About Google AdWords

Google AdWords is an online advertising service that enables advertisers to compete to display brief advertising copyto web users, based in part on keywords, predefined by the advertisers, that might link the copy to the content of web pages shown to users. Web pages from Google and from partner websites are designed to allow Google to select and display this advertising copy. Advertisers pay when users divert their browsing to seek more information about the copy displayed, and partner websites receive a portion of the income they generate.

AdWords has evolved into Google's main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD $43.7 billion in 2012. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC), that is, cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, cost-per-acquisition (CPA) advertising, cost-per-thousand-impressions or cost per mille (CPM) advertising, site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads, and remarketing (also known as retargeting). The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one headline of 25 characters, two additional text lines of 35 characters each, and a display URL of 35 characters. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.

Sales and support for Google's AdWords division in the United States is based in Mountain View, California, with major secondary offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan and New York. The third-largest US facility is in Mountain View, California, headquarters. Engineering for Google AdWords is based in Mountain View, California with major secondary offices in Los Angeles and New York.

Google has an active official public help and support community maintained and frequented by highly experienced Adwords users (referred to as "Top Contributors") and Google employees

How it works

With Google AdWords, you can reach people as they search for words or phrases (which we call keywords

) or browse websites with themes related to your business. Your ad can appear on Google and its partner websites. With cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, you're charged only when someone clicks your ad.

Your ads appear beside relevant content

People click on your ads

And connect to your business

Example

Let's say you run a bicycle repair shop near Boston. Set your ad to appear to customers in just that location, and when someone living or visiting there searches Google for "bike repair near Boston," they could see your ad and click it to connect to your business.

Benefits

A few important things set AdWords apart from other kinds of advertising. Using AdWords, you can:

Reach people searching for what you offer Your ad is displayed to people who are already searching for the kinds of products and services you offer. So those people are more likely to take action. You can choose where your ad appears -- on which specific websites and in which geographical areas (states, towns, or even neighborhoods). The Google Display Network   alone reaches over 90% of Internet users worldwide (Source: comScore).

Control your budget With cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, you’re charged only when someone clicks your ad, not when your ad appears. There are a variety of bidding options you can choose from. You decide how much or little you want to spend monthly, and you’ll never be charged more than that amount. There’s no minimum spending commitment.

See what's working in your ad, and build on it View a report of how your ad is doing -- see how many new customers connect to your business from your ad, where they’re coming from, and more. Use AdWords tools to edit and improve your ad, and increase the number of potential customers who contact your business.

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IBM cloud computing

IBM cloud computing is using for a set of cloud computing services for business offered by the information technology company IBM. All offerings used to be marketed under the name IBM SmartCloud. IBM cloud includes infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) offered through public, private and hybrid cloud delivery models, in addition to the components that make up those clouds.

Overview

IBM cloud computing model

IBM offers three hardware platforms for cloud computing. These platforms offer built-in support forvirtualization. For virtualization IBM offers IBM Websphere application infrastructure solutions that support programming models and open standards for virtualization.

The management layer of the IBM cloud framework includes IBM Tivoli middleware. Management tools provide capabilities to regulate images with automated provisioning and de-provisioning, monitor operations and meter usage while tracking costs and allocating billing. The last layer of the framework provides integrated workload tools. Workloads for cloud computing are services or instances of code that can be executed to meet specific business needs. IBM offers tools for cloud based collaboration, development and test, application development, analytics, business-to-business integration, and security.

History

IBM cloud computing emerged from the union of its mainframe computing and virtualization technologies. Known as the original virtualization company, IBM’s first experiments in virtualization occurred in the 1960s with the development of the virtual machine (VM) on CP-40 and CP-67 operating systems. CP-67, ahypervisor used for software testing and development, enabled memory sharing across VMs while giving each user their own virtual memory space. With the machine partitioned into separate VMs, mainframes could run multiple applications and processes at the same time, making the hardware more efficient and cost-effective.^[7] IBM began selling VM technology for the mainframe in 1972.

In February 1990, IBM released POWER processor based servers. The servers, in combination with the IBM mainframe, were built for complex and mission-critical virtualization. Power systems servers include PowerVMhypervisors with live partition mobility and active memory sharing. Live migration was introduced withPOWER6 in May 2007. Next, IBM looked to implement standardization and automation in their technology in order to keep up with the proliferation of data produced by increasingly efficient hardware and data centers. This combination of virtualization, standardization and automation led to the development of IBM cloud computing.

