Posts Tagged ‘ Cloud Monitoring ’

Guidelines for Cloud Consumers and Providers

Business users are drawn to the cloud. That’s not surprising, considering they tend to see mostly benefits: self-service freedom, scalability, availability, flexibility, and the pleasure of avoiding various nasty hardware and software headaches.IT leaders though are a different story—they are not always as ecstatic.  They indicate uneasiness about cloud securityand have legitimate concerns that unauthorized users could get their hands on their applications and data. Moreover, retaining a level of influence and control is a must for them. Can both “sides” meet halfway? Is it attainable to provide the freedom that users want while having the control that IT leaders need?
.
Simply put, Yes…. However, doing so will entail a collaborative effort. Both business users and IT leaders have to assume a few key responsibilities. In addition, you will have to make certain that your cloud provider will be doing its part as well.

.

Your 5 Responsibilities

Here are a few things you need to be held accountable for:
.
1. Define the business need. Identify the root problem you want to solve a cloud technology. Is it a perpetually recurring concern, or one that happens irregularly? Did you need an answer “last week,” or do you have time to construct a solution?

Important note: Not all clouds are created equally. Some can run your applications unchanged, with instant access; while others require little tweaking. Recognizing your needs and differentiating cloud technologies will help you determine the correct strategy for handling the particular business problem that needs attention.

2. Identify your application and process requirements. Once you have accurately defined your business needs, it is time to select the application best-suited to meet those needs. Be clear and precise about the nature of the application, the development process you want to adapt, and the roles and access permissions for each user.

Your teams no longer have to struggle through traditional linear and slow development processes. Instead, the cloud can give them access to the best practices that are fluid and agile. Many self-service solutions can even empower them to run copies of the same environment in parallel.

Simply put, the cloud may lead to breakthrough productivity when used properly. However, if used incorrectly it can also lead to enormous amounts of wasted resources. Having said this, take your time to do your research and choose wisely.

3. Determine your timetable. Cloud projects are not short sprints contrary to popular belief. They are better illustrated as long journeys over time. Please plan accordingly.

Nubifer recommends to define your early experiments in a quarterly basis because cloud technology is transformative. Learn from the first quarter, take note, and execute the necessary adjustments and then move on to the next. The objective is to generate a learning organization that increases control over time and progresses based on data and experience.

4. Establish success factors. Define what success is for you. Do you want to improve the agility of the development process? Maybe you want to increase the availability of your applications? Or perhaps you want to enhance remote collaboration? Define achievement, and have a tool to measure progress as well. Identifying metrics and establishing realistic goals will aid you achieve the solution that meets not only your needs, but also your budget and payback time frame.

5. Define data and application security. Companies overlook this critical responsibility more often than they realize. Make sure to do your due diligence and attentively determine whom you can trust with cloud application. After which, empower them. The following are questions that need unambiguous answers: What specific roles will team members take in the cloud model? Does everyone comprehend fully the nature of the application and data they are planning to bring to the cloud? Does everyone know how to protect your data? Do they understand your password policies? Dealing with these security factors early on enables you to create a solid foundation for cloud success while having your own peace of mind about this issue.

Your Provider’s 5 Responsibilities

Meanwhile, make sure your cloud provider offers the following to attain better cloud control:
1. Self-service solutions. Time equals money. Thus waiting equals wasted time and money. So search for cloud applications that are ready from the get go. Determine if the solution you are considering may implement the applications and business process you have in mind immediately, or if the provider requires you to rewrite the application or change the process entirely.

There is also a need to distinguish if users will require training, or if they already equipped to handle a self-service Web interface. Answers to these questions can determine whether adoption will be rapid and smooth, or slow and bumpy.

2. Scale and speed. A well-constructed cloud solution provides the unique combination of scale and speed. It gives you access to the resources at a scale that you need with on-demand responsiveness. This combination will empower your team to run several instances in parallel, snapshot, suspend/resume, publish, collaborate, and accelerate the business cycle.

3. Reliability and availability. As articulated in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs), it is the responsibility of the cloud provider to make the system reliable and available. The provider should set clear and precise operational expectations, such as 99.9 percent availability, with you, the consumer.

4. Security. Ask for a comprehensive review of your cloud provider’s security technology and processes. In specific, ask about the following:

  • Application and data transportability. Can your provider give you the ability to export existing applications, data and processes into the cloud with ease? And can you import back just as hassle free?
  • Data center physical security.
  • Access and operations security. How does the consumer protect its physical data centers? Are these the SAS 70 Type II data centers? Are there trained and skilled data center operators in those places?
  • Virtual data center security. Your provider must be clear about how to control the method of access to physical machines. How are these machines managed? And who are able to access these machines?
  • In terms of scale and speed, most cloud efficiency derives from how the cloud is architected. Be sure to understand how the individual pieces, the compute nodes, network nodes, storage nodes, etc., are architected and how they are secured and integrated.

Application and data security.

In order to be able to implement your policies, the cloud solution must permit you to define groups, roles with granular role-based access control, proper password policies and data encryption–both iin transit and at rest.

5. Cost efficiencies. Without any commitments upfront, cloud solutions should enable your success to drive success. Unlike a managed service or a hosting solution, a cloud solution uses technology to automate the back-end systems, and therefore can operate large resource pools without the immense human costs. Having this luxury translates all these into real cost savings for you.

Despite business leaders recognizing the benefits of cloud computing technologies, more than a handful still have questions about cloud security and control. Indeed, that is understandable. However, by adopting a collaborative approach and aligning their responsibilities with those of the cloud provider, these leaders can find solutions that offer the best of both worlds. They get the visibility and control they want and need, while giving their teams access to the huge performance gains only the cloud can provide.

Contact Nubifer for a free, no-obligation Cloud Migration consultation.

2011
10/05
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud Security
Leave a comment

Developing Cloud Applications: Pattern Usage and Workload Modeling

For enterprise companies today, the process of determining one or more common application usage profiles for use in cloud platform performance testing is known as ‘application workload modeling’. Cloud application workload modeling can be accomplished in a myriad of ways, and is a critical piece to properly planning, developing and implementing successful cloud solution technologies.

Some General Best Practices when Developing Cloud Applications.

  • Understand your application usage patterns. New business processes are prime candidates for building out such apps. Silo-ed departmental initiatives often evolve into organizational best practices that get adopted by the entire enterprise, and because most of the programs are developed organically from the ground up, they can leverage the interoperability of the cloud and be scaled depending on demand. This also allows the app to be discontinued with minimal cost if the initiative isn’t deemed efficient or necessary to the organization.

  • Develop and Deploy Your Application. Creating a plan and sequence of key metric drivers help you keep your cloud deployment efforts on track. Start small, grow fast is a common mantra of many start-ups (including ours), the overwhelming majority of which are intimidated by the significant cost of on-premise infrastructure.
  1. Define and Identify the objectives
  2. Document and Identify primary usage scenarios
  3. Develop and Determine navigation paths for key scenarios
  4. Design and Determine individual user data and variances
  5. Determine the likely-hood of such scenarios
  6. Identify peak target load levels
  7. Prepare and Deploy the new cloud solution
  • Monitor Spiked Usage Patterns for “Common Utility Apps”. Within every organization, large or small, there’s at least one program or application that receives spiked usage during a certain time of the year, quarter or month. One example of this pattern is related to corporate tax software, as this app is lightly used for many months, but becomes a highly leveraged application during the end of the fiscal year tax calculation process. Another example is Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) and the periodic need for employees to subscribe to new company health plans, insurance plans, etc. Other examples include e-commerce websites like Ebay and Buy.com which experience this “peak load” requirement during holiday or special sales seasons.

