With the launch of the Oracle Cloud PaaS Platforms we will make the
SOA & BPM Partner Community cloud ready. In this article series we
will lay the foundation for cloud computing including definition and
concepts.
Content
Cloud Computing Hype Introduction
Cloud Computing Definition and Criteria
Concepts in Cloud Computing
Industry focus & use case Cloud Computing Providers & Consumers
Differences between Cloud Definitions
NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture
Cloud Broker
Types Cloud Broker
Challenges Cloud Broker
Cloud Computing Hype Introduction
Why is everyone talking about cloud computing? Drawn-out, expensive IT
projects that are planned and implemented with few benefits for the
business stakeholders are commonplace. In contrast, cloud computing
offers business users the chance to immediately implement services with
usage-based billing that are tailored to their requirements, often
without the need to consult with the IT department.
However,
aspects including security, architecture, availability, and standards
are often not evaluated. Cloud consumers find themselves at the mercy of
the cloud provider. Scenarios that require changing cloud providers
after a cloud provider goes bankrupt, and the associated moving of data
and/or applications, have not yet been sufficiently tested. Business
continuity should play a key role from the start of a cloud evaluation
process.
One of the greatest challenges here is the integration of
existing data and systems into the cloud solution. Without integration
spanning clouds and on premise systems, processes can only be executed
in isolation, leading to cloud-specific silos of isolated solutions.
Important information for users is not available across processes and
systems. Problems that would have occurred in the company's internal IT
are now shifted to the cloud provider. To prevent "legacy clouds" or
solutions that are hard to maintain, it is important to manage the
entire architecture proactively and, in particular, the integration into
the cloud. Even if cloud providers want us to believe otherwise, not
every aspect of IT can be outsourced to cloud solutions!
Cloud Computing Definition and Criteria
Cloud
computing is a model for usage-based network access to a common pool of
configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage
systems, applications, and services) that can be provided and used
quickly. IP-based services are requested via self-service and used
online independently. A prerequisite for this is a broadband Internet
connection with low latency. The IT resources are bundled into pools and
provided as required. Billing is based on the services used. *1
Concepts in Cloud Computing
In cloud computing, the following models are differentiated on the basis of horizontal scaling:
·
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) - provides a hardware platform as a
service, such as Amazon EC2 or Oracle Compute Service (now in preview)
· Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) - provides a software platform as a service, such as Google Apps Engine or Oracle Java Cloud
·
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - allows applications and functions to be
outsourced by virtualizing cloud providers' hardware and software and
providing the functions as services, such as Salesforce CRM [REF-1] or
Oracle Sales Cloud
In deployment models, distinctions are made
according to availability and installation location. Public clouds are
services that are available to the public on the Internet. Private
clouds are internal company services. Hybrid clouds and community clouds
represent mixtures of these models, such as when Amazon computing power
is used in the event of a failure or overload of an internal company
cloud application.
Industry focus & use case Cloud Computing Providers & Consumers
Large
companies for which IT plays a central role or represents a competitive
advantage often build internal company cloud solutions in their own
data centers “private clouds”. Small and medium enterprises frequently
use public cloud services. A further distinguishing feature is the cloud
consumer focus. In the business-to-business segment, private clouds are
predominantly used, while in the business-to-consumer segment the
majority are public clouds (Figure: 1).
Differences between Cloud Definitions
Thomas
Erl, Ricardo Puttini and Zaigham Mahmood define cloud computing in his
latest book “Cloud Computing Concepts, Technology & Architecture”.
Based on the NIST cloud computing definition they add “ubiquitous
access” as a cloud characteristic, to reflect the trend that more and
more services are used on mobile devices. As cloud computing becomes
more and more adopted also in b2b services, companies run mission
critical applications on a global level in the cloud, resiliency of this
services becomes important. Therefore Thomas Erl Ricardo Puttini and
Zaigham Mahmood add also “resiliency” to the cloud characteristics.*2
Wikipedia
defined cloud computing more from a consumer perspective. The article
highlights that cloud computing is often used as a jargon term without a
commonly accepted non-ambiguous scientific or technical definition.*3.