IBM began to develop a strategy for cloud computing in 2007, announcing that it planned to build clouds for enterprise clients and provide services to fill what it regarded as gaps in existing cloud environments. In October 2007, IBM announced a partnership with Google to promote cloud computing in universities. In addition to donating hardware and machines, the two companies also provided a curriculum to teach students about cloud computing.

IBM claimed in April 2011 that 80% of Fortune 500 companies were using IBM cloud, and that their software and services were used by more than 20 million end-user customers, with clients including American Airlines, Aviva, Carfax, Frito-Lay, IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, and 7-Eleven.

On 4 June 2013 IBM announced its acquisition of SoftLayer, to form an IBM Cloud Services Division.

IBM SmartCloud (or IBM Cloud)

The IBM SmartCloud brand includes infrastructure as a service, software as a service and platform as a service offered through public, private and hybrid cloud delivery models. IBM places these offerings under three umbrellas: SmartCloud Foundation, SmartCloud Services and SmartCloud Solutions.^[14]

SmartCloud Foundation consists of the infrastructure, hardware, provisioning, management, integration and security that serve as the underpinnings of a private or hybrid cloud. Built using those foundational components, PaaS, IaaS and backup services make up SmartCloud Services. Running on this cloud platform and infrastructure, SmartCloud Solutions consist of a number of collaboration, analytics and marketing SaaS applications.

IBM also builds cloud environments for clients that are not necessarily on the SmartCloud Platform. For example, features of the SmartCloud platform—such as Tivoli management software or IBM Systems Director virtualization—can be integrated separately as part of a non-IBM cloud platform. The SmartCloud platform consists solely of IBM hardware, software, services and practices.

IBM SmartCloud Enterprise and SmartCloud Enterprise+ compete with products like those of Rackspace and Amazon Web Services. Erich Clementi, vice president of Global Technology Services at IBM, said in 2012 that the goal with SmartCloud Enterprise and SmartCloud Enterprise+ was to provide an Amazon EC2-like experience primarily for test and development purposes and to provide a more robust experience for production workloads.

In 2011, IBM SmartCloud integrated Hadoop-based InfoSphere BigInsights for big data, Green Hat for software testing and Nirvanix for cloud storage. In 2012, the then new CEO Virginia Rometty said the company planned to spend $20 billion on acquisitions by 2015.

Users may build their own private cloud or purchase services hosted on the IBM cloud. Users may also purchase IBM hardware, software and services to build their customized cloud environment.

By 2014, the name SmartCloud has been replaced with products that have a prefix of "IBM Cloud". A product called IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack would be IBM's integration of OpenStack along with a multitude of value additions that would serve enterprise customers. A product called IBM Cloud Orchestrator would serve the orchestration needs of an enterprise. The aforementioned SmartCloud products have been discontinued.

Public, private and hybrid cloud models

IBM offers cloud delivery options including solely private cloud, solely public cloud, and variations in between. Private, public and hybrid clouds are not strictly distinct, as IBM allows the option to build a customized cloud solution out of a combination of public cloud and private cloud elements. Companies that prefer to keep all data and processes behind their own firewall can use private cloud services managed by their own IT staff. A company may also choose pay-as-you-go pricing. Hybrid cloud options allow for some processes to be hosted and managed by IBM, while others are kept on a private cloud or on a VPN or VLAN. IBM also offers planning and consultation throughout the deployment process. IBM offers five cloud provision models:

• Private cloud, owned and operated by the customer
• Private cloud, owned by the customer, but operated by IBM (or another provider)
• Private cloud, owned and operated by IBM (or another provider)
• Virtual private cloud services (based on multi-tenanted support for individual enterprises)
• Public cloud services (based on the provision of functions to individuals)

The majority of cloud users choose a hybrid cloud model, with some workloads being served by internal systems, some from commercial cloud providers and some from public cloud service providers.

On August 25, 2011, IBM announced the release of a new hybrid cloud model orchestrated by IBM WebSphere Cast Iron integration of on- and off-premises resources.Enterprises can use Cast Iron integration to link their public cloud appliances— hosted on environments like Amazon EC2, Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM,SugarCRM and a number of others—to their existing systems or in-house, private cloud environments. Cast Iron Integration aims to reduce the time and effort needed for customized coding, in favor of simple workload provisioning through Tivoli.

