Khan Academy is a non-profit institution located in Mountain View, California. The institution produces a wide range of free edifying online videos for mathematics and other science related subjects. Millions of learners and scholars across the globe frequently access these videos via the institution website and YouTube channel.
The website boasts of the tutorials with a broad range of subjects ideal for students who are in quest of higher education. In addition, students are able to answer practical questions and do online exams through the website. The institution development teams very otfen polish the website to match the learners’ specific demands (Khan Academy 1).
The institution was established in the mid 2004 by Salman Khan, a Harvard MBA holder. Khan started by recording brief lessons and posting them on the Internet, especially in YouTube. He transformed intricate concepts into easy-to-follow videotaped tutorials (Khan Academy 1). Khan also established a website for the increasing number of video libraries.
The website, however, started experiencing problems due to an increase in traffic. This is also attributed to the fact that the videos attracted many users and started going viral over the Internet. Besides, the media focus was increasing and ICT industry leaders, for instance, Microsoft and Silicon Valley, started supporting the institution objective and efforts (Khan Academy 2).
The growing demand prompted Khan to relinquish his career as a financial analyst to dedicate his life to the course. In addition, Khan decided to outsource Google cloud application to enhance the institution operations. He wanted to delegate the technological and maintenance duties so that he could focus on the core business, that is, making more videos for the library.
He was the principal system developer of the institution and wanted to stop fretting about deployment matters and running the server (Khan Academy 2). This paper will explore the cloud platform at Khan Academy in Mountain View, California.
The study will mainly focus on a number of challenges experienced by the institution at the initial stage, the ways the Google Cloud Platform or a specific Google App Engine was presented as a solution, and more importantly, the results or benefits of using the Cloud Platform.
Khan Academy before Google App Engine
Initially, Khan Academy used to post tutorial videos on YouTube to support learning and solve mathematical problems. Even though YouTube did not have scaling problems, it was not interactive. As a result, the institution was not able to effectively execute its mission and objective, that is, present a learning tree to the students and other users, administer outcomes, and provide exams among others.
For these reasons, Khan Academy gave a try to host a Java-based website which very often crumbled under huge traffic (Khan Academy 1). In addition, Khan, who was the founder, was the lead systems developer and dedicated nearly 100 percent of his time to working on the applications. Khan therefore had to deal with both the system technical and maintenance concerns on his own.
As a result, there were very many cases of website overload, hacking reports, and sequential system hitches. Furthermore, tracking information through the system was relatively tricky, especially when other users were tracking the same data (Kamens 1).
For the above reasons, Salman Khan made a decision to outsource cloud computing service from Google Company, to be precise Google App Engine (Kamens 1). Google App Engine encompasses all the well-known web-based applications, for instance, emails, spreadsheets, Task Queues, Memcache, and many more.
Since the company had already built a huge audience via YouTube, they automatically switched to the Google App Engine. The company then built a very strong foundation using the YouTube imports. Bootstrapping YouTube users into the institution website proved to be a very effective strategy. The website received a lot of publicity and kept growing day after day at very high speed (Kamens 1; App Engine 1).
Google App Engine as a Solution
According to ICT experts, it does not make any sense why newly established companies are not seeking the services of cloud service providers. They explain that cloud computing services help to solve the scalability problems in the organizations at the expense of the cloud provider.
Even though the company does not have 100 percent control of the system, cloud computing services minimize numerous risks and workload that may be associated with operating an in-house system. Therefore, the Google App Application helped to solve the institution scalability problem.
As long as the institution keeps paying for the service on time, the issue of scalability remains a thing of the past (Luit Infotech 3). Many people will be debating on how the institution has been able to afford such a service. The main focus of Khan Academy has, however, always been on how to upgrade its system and minimize cost per user which Google App Engine has achieved so tremendously (Kamens 1).
Khan Academy had worked on numerous App Engine projects but found Google App Engine (GAE) the most appropriate. The institution management explains that the only disadvantage of using the application is lack of full control of the system and that all the applications used must fit into the Google App Engine’s service model.
However, they emphasize that by surrendering some of the freedom and complying with the GAE model’s requirement, the returns are overwhelming (Kamens 1). The institution has been able to scale to millions of students and other users across the globe without engaging the service of any system administrator or spending any time worrying about the system hitches.
Google App Engine can scale up to a billion requests within 24 hours and scale down when there are fewer users (App Engine 1). The institution has been able to handle the ever growing traffic successfully and launch their new curriculums without any challenge. The company has at no time worried about the system crunch despite the amount of data fed into the database (Khan Academy 2).
According to the institution system administrator, Khan Academy had anticipated a huge traffic ahead and had to turn the right dial. Google App makes all issues of data management trouble free and spotless. The institution can track any information on their website through the applications by a well tested data tracking solution.
The company was able to minimize operational costs through downsizing, since most of the work was transferred to the cloud service provider. Additionally, the employees were no longer overworked since most of their burden was shifted to the cloud provider. Instead, they focused on the institution core business.
For this reason, the institution performance improved tremendously by more than 15 percent in the fourth quarter, following the adoption of Google cloud services (Khan Academy 2).
At the outset, the students and other users were not able to collect and report the data acquired from the institution website because the previous data storage system used by the institution could not sum up all the data. Google App Engine has helped the institution to roll up and redesign the data, thus making it easier to analyze (Kamens 2).
General Benefits of Cloud Computing
Luit Infotech defines cloud computing as an internet based computing where applications and general infrastructure are provided by the service provider on a pay-as-you-use basis. Any individual or organization can access these services without prior knowledge of managing such resources (1). However, the adoption of cloud computing can prove to be challenging due to practical and socio-political factors.
