2. cloud computing:
pinnacle of IT Infrastructure
democratization
cloud computing, in brief referring to the emergent concept of flexible access to
resources on a tap, with pay-as-you-go model, over the all-pervasive network,
SETLabs Briefings
Advisory Board stirs an uncanny familiarity to the popular slogan of a leading airline out of
India, Simplifly, whose model of low cost aviation is a classic case of disruptive
Gaurav Rastogi innovation. The notion of simplifly lowered the bar of access to flying, thereby
Associate Vice President, democratizing air travel. On a similar note, the cloud computing concept manifests
Head - Learning Services
itself in myriad forms like simpliStore or simpliCompute, technically also referred to
George Eby Mathew storage as a service or computation as a service, or broader terms like platform as a
Senior Principal, service and infrastructure as a service.
Infosys Australia
The democratization effect of cloud is loud and clear from the multiple
Kochikar V P PhD SmEs, including startups, which have been early cloud adopters. Likewise, even
Associate Vice President, large enterprises have begun looking at the low hanging fruits to exploit cloud,
Education & Research Unit especially in areas like infrastructure rationalization, where the cost advantages
of cloud are immediately visible. Notwithstanding these adoption trends, a few
Raj Joshi
Managing Director, questions need to be answered before we can begin to see the cloud as an inflexion
Infosys Consulting Inc. point in IT.
Is cost the only driver for cloud? Is there a mainstream enterprise play
Rajiv Narvekar PhD
Manager, for cloud? Is there an innovation angle to cloud? What are the showstoppers to
R&D Strategy mainstream adoption of cloud? What applications are better suited for cloud?
Software Engineering &
In this issue, we attempt to cover the breadth and depth of issues in an
Technology Labs
attempt to provide the answers. On the democratization front, while one article
Ranganath M discusses internal deployment of utility model via private cloud yet another
Vice President & article elucidates how high performance computing, usually a costly proposition,
Chief Risk Officer
can be made available to masses for massive number crunching and simulations.
Subu Goparaju going beyond cost, we see interesting articles on how cloud can power
Vice President & Head, innovative business models like service exchanges. We also discuss the power of
Software Engineering &
Technology Labs cloud in offering innovative solutions for consumers needing ubiquitous access
to infrastructure be it to store data for wireless sensor networks or ISVs needing
ubiquitous storage and compute power. On the other side, potential new service
opportunities leveraging cloud are identified like infrastructure management
services for cloud.
A key contribution of this issue is in the several articles that delve deeper
into the several showstoppers plaguing the cloud, requiring a leap of faith on part
of enterprises to go from ‘adopting low hanging fruits’ to ‘strategic adoption.’ Key
showstoppers of ‘interoperability’ and ‘standardization’ are explored in depth
alongside usability and security.
Overall, we hope the issue helps in ‘clearing the clouds’ to cloud adoption
and that the word cloud is no longer a homonym, i.e., it is cloudy to adopt cloud.
Happy reading!
Srinivas padmanabhuni phd
guest Editor
3. SETLabs Briefings
VOL 7 NO 7
2009
Trend: Cloud Computing — Transforming the IT Ecosystem 3
By Rahul Bakhshi and Deepak John
Cloud computing has a wide array of things to offer. Each stakeholder in the cloud
computing space has enough reasons to smile for the goodies it brings along. The authors
opine that since it is here to stay enterprises should explore the possibilities and seek the
right fitment with what cloud has to offer.
Discussion: Adopting Cloud Computing: Enterprise Private Clouds 11
By Shyam Kumar Doddavula and Amit Wasudeo Gawande
An agile pay-per-use business model can prove to be cost effective for small and large
firms alike and can turn a new leaf in the way business and IT usage is defined, opine the
authors.
Insight: Cloud Interoperability and Standardization 19
By AV Parameswaran and Asheesh Chaddha
The authors contend that while moving the existing applications to cloud or integrating
data and application to the cloud platform, an eye on standardization will lend a congenial
and effortless move to the new platform.
Model: SLA Aware ‘on-boarding’ of Applications on the Cloud 27
By Sumit Kumar Bose PhD, Nidhi Tiwari, Anjaneyulu Pasala PhD and Srinivas Padmanabhuni PhD
While adopting cloud computing, SLA aware on-boarding of application onto cloud
platforms enables a streamlined exercise, transparent deadlines and better transition, state
the authors.
Platform: Can We Plug Wireless Sensor Network to Cloud? 33
By Adi Mallikarjuna Reddy V, Siva Prasad Katru and Kumar Padmanabh PhD
Virtual communities, real time data share and analysis can add a different dimension to the
existing IT scenario. The authors suggest a holistic approach towards cloud through Web
2.0 technologies to usher in a new age of business.
Third Angle:Cloud – Five Minute into the First Quarter 41
Amitabh Srivastava Senior VP, Windows Azure, Microsoft in an interview with Jitendra
Pal Thethi, provides clarity on defining cloud computing and discusses the key traits and
future prospects of exploring this new promising IT platform.
Viewpoint: Cloud Computing Identity Management 45
By Anu Gopalakrishnan
Beyond all the silver lining that cloud holds, the author draws our attention to identity
management, a growing concern in the dynamic world of virtual space. A seamless and risk-
free identity management is the basis for the evolving scenario of virtual workspace, opines
the author.
Opinion: Service Exchange @ Cloud 55
By Bhavin Raichura and Ashutosh Agarwal
Business on cloud can mean low investment and high returns. Services exchange on cloud
can prove to be a win-win situation for all stakeholders, at either end of service offering and
consuming.
Perspective: Revenue and Customer Growth for ISVs using Cloud Offerings 61
By Ajit Mhaiskar and Bhavin Raichura
Virtualization is already in vogue and ISVs have to adapt themselves to suit the changing
model to be able to attract and retain customers. The authors bring up some pertinent
issues related to ISVs’ revenue growth and the evolving cloud space.
Research: Power in the Clouds? 69
By Sudeep Mallick PhD and Ganesan Pandurangan
High performance computing (HPC) is required for faster processing time in complex and
parallel processing applications scenario. The authors focus on how the architecture of
cloud computing platform can be exploited fruitfully for HPC application execution.
Spotlight: Infrastructure Management and Monitoring in the Cloud 79
By Kaustubh Janmejay Vaidya
Cloud seems to be the most alluring IT innovation to every organization today. This paper
offers well-laid roadmaps to help in planning and organizing cloud adoption.
The Last Word: Cloud Computing — A Disruptive Technology 89
By Srinivas Padmanabhuni PhD
Index 93
4. “Cloud is designed to be available ever ywhere, all the
time. By using redundancy and geo-replication, cloud
is so designed that services be available even during
hardware failures including full data center failures.”
Amitabh Srivastava
Senior Vice President
Microsoft Technologies
“System integrators with a close proximity to customers
have to play a crucial role in taking the benefit of cloud
computing to the enterprise customers.”
