean computations performed by a machine, not by man. From the mainframe era of the 1960s to the advent of minicomputers in the 1970s, the personal computer in the 1980s, the growth of the Internet and the Web in the 1990s, and the explosion of cell phones and other smart, Web-connected devices in the past 10 years.

Now, many think that cloud computing will be “the next big thing.” Indeed, Gartner  believes that in the end, the impact of the cloud model will be “no less influential than e-business.”  If industry analysts are correct, we thus stand at an inflection point – a true paradigm change – in the evolution of computing.

The basic idea behind cloud computing is that anything that could be done in computing – whether on an individual PC or in a corporate data center – from storing data to communicating via email to collaborating on documents or crunching numbers on large data sets – can be shifted to the cloud. As can be seen in Table 1, cloud computing encompasses a wide variety of offerings, including: SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

Table 1

Variants of Cloud Computing

Level

Label

Description

User Level

SaaS

“Software as a Service”

Companies host applications in the cloud that many users access through Internet connections. The service being sold or offered is a complete end-user application.

Developer Level

PaaS

“Platform as a Service”

Developers can design, build, and test applications that run on the cloud provider’s infrastructure and then deliver those applications to end-users from the provider’s servers.

IT Level

IaaS “Infrastructure as a Service”

System administrators obtain general processing, storage, database management and other resources and applications through the network and pay only for gets used.

Cloud computing has now become “shorthand” for the larger trend of computing services delivered over the Internet. From the perspective of the market analyst, IDC, cloud computing represents “an emerging IT development, deployment and delivery model, enabling real-time delivery of products, services and solutions over the Internet.” As one commentator recently characterized it: “Cloud computing — in which vast stores of information and processing resources can be tapped from afar, over the Internet, using a personal computer, cell phone or other device — holds great promise…to cut the costs, complexity and headaches of technology for companies and government agencies.”

Certainly, one of the hallmarks of cloud computing is that it enables users to interact with systems, data, and each other in a manner that minimizes concern about the underlying technology. According to the Cloud Computing Manifesto: “The key characteristics of the cloud are the ability to scale and provision computing power dynamically in a cost efficient way and the ability of the consumer (end user, organization or IT staff) to make the most of that power without having to manage the underlying complexity of the technology.”

The Economist captured the meaning of this trend in stating: “The plethora of devices wirelessly connected to the Internet will speed up a shift that is already under way: from a ‘device-centric’ to an ‘information-centric’ world….(and) as wireless technology gets better and cheaper, more and more different kinds of objects will connect directly to the cloud.” Technology guru Clay Shirky perhaps put it best when he said: “What is driving this shift is a change in perspective from seeing the computer as a box to seeing the computer as a door.” The emerging cloud computing paradigm is thus based on a “user-centric interface” that minimizes user concern over the supporting infrastructure.

Overview 

How does this new, on-demand, information-centric model of computing fit in the world of higher education – and what does it entail for research, for collaboration and for communication in colleges and universities? This article examines the early evidence from the field and discusses the practical and institutional implications. It concludes with a Cloud Migration Strategy for college and university IT executives to follow as they seek to best integrate cloud computing into their overall IT strategies.

Cloud Computing in Universities Today

For universities, migrating to cloud-based services affords them the ability to provide improved collaboration and research capabilities, while at the same time, providing an opportunity to cut IT costs while providing the same – or better – levels of computing services. Magnified by the need to pare overhead costs at a time when public and private institutions are grappling with significant budget shortfalls, cloud computing allows universities to not just use the resources of commercial cloud providers – many of which are available to them either for free or at reduced costs. With the cloud model, students and faculty can take advantage of the ability to work and communicate from anywhere and on any device using cloud-based applications.

The benefits for higher education center upon the scalability and the economics of cloud computing. These will be discussed in subsequent sections.

