Itcc eBook

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AN INTRODUCTION

TO CLOUD

COMPUTINGA Stratospheric eBook

by Hilton Rosenfeld

http://stratospheric.com.au


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Copyright (c) 2013 by Stratospheric Pty Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or

mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without writtenpermission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages

embodied in critical articles or in a review.

Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with

every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no

intention of infringement of the respective owners trademark.

The information in this book is distributed on an as is basis, without warranty. Although every

precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher

shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or

alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

Hilton RosenfeldChief Executive Off icerStratospherichi [email protected] 488 267 388www.stratospher ic .com.au

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations,

associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

Printed in Australia

First Edition

14 13 12 11 10 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 4 WHY CLOUD 5 WHAT BENEFITS WILL CLOUD PROVIDE 7 WHAT IS CLOUD 9

THE STRATOSPHERIC 5FEATURES OF CLOUD .......................................................................................... 10

THE FOUR PRIMARY CLOUD MODELS 14 PUBLIC CLOUD ..................................................................................................................................... 14

PRIVATE CLOUD ................................................................................................................................... 15

HYBRID CLOUD .................................................................................................................................... 15

COMMUNITY CLOUD.............................................................................................................................. 15

CLOUD SERVICE MODELS 17 PHYSICAL HARDWARE ........................................................................................................................... 17

VIRTUALIZATION.................................................................................................................................... 18

INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE (IAAS) ................................................................................................... 18

PLATFORM AS A SERVICE (PAAS) ........................................................................................................... 18

SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS) ........................................................................................................... 19

CLIENT LAYER ...................................................................................................................................... 20

WHAT RISKS DOES CLOUD ENTAIL 21 MAINTAINING AVAILABILITY AND BUSINESS FUNCTIONALITY...................................................................... 22

PROTECTING DATA FROM UNAUTHORISED ACCESS BY A THIRD PARTY........................................................ 22

PROTECTING DATA FROM UNAUTHORISED ACCESS BY THE VENDORS CUSTOMERS..................................... 22SAMPLE CLOUD SCENARIOS 24 CLOUD ENABLE YOUR DATACENTER ........................................................................................................ 24

PRIVATE INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE ................................................................................................ 24

CLOUD BASED SERVICE MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................... 24

DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING CLOUD ...................................................................................................... 25

APPLICATION TRANSFORMATION............................................................................................................. 26

SOURCE PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES -(NO OPS CLOUD) ............................................................................. 26

BUILD,OPERATE,AND HOST SERVICE PROVIDER CLOUD ........................................................................... 26

CONCLUSION 28 WHAT DID WE COVER ............................................................................................................................ 28POINTS FOR CONSIDERATION ................................................................................................................. 28

WHERE TO NEXT 30


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Copyright 2014 Stratospheric P/L 4

Introduction

Its no secret that everyone is talking about Cloud and its not just tech firms, and its not just

CIOs or IT managers. More often than not key decision makers at all levels are taking a long hard

look at how they can leverage the benefits of Cloud for their organisations.

Some are talking about Cloud because of the potential of what Cloud can deliver, others talk

about Cloud because everyone else is. Then there are those of us talking about Cloud because

we understand what Cloud is and how your business can benefit from it.

So what is this Cloud thing, why use it, what benefits can and will it provide, what risks does

Cloud entail if you do or dont adopt or leverage it in some form?

The purpose of this eBook is to share with you the Stratospheric understanding of Cloud, from

both the conceptual and business perspectives. We will answer the questions posed above, and

detail the types of Cloud technologies and how they will benefit your business.

Cloud is the latest technology wave to break across the IT landscape. As with previous waves like

mobile phones, virtualisation and automation, this new wave will follow the Rogers Adoption

Curve that shows the rate of adoption for new technologies.

DIAGRAM:ROGERS ADOPTION CURVE

The question your organisation must ask itself is Where do you want to sit on the adoption

curve, i.e. do you want to be a leader in the early adopters space, or a follower in the early or late

majority or the mass market? Too many organisations let their legacy IT policies guide their

Cloud adoption policy only to find their competitors have left them behind.

