Cloud Essentials Definitions

Question 1

API

Answer 1

Application Programming Interface:

In computer programming, an application programming interface is a set of subroutine definitions, communication protocols, and tools for building software. In general terms, it is a set of clearly defined methods of communication among various components.

Question 2

BPaaS

Answer 2

Business Process as a Service:

Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) is a form of business process outsourcing (BPO) that employs a cloud computing service model. Whereas the aim of traditional BPO is to reduce labor costs, BPaaS reduces labor count through increased automation, thereby cutting costs in the process.

Question 3

CaaS

Answer 3

Communications as a Service:

Communications as a Service (CaaS) is an outsourced enterprise communications solution that can be leased from a single vendor. Such communications can include voice over IP (VoIP or Internet telephony), instant messaging (IM), collaboration and videoconference applications using fixed and mobile devices.

Question 4

CAPEX

Answer 4

Capital Expense:

Capital expenditure or capital expense is the money a company spends to buy, maintain, or improve its fixed assets, such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, or land.

Question 5

CIO

Answer 5

Chief Information Officer:

Chief information officer, chief digital information officer or information technology director, is a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise who works for the traditional information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals.

Question 6

CRM

Answer 6

Content Records Management:

Cloud content management is an aspect of information technology (IT) management that is concerned with collecting, delivering, retrieving, governing and managing information within a cloud-based hosting environment.

Question 7

DR

Answer 7

Disaster Recovery:

Cloud disaster recovery (cloud DR) is a backup and restore strategy that involves storing and maintaining copies of electronic records in a cloud computing environment as a security measure.

Question 8

IaaS

Answer 8

Infrastructure as a Service:

In an IaaS model, a cloud provider hosts the infrastructure components traditionally present in an on-premises data center, including servers, storage and networking hardware, as well as the virtualization or hypervisor layer.

Example:
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Computer Engine

Question 9

ISO

Answer 9

International Standards Organization:

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promotes worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial standards.

Question 10

ITIL

Answer 10

Information Technology Infrastructure Library:

ITIL is a set of detailed practices for IT service management that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. In its current form, ITIL is published as a series of five core volumes, each of which covers a different ITSM lifecycle stage.

Question 11

LDAP

Answer 11

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol:

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol network.

Question 12

MaaS

Answer 12

Monitoring as a Service:

Monitoring as a service is one of many cloud computing delivery models under anything as a service. It is a framework that facilitates the deployment of monitoring functionalities for various other services and applications within the cloud.

Question 13

OPEX

Answer 13

Operating Expense:

An operating expense, operating expenditure, operational expense, operational expenditure or opex is an ongoing cost for running a product, business, or system. Its counterpart, a capital expenditure, is the cost of developing or providing non-consumable parts for the product or system.

Question 14

PaaS

Answer 14

Platform as a Service:

Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app.

Example:
Salesforce, Microsoft Azure

Question 15

SaaS

Answer 15

Software as a Service:

Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the Internet.

Question 16

SDLC

Answer 16

Synchronous Data Link Control:

Synchronous Data Link Control. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Synchronous Data Link Control (SDLC) is a computer communications protocol. It is the layer 2 protocol for IBM’s Systems Network Architecture (SNA). SDLC supports multipoint links as well as error correction.

Question 17

SFTP

Answer 17

Secure File Transfer Protocol:

Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a secure version of File Transfer Protocol (FTP), which facilitates data access and data transfer over a Secure Shell (SSH) data stream. It is part of the SSH Protocol. This term is also known as SSH File Transfer Protocol.

Question 18

SLA

Answer 18

Service Level Agreement:

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a commitment between a service provider and a client. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user.

Question 19

SNMAP

Answer 19

Simple Network Management Protocol:

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. … SNMPv1 is the original version of the protocol.

Question 20

SOA

Answer 20

Service Oriented Architecture:

A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a style of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network.

Question 21

SSL

Answer 21

Secure Sockets Layer:

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a standard protocol used for the secure transmission of documents over a network. Developed by Netscape, SSL technology creates a secure link between a Web server and browser to ensure private and integral data transmission.

Question 22

TaaS

Answer 22

Testing as a Service:

Testing as a Service (TaaS) is an outsourcing model in which testing activities associated with some of an organization’s business activities are performed by a service provider rather than employees.

