By
Goran Novkovic, CQA, CSQE, ITIL, APM, PMP, PEng
This
blog is part of a series called Manufacturing in the Cloud. This series aims to assist
manufacturing organizations to evaluate how they can overcome challenges and
maximize cloud computing benefits. As cloud computing services mature both
commercially and technologically, this is likely to become relatively easier to
achieve.
From the previous blog ‘Part I:What is cloud computing and why is it being used?’ we looked at the
definition of cloud and the benefits seen so far. In this blog, we will take a
deeper look into five characteristics that help define what we know today as
cloud computing as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
1.
On-demand self-service
Cloud computing resources can be
provisioned without human interaction from the service provider. In other
words, a manufacturing organization can provision additional computing
resources as needed without going through the cloud service provider. This can
be a storage space, virtual machine instances, database instances, and so on.
Manufacturing organizations can use a web
self-service portal as an interface to access their cloud accounts to see their
cloud services, their usage, and also to provision and de-provision services as
they need to.
2.
Broad network access
Cloud computing resources are available
over the network and can be accessed by diverse customer platforms. It other
words, cloud services are available over a network (ideally high broadband
communication link) such as the Internet, or in the case of a private clouds it
could be a local area network (LAN).
Network
bandwidth and latency are very important aspects of cloud computing and broad
network access, because they relate to the Quality of Service (QoS) on the
network. This is particularly important for serving time sensitive
manufacturing applications.
3.
Multi-tenancy and resource pooling
Cloud computing resources are pooled to
support a multitenant model.
Multi-tenancy
allows multiple customers to share the same applications or the same physical
infrastructure while retaining privacy and security over their information.
It's similar to people living in an apartment building, sharing the same
building infrastructure but they still have their own apartments and privacy
within that infrastructure. That is how cloud multi-tenancy works.
Resource pooling means that multiple
customers are serviced from the same physical resources. Providers' resource
pool should be very large and flexible enough to service multiple client
requirements and to provide for economy of scale. When it comes to resource
pooling, resource allocation must not impact performances of critical
manufacturing applications.
4.
Rapid elasticity and scalability
One of the great things about cloud
computing is the ability to quickly provision resources in the cloud as
manufacturing organizations need them. And then to remove them when they don't
need them. Cloud computing resources can scale up or down rapidly and, in some
cases, automatically, in response to business demands. It is a key feature of
cloud computing. The usage,
capacity, and therefore cost, can be scaled up or down with no additional
contract or penalties.
Elasticity is a landmark of cloud
computing and it implies that manufacturing organizations can rapidly provision
and de-provision any of the cloud computing resources. Rapid provisioning and
de-provisioning might apply to storage or virtual machines or customer
applications.
With cloud computing scalability, there
is less capital expenditure on the cloud customer side. This is because as the
cloud customer needs additional computing resources, they can simply provision
them as needed, and they are available right away. Scalability is more planned
and gradual. For instance, scalability means that manufacturing organizations
are gradually planning for more capacity and of course the cloud can handle
that scaling up or scaling down.
Just-in-time service is the notion of
requiring cloud elasticity either to provision more resources in the cloud or
less. For example, if a manufacturing organization all of a sudden needs more
computing power to perform some kind of complex calculation, this would be
cloud elasticity that would be a just-in-time service. On the other hand, if
the manufacturing organization needs to provision new HMI tags in the database
for a manufacturing project, that is not really just-in-time service, it is
planned ahead of time. So it is more on the scalability side than elasticity.
Another feature available for rapid
elasticity and scalability in the cloud is related to testing of manufacturing
applications. If a manufacturing organization needs, for example, a few new
virtual machines to test a SCADA system before they roll it out in production,
they can have it up and running in minutes instead of physically ordering and
waiting for hardware to be shipped.
Looking at the bottom line, when
manufacturing organizations need to test something in the cloud, they are
paying for what they use as they use it. As long as they remember to
de-provision it, they will no longer be paying for it. So there is no capital
expense here for computer resources. Manufacturing organizations are using the
cloud provider's investment in cloud computing resources instead. This is
really useful for testing smart manufacturing solutions.
5.
Measured service
Cloud computing resources usage is
metered and manufacturing organizations pay accordingly for what they have
used. Resource utilization can be optimized by leveraging charge-per-use
capabilities. This means that cloud resource usage (whether virtual server
instances that are running or storage in the cloud) gets monitored, measured
and reported by the cloud service provider. The cost model is based on
"pay for what you use" -- payment is variable based on the actual
consumption by the manufacturing organization.
Has your
experience with cloud been successful? Have you run into issues? Email me or
start a reply to this blog or in MESA’s LinkedIn Group
to voice your experience or concerns.
Next week
I’ll talk about Cloud Computing and Virtualization.
Goran
Novkovic, CQA, CSQE, ITIL, APM, PMP, PEng
Goran Novkovic has over 15 years of
experience in various regulated industry sectors. His expertise is in
industrial control systems (ICS) cybersecurity, control systems engineering,
computer systems validation, software security and test management, cloud
security and regulatory compliance. Goran has a formal education in Electrical
Engineering and Project Management and possesses a master's degree in
Information Technology. He has number of professional licenses and
designations. He is holder of CQA (Certified Quality Auditor)
and CSQE (Certified Software Quality Engineer) certifications with ASQ
(American Society for Quality). Goran is certified ITIL, certified Agile
Project Manager and Project Management Professional with PMI (Project
Management Institute). He is licensed Professional Engineer with PEO
(Professional Engineers Ontario). Goran is focused on ICS cybersecurity and he
is helping organizations to establish ICS cybersecurity governance and develop
effective ICS cybersecurity programs from scratch. E-mail contact: gnovkov@toronto.ca
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