Raghavan Subramanian
AVP & Head – Cloud Computing CoE
Infosys Technologies Limited
5. SETLabs Briefings
VOL 7 NO 7
2009
Cloud Computing — Transforming
the IT Ecosystem
By Rahul Bakhshi and Deepak John
Cloud computing is here to stay and promises
a fresh approach to the IT ecosystem
C loud computing has emerged at an
inflexion point in the industry and our
lives, where IT is all prevalent and is no longer
With cloud computing sweeping across
the IT and business world, the economics of
this emerging world will be very different.
the panacea for all industry ills. Jumping to the This paper looks at the prospects that cloud
front seat are buzzwords like TCO, business computing presents to all the stakeholders in
drivers, regulatory compliance, real-time data the IT ecosystem during the transformation.
streams, SOA, mobility, Web 2.0, etc. A quick
look around shows that any company worth THE IT ECOSYSTEM
its salt claims to be a cloud company or at least To gather the changes that will come along with
claims to have a cloud strategy in place. The cloud computing and to better understand the
acceptance of cloud computing as a mainstream way the IT ecosystem is projected to evolve,
technology is gaining momentum rapidly we have segmented the IT ecosystem into
because of a strong alignment between cloud horizontals and verticals.
computing and the demands of an enterprise [1]. The verticals define the domain/type of
It is interesting to note that we have all services/products offered:
been touched by cloud computing in some way
or the other, irrespective of whether or not we are ■ Hardware: Infrastructure, network,
aware of it. Every time we access emails through storage and computing solution
applications like Gmail and Yahoo, view content providers, etc.
on YouTube and Flikr, or post on Facebook, we
are making use of cloud computing. ■ Software: Independent software
Cloud computing is here to stay and vendors, value added resellers, etc.
Gartner hype cycle identifies cloud computing
as one of the key technology triggers of our ■ Service: Communication, media and
times in the 2008 hype [2]. entertainment service providers, etc.
3
6. The horizontals describe the actors in CLOUD COMPUTING: THE RISE TO
each of these verticals. PROMINENCE
Cloud computing offers a new, better and
■ Enablers: OEMs, independent software economical way of delivering services and
vendors, etc. all the stakeholders will have to embrace the
dramatic changes to exploit opportunities to
■ Delivery Agents: Value added avoid becoming irrelevant.
resellers, communication, media and Following are some of the key trends/
entertainment service providers, last changes that we expect to see:
mile access suppliers, etc.
Movement across Domains and Competencies:
■ Consumer: Enterprise and retail users. Technology providers are realising that in order
to leverage economies of scale, it is essential
The complex relationship can be best to have competencies across hardware and
represented if we consider that the consumer software verticals. Nokia for example, operating
utilizes services and delivery agents act in the handset and telecom infrastructure
as intermediaries adding value to the raw space, has boldly ventured into the social
capabilities offered by the enablers [Fig. 1]. networking space with Ovi. The acquisition
It is important to realize that the roles for of US internetworking (an application service
the actors are not limited and the entities may provider offering managed hosted applications
span across domains and roles. With renewed like PeopleSoft and SAP) in 2006 has enabled
interest in decoupling technology from services AT&T to offer enterprise-class cloud services
and the falling price of bandwidth, the cloud labelled Synaptic Hosting.
model of operating will drive visible growth Acquisitions, although the preferred
and collaboration horizontally, vertically as route, need not be the only route, as with all
well as across quadrants. disruptive and emerging technologies, cloud
computing will drive the creation of alliances
spanning hardware, software and services, for
instance, HP - Intel - Yahoo [3]. NetSuite, a
leading vendor of on-demand enterprise services
has announced its partnership with BT to deliver
io n
rat
Consumer services via the SaaS model [4]. We also expect to
bo
olla
see an increased clarity with standardization and
dC
Su
Utility
Cost
interoperable open models like DTMF Incubator
pp
Delivery
an
o
Agents
rt
ion
and Open Cloud Manifesto [5, 6].
rat
eg
Int
Enablers Loss of Differentiation and Startup Power:
The utility or value delivered by a product
will triumph over the product itself. Hardware
Figure 1: Relationships between Consumer and Enabler
through Delivery Agents
and software commoditization will give way
Source: Infosys Research to service commoditization. As George Crump
4
7. from InformationWeek says “It’s very hard increasingly rich as they become more and
to add a significant new capability to existing more service focused [11]. For the mass, cloud
products [7].” As we move up the triangle in computing is all about ubiquitous access to
Figure 1, hardware and software enablers and content. Thus, telecom and media companies are
delivery agents will collaborate and co-innovate reinventing themselves to become on-demand
to differentiate services. solution providers, aiming to provide complete
John Foley describes start-ups as having experience, as opposed to just providing services
the innate capacity to drive innovation and fill in silos. Citrix president Mark Templeton said,
niches, while pushing down costs and driving “Optimization of the user experience will happen
up performance [8]. There will be a delicate in the data centre, at the edge of the network
shift in the balance of power from traditional and in internet cloud, allowing IT to deliver any
enablers to start-ups that deliver ideas, the application to any user with the best performance,
likes of 3Tera, Appirio, Coghead and Kaavo. security and cost savings possible [12].” This is
This is reflected by the fact that venture capital evident from the increased investments in server
interest in the ‘cloud’ is high. While VC funding and storage consolidation. Cisco’s ‘medianet’
has dried up in many areas in this recession, suite, for one, has been built around advanced
some 25 startups in the cloud space garnered collaboration and entertainment, targeting both
more than $150 million in VC funding in the the business and home user.
past year [9].
Security and Legal Implications: It is
New Sales and Pricing Models: Delivery important to realise that even if data and
of cloud computing requires optimised applications are stored and accessed remotely,
infrastructure management costs and increased the responsibility of the security and integrity
operational efficiencies. This will have of data lies with the individual. Authentication
considerable impact on the way the enablers and authorization on the cloud, entangled with
realize revenues. The key trend to arise will be similar requirements offline will drive the need
the acceptance of the subscription model (opex for interoperable (across services and devices)
model) resulting in customers increasingly identity management. Single sign-on will be
transforming ‘my problem’ into ‘your problem.’ an area of investment. Ventures in this field
With the subscription model, the enablers include Microsoft Active Directory (within the
will require an upfront investment. However, enterprise) and OpenID. Also, issues around
the breakeven will be hazy depending on the privacy and the way individuals exercise
volume of subscribers. The traditional delivery control over personal data stored remotely will
mechanisms (brick and mortar, media like need to be addressed.
CDs and DVDs) are on the decline and not Hardware and software services available
transforming will mean sudden death, as is through the cloud may span geographies and
evident from Blockbuster’s partnership with cloud providers may soon subcontract their
TiVo in an attempt to ward off Netflix [10]. services. All the three actors will have to
understand the implications of having sensitive
Data/Content Driven Innovation: The data on the cloud and regulatory compliances
application delivery platforms will become viz., SOX, HIPPA, etc., governing the same.
