Akela

As, friends have said " A single step of man a giant leap for mankind", we have also taken a single simple step that was to make a IT Club in our Campus then for the First time in the history of our campus we try to do some program of IT other than any political issues. We had to labor too much to make it successful, this sort of program was for the first time in Amrit Campus, as everybody knows what kind of the campus it is. But, also we did our best and at last it was on great success thanks to everyone who helped us to make this program of great success.

We all took first two classes and begin to prepare for the program, some work were done the day before aswell so not too much burden. We just manage the stuffs what were needed to start the program. We all were busy and I had some problem with my shirt and one of my junior was helping me with it, the very time Allen Bailochan Tuladhar, Country Mangager of Microsoft MDP, Nepal arrived. I was in doubt what to do... We all our fauclty member and other guests also arrived like Shailendra Jha, Microsoft Community Lead and MSP from other Colleges. While we were going to start the program there was a little bit problem but also we sort out and begin the program. GK hosted the program, the first presentation was of Windows 7, by Gandip Khaling doing internship in Microsoft MDP and our senior. Then, Allen Sir was on the floor taking about What is Microsoft doing in Nepal, he rock it everybody were so intersted that nobody uttered anything else other than the topics. Shailendra Sir,  gave the presentation of Microsoft Certification then Archana Maharjan, MSP gave the presentation on Live@edu. We all were busy in different things. We have kept a small stall where we could order our copy of Geninue Windows 7 RC, signed by the Country Manager, Allen Sir.

Some of our friend were interested to take interview of Allen Sir and were engage with it. Our faculty and FSU all were happy with the program all were taking Windows 7 and we immediately installed in one of the computer of our Account Section since sir was too curious to install and use it.

We finished our program with great success and happily. We said Bye Bye to all our guest and began to do other internal works. We were too tired and hectic.I was feeling hectic till next day and I missed two classes. With our program all were happy and not only that much it gave us some knowledge and taught us something.

Thanks to the Team of Microsoft MDP, Nepal and We all look this kind of program in near future aswell.

Partnership for Technology Access(PTA)

PTA is a project launched with the colabration of Microsoft MDP Nepal, HLCIT and Nabil Bank. It,s a project which says " I have a PC, What about you?". This works in basic principle of PPP model(Private Public Partnership). It is a project where we  can get laptops with no down payment and extra interest just monthly installment. The project is launched with the help of Microsoft and HLCIT and finance is done by the Nabil Bank. This is the project where we do not have to pay extra interest and take the laptop and pay monthly installment only. The project is specially for the students but now it has been started for the governmental officials, faculty members and then only to students since, bank doesn't want to take risk about the students. Bank is having trouble to give loan for the student, so it will take a little bit more time to start for the students.

In this project lauch there were guest from Government sector, Private sector, Microsoft personnel's, and Chief Guest Haja Sheriff. It was a great start for the country like Nepal. There were people who were talking about the project lots of them wer

e exited for this and me too very much. But, some were taking it's difficult and we cannot offer this, what is a difference in this project then others, so and so.......... this and that........

It has a big difference that is, not only a laptop but you are getting Micro

soft geninue software for free with it and a live support for those user who buy the laptops. I think this is a very good project for the country like Nepal, which is trying to develop in ICT sector.

Myself and Archana were there for the program as a representative of students (MSP) to attend the program, it was too good and hope it will be in great success.

Thanks to Microsoft MDP Nepal, HLCIT, and Nabil Bank. We a

re waiting for this project when it will reach to us.

National Data Center

As an MSP I got the chance to visit the National Data Centre of Nepal for the first time in the Singha Durbar . We reached there, after sometime we entered the Singha Durbar and to the Data Center. We had a small brief by Dr. Subarna Shakya, Executive Director, NITC and Project Director of GIDC. He is the one who is working on the e-gov master plan of Nepal. After that we visited to the server room and control room then we had meeting of MSP over there in meeting room with Allen sir, Country Manager, Microsoft MDP Nepal and S

hailendra Jha, Microsoft Community Lead. We retured at late evening from there.

What is GIDC?

It's an National Data Center for Nepal for the first time in the whole history of ours,  built with the help of the KOICA, Korean Government. The name given  for this Data Center is Government Integrated Data Center (GIDC). Investment of  23 crore had been made for this project. This project was started on 14th May, 2008. It has mainly three types of Data Centres: 1. Intern

et Data Cener(IDC), 2. Storage Data Network(SDN) and 3. Enterprise Data Center(EDC). Amoung these three types only one is is now functional that is IDC. It consist of 16 Terabyte storage and 10 Terabyte as a backup for keeping the data of government and the other organizations. Its has two special room one is Monitoring room and Situational Room. It have kept the data of almost all ministries inside the Singha Durbar and trying to do with all the governmental offieces. It has full power backups for the GIDC.

What are the plans for future?