As a result, most companies do not contract out their entire back end computing requirements to the service providers. Instead, they normally set up an assorted computing environment which is based on different types of cloud services (Williams 11).
Khajeh-Hosseini and others emphasize that the adoption of cloud computing not only depends on the practices and socio-technical factors, but also on job practices and limitation arising from prevailing business models (448).
The main challenges that must be addressed before adopting cloud computing include: exact cost of adopting cloud computing, support risk management, and the trade-offs between the benefits and risks involved.
A case study conducted by Khajeh-Hosseini on the migration from grid computing to cloud computing introduced the subject of third party cloud infrastructure. According to Khajeh-Hosseini and others, the third party infrastructure presents numerous prospects for businesses to enhance the management of their revenues and information exchange.
Cloud computing improves cash-flow management given the fact that it reduces the overall costs and periodical billings as well as minimizes the inconsistency of expenditure on energy. Cloud computing also assists companies to reduce administrative costs (449).
Cloud computing is a novel technology that has transformed the IT systems given that it is inexpensive, uncomplicated ,and flexible in nature. Cloud computing is less expensive because businesses do not have to buy or maintain an internal data center, as it eliminates physical infrastructure (Miller 5).
Cloud computing makes it easy to access an organization’s computing and storage infrastructure via the web. It also masks the intricacy of information technology infrastructure management from the users and offers increased flexibility, steadfastness, soaring performance, and specific configuration. All the above capabilities of cloud computing are offered at less cost in comparison to in-house data centers (Williams 10).
As already been mentioned, many businesses are migrating to cloud computing to save cost. Cloud computing provides cheaper and scalable data storage for these businesses. However, the biggest question that lingers in the mind of many people is whether data storage in the cloud is secure.
Thus, the most imminent task for businesses is the security of data. In accordance with the survey conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance, the biggest concern of many organizations is the security of cloud computing.
To understand the security issues surrounding cloud computing, it is important to go back to the subject of cloud computing architecture (15). The figure below shows a cloud computing reference model that integrates all the three forms of cloud computing.
Source: (Cloud Security Alliance 18).
Security controls for cloud computing are almost similar to security controls in IT environment. However, cloud computing uses a divergent service model, functional model, and technologies which present new types of risks (Cloud Security Alliance 19). The business IT security is normally tackled in different faces ranging from physical security, network security, system security to application security.
The security responsibility of the cloud computing service providers and users depends on the type of a model used. In most cases the cloud provider is responsible for physical security, environmental security, and virtualization security. On the other hand, at the lower levels of the platform, consumers are tactically responsible for the security, especially of application and data (Cloud Security Alliance 20).
Besides the architecture, there are other areas that must be taken into account when tackling security issues in cloud computing. The Cloud Security Alliance divides these areas into two, and namely: governance domain and operational domain. Governance domain encompasses strategic and procedural issues, while the operational domain tackles the technical aspects of security and implementation within the architecture (21).
Governance domain takes into account business risks caused by cloud computing, legal and electronic risks, compliance, and data management. On the other hand, operation domain consists of operational procedures used to tackle security, operations of data centers, incident handling and forensics, application security, encryption and scalability management, and virtualization (Cloud Security Alliance 22).
In summary, given the fact that cloud computing is generally implemented on a large scale, it is cheaper than other alternatives. By embracing cloud computing a business therefore enjoys better protection at an affordable rate. Cloud computing also enhances the network effect of collaboration among different businesses using the service.
Other security benefits include: multiple locations, edge networks, instant response, and improved risk management. With multiple locations, the cloud computing providers have adequate resources to avert system failures and data recovery.
The edge networks prevent the problems associated with local networks. For small businesses that do not have the necessary resources to manage looming threats, cloud computing services come in hand. Lastly, cloud providers have a large scale system that is able to respond to incidences in time.
Conclusion
Cloud computing is increasingly gaining popularity among institutions and organizations such as Khan Academy. Millions of learners and scholars across the globe frequently access these videos via the institution website and YouTube channel. Cloud computing basically refers to outsourcing computer applications and infrastructure. An example of cloud computing service provider is Google Cloud service.
Khan Academy opted to contract out Google cloud service due to a number of limitations within its own system, which include: system crunch, difficulty in tracking data, and work overload among others. The Google App Engine was chosen due to its numerous benefits and solution to the existing challenges. Google App Engine scaled up the institution website, thus allowing access to millions of users.
In addition, it had reduced the work overload and general operational cost. Its other benefits include: edge networks, instant response, improved risk management, and adequate resources to avert system failures and data recovery. The edge networks avert the problems associated with local networks. Last but not least, Google App Engine is a large scale system that is able to respond to incidences in time.
Works Cited
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Cloud Security Alliance. Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing, New Jersey: Cloud Security Alliance Inc, 2009. Print.
Kamens, Ben. Khan Academy Checkbook Scaling to 6 Million Users a Month on GAE. Web.
Khajeh-Hosseini, Ali, Ian Sommerville, David Greenwood and James Smith. “The Cloud Adoption Toolkit: supporting cloud adoption decisions in the enterprise”. Software Practice and Experience 42. 4(2012): 447-467. Print.
Khan Academy. The Khan Academy Scales and Simplifies with Google App Engine. Web.
Luit Infotech. What is Cloud Computing. Web.
Miller, Michael. Cloud computing: Web-based applications that change the way you work and collaborate online, Indianapolis: Que, 2009. Print.
Williams, Mark. A quick start guide to cloud computing moving your business into the cloud, London: Kogan Page, 2010. Print.