Technology leaders are firmly grounded in the Early Adopters phase of each new wave of

technology. Thats where Stratospheric is with Cloud and all that surrounds Cloud from strategy,

planning, design, through to implementation and day to day operations and management.

We are at the forefront of this technology wave, and were helping organisations of all shapes

and sizes take advantage of Cloud to put them ahead of their competitors.


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5 Copyright 2014 Stratospheric P/L

Why Cloud

In a sentence, Cloud can transform how your business consumes and manages IT Business

Services, empowering you to operate Faster, Better, and Smarter.

Businesses today expect more from IT. This expectation is much higher than ever as workers

become aware of what is possible today just in the Cloud consumer market. Business users want

the same capabilities in their workplace.

50% of business leaders say that their IT department is unable to

respond to rapidly meet changes in demand.

SOURCE: HPINTERNAL RESEARCH

A six week time frame to spin up a single virtual server with the quagmire of change requests,

firewall policies, approvals, funding requests, business cases et al when compared to a five

minute process with a credit card on a public Cloud provider was to the average developer a no

brainer.The consumption model for technology has changed so profoundly because of Cloud; businesses

now expect to consume services, not technologies.

For business, the challenge now is how to become more agile, cost effective, and responsive in

their capability to satisfy this demand, while at the same time ensuring the highest levels of

quality, security, and oversight.

Businesses which are not able to make this transition are rapidly being left behind by their

competitors who have already been able to achieve these outcomes to support their users.

For IT, the challenge now is how to quickly develop the capability to satisfy an ever increasing

demand for highly distributed applications, services and resources, while maintaining quality and

oversight.

71% of CIOs would increase IT investment

if it meant better time to market.

SOURCE:HPINTERNAL RESEARCH

Manual approaches and siloed management tools don't offer the flexibility and compliancerequired to meet this complexity.

Cloud is designed to provide solutions to these challenges.Why be FASTER, BETTER, SMARTER?

Demand for IT Business Services is growing exponentially. Not only in number, but also in

variety. The ability to deliver on this growth is sometimes called Agility.

Users are bypassing their organisations IT in favour of public Cloud Services, creating a

high risk shadow IT. This is primarily due to in-house IT not being Agile enough to satisfy

users.


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Users are fed up with the slow response from their own internal IT organisations when

they knew very well that Cloud Services would give them instant delivery of platforms for

their use.... Developers are bypassing IT and putting applications onto

public Clouds at a rate 5x greater than IT thinks

SOURCE:ENTERPRISE &SMBSOFTWARE SURVEY,NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE,Q42008

Businesses now expect to consume services, not technologies.

Traditionally, IT has been occupied with maintaining not only the Business Service

software, but all layers of the compute environment underpinning this service. This has

carried with it an immense burden of skills and cost.

A world of new business opportunities is made possible by any organization that becomes

involved with providing Cloud Services.

Just how much Faster and Better and Smarter do you need to be? Listed below are some samplestatistics for social media sites. The only way these web scale volumes can be achieved is

through the adoption of technology architectures made possible with Cloud.

Every 60 seconds there are:

6,944,444 Facebook messages

347,222 tweets

3,472 Pinterest pins

38,194 Instagram Photos posted

23,148 apps downloaded

400,710 ads requested

208,333 minutes of Angry Birds played

SOURCE: www.jeffbullas.com

Australian Public Cloud market to hit $3.2 billion this year:

Gartner predicts growth in excess of 23% for Cloud Services

SOURCE:GARTNER

HTTP://WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM.AU/ARTICLE/455597/AUSTRALIAN_PUBLIC_CLOUD_MARKET_HIT_3_2_BILLION_YEAR_GAR

TNER

It may appear overly subtle to look at Cloud purely from a delivery versus consumer perspective,

but IT departments who focus only on the delivery aspects will miss the boat altogether.