The common thread across all of these types of “on-demand” cloud apps is that their usage rate is relatively standard or predictable most of the time, but become the most demanded of resources periodically. Utilizing a scalable cloud solution approach in this manner enables greater cost savings and ensures high availability of your enterprise business systems.

Application Load and Scalability, and Dynamically Reacting to Peak Load

As it is most often associated with consumer-facing web apps, unpredictable load occurs when an inordinate amount of traffic is directed toward your site, and the app is subsequently unable to meet this demand—causing the entire website to return a load error message. Nubifer has noticed sudden spikes in traffic when organizations launch fresh marketing campaigns, or receive extensive back-linking from prominent authority sites. Apps and sites eminently susceptible to these load spikes are ideal candidates for the cloud, and the most prominent advantage of this methodolgy is the auto-scale or on-demand capability.

Monitoring, a Primary Key to Any Successful Cloud Deployment

Your cloud platform monitors the patterns of Internet traffic and the utilization of the infrastructure, adding additional server resources if the traffic crosses your preset threshold. The extra servers that are added can be safely deactivated once the traffic subsides and the environment isn’t so demanding. This creates an extremely cost-efficient use case for leveraging a cloud platform for app and site hosting.

To the contrary of unpredictable load occurrences, e-commerce sites commonly experience predictable spikes in traffic. For instance, when Amazon launches pre-ordering for the next novel for Oprah’s book club, they prepare their infrastructure to handle these peak loads. Organizations of this size typically have a ballpark budget figure of the infrastructure cost because of its inherent predictability. There are many occurrences in the public sector that experience predictable bursts as well, such as electoral results and the examination of the latest census reports.

Understanding Application Usage Pattern Trends

Within your business, these patterns are manifested during a virtual company meeting or initiation of a compulsory online training for all employees, but the primary difference between this pattern of usage and the first is that there may not be a periodic recurrence of this particular pattern or spike in resource demand.

It’s paramount that your IT personnel remain cognizant of these peak load times, whether they are predictable or not, as this is a key element for effectively leveraging a cloud solution that offers support and business intelligence data regarding peak load and latency issues.

How We Have Evolved to Solve for Peak Load and Usage Monitoring

Nubifer has solved these business scenarios by developing a robust set of tools and monitoring applications for private and public clouds, named Nubifer Cloud:Link. To learn more about Cloud:Link and Nubifer’s approach to enterprise cloud monitoring visit CloudLink.pro

2010
09/08
CATEGORY
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Hybrid Cloud and On-Premise
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Updated User Policy Management for Google Apps

Google has released a series of new features granting administrators more controls to manage Google Apps within their organizations, including new data migration tools, SSL enforcement capabilities, multi-domain support and the ability to tailor Google Apps with over 100 applications from the recently-introduced Google Apps Marketplace. On July 20 Google announced one of the most-requested features from administrators: User Policy Management.

With User Policy Management, administrators can segment their users into organizational units and control which applications are enabled or disabled for each group.  Take a manufacturing firm, for example. The company might want to give their office workers access to Google Talk, but not their production line employees, and this is possible with User Policy Management.

Additionally, organizations can use this functionality to test applications with pilot users before making them available on a larger scale. Associate Vice President for Computer Services at Temple University Sheri Stahler says, “Using the new User Policy Management feature in Google Apps, we’re able to test out new applications like Google Wave with a subset of users to decide how we should roll our new functionality more broadly.”

Customers can transition to Google Apps from on-premise environments with User Policy Management, as it grants them the ability to toggle services on or off for groups of users. A business can enable just the collaboration tools like Google Docs and Google sites for users who have yet to move off old on-premises messaging solutions, for example.

These settings can be managed by administrators on the ‘Organizations & Users’ tab in the ‘Next Generation’ control panel. On balance, organizations can mirror their existing LDAP organizational schema using Google Apps Directory Sync or programmatically assign users to organizational units using the Google Apps Provisioning API.

Premier and Educational edition users can begin using User Policy Management for Google Apps at no additional charge.

2010
07/29
CATEGORY
Cloud Computing
Cloud Monitoring
Google Apps
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Zuora Releases Z-Commerce

The first external service (SaaS) that actually understands the complex billing models of the cloud providers (which account for monthly subscription fees as well as automated metering, pricing and billing for products, bundles and highly individualized/specific configurations) arrived in mid-June in the form of Zuora’s Z-Commerce. An upgrade to Zuora’s billing and payment service that is built for cloud providers, Z-Commerce is a major development. With Z-Commerce, storage-as-a-service is able to charge for terabytes of storage used, or IP address usage, or data transfer charges. Cloud providers can also structure a per CPU instance charge or per application use charge and it can take complexities like peak usage into account. Zuora has provided 20 pre-configured templates for the billing and payment models that cloud providers use.

What makes this development so interesting that that Zuora is using what they are calling the “subscription economy” for the underlying rationale for their success: 125 customers, 75 employees and profitability.

Tien Tzou, the CEO of Zuora (also the former Chief Strategy Officer of Salesforce.com, described subscription economy below:

“The business model of the 21st century is a fundamentally different business model.

The 21st century world needs a whole new set of operational systems — ones that match the customer centric business model that is now necessary to succeed.

The business model of the 20th century was built around manufacturing.  You built products at the lowest possible cost, and you find buyers for that product.

They key metrics were all around inventory, cost of goods sold, product life cycles, etc. But over the last 30 years, we’ve been moving away from a manufacturing economy to a services economy. Away from an economy based on tangible goods, to an economy based on intangible ideas and experiences.

What is important now is the customer — of understanding customer needs, and building services & experiences that fulfill those customer needs.  Hence the rise of CRM.

But our financial and operational systems have not yet evolved!  What we need today are operational systems built around the customer, and around the services you offer to your customers.

You need systems that allow you to design different services, offered under different price plans that customers can choose from based on their specific needs.  So the phone companies have 450 minute plans, prepaid plans, unlimited plans, family plans, and more.  Salesforce has Professional Edition, and Enterprise Edition, and Group Edition, and PRM Edition, and more.  Amazon has Amazon Prime.  ZipCar has their Occasional Driving Plan and their Extra Value Plans.

You need systems that track customer lifecycles — things such as monthly customer value, customer lifetime value, customer churn, customer share of wallet, conversion rates, up sell rates, adoption levels.

You need systems that measure how much of your service your customers are consuming.  By the minute?  By the gigabyte?  By the mile?  By the user?  By the view?  And you need to establish an ongoing, recurring billing relationship with your customers, that maps to your ongoing service relationship, that allows you to monetize your customer interactions based on the relationship that the customer opted into.

The 21st century world needs a whole new set of operational systems — ones that match the customer centric business model that is now necessary to succeed.”