5
8. ROLE ENTITIES: CLOUD TRENDS on the PDA while on the move or on high-
The following sections look at the consequences definition TVs at home. This mandates higher
of the cloud for each of the roles defined in the investment in product development but does
previous section in greater detail. not necessarily allow a longer concept-to-
market cycle.
The Enablers To support the increased demand and
Enablers provide resources that drive and adoption of cloud computing, the enablers
support the creation of solutions in terms of are aligning their resources to provide
both hardware and software that the consumer multi-tenanted architectures, virtualization
utilizes. Following are the buzz words in the technologies along with support to highly
enabler’s arena: scalable and elastic services. Virtualization
technologies span platforms, resources and
Consolidation and Integration: With the markets applications and the likes of VMware’s Mobile
changing rapidly, it is imperative for players virtualization platform are steps in that direction.
to find new opportunities. Some of the recent In fact enterprises are already reaping benefits
acquisitions highlight the clear horizontal of this. Westar Aerospace & Defence Group has
expansion across hardware and software been successful in slashing their data centre size
towards services. For instance, with its purchase by 50% and power and cooling costs by 30% with
of Sun, Oracle has become a true cloud player a server virtualization solution from Dell [14].
with services now ranging from operating
systems, programming/development platforms, Environmental Sustainability and Data Centres:
ERP, CRM and other support utilities, giving Environmental awareness will further drive
Oracle an edge over its competitors and allowing enterprises towards cloud computing as it
it to offer the entire gamut of computing services allows considerable reduction in energy costs.
required by any enterprise. Gartner estimates that over the next five years,
Examples of integration within the most enterprise data centres will spend as
domain include Adobe acquiring Virtual much on energy (power and cooling) as they
Ubiquity - developer of online word processor; do on hardware infrastructure [15]. To quote
Google acquiring FeedBurner - leader in RSS VMware, “Gartner estimates that 1.2 million
services; and AT&T acquiring Ingenio - live workloads run in VMware virtual machines,
search and commerce application provider, to which represents an aggregate power savings
name a few [13]. of about 8.5 billion kWh—more electricity than
is consumed annually in all of New England for
Ubiquity and Virtualization: The fact that the heating, ventilation and cooling [16].” Cloud
consumer would demand seamless access to enabling technologies like virtualization and
content, impacts both the enablers as well as server consolidation can help enterprises reduce
the delivery agents (providers in the software energy costs by as much as 80%.
vertical, a little more than anyone else). The Data centre consolidation will be driven
challenge being, developing applications that by cost, space and energy savings. HP, for one,
are ‘portable’ and offering seamless content is replacing 85 data centres with just six located
delivery – whether on the office laptop or in America. According to IDC, America alone
6
9. has more than 7000 data centres and predicts important for the delivery agents to weigh
that the number of servers will grow to 15.8 pros and cons before investing in the platforms.
million by 2010. In driving the cloud data In the retail space Microsoft and Google can
centres, Linux complemented by open source emerge as dominant players due to the inertia
solutions will be at the forefront. IDC expects keeping consumers tied to its suite of products.
Linux spending to boom by 21% in 2009 [17]. Supporting them will be hardware players
Cloud computing is also driving the (a near monopoly of Intel) and virtualization
usage of netbooks or laptops that are enhanced providers like Citrix and VMware. The situation
for mobility, compromised on computing is complicated in the enterprise space, driven
capacity with a reduced storage capacity. by leaders like Amazon, Oracle, IBM and
Therefore, there will be an increased demand Google. Cross platform compatibility and ease
for transfer processing and storage in data of migration demanded by the consumer will
centers. IDC reported that netbooks accounted require the delivery agents to understand long
for 30% of all laptop sales in Europe during the term strategies.
fourth quarter of 2008, with 3.6 million netbooks
sold [18]. Death of the System Integrators: System
integrators, as we know them today, will have
Marginalization of Fringe Players: Desktop to take a second look at their model of operation.
based utilities and tools like MS Office and With the rising popularity of subscription
Norton antivirus will see a reduction in their based applications like Siebel On-Demand and
installed user base and will ultimately be SalesForce.com, the demand for customised on-
marginalized, as the same services will be premise will decrease, taking away with it the
available online. The traditional fringe players biggest market of the SIs. In the long term, IT
will have to re-invent themselves to align services providers will have to increase efforts
with the new modes of delivery, warranted to provide end-to-end management of the IT
by the cloud. Adobe is already providing an estate (or whatever little would be left of it)
online version of its graphics editing program or work along with the product companies to
called Photoshop. Appistry is one of the offer technical support to their customers. Once
more innovative companies and has recently cloud computing technology reaches the critical
launched the CloudIQ platform, offering mass, there will be an increased demand from
enterprises the capability to port nearly any enterprises to migrate data, applications and
enterprise application to the cloud [19]. content to the cloud. In the short term, service
providers need to ready their arsenal to deliver
The Delivery Agents consulting services across technology and
Delivery agents are value added resellers of the human resource domain.
capabilities offered by the enablers. Following
are the key changes that we foresee in this Last Mile Connectivity: When push comes to
domain: shove, availability will triumph over utility.
Internet service providers (ISPs) and last
Collaboration, Partner Driven Work Environments: mile access supplier will have to ramp up
Industry alliances are being forged and it is their offerings rapidly to meet the increasing
7
10. requirements of the bandwidth hungry content delivery through the cloud – a clear shift
content and applications, with fibre being the in perspectives [20].
predominant technology for last mile access.
The Consumers
New Pricing and Delivery Models: Sales channels Consumers are the demand side of the cloud
will also have to evolve to provide ubiquitous equation and following are the trends for them:
delivery models and the revenues are going to
be long-tailed as the sales model will shift to a Convergence, On-Demand: The retail customer
subscription based service, which will imply will now, more than ever, come to expect on-
that customer retention and loyalty becomes demand everything - be it multimedia content,
all the more important. So all players will have applications, gaming or storage. AMD’s new
to reinvent, be it the telecom operators who campaign ‘The Future is Fusion’ is again
are shifting focus to value added services or reflective of the changing times. For the retail
the internet media houses that have to come user, it is all about bringing together convergent
up with variants of their web pages that can multimedia solutions on any screen supported
be accessed from mobile devices offering a with advanced graphics capabilities; for the
consistent user experience, along with richer enterprise user it is delivering enhanced server
interactive applications to keep the customers and powerful virtualization capabilities [21].
hooked on.
