Cloud engineering is the application of

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

disciplines to

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

. It brings a systematic approach to concerns of commercialization, standardization, and governance of cloud computing applications. In practice, it leverages the methods and tools of engineering in conceiving, developing, operating and maintaining cloud computing systems and solutions. It is about the process of designing the systems necessary to leverage the power and economics of cloud resources to solve business problems.

Core features

Cloud engineering is a field of engineering that focuses on cloud services, such as "

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is con ...

", "

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 allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computin ...

", and "

infrastructure as a service The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...

". It is a multidisciplinary method encompassing contributions from diverse areas such as ''

systems engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering util ...

'', ''

software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

'', ''

web engineering The World Wide Web has become a major delivery platform for a variety of complex and sophisticated enterprise applications in several domains. In addition to their inherent multifaceted functionality, these Web applications exhibit complex behavio ...

'', ''

performance engineering Performance engineering encompasses the techniques applied during a systems development life cycle to ensure the non-functional requirements for performance (such as throughput, latency, or memory usage) will be met. It may be alternatively refe ...

'', ''

information technology engineering Data engineering refers to the building of systems to enable the collection and usage of data. This data is usually used to enable subsequent analysis and data science; which often involves machine learning. Making the data usable usually involves ...

'', ''

security engineering Security engineering is the process of incorporating security controls into an information system so that the controls become an integral part of the system’s operational capabilities. It is similar to other systems engineering activities in tha ...

'', platform engineering, service engineering, risk engineering, and quality engineering. The nature of commodity-like capabilities delivered by cloud services and the inherent challenges in this business model drive the need for cloud engineering as the core discipline. Elements of Cloud Engineering include: * Foundation: the fundamental basics, concepts, guiding principles, and taxonomy * Implementation: the building blocks and practice guides for Cloud realization * Lifecycle: the end-to-end iteration of Cloud development and delivery * Management: the design-time and run-time Cloud management from multiple perspectives

Profession

The professionals who work in the field of cloud engineering are primarily cloud architects and engineers. The key skills possessed by cloud engineering professionals are: * Know the language of business and

domain knowledge Domain knowledge is knowledge of a specific, specialized discipline or field, in contrast to general (or domain-independent) knowledge. The term is often used in reference to a more general discipline—for example, in describing a software engin ...

* Understand the conceptual, logical and physical architecture * Master various cloud technologies, frameworks, and platforms * Implement the solutions for quality of cloud services, e.g. HA, DR, scaling, performance * Work on the security at multiple levels * Develop applications for flexible deployment, provisioning, and management * Leverage open source packages and products * Apply agile and lean principles in design and construction The demand for skills in advanced ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has rapidly expanded in recent years as business and society are being transformed by the emergence of Internet and Web as ubiquitous media for enabling knowledge-based global economy. This in turn has created a huge demand for networked-enabled parallel and distributed computing technologies that are changing the way we conduct science, operate business, and tackle challenging problems such as epidemic diseases and climate change.

Software

There are many platforms available for cloud engineering, enabling a variety of adaptive environments for architectural framework design, access point sharing, and data retrieval analytics. Platform virtualization is also available, allowing multimodal hypervisor operating system interface relay within the cloud database.

History

The notion of cloud engineering in the context of cloud computing had been sparsely used in discussions, presentations and talks in various occasions in the middle of the 2000s. The term of cloud engineering was formally coined around 2007 and the concept of cloud engineering was officially introduced in April 2009. Various aspects and topics of this subject have been extensively covered in a number of industry events. Extensive research has been conducted on specific areas in cloud engineering, such as development support for cloud patterns, and cloud business continuity services. The first IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E) took place on March 25–28, 2013 and the second conference was held on March 10–14, 2014.

References

{{Reflist, 1

Core features

Profession

Software

History

See also

References

Further reading