To summarize, what he is saying is that the model for future business isn’t the purchase of goods and services, but rather a price provided to a customer for an ongoing relationship to the company. Under this model, the customer is able to structure the relationship in a way which provides them with what they need to accomplish the job (s) that the company can help them with (which can be a variety of services, products, tools and structured experiences).

This is also interesting because your business is measuring the customer’s commitments to you and the other way around in operation terms, even as the business model is shifting to more interactions than ever before. If you are looking at traditional CRM metrics like CLV, churn, share of wallet, adoption rates and more, as they apply to a business model that has continued to evolve away from pure transactions, Tien is saying that the payment/billing, to him, is the financial infrastructure for this new customer-centered economic model (i.e. the subscription model).

Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research Group, LLC commented on this on his blog recently, pointing out that a subscription model does not guarantee a business will be successful. What does have significant bearing on the success of failure of a business is how well the business manages it or has it managed (i.e. by Zuora).

This can be applied to the subscription economy. Zuora is highlighting what they have predicted: that companies are increasingly moving their business models to subscription based pricing. This is the same model that supports free software and hardware, which charges customers by the month. How it is managed is another can of worms, but for now Zuora has done a service by recognizing that the customer-driven companies are realizing that the customers are willing to pay for the aggregate capabilities of the company in an ongoing way—as long as the company continues to support the customer’s needs in solving problems that arise. To learn more about cloud computing and the subscription model, contact a Nubifer.com representative.

2010
07/14
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Hosting-as-a-Service
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Microsoft Releases Security Guidelines for Windows Azure

Industry analysts have praised Microsoft for doing a respectable job at ensuring the security of its Business Productivity Online Services, Windows and SQL Azure. With that said, deploying applications to the cloud requires additional considerations to ensure that data remains in the correct hands.

Microsoft released a version of its Security Development Lifecycle in early June as a result of these concerns. Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle, a statement of best practices to those building Windows and .NET applications, focuses on how to build security into Windows Azure applications and has been updated over the years to ensure the security of those apps.

Principle security program manager of Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle team Michael Howard warns that those practices were not, however, designed for the cloud. Speaking in a pre-recorded video statement embedded in a blog entry, Howard says, “Many corporations want to move their applications to the cloud but that changes the threats, the threat scenarios change substantially.”

Titled “Security Best Practices for Developing Windows Azure Applications,” the 26-page white paper is divided into three sections: the first describes the security technologies that are part of Windows Azure (including the Windows Identity Foundation, Windows Azure App Fabric Access Control Service and Active Directory Federation Services 2.0—a core component for providing common logins to Windows Server and Azure); the second explains how developers can apply the various SDL practices to build more secure Windows Azure applications, outlining various threats like namespace configuration issues and recommending data security practices like how to generate shared-access signatures and use of HTTPS in the request URL;  and the third is a matrix that identifies various threats and how to address them.

Says Howard, “Some of those threat mitigations can be technologies you use from Windows Azure and some of them are threat mitigations that you must be aware of and build into your application.”

Security is a major concern and Microsoft has address many key issues concerning security in the cloud. President of Lieberman Software Corp., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in enterprise security Phil Lieberman says, “By Microsoft providing extensive training and guidance on how to properly and securely use its cloud platform, it can overcome customer resistance at all levels and achieve revenue growth as well as dominance in this new area. This strategy can ultimately provide significant growth for Microsoft.”

Agreeing with Lieberman, Scott Matsumoto, a principal consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based consultancy firm Cigital Inc., which specializes in security, says, “I especially like the fact that they discuss what the platform does and what’s still the responsibility of the application developer. I think that it could be [wrongly] dismissed as a rehash of other information or incomplete—that would be unfair.” To find more research on Cloud Security, please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
07/12
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud Security
Microsoft
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Windows Azure
Leave a comment

Nubifer Cloud:Link Mobile and Why Windows Phone 7 is Worth the Wait

Sure, Android devices become more cutting-edge with each near-monthly release and Apple recently unveiled its new iPhone, but some industry experts suggest that Windows Phone 7 is worth the wait. Additionally, businesses may benefit from waiting until Windows Phone 7 arrives to properly compare the benefits and drawbacks of all three platforms before making a decision.

Everyone is buzzing about the next-generation iPhone and smartphones like the HTC Incredible and HTC EVO 4G, but iPhone and Android aren’t even the top smart phone platforms. With more market share than second place Apple and third place Microsoft combined, RIM remains the number one smartphone platform. Despite significant gains since its launch, Android is in fourth place, with only 60 percent as much market share as Microsoft.

So what gives? In two words: the business market. While iPhone was revolutionary for merging the line between consumer gadget and business tool, RIM has established itself as synonymous with mobile business communications. Apple and Google don’t provide infrastructure integration or management tools comparable to those available with the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).

The continued divide between consumer and business is highlighted by the fact that Microsoft is still in third place with 15 percent market share. Apple and Google continue to leapfrog one another while RIM and Microsoft are waiting to make their move.

The long delay in new smartphone technology from Microsoft is the result of leadership shakeups and the fact that Microsoft completely reinvented its mobile strategy, starting from scratch. Windows Phone 7 isn’t merely an incremental evolution of Windows Mobile 6.5. Rather, Microsoft went back to the drawing board to create an entirely new OS platform that recognizes the difference between a desktop PC and a smartphone as opposed to assuming that the smartphone is a scaled-down Windows PC.

Slated to arrive later this year, Windows 7 smartphones promise an attractive combination of the intuitive touch interface and experience found in the iPhone and Android, as well as the integration and native apps to tie in with the Microsoft server infrastructure that comprises the backbone of most customers network and communications architecture.

With that said, the Windows Phone 7 platform won’t be without its own set of issues. Like Apple’s iPhone, Windows Phone 7 is expected to lack true multitasking and the copy and paste functionality from the get-go. Additionally, Microsoft is also locking down the environment with hardware and software restrictions that limit how smartphone manufacturers can customize the devices, and doing away with all backward compatibility with existing Windows Mobile hardware and apps.

As a mobile computing platform, Cloud Computing today touches many devices and end points. From Application Servers to Desktops and of course the burgeoning ecosystem of smart phone devices. When studying the landscapes and plethora of cell phone operating systems, and technology capabilities of the smart phones, you start to see a whole new and exciting layer of technology for consumers and business people alike.

Given the rich capabilities of Windows Phone 7 offering Silverlight, and/or XNA technology, we at Nubifer have become compelled to engineer the upgrades to our cloud services to inter-operate with the powerful new upcoming technologies offered by Windows Phone 7. At Nubifer, we plan to deploy and inter-operate with many popular smart phones and hand-set devices by way of linking these devices to our Nubifer Cloud:Link technology and offering extended functionality delivered by Nubifer Cloud:Connector and Cloud:Portal which enable enterprise companies to gain a deeper view into the analytics and human computer interaction of end users and subscribers of various owned and leased software systems hosted entirely in the cloud or by way of the hybrid model.

It makes sense for companies that don’t need to replace their smartphones at once to wait for Windows Phone 7 to arrive, at which point all three platforms and be compared and contrasted. May the best smartphone win!