Collaboration and Social Networking: Cloud
Piracy: With the onset of the cloud, the users based platforms like Facebook and Twitter
will no longer be required to download or will become destinations for collaboration,
install applications in the traditional sense. e-commerce and marketing. Enterprises are
In the online world, controlled access implies already planning to listen to the voice of the
that piracy will become increasingly difficult, if customer using such tools.
not impossible. Case in point being the online Collaboration and virtual workspace
documentation services offered by Zoho, since solutions will see increased investments. A
there is no application that has to be installed key player in this space is WebEx, acquired
at the users’ end, there is no chance of having by Cisco in 2007 for $3.2 billion – again an
a pirated version of the application. example of a hardware player moving to the
Likewise with online gaming, the software cloud domain. Another promising
problem of pirated copies of the games being technology is IBM’s Bluehouse, based on Lotus
spread around, resulting in millions of dollars Notes. This enables employees among business
worth of revenue loss can be curbed. OnLive partners or within the same organization to
is one of the pioneers in this field and has share documents and contacts, collaborate on
signed contracts with major video game content joint project activities, host online meetings and
providers like Warner Brothers, Electronic build social-networking communities.
Arts and Epic Games. What is interesting is
that Nvidia, a provider of high end graphics Back to Core Competencies: The cloud enables
processors and cards, primarily in the desktop businesses to focus on their core competency
segment, has welcomed the initiative of game and cloudsource the IT estate enabling the
8
11. consumers to transfer risk. ‘My problem’ now REFERENCES
becomes A look at an IDC study makes it clear 1. Frank Gens, What User Want from IT:
that businesses want the cloud because of the Speed, Relevance, Information and
cost benefit [22]. Innovation, IDC exchange, March 2008.
Available at http://blogs.idc.com/
Decentralization of Management: The traditional ie/?p=141
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9
12. Shape Enterprise Data Center Strategies. 19. h t t p : / / g i g a o m . c o m / 2 0 0 9 / 0 3 / 0 9 /
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10
13. SETLabs Briefings
VOL 7 NO 7
2009
Adopting Cloud Computing:
Enterprise Private Clouds
By Shyam Kumar Doddavula and Amit Wasudeo Gawande
Cost efficiency riding on the agility of cloud
computing appeals enterprises the most
C loud computing delivers IT capabilities
as services-on-demand. This scalable and
elastic model provides advantages like faster
requirements of the internet era [Fig. 1]. In
this system centric model, once the need
for a business application is identified, its
time-to-market, no capex and pay-per-use infrastructure needs are identified and a
business model. While there are several such request for infrastructure is placed with the
benefits, there are challenges in adopting public IT infrastructure team that procures and
clouds because of dependency on infrastructure provisions the infrastructure. The application
that is not completely controlled internally is then developed, tested and deployed on that
and rather shared with outsiders. Several infrastructure.
enterprises, especially large ones that have Some of the challenges with this model
already invested in their own infrastructure include —
over the years are looking at setting up private
clouds within their organizational boundaries ■ Need for Large Capex: Large investments
to reap the benefits of cloud computing need to be made in procuring the
technologies leveraging such investments. This infrastructure for a business application.
paper describes the different options available, This increases the barrier for innovation
highlighting the key advantages and challenges as it is hard to experiment with a
posed by each and the approach enterprises business idea without large investments.
should be taking in adopting cloud computing
with minimal risk. ■ Poor Utilization of Resources:
Application usage is not going to
WHY CLOUD COMPUTING? be constant yet the infrastructure is
Traditional infrastructure provisioning provisioned for peak demand, to be able
model is inefficient and does not meet the to guarantee application SLAs. So, the
11
14. Business Business Business
Provision Solution 1 Solution 2 Solution n
Business Resolve Required
Requirements Plan Infrastructure
Solution Infrastructure HP IBM SUN
Business Provide Solution Architect Assign Team Servers Servers Servers
Fulfilling Requested
Requirements Resource Infrastructure Repository
Figure 1: Infrastructure Provisioning: Traditional Model Source: Infosys Research
infrastructure remains under-utilized ranging from infrastructure to platforms and
for a major part of the time. applications. This is commonly referred as
infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-
■ Slow Time-to-Market: This model of service and software-as-a-service.
procuring and provisioning infrastructure This cloud computing model offers
usually requires significant time and several appealing benefits for enterprises
reduces the agility of an organization in including —
creating new business solutions.
■ Faster Time-to-Market: Enterprises can
Figure 2 below provides an overview avoid the step of initial infrastructure
of the service centric provisioning model with procurement and setup, thus allowing
cloud computing. the business solutions to be taken to
In the cloud computing model, IT- market faster.
related capabilities are made available as
services that can be provisioned on demand. ■ On-Demand Elastic Infrastructure:
There are several offerings from various Sudden spikes due to business growth,
vendors that enable provisioning different functionality additions or promotional
IT components as services, components offers can be addressed easily with
Service
Service Procurement
Request Service Management Cloud
Service Infrastructure
Portal Provisioning
Assign Workflow
Consumer
Requested
Service
Platform Templates
Cloud Management
Repository
and Billing
Figure 2: Infrastructure Provisioning: Cloud Computing Source: Infosys Research
Model
12
15. infrastructure that can be requested on control of the IT organizations makes
demand. it dangerous for some mission critical
applications.
■ Pay-as-Use: Organizations can leverage
the pay-as-use model of cloud computing ■ Vendor Lock-in: Cloud computing
to ensure optimum utilization of services offered by different vendors
available resources. are not governed by any standards as
of today. Depending on the vendor, the
PUBLIC CLOUDS AND CHALLENGES applications have to undergo changes to
Public clouds like Amazon AWS, Microsoft adapt to the service.
Azure, Google AppEngine offer infrastructure
and platforms as services over the internet. In ■ Leveraging Existing Investment: Most
public clouds, resources and costs are shared large organizations that have already
by users who use them over the internet on pay invested in their own data centers would
per use model. see a need to leverage those investments
This model appeals especially to startups as an important criterion in adopting
and small organizations that have not invested cloud computing.
in hardware resources and are looking for ways
to avoid the large capex involved in procuring ■ Corporate Governance and Auditing:
infrastructure upfront. Even though there are Performing governance and auditing
several benefits like cost savings, faster time to activities with the corporate data
market, etc., from this model, there are a few abstracted in the public cloud poses
challenges listed below that are preventing wide challenges, that are yet to be addressed.
scale adoption of public clouds.
■ Maturity of the Solutions: Some of
■ Security: The biggest roadblock is the the PaaS offering like AppEngine offer
potential security issues due to multi- limited capabilities like only a subset of
tenant nature of public clouds. There JDO API.
are security and privacy concerns with
sharing same physical hardware with ENTERPRISE PRIVATE CLOUDS
unknown parties that need to addressed. In order to overcome these challenges,
organizations are looking at enterprise
■ Reliability and Performance: private cloud offerings. Enterprise private
Performance and availability of the cloud solutions help organizations leverage
applications are important criteria the existing IT environment and create a
defining the success of an enterprise’s cloud computing platform in the private
business. However, the fact that internal network. This model overcomes
organizations lose control over IT several challenges faced in public cloud
environment and important success adoption. Enterprise private clouds are
metrics like performance and reliability, seen as a natural progression of initiatives
and are dependent on factors outside the like virtualization already taken up by
13
16. several organizations. Enterprise private Automation
cloud solutions add capabilities like self- The private cloud solution should have certain
service, automation and charge back over the traits -
virtualized infrastructure.