From my perspective the NIST definition is widely accepted between b2b
vendors. Many software vendors try to brand their solutions as cloud
solution, or cloud enabled solutions without to respect the NIST cloud
definition. This reflects the change of the IT industry caused by cloud
computing.
NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture
Together
with the “The NIST Cloud Definition of Cloud Computing” the “NIST Cloud
Computing Reference Architecture” lays the theoretical foundation of
cloud computing. The NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture extends
the definition by a reference architecture and a taxonomy. An
additional actor and role model is introduced. The cloud provider offers
IaaS, PaaS or SaaS services to the cloud consumer. Between them a cloud
broker might offer service intermediation, service aggregation and
service arbitrage. These services become more important as cloud
services need to be integrated with on premise and integrated or
exchanged between different cloud providers. A cloud carrier transports
the cloud services from the cloud provider to the cloud consumer. A
cloud auditor might support the cloud consumer and cloud provider in
security, privacy impact and performance audits*4
Cloud Broker
NIST and Gartner define three different types of cloud brokers:
Service Intermediation
Provides
value added services on top of a cloud platform. An example is the
Force identity service from Salesforce. This identity service can be
used to identify users across several cloud services.
Service Aggregation
Ensures
the interoperability between different cloud services. An example is
Boomi from Dell. The service let cloud consumers integrate for example a
Salesforce CRM system with a Netleger billing system and or an on
premise solution. As IT System are often historical grown and rally
build on a green field approach cloud aggregation becomes key for cloud
adoption.
Service Arbitration
A
cloud service arbitrage provides flexibility and an “opportunistic
choices” by offering multiple similar services to select from.*5 Heroku
for example lets the cloud consumer choose between different cloud
services. The cloud consumer might increase service level agreements or
reduce the dependency from one cloud provider by a service arbitration
service.
Key Benefits of Cloud Brokers
Key benefits of cloud brokers might include:
• Cloud interoperability: Integration between several cloud offerings
• Cloud portability: Move application between different cloud vendors
• Different data models between cloud offerings
•
Modular services between several cloud offerings e.g. security,
document or notification services to increase developer productivity and
user usability & security
• Increase business continuity by reducing dependency from one cloud provider
• Increase SLAs by leverage multiple cloud provider
Challenges Cloud Brokers
Large
leading cloud providers e.g. Google or Salesforce try to offer
comprehensive services & platforms for cloud consumers. Often they
are not interested to enable cloud broker services which might enable
cloud consumer to choose or broker between different cloud providers.
Sometimes their strategy can be characterized as a vendor log-in. Today
no industry wide standard for cloud brokers is developed. To enable
seamless service aggregation on a process level, between different cloud
providers a meta-data model between them needs to be established. This
model needs to include joint business objects and services to ensure
seamless processes across multiple cloud providers.
Cloud consumers Dependencies based on Service Layer
The
risk of such a vendor login might be based on the service model the
cloud consumer chooses. The higher the service model, less has to build
by the cloud consumer, more is provided by the cloud provider, the
higher the risk of vendor login:
Service Model
Risk vendor login
Advice
SaaS
High
Same application on-premise available
PaaS
Medium
Standard programming language available several clouds
IaaS
Low
Operating & Virtualization technologies
With
the need of cloud Brokers versus the trend to build whole cloud
Economies by one dominant player this might be one of the most
challenging and exciting areas of cloud computing in the next years.
Today cloud consumers might carefully evaluate this in the cloud
selection phase to ensure business continuity.*6
References
NIST Definition Cloud Computing
„Cloud Computing Concepts, Technology & Architecture” Thomas Erl, Zaigham Mahmood, Ricardo Puttini, PRENTICE HALL June 2013
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture
Gartner
NIST Definition Cloud Computing
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