2010
07/01
CATEGORY
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud:Link
Microsoft
Nubifer
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
1 comment

Cloud Computing Security Play Made by McAfee with McAfee Cloud Secure

A new service targeting Software-as-a-Service providers from McAfee combines vulnerability scanning and security certification for cloud infrastructures. The service—called the McAfee Cloud Secure program—is basically designated to compliment annual audits of security and process controls most cloud vendors undergo for the purpose of certification. McAfee officials say that with McAfee Cloud Secure they will team up with certification providers to offer an additional level of security by offering a daily scan of application, network perimeter and infrastructure vulnerabilities. Those that pass will be rewarded with a “McAfee SECURE” seal of approval.

Earlier this month at the RSA security conference, securing cloud environments was a major topic up for discussion. A survey by IDC on attitudes towards the cloud revealed that 87.5 percent of participants said the most significant obstacles to cloud adoption were security concerns. IDC analyst Christian Christiansen said in a statement, “SaaS vendors have a difficult time convincing prospects that their services are secure and safe.” According to Christiansen, though, McAfee’s new offering is a step in the right direction toward increased security in the cloud.

McAfee and other vendors have discussed providing security from the cloud in the past, but this announcement shows the increasing focus on providing solutions to secure cloud environments themselves in the industry.

Marc Olesen, senior vice president and general manager of McAfee’s Software-as-a-Service business said in an interview with eWEEK, ” McAfee looks at the cloud really from three different angles, which is security from the cloud, in the cloud and for the cloud. What’s really been out there today are (annual) process certification audits … that address the process controls and security controls that cloud providers have in place. This has typically been an ISO-27001 certification or an SAS-70 certification that cloud providers are suing, and we feel that that’s very important, but it’s just a start.” For more information please contact a Nubifer representative today.

2010
05/29
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Security
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Cloud-Optimized Infrastructure and New Services on the Horizon for Dell

Over the past three years, Dell has gained experience in the Cloud through its Data Center solutions and  group-designed customized offerings for cloud and hyperscaled IT environments. The company is now putting that experience to use, releasing several new hardware, software and service offerings optimized for cloud computing environments. Dell officials launched the new offerings—which include a new partner program, new servers optimized for cloud computing and new services designed to help business migrate to the cloud—at a San Francisco event on March 24.

Based on work the Dell Data Center Solutions group has completed over the past three years, the new offerings were outlined by Valeria Knafo, senior manager of business development and business marketing for the DCS unit. According to Knafo, DCS has built customized computing infrastructures for large cloud service providers and hyperscale data centers and is now trying to make their solutions available to enterprises. Said Knafo, “We’ve taken that experience and brought it to a new set of users.”

Dell officials revealed that they have been working with Microsoft on its Windows Azure cloud platform and that the software giant will work with Dell to create joint cloud-based solutions. Dell and Microsoft will continue to collaborate around Windows Azure (including offering services) and Microsoft will continue buying Dell hardware for its Azure platform as well. Turnkey cloud solutions—including pre-tested and pre-assembled hardware, software and services packages that businesses can use to deploy and run their cloud infrastructures quickly—are among the new offerings.

A cloud solution for Web applications will be the first Platform-as-a-Service made available. The offering will combine Dell servers and services with Web application software from Joyent and will come with challenges, caution Dell officials, like unpredictable traffic and the migrating of the apps from development to production. Dell is also offering a new Cloud Partner Program. According to officials, it will broaden options for customers seeking to move into private or public clouds. Dell announced three new software companies as partners as well: Aster Data, Greenplum and Canonical.

Also on the horizon for Dell is its PowerEdge C-series servers, which are designed to be energy efficient and offer features that are vital to hyperscaled environments—HPC (high-performance computing), social networking, gaming, cloud computing, Web 2.0 functions—like memory capacity and high performance. The C1100 (designed for clustered computing environments), the C2100 (for data analytics, cloud computing and cloud storage) and the C6100 (a four-node cloud and cluster system which offers a shared infrastructure) are the three servers that make up the family.

In unveiling the PowerEdge C-Series, Dell is partaking in the increasing industry trend of offering new systems optimized for cloud computing. For example, on March 17 Fujitsu unveiled the Primergy CX1000, a rack server created to offer the high performance environments need when lowering costs and power consumption. The Primergy CX1000 can also save on data center space through a design which pushes hot air from the system through the top of the enclosure as opposed to the back.

Last, but certainly not least, are Dell’s Integrated Solution Services. They offer complete cloud lifecycle management and include workshops to assess a company’s readiness to move to the cloud. Knafo said that the services are a combination of what Dell gained with the acquisition of Perot Systems and what it had already. “There’s a great interest in the cloud, and a lot of questions on how to get to the cloud. They want a path and a roadmap identifying what the cloud can bring,” said Knafo.

Mike Wilmington, a planner and strategist for Dell’s DCS group, claimed the services will decrease confusion many enterprises may have about the cloud. Said Wilmington, “Clouds are what the customer wants them to be,” meaning that while cloud computing may offer essentially the same benefits to all enterprises (cost reductions, flexibility, improved management and greater energy efficiency) it will look different for every enterprise. For more information please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
05/28
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud Security
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Transforming Into a Service-Centric IT Organization By Using the Cloud

While IT executives typically approach cloud services from the perspective of how they are being delivered, this model neglects what cloud services are and how they are consumed. These two facets can have a large impact on the overall IT organizations, points out eWeek Knowledge Center contributor Keith Jahn. Jahn maintains that it is very important for IT executives to veer away from the current delivery-only focus by creating a world-class supply chain for managing the supply and demand of cloud services.

Using the popular fable The Sky Is Falling, known lovingly as Chicken Little, Jahn explains a possible future scenario that IT organizations may face due to cloud computing. As the fable goes, Chicken Little embarks on a life-threatening journey to warn the king that the sky is falling and on this journey she gathers friends who join her on her quest. Eventually, the group encounters a sly fox who tricks them into thinking that he has a better path to help them reach the king. The tale can end one of two ways: the fox eats the gullible animals (thus communicating the lesson “Don’t believe everything you hear”) or the king’s hunting dogs can save the day (thus teaching a lesson about courage and perseverance).

So what does this have to do with cloud computing? Cloud computing has the capacity to bring on a scenario that will force IT organizations to change, or possibly be eliminated altogether. The entire technology supply chain as a whole will be severely impacted if IT organizations are wiped out. Traditionally, cloud is viewed as a technology disruption, and is assessed from a deliver orientation, posing questions like how can this new technology deliver solutions cheaper and better and faster? An equally important yet often ignored aspect of this equation is how cloud services are consumed. Cloud services are ready to run, self-sourced, available wherever you are and are pay-as-you-go or subscription based.

New capabilities will emerge as cloud services grow and mature and organizations must be able to solve new problems as they arise. Organizations will also be able to solve old problems cheaper, better and faster. New business models will be ushered in by cloud services and these new business models will force IT to reinvent itself in order to remain relevant. Essentially, IT must move away from its focus on the delivery and management of assets and move toward the creation of a world-class supply chain for managing supply and demand of business services.

Cloud services become a forcing function in this scenario because they are forcing IT to transform. CIOs that choose to ignore this and neglect to make transformative measures will likely see their role shift from innovation leader to CMO (Chief Maintenance Officer), in charge of maintaining legacy systems and services sourced by the business.