Figure 3 provides the recommended ■ A provisioning engine that automates
logical architecture for an enterprise private the provisioning of the infrastructure
cloud. ■ Workflow driven with built-in approval
mechanisms enabling governance
Self Service ■ Enable user management and integration
The private cloud solution should have a with enterprise authentication and
self service portal that enables users request authorization mechanisms
infrastructure and platforms as a service. ■ Enable enforcing enterprise policies on
It should contain a service catalog that lists resource allocation through a rules engine
the categories and the services available, the ■ Enable capturing the common
associated SLAs and costs. deployment patterns using templates.
The service portal should enable
reserving as well as requesting the services on Self-service and automation helps reduce
demand. the time-to-market so that users can request
Service Portal Service Monitoring and Management
SLA Trouble
Self Service Catalogue Reports
Management Ticketing
User Approval Deployment Patch Metering
Management Pattern Library Management Charge Back Alerts/Events
Workflows
Monitoring and Management
Provisioning Policies Scheduling and
Inventory Provisioning Engine
and Rules Engine Load Balancing
Virtual Network Management Service
Templates
Virtual Storage Management Virtual Machine Management
Storage Virtualization Compute Virtualization
Virtualization Layer Virtual Machines
Virtualization Layer
NAS SAN
Physical Infrastructure
Figure 3: Enterprise Private Cloud Architecture Source: Infosys Research
14
17. for infrastructure as a service and can get it holds true. Not just the infrastructure, even
provisioned on demand. the internal clouds are to be built and managed
by the IT team. Moreover, as the underlying
Management and Monitoring infrastructure is limited, it is likely to be less
The private cloud solution should also have scalable as compared to the immensely robust
an integrated monitoring and management and scalable infrastructure of cloud providers.
platform that should have the following The model also does not benefit from the lower
components — upfront capital costs and less management
overheads that are otherwise possible with
Monitoring and Management: Track various public clouds.
metrics at the software and infrastructure level So, the recommended approach is to
adopt a hybrid one where both public and
Metering & Chargeback: Track the usage of the private clouds are used for different categories of
various services and allow to charge back applications. With this approach, organizations
mechanisms to be plugged in can reap the benefits of both public and private
cloud models. This approach allows enterprises
SLA Management: Enable, define and monitor to adopt the public clouds partially, deploying
SLAs for the services only those services that are suitable for public
clouds. The private cloud helps apply the cloud
Patch Management: Enable patches to be rolled computing model internally as well. Thus the
out to the various software components used hybrid approach brings together the best in both
worlds of public and private clouds.
Reports: Generate reports on usage, SLA As technology matures, there will be
adherence, etc. better options for creating such an enterprise
cloud. There are already solutions available
Incident Management: Generate alerts when there that provide abstractions over infrastructure
are issues and provide ticketing mechanism to available internally through virtualization
track and resolve incidents. software like vmware ESXi, Xen, HyperV
and public clouds like AWS. Also there are
Virtualization VPN solutions available that can help create a
The private cloud solution should have secure network spanning infrastructure across
virtualization layer that virtualize the key enterprise data centers and public clouds.
infrastructure components including compute, There are still challenges to be addressed like
storage and network. latency, automated routing and load balancing,
end-to-end SLA management, etc., before such
ENTERPRISE CLOUD: HYBRID APPROACH solutions become enterprise ready.
Private clouds help overcome some of the
challenges associated with public clouds but TYPICAL USE CASES FOR PRIVATE
they are not as cost effective as public clouds CLOUDS
since the traditional model of owning, i.e., Scenarios where there are only intermittent
buying and managing the infrastructure, still usages of infrastructure are ideal for cloud
15
18. computing. Also, scenarios that involve operating system but also the software stack,
sensitive data and processes, or mission thus enabling creation of virtual appliances that
critical applications are better suited for can be provisioned on-demand.
enterprise private clouds. Some of the typical
use cases where enterprise private clouds can Cloud Burst: With a computing stack that
be leveraged include - provides abstraction over the underlying cloud
infrastructure and enables applications and data
Development and Test Platforms as Services: There to reside together on both private and public
are studies that indicate that around 30% of clouds, when there is sudden spike in usage
the infrastructure at large enterprise is used and the in-house private cloud environment
for development and testing. These resources is not able to support the requests, additional
are not always utilized as development and infrastructure can be provisioned from a public
testing are activities that happen occasionally. cloud without affecting the service quality.
These resources can be provisioned through an
enterprise private cloud so that the resources High Performance Grid: Enterprise private clouds
can be shared and utilized better and also the can also be used to create grid environments so
time to provision can be reduced. that the infrastructure that would otherwise
have got dedicated only for specialized grid
Public Cloud Emulation Environments: Private applications can be utilized better.
clouds can be used to emulate a public cloud
environment and can be used as a development TYPICAL USE CASES FOR PUBLIC CLOUDS
and test platform while developing the Some of the initial services that can be moved
applications to be deployed on the particular into public cloud are those that are not business
public cloud. The design, architecture and or mission critical or do not deal with the
the actual code can be validated using the sensitive data. Some of the typical use cases
private cloud environment. Further, the where public clouds can be leveraged include.
same environment can also be used to test
the developed applications for functionality BPOs: Business productivity online (BPO) suite
as well as validations before it moves to the applications are one of the first applications of
production at a public cloud. An example of public clouds in enterprises. There are several
this is usage of the open source Eucalyptus vendor offerings like exchange online and Google
framework to emulate some of the Amazon Apps that offer messaging and collaboration
AWS functionality. It can be used to create software as services on subscription model
the development and test environment that that can reduce the overheads associated with
emulates AWS EC2 and S3 environments. maintaining such application on premise.
Virtual Appliances: Private clouds can be used Data Backup and Archival: Cloud storage
to create virtual appliances that leverage is cheaper and offer storage on demand. So,
commodity hardware to create specialized enterprises are looking at public cloud storage
devices like load-balancers, storage devices, etc. solutions for their data back up and archival
A machine image is created with not only the needs.