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What Benefits will Cloud Provide

Cloud Services have brought about and enabled a paradigm shift to those businesses which

adopt them. Some of these key enablers and benefits are:

Cloud Services change how technology is consumed. They allow your business to make

use of complex software platforms, without needing any expertise in managing or

administering these platforms. The Cloud Service Provider will maintain the solution,

which you consume through the network.

Cloud Services remove current inhibitors & unleash power of innovation, allowing your

business to pursue new business opportunities, such as trialling new ideas to reach and

interact with customers over the Internet;

Reducing upfront costs of capital expenditure of computer equipment and related

expenses such as a physical data centre and support staff, while reducing the associated

financial risk to the business by replacing upfront costs with reasonably predictable

operational expenditure, and only paying for the amount of computing processing anddata storage that is actually used;

By 2016, the analyst firm predicts that public cloud spending in

Australia will reach US$5.2 billion

SOURCE:GARTNER

HTTP://WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM.AU/ARTICLE/455597/AUSTRALIAN_PUBLIC_CLOUD_MARKET_HIT_3_2_BILLION_YEAR_GAR

TNER

Potentially reducing ongoing costs due to the use of infrastructure and technical

specialists that are typically shared among many customers to achieve economies of

scale

Potentially improving business continuity and the availability of computing infrastructure,

where the infrastructure can rapidly and flexibly scale to meet peaks and troughs in

usage demand, and with the computing infrastructure typically located in multiple

physical locations for improved disaster recovery; and,

Potentially reducing carbon footprint due to the more efficient use of computer hardware

requiring less electricity and less air conditioning.

Cloud Services are delivered using smart automation. This changes the delivery times for

new services from weeks, to minutes.

Cloud Services allow your business to embrace a Bring Your Own Device or a Mobile

Strategy. This is because the requirement for every PC being the same in order to run

complex fat clients disappears with Cloud Services. Software Cloud Services are generally

consumed through a web browser.

Cloud Services deliver a reduction in the cost of running IT. The table below shows the cost of IT

as a percentage of revenue for various business verticals. Both Average and Best in Class figures

are shown.

How would the bottom line in your business benefit from becoming best in class rather than

being average?


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Cost of IT vs Revenue Average (%) Best in Class (%)

Financial 6.30 2.80Telecom 5.25 3.25

High Tech 4.00 1.75Manufactur ing 2.00 1.15

Retai l 2.00 0.50SOURCE:HPTECH AT WORK -CLOUD -DELIVER THE OUTCOMES

HTTP://H20427.WWW2.HP.COM/CAMPAIGN/TECHATWORK/AU/EN/TAW11POST/PDF/3.%20CLOUD%20-

%20DELIVER%20THE%20OUTCOMES.PDF


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What is Cloud

Ask five business leaders what their definition of Cloud is, and youll get five different answers.

Some refer to Cloud as simple automated provisioning, while others define Cloud as Managed

Services with a self-service portal.

Cloud Computing is defined by the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) as:

A model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a

shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be

rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort

or service provider interaction

Ultimately what this means is that businesses just want easy access to rapid deployment ofservices. They want the right technology-enabled services that help them get their job done, and

that help broaden their horizons into new opportunities.

Many view Cloud simply as a new technology for service delivery. There are far more possibilities

with Cloud.

Equally important perspectives are what Cloud Services are and how they are consumed. The

future will comprise a hybrid mix of services sourced both internal and externally. Others may

source from any public Cloud Services that your business provides. This leads to questions such

as: are your services ready to run, self-sourced, available anywhere, subscription-based, or pay as

you go.

IT has seen its role as the delivery and management of Technology based capabilities. IT is

typically organized around the various technology domains, taking in new work via project

requests and moving it through a plan-build-run lifecycle.

This delivery-oriented, technology-centric approach to IT has inherent latency built into the model,

which has, in turn, created an ever-increasing tension between itself and the business it serves.

