Inventing the Cloud Century

Frontmatter

Introducing Cloudiness

Abstract

Our daily life is largely determined by using services and consuming products delivered by companies and organizations far beyond our horizon. The general term used today for these economic and technical structures is “cloud” and the number of these different clouds is constantly growing, which made us choose the title “Inventing the Cloud Century,” to describe this phenomenon on a general basis. Cloudiness is an increasing phenomenon. In this book, we will focus on several fundamental findings and, as an introduction, we highlight these fundamental assumptions as our starting points.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

A Short History of Service Ecosystems

Abstract

In this initial chapter, we will focus on the history and development of service ecosystems based on networks. We will start with early evolutions and analyze the first public water supply networks created by the ancient Romans. Moving along the path of history we will see that early public transportation networks that appeared in Europe in the fifteenth century and developed into continent wide service operations by the nineteenth century. With these first service ecosystems, we can observe the evolution of ecosystems and the changing roles between private and federal control as well as the creation of the first business models. With the beginning of the industrial age in the eighteenth century, technology became the major trigger behind new network-based ecosystems. Supported by the innovation of steam technology, the railway became the first exponent of network centric services, leading to a revolution in mobility. The demand for public transport of goods and later persons formed the first, large-scale service ecosystems in Europe and US.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Early Information Network Services

Abstract

The industrial age was also the starting point of messaging and information networks. Going back in history, we will find the first message networks using optical semaphores in the late eighteenth century in France and UK. The invention of the electrical telegraph triggered the first international message transportation networks. The introduction of the telegraph initiated the creation of large service ecosystems. Some of today’s businesses, federal organizations and standard organizations have their roots in that epoch. At the end of the nineteenth century, the electrical telegraph was replaced by the telephone, again creating new service-based ecosystems. With the invention of wireless communication, a completely new technology appeared and, again, started to trigger the formation of new, huge service ecosystems based on networks, as seen in radio and later television. Telephone, radio and television are the predecessors of today’s Internet.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Making of Digital Computers

Abstract

Computers have always been and will remain the heart of information processing, their form factor and base technology change over time, making them useable for every kind of new application that we can imagine. We will tell the story from early computing devices to mainframes, servers, PCs and data centers.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Networks for Sharing and Connecting

Abstract

Networking enables the necessary connectivity between devices covering small, local to wide distances by providing timely and appropriate technologies for fixed as well as mobile communications. We describe the evolution of local area and wide area networks driven by computing and highlight the usage of the Internet protocol suite for the success and breakthrough of the Internet.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Managing Virtual Storage

Abstract

Storage Virtualization became the only way to cope with the ever-growing amounts of data for modern corporate IT and to handle the demands of storage re-configurations as well as demanding data migrations. We describe how storage virtualization frees applications from knowing details about storage systems through adding a new layer of software and hardware.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

From Physical to Virtual Servers

Abstract

Server Virtualization addresses the needs for more power in modern data centers resulting from growing server demands and scalability. We show how server virtualization allows for the partitioning of one physical server into multiple virtual machines and we also detail the most common server virtualization models.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Software Defined Virtual Networks

Abstract

Network Virtualization is used for consolidation of infrastructure without compromising access controls protecting sensitive information.

Virtualization became the foundation and enabler of many new technology trends like cloud computing, Internet of Things, fog computing and big data and analytics and, hence, is one of the central chapters of this book. We describe why network virtualization, also known as Software Defined Networking (SDN), already has a long history going back to the mid 1990s. We also discuss what the actual limiting factors of legacy networking technologies are today and what we understand when we talk about architectures for future networking.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Building the Internet

Abstract

The foundations of what we know today as the Internet were laid in 1960s by a group of researches in the USA working together in the federally funded Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). In the 1970s, several parallel evolutions empowered the making of an international global computer network based on a consensual protocol standard. We will also follow the history of operating system approaches, which led to the industry wide acceptance of the UNIX-family as server operating system, the evolution of standard programming languages and the importance of the open system movement. With the commercialization of the Internet in the 1980s, the foundation was established for a broad distribution of new applications and businesses.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

World Wide Web

Abstract

In the last decade of the twentieth century, the World Wide Web was introduced in addition to the Internet and started its dramatic transition of Internet usage. As a consequence of the “WWW”-introduction, the development of web services followed as a standardized integration method. By 2007, the iPhone expanded the way consumers interacted with the service ecosystems and created a completely new part of the ecosystem. This also created a new industry that provided apps and service platforms, which delivered services to a larger community, thus creating a mass market. We will give an overview on the development of the market created by the Internet and the World Wide Web and the vibrant changes between 1992 and today. New players appeared and the information technology nexus went through a sequence of major transitions regarding the role of the “old companies” and the enterprises “born on the net.”