In the upcoming new  annual year they are planning to take this project out of the valley also. It is going to synchronize all the governmental office, ministries and private sector with the GIDC. It will have another Data Center for the backup purpose outside the 200m of this data center.

Cloud computing is all the rage. "It's become the phrase du jour," says Gartner senior analyst Ben Pring, echoing many of his peers. The problem is that (as with Web 2.0) everyone seems to have a different definition.As a metaphor for the Internet, "the cloud", but when combined with "computing," the meaning gets bigger and fuzzier. Some analysts and vendors define cloud computing narrowly as an updated version of utility computing: basically virtual servers available over the Internet. Others go very broad, arguing anything you consume outside the firewall is "in the cloud," including conventional outsourcing.

Organizations need flexible IT environments that help reduce costs, accelerate processes and simplify management. Cloud computing transforms the traditional server infrastructure into a dynamic environment that expands and reduces capacity depending on requirements. A cloud computing environment that expands and reduces capacity depending on requirements. A cloud computing environment combines the resources of a group of serves over a network. This group of servers is the cloud that provides access to resources on demand. Adopting a cloud-computing strategy helps businesses conduct their core business activities with greater efficiency and flexibility. It enables greater utilization of existing hardware while also providing the ability to handle peaks in usage. Thousands of virtual machines and applications can be managed more easily using a cloud-like environment.

Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT's existing capabilities.

Cloud computing is at an early stage, with a motley crew of providers large and small delivering a slew of cloud-based services, from full-blown applications to storage services to spam filtering. Yes, utility-style infrastructure providers are part of the mix, but so are SAAS( Software As A Services), providers such as Salesforce.com. Today, for the most part, IT must plug into cloud-based services individually, but cloud computing aggregators and integrators are already emerging.InfoWorld talked to dozens of vendors, analysts, and IT customers to tease out the various components of cloud computing. Based on those discussions, here's a rough breakdown of what cloud computing is all about:

SAAS

This type of cloud computing delivers a single application through the browser to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. On the customer side, it means no upfront investment in servers or software licensing; on the provider side, with just one app to maintain, costs are low compared to conventional hosting. Salesforce.com is by far the best-known example among enterprise applications, but SAAS is also common for HR apps and has even worked its way up the food chain to ERP, with players such as Workday. And who could have predicted the sudden rise of SAAS " desktop" applications, such as Windows Azure, Google Apps and Zoho Office?

Comparisons

Cloud computing is often confused with grid computing ("a form of distributed computing whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers, acting in concert to perform very large tasks"),utility computing (the "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility such as electricity")and autonomic computing ("computer systems capable of self-management").

Indeed many cloud computing deployments as of 2009^[update] depend on grids, have autonomic characteristics and bill like utilities — but cloud computing can be seen as a natural next step from the grid-utility model.Some successful cloud architectures have little or no centralised infrastructure or billing systems whatsoever, including peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent and Skytype and volunteer computing.

Characteristics

The customers engaging in cloud computing do not own the physical infrastructure serving as host to the software platform in question. Instead, they avoid capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a services paying instead for only the resources they use. Many cloud-computing offerings have adopted the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utilities like electricity are consumed, while others are billed on a subscription basis. Sharing "perishable and intangible" computing power among mulitiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not left idle, which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development. A side effect of this approach is that overall computer usage rises dramatically as customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits. Adoption has been enabled by "increased high-speed bandwidth" which makes it possible to receive the same response times from centralized infrastructure at other sites.

Companies

IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Sun Microsystems, Google and Yahoo are some of the major cloud computing service providers. It is being adopted by individual users through large enterprises.

Legal issues

In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term "cloud computing"(U.S. Trademark 77,139,082) in theUnited States. The "Notice of Allowance" it received in July 2008 was canceled on August 6, resulting in a formal rejection of the trademark application less than a week later.

On September 30, 2008,USPTO issued a "Notice of Allowance" to CGactive LLC for "CloudOS". A cloud operating system is a generic operating system that "manage[s] the relationship between software inside the computer and on the Web", such as Microsoft Azure.

In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License, a version of GPLv3 designed to close a perceived legal loophole associated with Free software designed to be run over a network, particularly SAAS. An application service provider is required to release any changes they make to Affero GPL open source code.

In early April of 2009, the FBI raided a data center in Texas. As part of an ongoing investigation, they had a search warrant allowing them to seize a particular cabinet of equipment. Unfortunately, the hardware in that cabinet contained data for multiple companies, in addition to the one involved in the investigation. The removal of their data caused at least one of these companies to be unable to operate, and the court denied their attempt to get their data back, although the FBI did offer to copy it to blank tapes. This same type of co-location of data for multiple entities on the same hardware could be a potential risk and legal issue for companies considering hosting data or applications in the cloud.

Types of Cloud Computing

• Public Cloud Computing
• Hybrid Cloud Computing
• Private Cloud Computing

References:

Wikipedia

Windows Azure

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• What is Cloud Computing?

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