Scalability of Resources             

One of the most important impacts of cloud computing will be the notion of computing power on-demand. One industry expert described this newfound power in the following manner: “When you radically democratize computing so that anyone has access at any moment to supercomputer-type capacity and all the data storage they need.” This “democratization” of computing processing and storage power could have profound implications in everything from scientific inquiry (by making no problem too big to compute) to new enterprise formation (by drastically reducing the need for upfront investment in IT resources – and the people to support and maintain them) to public agencies (by making IT more affordable and available to governments at all levels and in all locales). Thus, we may be seeing a truly new era, where through democratizing computing technology, this will help to bring “the benefits of high-powered computers and communications to all.”

Cloud computing is a revolutionary concept in IT, due to an unprecedented elasticity of resources made possible by the cloud model. In everyday use, elasticity is commonly thought of not just as the ability of an object to stretch out when needed, but to also contract as necessary (think of a rubber band or a bungee cord). In computing terms, elasticity can be defined as: “The ability of a system to dynamically acquire or release compute resources on-demand.”  Under the cloud model, organizations that need more computing power have the ability to “scale-up” resources on-demand, without having to pay a premium for that ability.  Say, for instance, that a researcher or a department has large, batch-oriented processing tasks. The individual or group can run the operations far faster than previously and at no additional costs, since using 1000 servers for one hour costs no more than using one server for 1000 hours. This unique attribute of cloud computing is a commonly referred to as “cost associativity,” and it allows for computational needs to be addressed far faster and far cheaper than in the past. In short, cloud computing gives organizations – even individual users – with unprecedented scalability.

Additionally, where in the past only the largest universities have had supercomputing capabilities cloud computing, with number-crunching capabilities available on an on-demand basis, affords researchers anywhere to scale their computing power to match the scale of their research question – bringing supercomputing to the mainstream of research. As Delic and Walker recently characterized it, cloud computing might just “enable new insights into challenging engineering, medical and social problems,” as researchers will now have newfound capabilities “to tackle peta-scale type(s) of problems” and to “carry out mega-scale simulations.” Craig A. Stewart, Associate Dean for Research Technologies at Indiana University, recently remarked that with cloud computing, “You reduce the barrier to use advanced computing facilities.”

We have seen the reduction of barriers already paying dividends in research. At pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, researchers needed to queue their projects to run in Lilly’s internal data center. This process to provision enough server capacity for their respective projects often meant a delay of up to two months waiting on their data run. Today however, with cloud computing, research scientists can today provision the necessary processing capacity for their projects in five minutes. This allows researchers at Lilly and other research organizations to crunch data and test theories in ways that may have gone unexplored in the prior era where they would have been dependent solely on in-house computing resources! Similar experiences are being reported at universities, both in the U.S. and abroad. For instance, at the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad, India, Associate Professor Vasudeva Varma reports that the ability to run more data from more experiments more quickly has resulted in more publications for faculty in the Institute’s Search and Information Extraction Lab, which he heads.

Economics of Computing 

There is much discussion about the whole concept of “free” pricing for products and services today – and many of the email, storage, hosting, and applications that are at the forefront of cloud computing today are indeed free. The most notable of these are the product offerings of Google (Gmail, Google Apps, Google Docs, and others). Much attention has been devoted to the concept of “freeconomics,” most notably the recent book by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson entitled, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Most consumer-level cloud offerings would be labeled a “freemium,” which is a free version that is supported by a paid, premium version. Such freemiums are becoming an emergent business model, as they are particularly popular among online service and software companies. And, when faced with competing against “free” alternatives, older, more established companies have seen users migrate to the gratis alternative. Indeed, some see an entire “Culture of free” emerging, where from music to entertainment to news to software, people are coming to expect that free is the price they should pay.