The enabler for businesses to that challenge is Cloud, as it enables business users to source

services that meet their needs quickly, at the right price, supported by the appropriate service

level, and without the help of an IT organization.

Cloud has ushered in innovations and breakthroughs at a pace not seen before. Cloud has

introduced new threats in existing markets for companies and opened new markets for others.

We have witnessed Cloud become more of a business revolution than a technology evolution.

At Stratospheric we believe that for a service to be a true Cloud Service, it should embody the

Stratospheric Five Features of Cloud.

These do not define types of Cloud Services, or the technologies of Cloud, but more importantly

what Cloud Services should embody.


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The Stratospheric 5 Features of Cloud

Stratospheric defines Cloud Services as having 5 primary features:

Cloud Services are consumed via user Self Service Cloud Services employ Automated Del ivery Cloud Services are billed on a Pay Per Use or Consumption basis Cloud Services are Elast icin nature Cloud Services are Network Accessible

Self ServiceWe live in a world of instant gratification, consumers of IT Business Services are no longer willing

to be held to ransom by slow legacy IT procurement processes forced upon them. One way to

improve user satisfaction, is to give the user more control.

Consumers want instant gratification on service requests

SOURCE:STRATOSPHERIC

Tools like Self Service catalogues give users the ability to request services from a pre-approved,

online, app store style services catalogue, and to self-manage subscriptions and requests,

without human interaction or delays between supplier and consumer.

In effect, this shifts the GO button from IT departments to the consumer who desires or requires

the service. Both the user and IT benefit from this.

A well-known success story we use to demonstrate the success of just such a platform is that of

the Google apps platform and the Apple iTunes platform.

When you want to create a new Gmail account, you dont have to talk to anyone from Google, you

simply self-serve using the Google apps portal.

Its the same story with iTunes apps, movies & music.

The catalogue is usually part of a web portal, which offers the user:

A catalogue of available services

A history of subscribed services and their status

A list of current services and available management functions for each

Role Based Access in order to allow each user to have their portal customised

Financial reporting, statistics and data related to the cost of current services

Automated DeliveryAutomation is nothing new. Administrators have been automating systems management using

scripts for many years. Run-book automation has been used for almost a decade. A run-book is

akin to a detailed step by step checklist, or an end to end process.

Modern automation and orchestration platforms take this to the next level by incorporating out ofthe box support for many Cloud Service APIs, operating systems and applications. More


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DIAGRAM:SERVICE LIFECYCLE

In our Google email and app example, unless we imagine there being a room full of cheap labor

fulfilling requests for Google email or app services, fulfilment is actually carried out using

automation. Manual delivery simply would not scale, either in speed or cost, is fraught withlatency and errors, and is dependent on the skill set of each administrator.

Pay per useAs Cloud Services are considered subscriptions, we are able to charge for them in a pay-per-use

model. This is sometimes referred to as a utility model.

Simply put, while you are using any given service you are paying, and when you stop using the

service, you stop paying. This is analogous to household use of utilities such as electricity, gas or

water.

... Why do we have to pay $10k/year for a server instance andwait 2 weeks for delivery when we could use a public Cloud

Resource and have it straight away and pay 9c per hour? ...

SOURCE:HPTECH AT WORK -CLOUD -DELIVER THE OUTCOMES

HTTP://H20427.WWW2.HP.COM/CAMPAIGN/TECHATWORK/AU/EN/TAW11POST/PDF/3.%20CLOUD%20-

%20DELIVER%20THE%20OUTCOMES.PDF

In our Google email example, you pay for each mailbox that you create & subscribe to. This may

be 50 mailboxes one day, and 40 the next, which saves you paying for 10 unused mailboxes.

Another example might be a Business Service whose demand for resources follows the workingday - maximum use between 10am and 4pm with little to no use after hours. Such a service

would benefit by allocating extra resources during working hours, and paying for these resources

only for the 6 hours per day during which they are used.

ElasticAnticipating the demand for business services or how the services will be used can be difficult.

Cloud Services are able to scale up and scale down.