Analyzing the Cloud to Pinpoint Patterns

The cloud really began in what IT folks now refer to as the “Internet era,” when people were talking about what was being hosted “in the cloud.” This was the first generation of the cloud, Cloud 1.0 if you will—an enabler that originated in the enterprise. Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes were revolutionized by commercial use of the Internet as a trusted platform and eventually the IT architectural landscape was forever altered.

This model evolved and produced thousands of consumer-class services, which used next-generation Internet technologies on the front end and massive scale architectures on the back end to deliver low-cost services to economic buyers. Enter Cloud 2.0, a more advanced generation of the cloud.

Beyond Cloud 2.0

Cloud 2.0 is driven by the consumer experiences that emerged out of Cloud 1.0. A new economic model and new technologies have surfaced since then, due to Internet-based shopping, search and other services. Services can be self-sourced from anywhere and from any device—and delivered immediately—while infrastructure and applications can be sourced as services in an on-demand manner.

Currently, most of the attention when it comes to cloud services remains focused on the new techniques and sourcing alternatives for IT capabilities, aka IT-as-a-Service. IT can drive higher degrees of automation and consolidation using standardized, highly virtualized infrastructure and applications. This results in a reduction in the cost of maintaining existing solutions and delivering new solutions.

Many companies are struggling with the transition from Cloud 1.0 to Cloud 2.0 due to the technology transitions required to make the move. As this occurs, the volume of services in the commercial cloud marketplace is increasing, propagation of data into the cloud is taking place and Web 3.0/semantic Web technology is maturing. The next generation of the cloud, Cloud 3.0 is beginning to materialize because of these factors.

Cloud 3.0 is significantly different because it will enable access to information through services set in the context of the consumer experience. This means that processes can be broken into smaller pieces and subsequently automated through a collection of services, which are woven together with massive amounts of data able to be accessed. With Cloud 3.0, the need for large-scale, complex applications built around monolithic processes is eliminated. Changes will be able to be made by refactoring service models and integration achieved by subscribing to new data feeds. New connections, new capabilities and new innovations—all of which surpass the current model—will be created.

The Necessary Reinvention of IT

IT is typically organized around the various technology domains taking in new work via project requests and moving it through a Plan-Build-Run Cycle. Here lies the problem. This delivery-oriented, technology-centric approach has inherent latency built-in. This inherent latency has created increasing tension with the business it serves, which is why IT must reinvent itself.

IT must be reinvented so that it becomes the central service-sourcing control point for the enterprise or realize that the business with source them on their own. By becoming the central service-sourcing control point for the enterprise, IT can maintain the required service levels and integrations. Changes to behavior, cultural norms and organizational models are required to achieve this.

IT Must Become Service-Centric in the Cloud

IT must evolve from a technology-centric organization into a service-centric organization in order to survive, as service-centric represents an advanced state of maturity for the IT function. Service-centric allows IT to operate as a business function—a service provider—created around a set of products which customers value and are in turn willing to pay for.

As part of the business strategy, these services are organized into a service portfolio. This model differs from the capability-centric model because the deliverable is the service that is procured as a unit through a catalog and for which the components—and sources of components—are irrelevant to the buyer. With the capability-centric model, the deliverables are usually a collection of technology assets which are often visible to the economic buyer and delivered through a project-oriented life cycle.

With the service-centric model, some existing roles within the IT organization will be eliminated and some new ones will be created. The result is a more agile IT organization which is able to rapidly respond to changing business needs and compete with commercial providers in the cloud service marketplace.

Cloud 3.0: A Business Enabler

Cloud 3.0 enables business users to source services that meet their needs quickly, cost-effectively and at a good service level—and on their own, without the help of an IT organization. Cloud 3.0 will usher in breakthroughs and innovations at an unforeseen pace and scope and will introduce new threats to existing markets for companies while opening new markets for others. In this way, it can be said that cloud is more of a business revolution than a technology one.

Rather than focusing on positioning themselves to adopt and implement cloud technology, a more effective strategy for IT organizations would be to focus on transforming the IT organization into a service-centric model that is able to source, integrate and manage services with high efficiency.

Back to the story and its two possible endings:

The first scenario suggests that IT will choose to ignore that its role is being threatened and continue to focus on the delivery aspects of the cloud. Under the second scenario, IT is rescued by transforming into the service-centric organization model and becoming the single sourcing control point for services in the enterprise. This will effectively place IT in control of fostering business innovation by embracing the next wave of cloud. For more information please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
05/14
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud Security
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Microsoft and Citrix Come to a Desktop Virtualization Agreement

On March 18, Microsoft announced a partnership with Citrix Systems which seeks to promote the pair of companies’ end-to-end virtualization packages for businesses. One aspect of the broad-based partnership sees Microsoft and Citrix aggressively offering customers of rival VMware View the option of trading in 500 licenses with no additional cost. This highly aggressive facet of the recent alliance between Microsoft and Citrix highlights the perpetually increasing competitive nature of the entire virtualization industry.

Also during the company’s March 18 announcement, Microsoft put a number of changes in place in its virtualization policy. One such change which was instituted was making virtual desktop access rights a Windows Client Software Assurance benefit. Beginning on July 1, Software Assurance clients will no longer need to buy a separate license in order to access Windows in a virtual environment.

Windows Client Software Assurance and Virtual Desktop Access license customers will be able to access virtualized Windows and Office applications beginning on July 1 as well. These applications will be accessible through non-corporate network devices, like home PCs. Under Microsoft’s agreement with Citrix, Windows XP Mode will no longer require hardware virtualization technology and assets like Citrix XenDesktop’s HDC technology will be able to be applied to the capabilities of the Microsoft RemoteFX platform.

In an interview with eWEEK one day before the March 18 announcement, Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s management and Services Division, said, “What we’re bringing to the market together is this end-to-end experience with a simple and consistent interface for the end user. It’s comprehensive, and it leverages what customers already have. If you take a look at the assets that our companies already have in virtualization, it’s the most comprehensive group of assets on the market.”

Together, Microsoft and Citrix are trying to fire a broadside into rival VMware with the “rescue for VMware VDI” promotion. The promotion allows VMware View customers to trade in up to 500 licenses for no additional cost. New Microsoft-Citrix customers also receive about 50 percent off the estimated retail price for virtual desktop infrastructure through another promotion.

In its media portrayal, Microsoft emphasized the announcement as a value proposition. “Two infrastructures are more expensive than one infrastructure,” said Anderson before adding, “When customers see the chance to consolidate multiple infrastructures into one, it’s a chance to manage virtual and hardware desktop so it’s truly one infrastructure. It enables administrators to do everything through system center. And reducing infrastructure reduces cost.”

The partnership with Citrix comes on the heels of another Microsoft virtualization initiative, which arrived on February 22. Microsoft unveiled two business-focused virtualization applications, App-V 4.6 and MED-V 1.0 SP1 Release Candidate designed to better integrate proprietary applications into business’ evolving IT infrastructure APP-V 4.6 extends 64-bit support for Microsoft’s application virtualization product to streaming applications. MED-V 1.o SP1 RC allows applications which require Internet Explorer 6—or that otherwise cannot be supported on Windows 7—to run in a managed virtual desktop environment. For more information about Cloud Computing, please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
04/12
CATEGORY
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Hosting-as-a-Service
Microsoft
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Media Streaming Added to Amazon CloudFront

Amazon Web Services LLC unveiled media streaming for its content delivery service, Amazon CloudFront, on December 16, 2009. The brand new feature enables streaming delivery of audio and video content, thus providing an alternative to progressive download where end users download a full media file.