In the corporate computing market, as software, hardware and processing power, and storage capacity become more and more commoditized, cloud computing becomes a free – or lower cost – alternative to the way things have been done for decades. As Gartner analyst Andrea DiMaio recently remarked: “Why should I bother looking for an email client to replace Outlook and coexist with my newly installed OpenOffice, if I can get email and office suite as a service with somebody like Google at a fraction of the cost and – most importantly – giving up the IT management burden too? Why are we talking about moving servers from Windows to Linux when the real question is why do we need to have our own servers in the first place?”

Already, there have been many campuses that have switched to Google or Microsoft-hosted email. Google and Microsoft host email for over four thousand colleges and universities, not just in the U.S., but in over 80 countries worldwide. In fact, almost half of all campuses are now making use of hosted email services. The switch to hosted services is paying significant dividends for the early adopting institutions. By switching to Gmail, Notre Dame reports that it saved .5 million in storage and other tech costs, while at the same time, finding that their students’ satisfaction with the campus’ email rose by over a third! Likewise, institutions (such as Arizona State and Washington State) are consistently reporting at least six figure annual savings from switching to Google or Microsoft hosted systems. Even more importantly, by switching to hosted email and productivity software, the job and focus of college IT staff can be changed. As Pepperdine University’s CIO Timothy Chester recently observed, his smaller IT staff can now be used more efficiently and be more productive, commenting that: “We want our staff working more with students and faculty and less on the nuts and bolts of delivering technology.”

Certainly, as challenging budgetary times have been forecast to persist across higher education for the next few years – at least, there will likely be even greater pressures on colleges and universities to replace “paid” software and computing resources with “free” or low-cost cloud alternatives. From the cloud provider standpoint, Google has stated that its incentive in providing such free services to universities is to create “relationships for life” with students and faculty.

ANALYSIS

Many in higher education are coming to believe that concur with the cloud computing will be the model of the future for information technology delivery and utilization in colleges and universities. Across higher education, the cloud computing landscape should be quite active over the next few years, as we will see both coordinated efforts and “rogue” operations that will test how and where cloud computing can be effectively applied. As we have seen, colleges and universities will in many instances lead the way. These entities will continue to do so, based on their need for computing power on demand and for providing the types of ready – and in many cases free – IT resources – to their faculty and students. With pressure to reduce the fixed costs of higher education – and IT being a very rich target – the shift to cloud may be more forced in some cases than may be dictated by the on-the-ground circumstances. Indeed, some of the most exciting uses and best practices for cloud computing could well come from the world of higher education.

We have seen predictions that due to the cost and operational benefits of cloud computing, more and more companies will find themselves outsourcing most – if not all – of their IT to cloud providers, creating what has been termed as “serverless organizations.”  Indeed, it has been predicted that organizations of all sizes will find it beneficial to concentrate on and optimize their business processes by outsourcing the IT function. So, why not “serverless universities?” By outsourcing almost all of IT and all data storage/handling – this may be a viable proposition for colleges and universities, particularly as cloud offerings expand and are made more secure and reliable.

As we have seen in this article, there are certainly discussions and embryonic efforts underway – both in the U.S. and abroad – as public and private universities examine how to best made the cloud-concept work for they and their students and faculty. Universities are beginning to work collaboratively in the cloud to pool their IT resources. Already, this has occurred in Virginia and North Carolina. In the Commonwealth, a dozen colleges and universities have come together to form the Virginia Virtual Computing Lab. Such efforts allow institutions to cut their IT costs by reducing their need for software licensing, for upgrade capabilities, and for perhaps maintaining their own data centers, all while improving the IT resources for their faculty and students. Already, by shifting to cloud offerings, North Carolina State University has been able to dramatically lower expenditures on software licenses and simultaneously, reduce the campus’ IT staff from 15 to 3 full-time employees.

Additionally, there have been calls for the federal government to take the lead to create a universal cloud computing environment, to be available for use by all colleges and universities nationwide. In doing so, proponents argue for the economic and educational benefits that such a resource would provide, as it would democratize computing technology and “level the playing field” so all students and faculty could have access to the scale and type of computing power enjoyed only by elite institutions.