As a result of automation being involved in the provisioning of Cloud Services, we are able to

quickly provision additional resources on demand, or conversely to de-provision either due to a

consumer request or reduced demand.


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When combined with effective service monitoring, a Cloud Service is actually able to

automatically scale up or down in response to demand.

In our Google email example, mailboxes are dynamically allocated and de-allocated as required,

through a simple to use consumer friendly web portal, without delay.

Another example we use is that of a Business Service whose demand for resources follows the

working day, or follow the sun as its often referred to - with usage between 10am and 4pm,

peaking at 10am and 1pm, with little to no use after hours. Such a service would benefit from

being elastic, adding and removing resources automatically as demand rises and falls.

Network AccessibleOf course a Cloud service is no use to anyone unless it is accessible to users. Access is provided

using the most common of all network protocols - World Wide Web. In other words, the Cloud

web-portal should be a web site accessed using a normal internet browser.

As another example of the five Stratospheric key features to Cloud, consider a developer that

requires a sandbox server. Before Cloud, she would have to submit a Request for Service via the

service desk.

This request would then need approval for the capital expenditure on a new server, physical or

virtual. The request would then pass to IT, where server, storage, network, security and more

teams would be involved.

IT would then finally build the server and install an OS. Total time to deliver this server, with all

the inherent latency of the process, has proven to be on average around two to six weeks.

Compare the process above to using a Cloud Infrastructure as a Service offering. The developer

would login to a catalogue of available server offerings, select the appropriate offering and

possibly select any add ons. The server will be ready for use within minutes.

Let's not forget the financial model. In the scenario before Cloud, the new server would be a

Capital Expense.

In a Cloud scenario, the developer is subscribing to a service, so the expense is an Operating

Expense, as a subscription. When the developer is finished with the server, the subscription can

be cancelled and payment stops.


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The Four Primary Cloud Models

While the term Cloud refers in general to the delivery of services on demand over a computer

network, the USA National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST) defines four different

Cloud deployment models;

Community Cloud

Public Cloud

Private Cloud

Hybrid Cloud

DIAGRAM X:SHOWS THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PUBLIC,PRIVATE,COMMUNITY AND HYBRID CLOUD.

Public Cloud

Public Cloud involves an organisation using a vendors Cloud infrastructure which is shared via

the Internet with many other organisations and other members of the public.

This model has maximum potential cost efficiencies due to economies of scale. However, this

model has a variety of inherent security risks that need to be considered.

This is the deployment model that most commonly described as Cloud. In this model, all of the

physical resources are owned and operated by a third party Cloud provider.


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Private Cloud

Private Cloud involves an organisations exclusive use of Cloud infrastructure and services

located at the organisations premises or off site, and managed by the organisation or a vendor.

Compared to the public Cloud model, the private Cloud model has reduced potential cost

efficiencies

If the private Cloud is properly implemented and operated, it has reduced potential security

concerns. A well architected private Cloud properly managed by a vendor provides many of the

benefits of a public Cloud, but with increased control over security.

A managed private Cloud may enable enterprise customers to more easily negotiate suitable

contracts with the vendor, instead of being forced to accept the generic contracts designed for

the consumer mass market that are offered by some public Cloud vendors.

Instead of using a dedicated infrastructure for each user, a private Cloud allows an organization

to virtualize its infrastructure and offer infrastructure provisioning and application deployment as

a service, reducing service delivery time from months to minutes.

Private Clouds are often used to deliver infrastructure and applications services for test,

development and production environments.

Hybrid Cloud

Enterprises use hybrid Clouds to deliver a broad catalog of services across private and publicCloud environments with a single user experience.

This unified approach results in a simplified provisioning experience, a streamlined ordering

process, and a reduction in overall IT management costs.

Hybrid Cloud involves a combination of Cloud models. An example is using commodity resources

from a public Cloud such as web servers to display non-sensitive data, which interacts with

sensitive data stored or processed in a private Cloud.