According to Amazon officials, Amazon CloudFront streams content from a worldwide network of 14 edge locations, which ensures low latencies and also offers cost-effective delivery. Like all Amazon Web Services, Amazon CloudFront requires no up-front investment, minimum fees or long-term contracts and uses the pay-what-you-use model.

General manager of Amazon CloudFront Tal Saraf said in a statement released in conjunction with the company’s announcement, “Many customers have told us that an on-demand streaming media service with low latency, high performance and reliability has been out of reach—it was technically complex and required sales negotiations and up-front commitments. We’re excited to add streaming functionality to Amazon CloudFront that is so easy, customers of any size can start streaming content in minutes.”

Amazon reports that viewers literally watch the bytes as they are delivered because content is delivered to end users in real time. In addition to giving the end user more control over their viewing experience, streaming also lowers costs for content owners by reducing the amount of data transferred when end users fail to watch the whole video.

Users only need to store the original copy of their media objects in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) in order to stream content with Amazon CloudFront, and then enable those files for distribution in Amazon CloudFront with a simple command using the AWS Management Console or the Amazon CloudFront API. Amazon officials said that end users requesting streaming content are automatically routed to the CloudFront edge location best suited to serve the stream, thus end users can get the highest bit rate, lowest latency and highest-quality stream possible. Due to multiple levels of redundancy built into Amazon CloudFront, customers’ streams are served reliably and with high quality.

Daniel Rhodes of video sharing website Vidly said in a statement, “In the five minutes it took us to implement Amazon CloudFront’s streaming service, Vidly was able to both cut costs and offer additional features that significantly improved the in-video experience for our worldwide audience. Without any upfront capital, we are able to side-step the purchase and administration of streaming servers while still getting all the same benefits. Amazon CloudFront brings all the benefits together in such a great tightly integrated way with Amazon’s other services we use and is reliably distributed worldwide, all with barely any work on our part.”

LongTail Video had added support for Amazon CloudFront Streaming to their popular open source video player, JW Player. “There was a great fit between the JW player and Amazon CloudFront streaming: both focus on making it as easy as possible for anyone to incorporate high quality video into Websites,” said LongTail Video co-founder Jeroen “JW” Wijering.

Using Adobe’s Flash Media Server 3.5.3 (FMS), Amazon CloudFront lets developers take advantage of many features of FMS. Customers can decide to deliver their content via the Flash standard Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) or using its encrypted version, RTMPE (for added security). Customers can also use advanced features like dynamic bit rate streaming (which automatically adjusts the bit rate of the stream plated to the end user based on the quality of the user’s connection). Currently supporting on-demand media, Amazon CloudFront streaming support for live events is slated for 2010. For more information regarding Cloud Hosting options please visit Nubifer.com.

2010
03/18
CATEGORY
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Hosting-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
1 comment

Google’s Power Play

Seeking to keep its large data centers supplied with power, Google’s Google Energy subsidiary has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the right to purchase and re-sell electricity to consumers. A vast amount of electricity is required for Google’s cloud computing model, which includes its Google Apps collaboration applications and its popular search engine, and by becoming a player in the energy game Google Energy feels it will be able to contain the cost of energy for Google at the very least.

Google is all too aware of its enormous consumption of power, as the leading search provider with the desire to expand its purview online via other Web services. Google Energy’s request to buy and resell electricity to consumers was made on December 23, 2009 and asked to be approved by February 23, 2010. eWeek.com obtained the subsidiary’s application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Google’s request is a common one among companies that consume a tremendous amount of power, such as Safeway grocery store chains and Wal-Mart retail, to name a few.

Google has thousands of inexpensive, thin rack-mount computers and other servers stashed in large facilities scattered across the globe. Working in parallel, these servers route search engine requests and queries for data from the company’s Google Apps to the next available computers and send the data back to consumers’ PCs and mobile devices. A large amount of energy, and thus a large sum of money, is required for the cloud computing model, and in its application to FERC Google stated that by playing the energy game it can “contain and manage the cost of energy for Google.”

In a statement to eWeek.com, a Google spokesperson said, “Google is interested in procuring more renewable energy as part of our carbon neutrality commitment, and the ability to buy and sell energy on the wholesale market could give us more flexibility in doing so. We made this filing so we can have more flexibility in producing power for Google’s own operations, including our data centers. This FERC authority would improve our ability to hedge out purchases of energy and incorporate renewable into our energy portfolio.”

Google Energy guru Bill Weihl described the company’s objective in layman’s terms during a January 7 interview with the New York Times. “One [motivation] is that we use a moderate amount of energy ourselves: we have a lot of servers, and we have 22,000 employees around the world with office buildings that consume a lot of energy. So we use energy and we care about the cost of that, we care about the environmental impact of it, and we care about the reliability of it,” said the Google Energy czar.

While some might argue that Google’s consumption of power is far more than “moderate,” due to its rather large cloud computing footprint, there are companies out there that consume more energy and are not taking measures to account for it. Also during his interview with the Times, Weihl described Google’s intentions to profit from alternative energy, saying, “We’d be delighted if some of this stuff actually made money, obviously; it is not our goal not to make money. All else being equal, we’d like to makes as much money as we can, but the principle goal is to have a big impact for good.”

Google has invested about $45 million in alternative energy over the past few years, with some of that money going toward eSolar and BrightSource. (Both companies are building towers that capture sunlight to be used as a power source.) Thus while Google’s power plans can be deems capitalistic, they are nonetheless altruistic as well. For mroe information on Google’s Cloud offerings, contact a Nubifer representative today.

2010
02/26
CATEGORY
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Maximizing Effectiveness in the Cloud

At its most basic, the cloud is a nebulous infrastructure owned and operated by an outside party that accepts and runs workloads created by customers. When thinking about the cloud in this way, the basic question concerning cloud computing becomes, “Can I run all of my applications in the cloud?” If you answer “no” to that question, then ask yourself, “What divisions of my data can safely be run in the cloud?” When assessing how to include cloud computing in your architecture, one way to maximize your effectiveness in the cloud is to see how you can effectively complement your existing architectures.

The current cloud tools strive to manage provisioning and a level of mobility management, with security and audit capabilities on the horizon, in addition to the ability to move the same virtual machine in and out of the cloud. This is where virtualization, a new data center which includes a range of challenges for traditional data center management tools, comes into play. Identity, mobility and data separation are a few obvious sues for virtualization.

1.       Identity

Server identity becomes crucial when you can make 20 identical copies of an existing server and then distribute them around the environment with just a click of a mouse. In this way, the traditional identity based on physicality doesn’t measure up.

2.       Mobility

While physical servers are stationary, VMs are designed to be mobile, and tracking and tracing them throughout their life cycles is an important part of maintaining and proving control and compliance.

3.       Data separation

Resources are shared between host servers and the virtual servers running on them, thus portions of the host’s hardware (like the processor and memory) are allocated to each virtual server. There have not been any breaches of isolation between virtual servers yet, but this may not last.