CONCLUSION

A Cloud Migration Strategy for Higher Education

It is important to bear in mind that, as one commentator recently put it, “cloud computing is a tool, not a strategy.” IT leaders in higher education will thus be well-advised to take a programmed, assessment of how cloud computing can fit into their overall IT strategy, in support of the mission and overall strategy of their institution. This should take the form of a 6-step process, which this author has labeled as the Cloud Migration Strategy.

The Cloud Migration Strategy begins with learning about the basics of cloud computing – through attending seminars, networking, talking with vendors, and reading articles such as this one. Given that cloud computing represents a new paradigm in computing technology, it will be important for technology transfer to occur – the “techies” in and outside of the institution will need to go the extra mile to educate and inform the “non-techie” amongst their ranks and constituencies as to the merits and value of cloud computing. It will be especially important to devote sufficient funding for research to establish how cloud computing is working – or not working – in various areas in the university and across institutions, so as to ground policies and develop best practices in regards to the use of cloud computing.

Then, IT executives should conduct an honest assessment of their institution’s present IT needs, structure, and capacity utilization. In a cloud computing environment, where resources can be added – or subtracted – based on needs and demand, it will be critical for IT managers to honestly assess their institution’s IT baseline for faculty, students and operations. In looking at data center utilization, it will be vital to look at what resources are used all the time and are necessary for day-to-day operations to establish a baseline for internally-hosted operations. Only then can one look at whether to continue to host “excess” capacity in the data center or to contract for cloud services as needed to scale-up to meet demands for greater amounts of computing resources.

University IT leaders should then pick one area – even one specific project – to “cloud pilot” and assess their ability to manage and bring such a project to fruition. As with any new technology, we are seeing a great deal of pure experimentation with cloud computing – “science project” like work for the most part up till now. All of us who use the Internet are experimenting with cloud applications in our daily lives – from Twittering to Gmail to using photo-sharing sites. In the same way, we are seeing organizations conducting cloud computing trials – what one writer termed as “science experiments” in the use of the technology. Such efforts that are far away from their core IT operations and many times on (or trying to connect) the periphery of the organization. . Many times – even in the public sector and especially on campuses, these experiments may be “rogue” operations – taken on by individuals and units to test the utility of the technology. These are important efforts, and they should be supported – and reported within and outside the institution – so that others in the IT and the wider community can learn of the successes – and the downsides – of operating in the clouds. Thus, it will be vitally important to share both “best practices” and “lessons learned” in cloud computing. Indeed, many predict that such “science projects” in large and small organizations will drive the eventual acceptance and adoption of cloud computing.

After the internal assessment and external outreach stemming from the pilot effort, they should then conduct an overall IT cloud-readiness assessment to determine if they have data and applications that could readily move to a cloud environment and if a public/private/hybrid cloud would be suitable or useable for these purposes and rank-order potential projects. Finally, it is time to begin a cloud rollout strategy – gaining buy-in from both institutional leadership and IT staffers and communicating with both internal and external stakeholders as to the goals, progress, and costs/benefits of each cloud project. This is where the cloud goes from being a test effort to become more mainstream in the way the university manages its data, its operations and its people. It becomes part of “normal” operations, just as other prior tech innovations (from telephony to fax to the Internet to email and to social media) have become IT tools, used in support of the institution’s IT strategy and more importantly, its overall strategy.

At this point, the process enters the final stage – call it “continuous cloud improvement” – to where the institution continues to move appropriate data and applications to the cloud – and perhaps even back from the cloud to internally-hosted operations, if necessary, based on a thorough and continuous assessment of the appropriate use of cloud technologies for their particular university.

