Outsourcing Data Centres to the Cloud?Opportunities and Risks

Dr. Anna LiuPrincipal Research LeaderNational ICT AustraliaAnna.Liu@nicta.com.au

• Federal and state funded research company established in 2002

• Largest ICT research centre of excellence in Australia

• Research Excellence and Wealth Creation for Australia as key goals

• ~700 staff/students working in 5 labs across major capital cities

• University founding members

• Research outcome deployed

across 1 billion+ mobile

devices

NICTA – National ICT Australia

Where are we at?

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I want my cloud!

Hmm…lots of hype here?

4

About NICTA

• Evaluating Cloud Computing

• Cloud migration and proof of concept Experience so far

• Looking forward to the future

Agenda

Why Cloud Computing

• Reduce cost and complexity• Economies of scale• Pay per usage

• Innovation Possibilities• Handling Big Data Sets• Service Delivery platform• Collaborative, engaging user experience

• Realising Green IT initiatives

Perceived Risks

6

Lock in

Identity management

Ownership of data

interoperability

regulationprivacy

Return on investment

security

Integration with existing assets

Migration challenges

Service Level Agreement

Australian Cloud Adoption

• Software as a service• Enterprise and SME• Productivity suites, CRM• Telco and SaaS vendor partnership• emerging tier 2 System integrator

• Platform and Infrastructure as a Service• SME, startups well on their way• Enterprise doing evaluation

• Government Cloud, Community Cloud, Private Cloud• Data centre consolidation, SOA, shared services• Financial industry and government leadership• True cost benefit compared to public cloud?

7

Typical Cloud Applications

• Internet scale web applications• User base from around the world• Integration with existing web APIs • Transient campaigns

• Many Mobile devices connecting to cloud• Good adoption in utilities industries

• Development/Test environment• Dynamic provisioning of dev/test resources• Pay for usage

• Bursty workload• Web apps

• Large scale data analysis• eScience, Financial risk calculations, Government statistical data

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A Line of Business Migration Experience

• Assessing feasibility in terms of• functional fit, Security, Performance, Cost benefit, • commercial implications, integration with existing

systems etc

• Key findings• Technically feasible (functionality, performance, security all ok)• Commercial and contract experience similar to retail purchase

experience• cost benefit observed• Integration with existing systems presents some challenges• Operationalise cloud use with existing process is non-trivial

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Infrastructure Configuration(VPN, VMs, Disk, …)

Infrastructure Configuration(VPN, VMs, Disk, …)

OS/

Appl

icat

ion

Secu

rity

(e.g

., Ac

tive

Dire

ctor

y)O

S/Ap

plic

atio

n Se

curit

y(e

.g.,

Activ

e D

irect

ory)

OS/Middleware Installation/ConfigurationOS/Middleware Installation/Configuration

OSPatching

OSPatching

Application Installation/ConfigurationApplication Installation/Configuration

ApplicationPatching

ApplicationPatching

Bill

ing

(Cos

t Cen

ter C

harg

ing)

Bill

ing

(Cos

t Cen

ter C

harg

ing)

AntivirusAntivirus OSBackup

OSBackup

OSMonitoring

OSMonitoring

App DataBackup

App DataBackup

ApplicationMonitoring

ApplicationMonitoring

Amazon EC2(IaaS providers)

InfrastructureMonitoring

(CPU, Disk, Net, …)

InfrastructureMonitoring

(CPU, Disk, Net, …)

Usage Reportand

Basic Billing

Usage Reportand

Basic Billing

Access Controlto IaaS

Access Controlto IaaS

Customers’ Responsibility in IaaS Cloud

Customers’Responsibility

Looking forward to the future

• There will be a class of applications that you will not move to a public cloud

• Classified, Sensitive data governed by regulation, compliance• Latency intolerant applications• Line of business applications that does not require the reach• Where cost benefit, and migration effort just doesn’t add up!

• Need to be ready to manage across local servers and remote public clouds

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NICTA Adaptive Cloud TechnologiesVisibility and Control Across Boundaries

• Extensible architectures supporting various plug-ins

• Diagnose and suggest optimal system configurations

• Auto generation of reconfiguration workflows

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Understandat a Glance

Public Cloud

In-House Data Center

Hybrid Cloud Environment

Diagnose and Plan

Your Future

Automate AdaptationsMonitor

Everything You Have

Monitoring Engine Decision Making Support

• Integrated monitoring across local and remote public clouds

• Works with existing enterprise monitoring and mgmt tools

Summary and Conclusion

• Cloud Computing can bring cost and efficiency benefits, good fit in a number of scenarios

• Some challenges and risks remain• Conduct proof of concept to ramp up readiness for your

team, gain insights for future business decisions• Need to anticipate a hybrid future of both local servers and

public cloud use

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Getting Involved

• Linkage with National ICT Australia

• Contract Research, Expert Advisory Services, Architecture Reviews

• Technology Trials• Public and In-house Training Courses • Market Surveys, Case Studies• Professional in Research Residence

Anna.Liu@nicta.com.au, @annaliuhttp://blogs.unsw.edu.au/annaliu/