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Cloud Computing

Abstract

The chapter gives a detailed overview on what we understand as “Cloud Computing” today. It concentrates on the technical levels and on standard definitions. We give brief introductions to the terms “cloud computing” and “cloud services” as they are defined today by describing the major players and roles, for example the consumers, the services and the resources. Following the timeline, we will explore the making of companies and services based on the Web and cloud computing.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Building Cloud Businesses and Ecosystems

Abstract

Starting with the availability of the Internet and furthermore with the World Wide Web by 1992, completely new types of enterprises appeared. They were called new economy enterprises and were based on new types of business models using two different approaches: the mass distribution of Internet based services and the sharing of capacity and resources between a large group of customers. Since then, these new ecosystems have gone through an epic development of different pricing models, marketing approaches and partner strategies.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Creating Innovation

Abstract

Innovation is and always was the major driver of economic, technical and social change. Innovation, as an effectual driver of change, seems not only to influence but sometimes also to dictate the transition into new economic and social structures. More than that, innovation became a kind of industry that tries to develop processes that identify, create or accelerate innovation to empower economic growth and change.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Security and Privacy Challenges

Abstract

With the availability of international networks and with the wide distribution of personal computers, the occurrence of security threads and violations became a mass phenomenon. In parallel to the development of the new economies, a shadow industry of criminal organizations appeared. We will analyze the different types of threads and the technologies used today to break into computer systems and data collections and give an overview on security measures that are used for risk reduction.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Changes in Society and Politics

Abstract

Like every other major technology leap, the Internet, the web and cloud computing was fueled by economic success and vice versa influenced ecosystems and social behavior. With the increase of the global adoption of the World Wide Web and the accelerating digitalization of economies and our personal life, a huge challenge for governments and administrations developed in changing and building legal systems for this new world. Our perception of privacy and trust must be redefined. Borders are no longer geographical or political borders, but demarcated by virtual services and regions in the cyberspace.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Internet of Things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the connection of devices or physical objects with embedded sensors, actuators and software by networking technologies to interact with the internal states or the external environment. We see how the Internet protocol stack is reused for IoT and how cloud solutions create a new ecosystem of applications and instances of use.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Fog Computing

Abstract

Fog Computing enables new applications and services by extending IoT and Cloud Computing to the edge of the network with the help of a distributed compute, network and storage infrastructure. These new IoT systems will mainly be self-efficient systems without any direct human interaction and be organized into types of macro endpoints. We will discuss a few of these systems and their requirements like smart traffic lights or smart connected vehicles, smart buildings and smart grid before we dig deeper into the Fog Platform requirements, the edge to cloud (core) relationship as well as the architecture.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Big Data Analytics

Abstract

Big Data Analytics describes how massive amounts of data are collected, organized and stored to allow efficient and timely analysis opens new areas of potential disruption in several different ecosystems. We will discuss what really is behind this new trend, what are the promised disruptions and what new ecosystems are inaugural. We will see how this massive amount of data is collected and organized appropriately to allow for efficient analysis, which is referred to as analytics, or big data analytics.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Future Technologies of the Cloud Century

Abstract

All the technology areas we have discussed throughout this book like computing, networking, the Internet, virtualization, the IoT and big data analytics will see significant changes but also significant improvements, which will form the basis of how our lives might look some decades from now. Among all these evolutions, we will find some of the next big things that will surely revolutionize our future.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

New Paradigms and Big Disruptive Things

Abstract

Peer-to-peer, cognitive computing and quantum computing seem to be the major, disruptive trends for the near and distant future. Given that they are the candidates for disruption in economy, technology and society, we will analyze these three paradigms in more detail.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Arrival in the Cloud Century

Abstract

All the evolutions discussed in this book will change our lives significantly and some of them will even provide the basis for the next big things to shape our economy, society and technology. Although, innovation is the trigger for improvement, we still carry the responsibility to make the right decisions as individuals as well as a society. We have arrived in the cloud century.

Marcus Oppitz, Peter Tomsu

Backmatter