Implications for Higher Education

The shift to more cloud-based applications will indeed bring newfound capabilities to communicate, collaborate and conduct research to university faculty, staff and students. However, it will also necessitate a flurry of policy decisions that will need to be made and operational rules that will need to be implemented. For instance, there will have to be IT policy decisions made as to who can access what files and what type of access they will have (i.e. read-only, editing access). The shift will also necessitate institutions to examine how cloud computing will secure and procure their computing environment.

Indeed, one of the principal concerns about cloud computing whether it is secure and reliable.  Unfortunately, worries over cloud reliability and availability – or specifically, the lack thereof when such instances arise – are not just theoretical, as there have been well-publicized outages of many of the most popular public cloud services.  And, as one industry analyst astutely pointed-out, when cloud service outages or inaccessibility occur, “most of the risk and blame if something goes wrong will fall directly on the shoulders of IT — and not on the cloud computing service providers.”

Security concerns may indeed impede the shift to cloud-based models. As with prior shifts in information technology with the advent of the Internet and the Web, the introduction of e-mail, and the explosion of social media, their growth and adoption rates have been slowed by initial fears – some justified and some very unjustified – over security concerns and the loss of control over data and operations. Certainly, privacy and security questions will need to be addressed as institutional data and applications move into a cloud environment. Indeed, analogies have been drawn between the advent of cloud computing today with the introduction of wireless technologies a decade ago. Finally, security is undoubtedly a hard metric to quantify. And, all too often, from the perspective of Bernard Golden and other observers, the IT community has a somewhat damaging tendency to treating all risks – whatever the real nature of them – as the very worst case scenario and not judging the true impact – and likelihood – of their occurrence.

Finally, universities’ often outdated and byzantine procurement rules and regulations, some of which may even preclude the use of cloud computing in select instances, will need to be changed to be more cloud-friendly and encourage the savings and efficiencies that can come from this new model of IT. There will also need to be changes made in not just the language, but in the mindset of contracting for computing services. For while IT administrators look at capacity and systems, end users look to performance. As Joab Jackson recently put it, the key metric will now become: “When I sit down at that computer, do I see the functionality I need?”

In time, we may look back on the latter portion of this first decade of the new millennium as a true turning point in the history of computing. The transition however will take years, perhaps even decades, and we’re not close to a day when we will simply have computing easily at our fingertips. However, all signs point to a true, campus-led revolution in computing.

It is one of those proverbial “big ideas”: What if we could just plug in the computer and it would go, just as we plug a cord into an outlet for electricity, turn on the tap for water, or hit “send” on our cell phones? What if computing became a utility? In fact, it has been suggested that the move to the cloud model could make computing the fifth utility (along with water, electricity, gas, and telephone). This may well be a trend that takes decades—perhaps even a century—to fully unfold. But many believe that we are in the midst of a fundamental transformation toward a more centralized utility model of computing.

While various authors have addressed the notion of computing becoming a utility, the concept crystallized in the work of Nicholas Carr. Carr first advanced the concept in 2005 in his Sloan Management Review article, “The End of Corporate Computing.” Carr continued developing and discussing his ideas on the subject over the next three years, leading to the release in 2008 of his book on the subject, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google. All of this is not new, as companies whose business model was to sell computing instead of computers dates back to pioneers such as payroll processor ADP and to Ross Perot, who left IBM in 1962 to found EDS (Electronic Data Systems).

In 2004, Dr. Michael Rappa, the director of North Carolina State University’s Institute for Advanced Analytics, categorized a number of services according to their business models (see Table 1). What can be seen from Professor Rappa’s work is that many services have evolved over the years from “make your own” to utility models.