A company may use internal resources in a private Cloud maintain total control over its

proprietary data. It can then use a public Cloud storage provider for backing up less sensitiveinformation.

At the same time, it might share computing resources with other organizations that have similar

needs.

By combining the advantages of the other models, the hybrid model offers organizations the

most flexibility.

Community Cloud

Community Cloud involves a private Cloud that is shared by several organisations with similarsecurity requirements and a need to store or process data of similar sensitivity.


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This model attempts to obtain most of the security benefits of a private Cloud, and most of the

economic benefits of a public Cloud.

One example community Cloud is the sharing of a private Cloud by several agencies of the same

government.


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Cloud Service Models

To understand what Cloud is, you need to understand the service layers that comprise Cloud.

Each layer of the Cloud model exists conceptually on the foundation of the previous layers.

! Software as a Service

! Platform as a Service

! Infrastructure as a Service

! Virtualisation

! Physical Hardware

The Cloud model is made up of three core different foundation service models which are used to

specify what is being provisioned, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS),

and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Additionally, there are three further layers in the Cloud model which are not provided as user

services. The Hardware Layer and the Virtualization Layer are owned and operated by the Cloud

Services provider, while the Client Layer is supplied by the end user.

DIAGRAM X:SHOWS THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN TYPES OF CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE.

Physical hardware

Underpinning all Cloud platforms is the hardware layer, sometimes referred to as the server layer.

The hardware layer represents the physical server hardware which provides actual resources thatmake up the Cloud, the CPUs, Memory, Storage & Network.

By definition and design Cloud users do not specify the hardware used to provide services, this is

the least important layer of the Cloud, and is usually built on low cost commodity off the shelf

hardware (COTS) rather than top end brand name systems.

Often, hardware resources are inexpensive and not fault tolerant. Redundancy is achieved simply

by utilizing multiple hardware platforms while fault tolerance is provided at other layers so that

any hardware failure is not noticed by the users. Cloud offers redundancy by design.


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Virtualization

Often referred to as the infrastructure layer, the virtualization layer is the result of various

hypervisors such as VMware, Hyper-V, Xen and KVM, and operating systems which are installed

as virtual machines on top of one or more hypervisors.

Much of the scalability and flexibility of the Cloud model is derived by the inherent ability of virtual

machines to be created and deleted at will and or on demand.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

The infrastructure layer builds on the virtualization layer by offering the virtual machines as a

service to users.

Instead of purchasing servers or even hosted services, IaaS customers can create and remove

virtual machines and network them together at will.

Clients are billed for infrastructure services based on what resources are consumed.

This eliminates the need to procure and operate physical servers, data storage systems, or

networking resources.

Examples of leading IaaS services providers include the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS),

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Microsoft Azure Cloud Services, HP Cloud, IBM SoftLayer

Cloud Services and Rackspace Cloud compute and storage services.

Advantages of IaaS

When an organization purchases IaaS from a provider there are many advantages. There is no

need for them to purchase hardware, operating system licenses, or networking equipment.

Their entire data center is outsourced and nearly all of the operation and maintenance

requirements are built into the cost of the service.

Organizations also look to achieve cost savings through massive efficiencies of scale.

Additionally, they stand to gain flexibility, scalability and reliability that would be impossible if they

were to provide their own infrastructure since additional virtual machines are created on demand

and removed just as easily.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

The platform layer rests on the infrastructure layers virtual machines. At this layer customers do

not manage their virtual machines, they merely create applications within an existing API,

framework, or programing language.

There is no need to manage an operating system, let alone the underlying hardware and

virtualization layers. Clients merely create their own programs which are hosted by the platform

services they are paying for.


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This is accomplished by presenting clients with a program language or an Application Programing

Interface (API) rather than one or more virtual machines. With PaaS, the development tools

themselves are hosted in the Cloud and are accessed via a web browser.

The result is that fewer technical resources are required in order to develop and deploy Cloud

hosted applications. At the same time, PaaS clients still retain greater opportunities to customizetheir applications than permitted by customers of Software as a Service (SaaS).