16
19. Cloud Application Layer
CRM SaaS Financial Service Health Care Community
Application Application Service Application Portal Cloud Tools
Admin Tools
Cloud Platform Layer
Cloud Application Frameworks
Social Service Development
Multi-tenant Batch Frame Analytics
Commerce Composition Tools
Web Framework Work Framework
Framework Framework
Cloud Management and Infrastructure Layer Migration Tools
Cloud Infrastructure Services
Messaging Service Storage Service Compute Service Data Service
Testing Tools
Cloud Management Services
SLA Emulators
Metering Billing Administration Security
Management
Cloud Adapter Framework
Public Cloud
Enterprise Cloud
(Private Cloud) AWS AZURE App Engine
Figure 4: Enterprise Cloud Computing Stack Source: Infosys Research
Internet Content Management: Content that Cloud Infrastructure Layer
needs to be accessible from the internet like The cloud infrastructure layer provides the core
product literature, etc., can be stored in public middleware capabilities like compute, storage,
cloud storage solutions. Amazon Offers S3 data stores, messaging, etc., as on-demand
for storage and cloud front for CDN that services. These use the infrastructure from public
increases the efficiency of delivering such and private clouds and provide abstractions for
content. the platform and application services.
Organizations should build a cloud
computing stack that helps them adopt this Cloud Platform Layer
hybrid approach efficiently. The recommended The cloud platform layer provides the
cloud computing stack is shown in Figure 4 with specialized frameworks like a multi-tenant
the various layers and the various components web framework for developing web based
needed for managing the cloud, developing applications, analytics and batch frameworks
and deploying enterprise applications and based on MapReduce algorithms, cloud based
maintaining the applications using the cloud social commerce framework, etc.
computing environment.
The cloud computing stack consists of Cloud Application Layer
the following layers - The cloud application layer consists of SaaS
17
20. applications developed using the cloud Startups You Should Know, Information
platform services. Week, September 2008. Available at
http://www.informationweek.com/
CONCLUSION news/software/hosted/showArticle.
In the current economic climate where the jhtml?articleID=210602537
expectations of efficiencies and cost savings 3. Private Cloud Computing for Enterprises:
are growing from IT organizations, enterprise Meet the Demands of High Utilization
private clouds provide a good opportunity to and Rapid Change. Available at http://
get started with cloud computing and reap www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/
the associated benefits of agility, cost savings collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns836/
and on-demand services while meeting the ns976/white_paper_c11-543729.html
stringent enterprise security, performance and 4. Daniel Nurmi, Rich Wolski, Chris
reliability requirements. Grzegorczyk Graziano Obertelli, Sunil
Soman, Lamia Youseff and Dmitrii
REFERENCES Zagorodnov, The Eucalyptus Open-
1. James Staten, Deliver Cloud Benefits source Cloud-computing System,
Inside Your Walls, Forrester, April University of California, Santa
2009. Available at http://www. Barbara. Available at http://open.
forrester.com/Research/Document/ eucalyptus.com/documents/nurmi_
Excerpt/0,7211,54035,00.html et_al-eucalyptus_open_source_cloud_
2. J o h n F o l e y , 2 0 C l o u d C o m p u t i n g computing_system-cca_2008.pdf.
18
21. SETLabs Briefings
VOL 7 NO 7
2009
Cloud Interoperability and
Standardization
By A V Parameswaran and Asheesh Chaddha
Adoption of cloud rests largely on interoperabilty
and standardization as they define the
new age IT industry
C loud computing can be defined as accessing
third party software and services on web
and paying as per usage. It facilitates scalability
by limiting cloud choice because of vendor lock-
in, portability, ability to use the cloud services
provided by multiple vendors including the
and virtualized resources over internet as a ability to use an organization’s own existing
service providing cost effective and scalable data center resources seamlessly. Business
solution to customers. Cloud computing has applications and data remain in cloud silos.
evolved as a disruptive technology and picked There is a need for complex developed business
up speed in 2008 and 2009 with the presence of applications on the clouds to be interoperable.
many vendors in cloud computing space. Cloud adoption will be hampered if there is not
With the presence of numerous vendors, a good way of integrating data and applications
the need is emerging for interoperability across clouds.
between clouds so that a complex and developed
business application on clouds is interoperable. CLOUD COMPUTING STANDARDS AND
In this paper we provide cloud computing INTEROPERABILITY VIEW
standards and interoperability view, examine To start with, we provide a cloud computing
some high level approaches for interoperability standards and interoperability view to show
and look at important interoperability factors. some aspects/areas of interoperability and
standardization in the cloud computing
NEED FOR INTEROPERABILITY landscape [Fig. 1 overleaf]. When we look
Every new cloud service provider have their across the broad range of things that people
own way on how a user or cloud application consider in cloud computing, potentially
interacts with their cloud leading to cloud API hundreds of standards will be involved. The
propagation [1]. This kills the cloud ecosystem good news is that many of these standards
19
22. Stora behind an open and standardized cloud
n APIs Security ge ng
utatio Brokeri
Com
p
Billing
ePayment
interface. Thus a key driver of the unified
Transactions
Provisioning
Management Lifecycle
Management
cloud interface (UCI) is to create an API
of VMs Regulatory Compliance
Replication
Deployment on
about other APIs.
Network unicati
Platform
QoS Comm
Logging ice Service Registries /
ic Serv
Monitoring Dynam reements
Level A
g Modeling
Ontologies ■ It is a singular abstraction/programmatic
ccess
Accounting Job Scheduling Migration of Vms Data A point of contact that encompasses the
ent Distributed
anagem Programming
Load M Cloud Services (SOA) Query Processin
g entire infrastructure stack as well as
Policies Notification
Workflow mic Sc
aling Pr Business
ocess Modelin emerging cloud centric technologies
Autono g IaaS
Caching / Distributed Caching SaaS PaaS Coordination through a unified interface.
Figure 1: Cloud Computing Interoperability View
Source: Infosys Research ■ The purpose of cloud broker is to serve
as a common interface for the interaction
between remote platforms, networks,
probably already exist. Reuse of good standards systems, applications, services, identity
should therefore be a primary strategy. Creating and data.
a big picture view of the cloud computing
landscape is therefore necessary to understand ■ Having a common set of cloud definitions
the what, where and why of standards. Once the is an important factor that would enable
overall view is understood, a gap analysis on vendors to exchange management
the standards can then be done to see what information between distant cloud
standards we have and the standards we need. providers.