Table 1: Business Models of Utility Services

Type of Service

Business Models

Water

Periodic

Metered usage of service

Electricity

Periodic

Metered usage of service

Common Carrier Transportation

One-way or Roundtrip Service

Basic pay-as-you-go fare

Commuter Service

Pay-as-you-go fare

Subscription (weekly or monthly pass)

Telephone

POTS (“Plain Old Telephone System” – or Land-Line Telephone Service)

Subscription for local service

Metered usage of long-distance service

Equipment is leased or purchased

Cellular

Subscription with usage limits

Metered usage in excess of the subscription limit Equipment purchased or bundled with subscription

Radio and Television Broadcasting

Terrestrial

Advertiser-sponsored

Community-sponsored

Satellite

Subscription with basic package and premium services

Lease or purchase equipment

Cable

Subscription with basic package and premium services

Pay-per-view for special event programming and movie selections

Leased equipment is bundled with service

Internet Access:

Dial-up

Subscription for limited service or metered usage, based upon connection time;

Equipment is purchased

DSL

Subscription for unlimited (“always on”) service

Leased equipment is bundled with service

Cable

Subscription for unlimited (“always on”) service

Leased equipment is bundled with service

Adapted from Rappa, Michael A. (2004). Preparing for utility computing: The role of IT architecture and relationship management. IBM Systems Journal, 43(1): 32-42.

Indeed, many compare what is happening today with similar circumstances surrounding electricity at the turn of the last century. Before the rise of the electric utility, businesses and individuals had to generate their own power to run their machines. However, when large electric producers began generating power and delivering it via transmission lines into factories, buildings, and homes, self-generation of power waned due to the cost-efficiency and convenience of having reliable electricity on demand. At the turn of the century, for manufacturing plants and other large facilities to have electrical power, they had to generate their own electricity through small generators or be located near a water source that could operate a waterwheel.

Take, for instance a brewery operating a hundred years ago. As Amazon chief technology officer Werner Vogels famously put it: “They had to be experts in electricity to brew beer. Something is off there. These guys couldn’t wait to dump their own generators and start to use electricity from other companies.” So, just as turn-of-the-century manufacturers had to produce all their electricity on site, today’s organizations in the private and public sector historically have had to own all of their information technology (IT) resources—until now.

However, like electricity, IT assets are not used equally or continuously. Overall, research has shown that, as computing power has indeed grown far cheaper and more plentiful, utilization rates for IT resources have, in fact, plummeted. Nicholas Carr’s research reported that quite surprisingly, overall, corporate servers typically use less than a third of their processing capacity (and much of the time, they are simply not being used). Likewise, much of a typical organization’s storage capacity is either unused or being “wasted” by unnecessary redundancy. An IBM study showed that desktop computers in organizations were even less utilized—with an average utilization rate of just 5 percent! Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Susan Cramm argues that this underutilization comes as a result of not properly using existing IT resources and unnecessary spending on new IT resources to ensure even more overcapacity and even greater underutilization, compounding the problem even more.

All of this adds up to a great deal of waste—an overinvestment in IT resources—and all those dollars being tied up in unnecessary hardware, software, and the manpower it takes to monitor, maintain, and constantly upgrade and update those resources which serve as a drain on not just individual firms, but the economy as a whole. As Ashar Baig recently commented, this means “companies with static compute resources have to consistently grapple with the trade-offs related to under- and over-provisioning of in-house compute capacity.”

For large organizations, these IT investments—both in capital costs and operating expenditures—represent a significant level of commitment to providing the computing resources necessary for operations. Yet, traditionally, IT has been viewed as a capital expense. With ready access to credit, the cost of acquiring technology could be written off over a period of years. Today however, with shrinking budgets, companies are increasingly looking to cut their IT costs—not just the up-front infrastructure costs, but also the personnel, software, and energy costs necessary to maintain and support that level of internal IT.

Many are now increasingly looking at a pay-as-you-go approach to information technology expenditures. This means not just a strategic change, but a shift in the mindset of many—from viewing IT and its infrastructure as a fixed, capital expense to seeing it as a variable cost. By only paying for the computing power they actually use, cloud computing, for most organizations, can represent a significant overall cost savings. The more organizations keep IT in-house, the more expensive—and difficult—they will find it to attract and retain qualified IT staff.