The IBM public cloud offering, SmartCloud Enterprise, was launched on April 7, 2011. SCE is hosted IaaS with service level agreements (SLA)s, and can be offered in a private, public or hybrid model. The environment is hosted on IBM servers (System p or System x), with a standard set of software images to choose from.

For customers who perceive that the security risk of cloud computing adoption is too high, IBM offers private cloud services. IDEAS International wrote in a white paper, “IBM believes that its clients are currently more comfortable with private clouds than public or hybrid clouds, and that many are ready to deploy fundamental business applications in private clouds.” For building strictly private clouds, IBM offers IBM Workload Deployer and Cloudburst as ready-to-deploy, “cloud in a box” style solutions. Cloudburst provides blade servers, middleware and virtualization for an enterprise to build its own cloud-ready virtual machines. Workload Deployer connects an enterprise’s existing servers to virtualization components and middleware in order to help deploy standardized virtual machines designed by IBM. For customers who prefer to perform their own integration of private clouds, IBM offers a choice of hardware and software building blocks, along with recommendations and a reference architecture, prior to deployment. Clients may choose from IBM virtualization-enabled servers, middleware and SaaS applications.

Cloud standards

IBM participates in several cloud standards initiatives within various standards development organizations involved in cloud service models IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, all of which work toward improvements in cloud interoperability and security.

IBM is a member of The Open Group, a council that works for the development of open, vendor-neutral IT standards and certifications. Other members of the group include HP,Oracle, SAP and numerous others.^[27] IBM contributed the Cloud Computing Reference Architecture in February 2011 to The Open Group as the basis of an industry-wide cloud architecture. IBM’s CCRA is based on real-world input from many cloud implementations across IBM. It is intended to be used as a blueprint/guide for architecting cloud implementations, driven by functional and non-functional requirements of the respective cloud implementation. HP and Microsoft have also published Cloud Computing Reference Architectures.

Within the IaaS space, IBM is a member of the Cloud Management Work Group (CMWG) within the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), which released a draft version of their IaaS APIs, called the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI), on September 14, 2011. The CIMI APIs define a logical model for the management of resources within the Infrastructure as a Service domain. With these APIs, clients can create, manage and connect machines, volumes and networks.

For PaaS and SaaS standards, IBM, Red Hat, Cisco, Citrix, EMC and others contribute to the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) technical committee within Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), which aims to provide a standardized way of managing the lifecycle of cloud services, for portability of cloud based applications. TOSCA's goal is to advance an interoperability standard that will make it easier to deploy cloud applications without vendor lock-in, while maintaining application requirements for security, governance, and compliance.

IBM participates in a number of cloud security related standards including the DMTF Cloud Auditing Data Federation (CADF) working group, and the OASIS Identity in the Cloud (IDCloud) technical committee. CADF is designed to address the need for a cloud provider to provide specific audit event, log and report information on a per-tenant and application basis. IDCloud aims to addresses the serious security challenges posed by identity management in cloud computing and investigates the need for profiles to achieve interoperability within current standards.

IBM founded the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) in April 2011, with the Object Management Group (OMG) Kaavo, Rackspace and Software AG, as an end user advocacy group that aimed to accelerate adoption of cloud services and eliminate barriers to security and interoperability associated with the transition to the cloud. In addition to contributing standards requirements to various standards development organizations (SDO), the CSCC also creates guides that companies can use on their own path to cloud adoption

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Cloud computing

Cloud computing, also on-demand computing, is a kind of Internet-based computing that provides shared processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. It is a model for enabling ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Cloud computing and storage solutions provide users and enterprises with various capabilities to store and process their data in third-party data centers. It relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale, similar to a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network. At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared services.

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort.

Proponents claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront infrastructure costs, and focus on projects that differentiate their businesses instead of on infrastructure.^[4] Proponents also claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. Cloud providers typically use a "pay as you go" model. This can lead to unexpectedly high charges if administrators do not adapt to the cloud pricing model.

The present availability of high-capacity networks, low-cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of hardware virtualization, service-oriented architecture, and autonomic and utility computing have led to a growth in cloud computing. Companies can scale up as computing needs increase and then scale down again as demands decrease.

