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Feature StoryBy Ian ColvilleThe Cloud – The Development Environmentfor the Future of CommunicationsIn the beginning, the Internet was conceptualized asa way to interconnect multiple computers, and thescientists who used them, for the advancement of scienceand technology. Today’s Internet has surpassed thatfundamental purpose by evolving into the primary communicationmedium that connects nearly everybody toeverything. It is ubiquitous, efficient, and forever evolving.The perfect illustration of this maturation is the growth ofvoice over IP technology. When first introduced, VoIP waspositioned as the perfect solution to reduce toll charges. Butwhen customers baulked at the high costs associated withintegrating the first series of IP PBXs, it took a while for thetechnology to find its footing. Once it was discovered thatincredibly robust applications like linking to remote locationsand collaboration tools were optimized in an IP environment,interest began to increase. And when companies realized therewas a profound ROI by collapsing voice and data networksinto a single infrastructure, the technology really took off.And now, history is repeating itself. As the Internet continuesto evolve and mature, the cloud concept is the most recentiteration garnering attention. Characteristic of the name, thecloud is difficult to define or pin down. For some, the cloudis just a new name for the same connectivity medium thatunderpins the Internet itself. However, in reality, the cloud isa temporal destination: a place where computing resources areavailable to execute tasks and generate results. Not a destinationin a brick and mortar sense, the cloud is more a destinationof a malleable nature that adjusts to the demand andapplies the appropriate resources to match the need. Connectivityno longer has to be from point A to point B, now it canbe from point A to point It Doesn’t Matter.In telecommunications, cloud-based services take a large stepbeyond traditional hosted services by providing near limitlessscalability, physical and geographic diversity, and operationalresilience that are not commonly available in a brick-andmortarhosted offering. Hosted telephony services targeted tomost enterprises rely on a dedicated connection to a telephonyserver or call manager that is located at the service providerpremises. Most service providers then employ strategies such asphysical redundancy and failover capability to ensure reliabilityin the event of a catastrophic system failure. But, by the verynature of the services being hosted from a single physical location,connectivity can still be at risk. Hosting services in thecloud mitigates these hazards by employing resources locatedin dispersed locations that act in concert across the Internet.Ian ColvilleAdditionally, the distributed nature of the compute resourcesin the cloud can provide an elastic resource without the capitaland operational expenses associated with in-house systems.Cloud-based resources provide nearly limitless scaling fordevelopment activities, which oftentimes place severe peakdemands on compute resources. For the more mundanedaily operations of an enterprise, the cost benefits are realizedthrough virtual right-sizing of resources to meet the immediateneed. Whether computer power is needed to support thewidely varied demands of development, or the more predictablefluctuations in telecom usage of a typical enterprise,cloud-based service providers can easily support pay-as-you-gosupply models that adapt to their immediate needs.Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is one such platform,which goes a long way toward eliminating the risks and costsassociated with managing dedicated computing resources andinfrastructure. The ability to expand and reduce resource utilizationon the fly enables a multitude of advantages for serviceproviders and developers. The latter group, in particular, gainthe freedom to focus their energies on innovating and creatingnew applications tailored to address the changing landscape ofcommerce in the Internet-powered world.GoTo:GoTo:48 INTERNET TELEPHONY ® February 2011 Table of Contents • Ad IndexSubscribe FREE online at www.itmag.com