This situation is replicated, and even magnified, when it comes to the public sector. The simple fact is that IT costs not just the government, but all of us who support it through our tax dollars, much more than it should due to the inefficient structure of today’s information technology model.

With all of the unused computing capacity, the stage has been set for cloud computing to develop. Nicholas Carr observed that:

“The history of commerce has repeatedly shown that redundant investment and fragmented capacity provide strong incentives for centralizing supply. And advances in computing and networking have allowed information technology to operate in an increasingly ‘virtual’ fashion, with ever greater distances between the site of the underlying technological assets and the point at which people access, interpret and manipulate the information. Given this trend, radical changes in corporate IT appear all but inevitable.”

Carr (2008) believes that we will see the web morph to become, in time, the “World Wide Computer,” where we will go for all of our computing and communication needs in the era of cloud computing.

Futurist George Gilder predicted in 2006 that we would see the growth of mammoth computing companies that would take advantage of the economies of scale for centralized computing operations. Gilder wrote that:

“In the PC era, the winners were companies that dominated the microcosm of the silicon chip. The new age of ‘petacomputing’ will be ruled by the masters of the remote data center—those who optimally manage processing power, electricity, bandwidth, storage, and location. They will leverage the Net to provide not only search, but also the panoply of applications formerly housed on the desktop. For the moment, at least, the dawning era favors scale in hardware rather than software applications, and centralized operations management rather than operating systems at the network’s edge.”

Another driver toward the technology possibility of computing as a utility—and cloud computing—is to be found in the trend toward what the analyst firm Gartner labeled as the “industrialization” of information technology. There is no doubt that IT has become standardized today, with “commoditized” hardware that underpins the Internet and data centers today. Former IBM expert Irving Wladawsky-Berger believes that this standardization is key, in that, “for computing to reach a higher level,” he says, “its cells had to be commoditised (sp).” There is also far more harmonization than at any point perhaps in the history of computing, with common software, file, and document formats that no longer present the “Mac vs. PC” incompatibility issues. Some have compared the possibilities that come from such standardization to those offered when Henry Ford mastered the art of assembly-line manufacturing to provide lower-cost, standardized outputs that made cars and a whole hosts of products available at reasonable costs. Indeed, the concept of “modularity” and interchangeable parts has been around since the early days of computing, with common parts used in programming (through the use and reuse of subroutines) and standards constantly emerging. In fact, it has been said each generation rediscovers the power of interchangeable parts, making cloud computing “a 21st century version of centralized mainframe computing.”

Certainly, as with electricity, there are cost efficiencies to be gained from centralizing and industrializing IT – through better capacity utilization, economies of scale, and cost savings/sharing (akin to the cost differential of a plant having its own small electrical generator versus the giant, centralized generators operated by an electrical utility firm). Instead of buying, operating, and maintaining IT functions on their own internal servers and data centers, organizations can instead today opt to purchase this capacity and services from cloud providers—often at a far lower cost and perhaps with more capabilities than their own internal systems. They can buy these services over the Internet from companies specializing in IT – at a lower cost than running an in-house system.

Such industrialization of information technology, built upon massive economies of scale, may well revolutionize the very structure of the computer industry and how IT resources are owned and housed. Traditionally, when it comes to software, IT managers had to decide whether to “build” or “buy” what was needed for operations. In contrast today, the choice is complicated by adding two new options—whether to build with open source or to “rent” through Software as a Service (SaaS) applications.

The move to cloud computing will ultimately be a sourcing decision, and for public and private sector organizations, there will be operations that are too critical—at the heart of one’s core business—to outsource and place outside of one’s control. As Nicholas Carr recently commented, “One of the key challenges for corporate IT departments, in fact, lies in making the right decisions about what to hold onto and what to let go.”  As outsourcing grows, more and more computing functions will be shifted to outside, often outsize providers. Indeed, Intel has projected that by 2012, a quarter of all its server chip sales will be for machines to be placed in such “mega-data centers.”