Cloud computing has become a highly demanded service or utility due to the advantages of high computing power, cheap cost of services, high performance, scalability, accessibility as well as availability. Some cloud vendors are experiencing growth rates of 50% per annum,^[11] but due to being in a stage of infancy, it still has pitfalls that need proper attention to make cloud computing services more reliable and user friendly

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What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is a topic that many find confusing. It isn’t, though, as confusing as it sounds. In fact, most of those who claim not to understand the subject are part of the majority that use it daily.

In basic terms, cloud computing is the phrase used to describe different scenarios in which computing resource is delivered as a service over a network connection (usually, this is the internet). Cloud computing is therefore a type of computing that relies on sharing a pool of physical and/or virtual resources, rather than deploying local or personal hardware and software. It is somewhat synonymous with the term ‘utility computing’ as users are able to tap into a supply of computing resource rather than manage the equipment needed to generate it themselves; much in the same way as a consumer tapping into the national electricity supply, instead of running their own generator.

One of the key characteristics of cloud computing is the flexibility that it offers and one of the ways that flexibility is offered is through scalability. This refers to the ability of a system to adapt and scale to changes in workload. Cloud technology allows for the automatic provision and deprovision of resource as and when it is necessary, thus ensuring that the level of resource available is as closely matched to current demand as possible. This is a defining characteristic that differentiates it from other computing models where resource is delivered in blocks (e.g., individual servers, downloaded software applications), usually with fixed capacities and upfront costs. With cloud computing, the end user usually pays only for the resource they use and so avoids the inefficiencies and expense of any unused capacity. 

However, the advantages of cloud computing are not limited to flexibility. Enterprise can also benefit (in varying degrees) from the economies of scale created by setting up services en masse with the same computing environments, and the reliability of physically hosting services across multiple servers where individual system failures do not affect the continuity of the service.

There is also great choice in the level of security and management required in cloud deployments, with an option to suit almost any business:

A public cloud, for example, is a cloud in which services and infrastructure are hosted off-site by a cloud provider, shared across their client base and accessed by these clients via public networks such as the internet. Public clouds offer great economies of scale and redundancy but are more vulnerable than private cloud setups due their high levels of accessibility. More information can be found on our ‘What is a Public Cloud?’ page.

Private clouds on the other hand use pooled services and infrastructure stored and maintained on a private network – whether physical or virtual – accessible for only one client. The obvious benefits to this are greater levels of security and control.  Cost benefits must be sacrificed to some extent though, as the enterprise in question will have to purchase/rent and maintain all the necessary software and hardware. More information can be found on our ‘What is a Private Cloud?’ page.

The final cloud option is a hybrid cloud and this, as the name suggests, combines both public and private cloud elements. A hybrid cloud allows a company to maximise their efficiencies; by utilising the public cloud for non-sensitive operations while using a private setup for sensitive or mission critical operations, companies can ensure that their computing setup is ideal without paying any more than is necessary. More information can be found on our ‘What is a Hybrid Cloud?’ page.

Moving away from deployment models, broadly speaking there are 3 models of cloud computing which describe the service on offer; these are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). 

As with the other cloud computing categories, IaaS refers to the delivery of virtualised computing resource as a service across a network connection. IaaS specifically deals with hardware – or computing infrastructure - delivered as a service. Offerings include virtualised server space, storage space, network connections and IP addresses. The resource is pulled from a pool of servers distributed across data centres under the provider’s control, the user is then granted access to this resource in order to build their own IT platforms. IaaS can provide enterprises with great business benefits. More information on IaaS can be found on our ‘What is IaaS’ page.

PaaS is an extension of IaaS and describes a category of cloud computing that provides developers with environments in which to build applications, over the internet. In addition to the fundamental computing resource supplied by the hardware in an IaaS offering, PaaS models also include the software and configuration (often known as the solution stack) required to create the platform on which clients can create their applications. PaaS packages can be tailored to meet individual user needs; they can cherry pick the features of the service that are relevant to them while disregarding those that are not. PaaS provides a number of benefits to enterprises, including simplifying the development process for geographically split development teams. More information about Platform as a Service can be found on our ‘What is PaaS’ page.

SaaS is arguably the most common of the cloud computing variations; it’s the term used to describe a software delivery model in which applications are hosted (usually by a provider) and made available to customers over a network connection. Many people make use of SaaS without realising it as many web applications are delivered in this way; Gmail, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook are all popular examples of SaaS. Enterprise users also frequently make use of SaaS with many popular accounting, invoicing, sales, communications and CRM systems being delivered this way. More information about Software as a Service can be found on our ‘What is SaaS’ page.

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