These challenges are highlighted by cloud governance. While these three issues are currently managed and controlled by someone outside of the IT department, additional challenges that are specific to the cloud now exist. Some of them include life cycle management, access control, integrity and cloud-created VMS.

1.       Life cycle management

How is a workload’s life cycle managed once it has been transferred to the cloud?

2.       Access control

Who was given access to the application and its data while it was in the cloud?

3.       Integrity

Did its integrity remain while it was in the cloud, or was it altered?

4.       Cloud-created VMS

Clouds generate their own workloads and subsequently transfer them into the data center. These so-called “virtual appliances” are being downloaded into data centers each day and identity, integrity and configuration need to be managed and controlled there.

Cloud computing has the potential to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of your IT organization and there are things you can do to be pragmatic about the evolution of cloud computing. They include understanding what is needed in the cloud, gaining experience with “internal clouds” and testing external clouds.

1.       Understanding that is needed to play in the cloud

The term “internal clouds” has resulted from the use of virtualization in the data center. It is important to discuss with auditors how virtualization is impacting their requirements and new requirements and new policies may subsequently be added to your internal audit checklists.

2.       Gaining experience with “internal clouds”

It is important to be able to efficiently implement and enforce the policies with the right automation and control systems. It becomes easier to practice that in the cloud once you have established what you need internally.

3.       Testing external clouds

The use of low-priority workloads help provide a better understanding of what is needed for life cycle management as well as establish what role external cloud infrastructures may play in your overall business architecture.

Essentially, you must be able to manage, control and audit your own internal virtual environment in order to be able to do so with an external cloud environment. Please visit nubifer.com to learn more on maximizing officing effectiveness in the cloud.

2010
02/23
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Hosting-as-a-Service
Hybrid Cloud and On-Premise
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

The Arrival of Ubiquitous Computing

Among other things, one of the “ah ha” moments taken from this year’s CES (the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow) was the arrival of ubiquitous computing. Formerly a purely academic concept, the data, voice, device and display convergence is now more relevant than ever. Ubiquitous convergence in consumer technology on enterprise software is poised to impact those highly involved in the field of cloud computing as well as the average consumer in the near future.

Industry prognosticators are now predicting that consumers will begin to expect the ubiquitous experience in practically everything they use on a daily basis, from their car to small household items. Take those that grew up in the digital world and will soon be entering the workforce; they will expect instant gratification when it comes to work and play and everything in between. For example, Apple made the Smartphone popular and a “must-have” item for non-enterprise consumers with its iPhone. The consumer-driven mobile phone revolution will likely seep into other areas as well, with consumers increasingly starting to expect to have a similar experience as with an iPhone in software. Due to this trend, many enterprise software vendors are now making mobile a greater priority than before, and in turn staying ahead of the curve will mean anticipating more and more ubiquitous convergence.

What Does Ubiquitous Computing Mean for ISVs?

CES showcased a wide range of new interface and display technology, such as a multi-touch screen by 3M, a screen with haptic feedback, pico projector and the list goes on. A cheap projector and a camera can combine to make virtually any surface into an interface or display, which will allow consumers to interact with software in innovative, unimaginable and unanticipated ways, thus putting ISVs to the task of supporting these new interfaces and displays. This gives ISVs the opportunity to differentiate their offering by leveraging rather than submitting to this new trend in technology.

The Combination of Location-based Apps and Geotagging

Both Google’s Favorite Places and Nokia’s Point and Find seek to organize and essentially own the information about places and objects using QR codes. The QR codes are generally easy to generate and have flexible and extensible structure to hold useful information, while the QR code readers are the devices—such as a camera phone with a working data connection—that most of us own already. When geotagging is combined with augmented reality that is already propelling the innovation in location-based apps, there is the potential for ample innovation. Smarter supply chain, sustainable product life cycle management and efficient manufacturing are all possible outcomes from the combination of location-based applications and geotagging.

The Evolution of 3D

While 3D simply adds a certain “cool” factor to playing video games or watching movies, 3D is poised to make the transition from merely a novelty into something useful. Although simply replicating 3D analog in the digital world won’t make software better, adding a third dimension could aid those looking at 2D. One way that 3D technology can be more effective is by using it in conjunction with complementing technology like multi-touch interface, to provide 3D accordances, and with location-based and mapping technology to manage objects in 3D analog world.

Rendering Technology to Outpace Non-Graphics Computation Technology

As shown by Toshiba’s TV with cell processors and ATI and nVidia’s graphic cards, the investment into rendering hardware complements the innovation in display elements (like LED, energy-efficient technology, etc). Hi-quality graphics at all former factors are being delivered via the combination of faster processors and sophisticated software. So far, enterprise software ISVs have been focusing on algorithmic computation of large volumes of data to design various solutions, and rendering computation technology lagged non-graphics data computation technology. Now rendering computation has caught up with non-graphics data and will outpace non-graphics data computation in the near future. This will allow for the creation of software that can crunch large volumes of data and leverage high-quality graphics without any lag, that delivers striking user experiences as well as realtime analytics and analysis.  For more information, please visit www.nubifer.com.

2010
02/18
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Monitoring
Platform-as-a-Service
Software-as-a-Service
Leave a comment

Scaling Storage and Analysis of Data Using Distributed Data Grids

One of the most important new methods for overcoming performance bottlenecks for a large class of applications is data parallel programming on a distributed data grid. This method is predicted to have important applications in cloud computing over the next couple years, and eWeek Knowledge Center contributor William L. Bain describes ways in which a distributed data grid can be used to implement powerful, Java-based applications for parallel data analysis.

In current Information Age, companies must store and analyze a large amount of business data. Companies that have the ability to efficiently search data for important patterns will have a competitive edge over others. An e-commerce Web site, for example, needs to be able to monitor online shopping carts in order to see which products are selling faster than others. Another example is a financial services company, which needs to hone its equity trading strategy as it optimizes its response to rapidly changing market conditions.

Businesses facing these challenges have turned to distributed data grids (also called distributed caches) in order to scale their ability to manage rapidly changing data and sort through data to identify patterns and trends that require a quick response. A few key advantages are offered by distributed data grids.

Distributed data grids store memory instead of on a disk for quick access. Additionally, they run seamlessly across various servers to scale performance. Lastly, they provide a quick, easy-to-use platform for running “what if” analyses on the data they store. They can take performance to a level unable to be matches by stand-alone database serves by breaking the sequential bottleneck.

Three simple steps for building a fast, scalable data storage and analysis solution:

1. Store rapidly changing business data directly in a distributed data grid rather than on a database server

Distributed data grids are designed to plug directly into the business logic of today’s enterprise application and services. They match the in-memory view of data already used by business logic by storing data as collections of objects rather than relational database tables. Because of this, distributed data grids are easy to integrate into existing applications using simple APIs (which are available for most modern languages like Java, C# and C++).

Distributed data grids run on server farms, thus their storage capacity and throughput scale just by adding more grid servers. A distributed data grid’s ability to store and quickly access large quantities of data can expand beyond a stand-alone database server when hosted on a large server farm or in the cloud.

2. Integrate the distributed data grid with database servers in an overall storage strategy

Distributed data grids are used to complement, not replace data servers, which are the authoritative repositories for transactional data and long-term storage. With an e-commerce Web site, for example, a distributed data grid would hold shopping carts to efficiently manage a large workload of online shopping traffic. A back-end database server would meanwhile store completed transactions, inventory and customer records.