There has been a long-term pendulum swinging between centralized and personalized computing. In other words, we have seen periods where computing power, data, and programs have been held on a major, centralized platform, and we have also seen periods where that power has resided on one’s desktop—or today, literally in the palm of your hand. We may well be heading, in a way, “back to the future” as the pendulum swings again. We have seen computing cycle from a highly vertical structure in the mainframe era of the 1960s and 1970s to an increasingly distributed, horizontal model of computing. This latter era began with the introduction of PCs in the 1980s through the next three decades with the explosion of the web and the proliferation of mobile devices. In the horizontal model of computing, it was important to distinguish between hardware, software, networking, and support services, and as such, entire industries grew and proliferated around each element of computing. However, under the cloud model—where we tie into the cloud—there is a move back toward a more vertical model of computing. Because as cloud computing features IT as a service, as The Economist magazine recently characterized the situation, “in a world of services it often does not make sense to think of hardware and software separately.”

Gordon Haff recently categorized the utility analogy as “an intriguing and big argument,” but one that ultimately will encounter a great deal of resistance from organizations (and their IT departments) that will have security and compliance issues which will cause them to retain computing resources and functions in house. Besides those issues, there are also other trade-offs for treating computing as a utility and moving to a more centralized computing model. Certainly, under cloud computing, while IT gains from better efficiencies, utilization, and manageability, that same centralization could inhibit the ability to innovate in the IT area by tying in users to larger and larger standardized systems.

Simply put then, when organizations can procure the same level of computing power and like-power (and compatible) software applications from outside providers as they get from their in-house resources for less (and perhaps for free), then companies and even public sector agencies will turn to the utility model and obtain more and more of their computing from the cloud. Nicholas Carr stated the cloud case very succinctly by saying that , quite simply: “It makes computing a heck of a lot less expensive.” Thus, the stage has been set for cloud computing to emerge as a new model for delivering information technology to individuals, organizations, and government agencies.

Writing in Forbes, Russ Daniels recently posited that: “The early 21st century is like the early 20th century, in that we are at the beginning of a new economic paradigm. This time, however, the engine of growth will not be manufacturing, but information.”  Yet, with this new age come new uncertainties. In her 2002 book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages, Carlota Perez described the “techno-economic” paradigm of technological innovation that has occurred historically. Once a major new technology emerges—be it trains, the telephone, or electrical power—eventually these disruptive innovations become thought of as “utilities”—becoming stabilizing forces for a new order for business and the economy. What is “different” about this time and the revolution in computing that is under way is that there will likely not be a stable period coming from the disruptively innovative technology forming the model of computing as a utility. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2008, John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison commented that:

“The historical pattern—disruption followed by stabilization—has itself been disrupted. A new kind of infrastructure is evolving, built on the sustained exponential pace of performance improvements in computing, storage, and bandwidth. Because the underlying technologies are developing continuously and rapidly, there is no prospect for stabilization … making equilibrium a distant memory.”

As some commentators have pointed out, past technological innovations have created far more jobs than those they have destroyed. However, as old media is being supplanted by new media, new media companies have mostly remained very small, with many being “Mom and Pop” or even one person in nature. And so, with more information technology being shifted to the cloud—and more internal IT roles being outsourced to external providers—it is likely that we will see fewer IT jobs overall. And, as Nicholas Carr recently pointed out, from a public policy perspective, this IT revolution is failing to create middle-class jobs to replace the ones that will inevitably be taken away. Further, he believes—as do others—that outsourcing IT could likely become offshoring IT for many cloud providers, thus taking the jobs and revenue from cloud computing outside of the country entirely. For certain areas of the country, like the Pacific Northwest, cloud computing may mean a veritable economic boom, as companies from Amazon to Google to Microsoft have moved to place their mammoth cloud data centers in areas with abundant water supplies and relatively inexpensive electrical utility costs.