INTEROPERABILITY APPROACHES ■ The important parts of unified cloud
We discuss some of the emerging approaches interface (UCI) or cloud broker are a
for interoperability at a high level. specification and a schema. The actual
model descriptions are provided by the
Approach 1: Unified Cloud Interface/Cloud schema and the details for integration
Broker with other management models are
Cloud computing vendors have formed defined by the specification.
a common platform — cloud computing
interoperability forum (CCIF) — to address ■ The unified cloud model will address
the problem of cloud interoperability and both the platforms as service offerings
standardization [2]. The purpose of CCIF is as well as infrastructure cloud platforms.
to discuss and come up with a common cloud It will enable a hybrid cloud computing
computing interface. CCIF is planning to come environment that is decentralized,
up with a unified cloud interface (a.k.a. cloud extensible and secure.
broker) whose features are as follows:
Figure 2 shows a bird’s eye view about
■ Unified cloud computing is trying to the vision of the UCI project of CCIF [3, 4]. The
unify various cloud APIs and abstract it primary goal is to come up with an abstraction
20
23. layer that is agnostic to any cloud API, platform all allocated resources and running VMs. A
or infrastructure. The architecture comprises component on the left side of Figure 2 is used
of layers and components with a use case to depict this. [6].
described at the UCI project requirement page
[5]. The architecture abstracts the usage of any Approach 2: Enterprise Cloud Orchestration
cloud API and unifies them in one layer. This is Platform /Orchestration layer
done with the help of semantic web and OWL According to IDC, in virtually every industry,
which has a pool of resources semantically thousands of companies are trying to simplify
understood and described. This enables the the speed and adoption of their products and
user to use these resources irrespective of services by transforming them into cloud
whether these resources are being allocated services. We see that the race to the cloud is
from provider Amazon EC2 or Enomaly accelerating [7]. The scenario that is unfolding
platform, etc. Having a unified interface with is that there will not be just one cloud but
common definitions of these resources helps numerous types -- private clouds and public
to do operations like allocation, de-allocation, ones. These will further get divided into general-
provisioning of virtual machines or managing purpose and specialized ones. Similar to the
them through the UCI layer using the agent way that internet is a network of networks,
component. Assuming that the interface to InterCloud means a federation of all kinds
UCI is provided to the user via a web browser of clouds. All these clouds will be full of
or UCI cloud client, the UCI should provide applications and services. It will not be possible
a kind of a dashboard that shows the state of to use these without some type of orchestration.
External Cloud
ECP Amazon Ec2 Google App Engine Any Provider
UCI Agent Messaging
Local
Server
DB
Semantic and OWL Engine Internal Cloud
Infrastructure
XML RDF
Query Engine VMS Provision Layer
Management and Control Layer
Unified Cloud Interface (UCI)
Figure 2: UCI Architecture Source: www.code.google.com [8]
21
24. The initiatives of some of the early adopters Eli Lilly and the various cloud services
towards Cloud Orchestration are discussed it subscribes to. This layer should be
below. provided by another vendor and not
Eli Lilly itself and should comprise
■ Vendors like Cordys advocate the of various algorithms that determine
need for a layer in the cloud that the best cloud service for a particular
provides assembly and orchestration job based on factors like highest
for enterprises, which helps to deliver performance, lowest cost or other
useful business advantages [9, 10]. requirement. This approach will help
Cordys delivers an enterprise cloud Eli Lilly and other users to write to a
orchestration platform that helps single API rather than many and help to
enterprises to quickly adopt new ways optimize service usage. Eli Lilly also sees
of running their business and reaching the potential of using cloud computing
their customers. for external collaboration. It is already
doing some of this, but foresees that
■ Rightscale is another vendor that going forward, the cloud will become
provides an orchestration layer/ a point of integration between Eli Lilly
cloud management platform. A single and outside researchers. They have work
management platform is provided to going on at present that starts to fit into
conveniently manage multiple clouds this collaborative scheme. This gives an
that facilitates businesses to migrate example of how standardization needs
deployments [11]. It helps businesses to are driven both by vendors as well as
manage and scale cloud deployments as end users.
well as facilitate application migration
and management across multiple clouds. ■ CSC has recently announced cloud
Similarly organizations like Suntec are orchestration services for cloud services
looking at building an orchestration integration. This provides clients with
layer for billing infrastructure. features like service level management,
data transparency, remote monitoring,
■ Eli Lilly, a pharmaceuticals company auditing and reporting [13]. These
uses Amazon web services and other services also provide automated
cloud services to provide high- arrangement, management, federation,
performance computing to hundreds coordination, security and operation
of its scientists based on need. In future, of public, private and hybrid cloud
it foresees the possibility of using cloud computing environments, supporting
services from many different vendors industry-specific compliance, etc.
and wants to avoid a scenario where
Eli Lilly has to configure and manage Figure 3 illustrates how a client can
each of those separately [12]. Eli Lilly consume the services offered by more than
describes the need for an intermediate one cloud service provider (CSP) via an
orchestration layer that is in-between orchestration layer.
22
25. ■ Note that the client uses only one single
Cloud 1 Cloud 2 Cloud 3 API offered by the orchestration layer
5. Execute 7. Execute
Service 3 3. Register and thus is insulated from the different
Service 1
Service 3
6. Execute 2. Register APIs offered by different CSPs.
Service 2 Service 2
Orchestration ■ Figure 3 shows an example of how a
1. Register Layer client request for executing a business
Service 1
4. Execute Business process (or workflow) is satisfied by
Process
the orchestration layer by invoking a
Client
sequence of three different services
provided by three different CSPs.
Figure 3: Cloud Orchestration
Source: Infosys Research
The challenges with such an approach
are discussed below.
T h e f e a t u r e s o f t h e a p p r o a c h a re ■ Service Level Management: Since
explained below. the orchestration layer provides
functionality to dynamically select
■ Different cloud service providers can and bind to services based on criteria/
register the cloud services that they offer algorithms that determine the best
with the orchestration layer. This is similar cloud service for a particular job based
to vendors who offer web services on highest performance, lowest cost or
publishing their web services with the other requirement as specified by the
Universal Description, Discovery and client, such an approach will involve
Integration (UDDI). The orchestration performance overhead due to runtime
layer can then dynamically select and binding delays.
bind to services based on criteria/ The orchestration layer also
algorithms that determine the best cloud needs to interpret client API calls
service for a particular job based on and translate them suitably to invoke
factors like highest performance, lowest services provided by different CSPs. This
cost or other requirement as specified by will involve latency as well.
the client.
■ Data Volumes: Depending on the
■ Note that since the orchestration layer provided service, the data volumes
interacts with the cloud services offered required to be transported across cloud
by different vendors via different APIs, services is another important factor to be
it can use user-computer interface (UCI) considered. For certain types of services,
for interacting with different CSPs or this could be a limiting factor due to the
have similar functionality built-in to be overhead involved.
able to understand and interact with
different CSPs via different APIs. ■ Platform Support: Depending on the
23
26. service, the platform support required by to use brokers/adapters for interoperability.
the service could also be a limiting factor. New users however will be able to natively
use the standard API. There will also be
■ Others: Apart from the above, vendors developing orchestration layers to
there could be other challenges like build business processes/workflows using the
security, regulatory compliance, data cloud services provided by different vendors.
transparency, etc. With some of the major vendors like Microsoft
and Amazon rejecting the CCIF agenda and
IMPORTANT INTEROPERABILITY pursuing their own interoperability agenda,
FACTORS this makes standardization and consensus
This section discusses the emerging scenario more difficult and could lead to multiple
and other important interoperability factors standards. This could lead to a scenario in the
from different viewpoints. long run where multiple standards co-exist
We see that there are multiple initiatives and customers using brokers/adapters for
by stakeholders from industry, academia and interoperability for using services from multiple
users. This does help the problem or parts of the cloud service providers.