Carefully separating application code used for business logic from other code used for data access is an important factor to integrating a distributed data grid into an enterprise application’s overall strategy. Distributed data grids naturally fit into business logic, which manages data as objects. This code is where rapid access to data is required and also where distributed data grids provide the greatest benefit. The data access layer, in contract, usually focuses on converting objects into a relational form for storage in database servers (or vice versa).

A distributed data grid can be integrated with a database server so that it can automatically access data from the database server if it is missing from the distributed data grid. This is incredibly useful for certain types of data such as product or customer information (stored in the database server and retrieved when needed by the application). Most types of rapidly changing, business logic data, however, can be stored solely in a distributed data grid without ever being written out to a database server.

3. Analyze grid-based data by using simple analysis codes as well as the MapReduce programming pattern

After a collection of objects, such as a Web site’s shopping carts, has been hosted in a distributed data grid, it is important to be able to scan this data for patterns and trends. Researchers have developed a two-step method called MapReduce for analyzing large volumes of data in parallel.

As the first step, each object in the collection is analyzed for a pattern of interest by writing and running a simple algorithm that assesses each object one at a time. This algorithm is run in parallel on all objects to analyze all of the data quickly. The results that were generated by running this algorithm are next combined to determine an overall result (which will hopefully identify an important trend).

Take an e-commerce developer, for example. The developer could write a simple code which analyzes each shopping cart to rate which product categories are generating the most interest. This code could be run on all shopping carts throughout the day in order to identify important shopping trends.

Using this MapReduce programming pattern, distributed data grids offer an ideal platform for analyzing data. Distributed data grids store data as memory-based objects, and thus the analysis code is easy to write and debug as a simple “in-memory” code. Programmers don’t need to learn parallel programming techniques nor understand how the grid works. Distributed data grids also provide the infrastructure needed to automatically run this analysis code on all grid servers in parallel and then combine the results. By using a distributed data grid, the net result is that the application developer can easily and quickly harness the full scalability of the grid to quickly discover data patterns and trends that are important to the success of an enterprise. For more information, please visit www.nubifer.com.

2010
02/16
CATEGORY
Cloud Compliance
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Hosting-as-a-Service
Platform-as-a-Service
1 comment

Nubifer Cloud:Link

Nubifer Cloud:Link monitors your enterprise systems in real-time and strengthens interoperability with disparate owned and leased SaaS systems. When building enterprise mash-ups, custom addresses and custom source codes are created by engineers to bridge the white space, also known as electronic hand-shakes, between the various enterprise applications within your organization. By utilizing Nubifer Cloud:Link, you gain a real-time and historic view of system-based interactions.

Cloud:Link is designed and configured via robust administrative tools to monitor custom enterprise mash-ups and deliver real-time notifications, warning and performance metrics of your separated yet interconnected business systems. Cloud:Link offers the technology and functionality to help your company monitor and audit your enterprise system configurations.

ENTERPRISE MONITORING
Powerful components of Cloud:Link make managing enterprise grade mash-ups simple and easy.

  • Cloud:Link inter-operates with other analytic engines including popular tracking engines (eg: Google Analytics)
  • RIA (Rich Internet Applications): reporting, graphs and charts
  • WEB API handles secure key param calls
  • Verb- and Action-based scripting language powered by “Verbal Script”
  • XML Schema Reporting capabilities
  • Runs on-premise, as an installed solution, or in the cloud as a SaaS offering
  • Client-side recording technology tracks and stores ‘x’ and ‘y’ coordinate usage of enterprise screens for compliance, legal and regulatory play back
  • Graphical snapshots of hot maps show historical views of user interaction and image hit state selections
  • Creates a method for large systems to employ “data and session playback” technologies of system-generated and user-generated interaction sessions in a meaningful and reproducible way

USE CASE
Cloud:Link monitors and reports enterprise system handshakes, configurations, connections and latency reports in real time. Additionally, Cloud:Link rolls the data view up to your IT staff and system stakeholders via rich dashboards of charts and performance metrics. Cloud:Link also has a robust and scalable analytic data repository that keeps an eye on the connection points of enterprise applications, and audits things like “valid ssl cert warnings or pending expirations”, “mid to high latency warnings”, “ip logging”, “custom gateway SSO (Single Sign-On) landing page monitoring” among many other tracking features.

SUPPORTS POPULAR WEB ANALYTICS
Cloud:Link also leverages Google Analytics by way of Cloud:Link extended AP,  which can complete parallel calls to your Google Analytics account API, and send data, logs, analytic summaries, and physical click and interface points by the end users to any third party provider or data store for use in your own systems.

SERVER SIDE
On the server side, Cloud:Link is a server-based application you can install or subscribe to as a service. Data points and Machine-to-Machine interaction is tracked at every point during a systems interaction. The Cloud:Link monitor can track remote systems without being embedded or adopted by the networked system, however, if your company chooses to leverage the Cloud:Link API for URI Mashup Tracking, you can see even more detailed real time reports of system interoperability and up-time.

CLIENT SIDE
On the client side, leverage Cloud:Link’s browser plug-in within your enterprise to extend your analytic reach into the interactions by your end-users. This approach is particularly powerful when tracking large systems being used by all types of users. Given the proper installation and setup, your company can leverage robust “Session Playback” of human interaction with your owned and leased corporate business systems.

ADMIN FUNCTIONALITY
Nubifer Inc. focuses on interoperability in the enterprise. Disparate applications operating in independent roles and duties need unified index management, Single Sign-On performance tracking, and application integration monitoring.

  • User Admin logs in and sees a dashboard with default reporting widgets configurable by the admin user
  • “My Reports” (Saved Wizard generated reports) and can be setup to auto send reports to key stake holders in your IT or Operations group
  • Logs (Raw log review in Text Area, exportable to csv, or API post to remote FTP account)
  • Users (Connecting known vs. unknown connecting IP’s)
  • Systems (URI lists of SSO (Single Sign-On)paths to your SaaS and on Premise Apps) – An Enterprise Schematic Map of your On-Prem and Cloud-Hosted Applications

At the core of Nubifer’s products are Nubifer Cloud:Portal, Nubifer Cloud:Link, and Nubifer Cloud:Connector, which offer machine-to-machine real time analytics, tracking and playback of machine to machine interaction for human viewers using Rich Internet Application Components to view on customize-able dashboards. Nubifer Cloud:Link enables large publicly traded or heavily regulated companies to follow compliance laws, regulations, such as SOX, SaS70, HL7/HPPA, and mitigate the risk of not knowing how your systems are interacting on a day to day basis.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CLOUD PLATFORM SUPPORT
Currently Cloud:Link is hosted on, and compatible with:

  • Microsoft® Windows Azure™ Platform
  • Amazon® EC3
  • Google® App Engine
  • On-Premise Hosted

To learn more about Cloud:Link technology please contact cloudlink@Nubifer.com or visit nubifer.com/cloud:link to find out how you can begin using the various features offered by Nubifer Cloud:Link.

2010
02/13
CATEGORY
Cloud Computing
Cloud Interop
Cloud Monitoring
Cloud:Link
Nubifer
Software-as-a-Service
Windows Azure
16 comments
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 191 other followers