Question 23

VLAN

Answer 23

Virtual Local Area Network:

A virtual LAN (VLAN) is any broadcast domain that is partitioned and isolated in a computer network at the data link layer (OSI layer 2). LAN is the abbreviation for local area network and in this context virtual refers to a physical object recreated and altered by additional logic.

Question 24

VPN

Answer 24

Virtual Private Network:

A virtual private cloud (VPC) is an on-demand configurable pool of shared computing resources allocated within a public cloud environment, providing a certain level of isolation between the different organizations (denoted as users hereafter) using the resources.

Question 25

VTP

Answer 25

VLAN Trunk Protocol:

Virtual local area network (VLAN) trunking Protocol or VTP is a proprietary protocol from Cisco that allows networks to send network functionality through all of the switches in a domain. This technique eliminates the need for multiple configurations for VLANs throughout the system.

Question 26

WAN

Answer 26

Wide Area Network:

A computer network that spans a relatively large geographical area. Typically, a WAN consists of two or more local-area networks (LANs). Computers connected to a wide-area network are often connected through public networks, such as the telephone system. They can also be connected through leased lines or satellites.

Question 27

XaaS

Answer 27

Anything as a Service:

Anything as a service (XaaS) is a term that describes a broad category of services related to cloud computing and remote access. … This idea started with the basic software as a service (SaaS) with cloud providers offering individual software applications.

Example:
Encompasses SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS: Salesforce, AWS, Google App Engine, etc.

Question 28

Similarities and Differences between Cloud Computing and Outsourcing

Answer 28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw_3EOp6fvM

Question 29

Scalability

Cloud Services from a Business Perspective

Answer 29

Cloud computing allows for immediate scaling at any time, without long-term commitment. More CPU, more memory, more storage the horsepower when you need it.

Question 30

Security

Cloud Services from a Business Perspective

Answer 30

Security is one of the biggest concerns of this computing model. With security becoming a core factor for organizations determining a cloud provider, many cloud vendors are emphasizing security from the get-go. The large scale of cloud helps providers hire skilled professionals to input the latest and best in measures and governance around the security, privacy, and confidentiality of your infrastructure and services.

Question 31

Hardware Independence

Cloud Services from a Business Perspective

Answer 31

Cloud computing is hardware agnostic, providing a convenient way of accessing computing services, independent of the hardware you use. This model provides a high degree of flexibility and openness versus being boxed into specific hardware platforms that may not adapt to changes over time.

Question 32

Variable Costs

Cloud Services from a Business Perspective

Answer 32

One of the factors that appeals to consumers of cloud computing services is the benefit of variable costs. With a variable cost basis, organizations can take more risks. If cloud computing doesn’t work out, they can close the relationship/unsubscribe from the service at any time. It’s a lot less risky than investing in capital and acquiring infrastructure or licenses and having to keep them when they are no longer needed.

Question 33

Time to Market

Cloud Services from a Business Perspective

Answer 33

Most businesses are faced with enormous pressure to accelerate time-to-market for new products and services while controlling costs. In many organizations, IT staff are so busy maintaining critical production systems that setting up development, test, and QA servers fall behind. Cloud computing provides a rapid deployment model that enables applications to be set up in record time at a low cost. It makes resource provisioning dynamic and a self-service system, where application development teams can now provision their own servers; even if the infrastructure team does it for them, it can still be done at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional models.

Question 34

Distribution over the Internet

Cloud Services from a Business Perspective

Answer 34

The Internet is one of the most reliable components of computing infrastructure. Your Internet provider may occasionally have hiccups, but when compared to the rates of failures for disk drives, memory, cooling units, backup power, etc., in your internal data center, the uptime for the Internet is considerably higher. In addition to uptime, the method of providing the computing resources via the Internet is, by itself, a major time- and costs-saving benefit.

Question 35

Steps to Successful Adoption of Cloud Computing

Answer 35

• Identify your business drivers: Get educated, talk to vendors and key members of your IT staff
• Develop the strategy: Show how the cloud can align with business needs, and articulate a value proposition
• To cloud or not?: Assess your organizational readiness from financial, technical, business and governance perspectives
• Pilot it: Run a pilot with one or more scenarios where you anticipate benefits. Evaluate against clearly defined success criteria
• Gain stakeholder buy-in: Carefully analyze feedback from both IT staff, as well as users. Is cloud computing right for your organization? Is it worth it? Get buy-in
• Plan for an enterprise roll-out: If the pilot is successful