problem being addressed by multiple standard It is also important to look at standards
bodies/forums/consortiums in parallel and also required from the perspective of different
provide diverse view points. But it is important industry verticals. For example, HIPAA
for the standard bodies, vendors and users to sit compliance could be important for healthcare
together, discuss and arrive at a consensus on services, SOX compliance could be important
the standards and APIs in different areas and for financial services, etc. This requires active
share information. This is all the more essential participation from different vendors and users
due to the duplication and overlaps among the from these verticals in standard bodies. It will
various groups involved. The flip side of the also be good if different vertical specific groups
story is that this could lead to the possibility of are setup in order to focus and discuss the
several standards emerging and possible lack vertical specific requirements and come up with
of consensus. It is important for the standard standards that are vertical specific.
bodies/forums/consortiums to have balanced Another challenge is that since there are
representation of interests in order to avoid bias many models of cloud computing (SaaS, PaaS,
towards certain stakeholders’ agenda. IaaS), standards are required for particular
Though initiatives like OGF’s OCCI models and not just one set. There is a need
are trying to come up with standards in a to prioritize and concentrate on core set of
quick timeframe, it takes time for standards standards to start with and then expand to
to mature and for reference implementations other areas. It is important to note that over
to become available. Till then the users will specification inhibits innovation. Patents and
use APIs/platforms from cloud computing intellectual property could be a hurdle for
vendors, whichever they feel is most suitable standardization process. Unlike Sun’s open
for their requirements. When standards cloud platform APIs, it will be interesting to
emerge and these vendors want to use the see if other vendors give their cloud APIs and
services of other vendors, then they will need protocols to the community.
24
27. When applications are migrated from the way towards realizing the true potential/
one cloud to another, apart from functionality, benefits of cloud computing.
it is also important to ensure that non-functional
requirements (NFRs) are satisfied as well in REFERENCES
the new migrated environment. This requires 1. Cloud API Propagation and the Race to
standards for defining and exchanging meta Zero (Cloud Interoperability), January
information regarding the application between 2009. Available at http://www.
the cloud service providers to check for elasticvapor.com/2009/01/cloud-API-
compliance of NFRs before actual migration of propagation-and-race-to-zero.html
the application via VM migration. The scenario 2. The Cloud Computing Interoperability
could be complex considering the fact that there Forum. Available at http://www.
could be several NFRs pertaining to security, cloudforum.org/
availability, reliability, performance, scalability, 3. Unified Cloud Interface Project (UCI).
etc., that requires compliance. Available at http://groups.google.com/
group/unifiedcloud?hl=en
CONCLUSION 4. UCI Architecture. Available at http://
Interoperability and standardization have code.google.com/p/unifiedcloud/
huge impact on the cloud adoption and usage wiki/UCI_Architecture
and thus the industry is witnessing high 5. U n i f i e d C l o u d I n t e r f a c e ( U C I )
amount of energy and thrust towards these Requirements. Available at http://code.
from different stakeholders viz., users, vendors google.com/p/unifiedcloud/wiki/
and standard bodies. Standardization will UCI_Requirements
increase and accelerate the adoption of cloud 6. CCIF’s Unified Cloud Interface Project.
computing as users will have a wider range Available at http://code.google.com/p/
of choices in cloud without vendor lock-in, unifiedcloud/
portability and ability to use the cloud services 7. F o r e c a s t f o r C o m p u t i n g : C l o u d y ,
provided by multiple vendors. This will also iStockAnalyst, December 2008.
include the ability to use an organization’s Available at http://www.istockanalyst.
own existing data center resources seamlessly. com/article/viewiStockNews/
Standardization further promises to help articleid/2904589#
towards complexly developed business 8. Unified Cloud. Available at http://code.
applications on the cloud to be interoperable google.com/p/unifiedcloud/wiki/
and ensure data and application integration UCI_Architecture
across clouds. It also provides business 9. C O R D Y S , T h e I n t e l l i g e n t C l o u d
opportunities to users to choose and use Platform. Available at http://partners.
services provided by many different cloud cordys.com/cordysportalpartners_com/
vendors based on various criteria. On the other cloud_solutions.php
hand it helps vendors to provide additional 10. C O R D Y S - E n t e r p r i s e C l o u d
higher level services like orchestration, apart Orchestration. Available at http://
from normal cloud services that are needed www.cordys.com/cordyscms_com/
by the users. Standardization will thus pave enterprise_cloud_orchestration.php
25
28. 11. Cloudonomics: Article RightScale Adds whats_next_in_t.html;jsessionid=35MV
Amazon EC2 Europe to List of Supported LYFIRJL2GQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JV
Clouds. Available at http://apache.sys- N?catid=cloud-computing
con.com/node/841086 13. CSC Announces New Family Of Cloud
12. Eli Lilly On What’s Next in Cloud Services. Available at http://www.csc.
Computing. Available at http:// com/banking/press_releases/27609-
www.informationweek.com/cloud- csc_announces_new_family_of_cloud_
computing/blog/archives/2009/01/ services.
26
29. SETLabs Briefings
VOL 7 NO 7
2009
SLA Aware ‘on-boarding’ of
Applications on the Cloud
By Sumit Kumar Bose PhD, Nidhi Tiwari, Anjaneyulu Pasala PhD and Srinivas Padmanabhuni PhD
Performance being the prime concern in
the adoption of cloud, SLA aware ‘on-boarding’
of application can be of great help
C loud computing is fast emerging as the
next generation service delivery platform.
Recent advancements in commodity server and
Typically the key performance measures are
average response time and throughput. These
measures are a part of the service level agreements
virtualization technologies are key enablers (SLA) that are legally binding agreements
for the interest in these platforms [1]. Cloud between service providers and consumers. There
computing platforms hold promise for both is a need, therefore, to understand the impact
service providers and service consumers. For on an application’s SLA due to its co-location
service providers it is a way to minimize capacity with multiple other applications on the same
redundancy and improve server utilization physical host and the effect of the overheads
through multiplexing system resources amongst introduced by the virtualization technologies. It
multiple customers. To service consumers, the is important to understand the extent to which
platforms help realize the ultimate dream of the existing performance models can prove to
capacity-on demand and pay-as-you-go concepts. be useful in addressing these issues arising out
To scale IT infrastructure vis-à-vis the demand of the adoption of cloud technologies [2]. It is
for business growth is known as capacity-on- also required to comprehend the drawbacks of
demand. Further, the consumers are not required the existing models to overcome the limitations
to invest in expensive IT resources upfront as they introduced by the current utility computing
are required to pay only for the amount of system paradigms.
resources they consume, known as pay-as-you-
go. These are the motivating factors for the recent MOTIVATION FOR SLA AWARE ‘ON-
interest in cloud computing as a service platform. BOARDING’
However, performance is one of the Virtualization is the core technology behind
key concerns in the possible adoption of cloud. popularity of cloud computing platforms.
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