Example PaaS vendor services include Google App Engine, Force.com, Amazon Web Services

Elastic Beanstalk, and the Microsoft Windows Azure platform.

Advantages of PaaS

Unlike traditional software development efforts, PaaS clients do not need a staff to install,

optimize, or maintain either the hardware or the virtual machine environments.

They can choose the type of platform that best suits their needs and immediately begin creatingapplications that can be hosted on the Cloud as soon as they are complete.

With simplified development tools, a developer in the PaaS environment does not need the

extensive skill set that a traditional web based application developer requires.

Like other Cloud Services, developing and deploying applications utilizing the PaaS model

requires little or no up-front investment. Billing is performed on a pay as you go basis.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Services at the software level consist of complete applications that do not require development.Such applications can be email, customer relationship management, accounting, and other office

productivity applications.

Enterprise services can be billed monthly or by usage, while software as service offered directly

to consumers, such as email, is often provided for free.

Today, many people use freely available web based email and productivity software without even

realizing they are SaaS customers. Even the voicemail service provided by your phone company

is essentially a SaaS alternative to owning and operating a conventional answering machine.

While Infrastructure as a Service offers core services in the form of virtual machines, and

Platform as a Service provides an interface for programming applications, SaaS takes the

concept a step further by delivering complete applications. End users own and operate their

client interface devices as the final service level.

These devices can be small footprint software installations, web browsers, or mobile devices. As

is the case with voicemail, even a telephone can act as the client layer for Software as a Service.

Example SaaS vendor services include Salesforce.com Customer Relationship Management

(CRM), Google Docs and Google Gmail. Microsoft Office 365 consists of Microsoft Office Web

Apps, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

and Microsoft Lync.


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Advantages of SaaS

As with other Cloud models, with SaaS there is no requirement for hardware acquisition,

installation, or maintenance. SaaS clients do not need to utilize any systems administration or

development resources either.

While SaaS clients may be able select various software options, its defining characteristic is that

software development is not needed before an application is deployed to end users.

Most services are sold with a monthly or annual fee per user such that the costs are less than

enterprise application licensing.

SaaS clients value the instant scalability of SaaS as well as the ease of collaboration common to

Cloud hosted applications.

Client Layer

While this layer is not a Cloud service, it is an essential part of the model. The client layer acts as

the user interface to which Cloud Services are delivered.

Client layer hardware can include personal computers, web browsers, mobile devices, and even

telephones.

One of the beauties of the Cloud model is the simplicity with which they are presented to the end

users.


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What Risks does Cloud Entail

There is a lot of talk about risk in Cloud Services. It is important to understand that any new

technology has risk. Until the technology matures, and the risks are ironed out, there will be

naysayers who, for reasons of their own, decry new technology as uncertain and unsafe.

Of course as use of new technology increases, the risks are identified and mitigated.

Organizations need to consider elements of risk and ensure they dont outweigh the benefits of

Cloud Services.

If you are going to turn critical data or infrastructure over to a Cloud Service Provider, you need to

make sure that the information is secure.

A big risk topic, is legal. Especially, about how do you get your data

back? Transitioning from one cloud provider to another, forexample.

HTTP://WWW.FINANCE.GOV.AU/FILES/2012/02/CLOUD-LEGAL-BETTER-PRACTICE-GUIDE-FINAL.DOC

HTTP://WWW.SCOTTANDSCOTTLLP.COM/MAIN/UPLOADEDFILES/RESOURCES/ARTICLES/SCOTTCHAPTER.PDF

Compliance requirements, set by organizations or by an industry or government body, may

prohibit the use of Cloud Services. You will need to gauge the security risks and requirements

and these may vary by service.

The Risks of Cloud from a survey of CIOs

75% say Cloud data SECURITY is a major concern

60% concerned about VENDOR LOCK IN

60% worried about Cloud PERFORMANCE AND AVAILABILITY

45% concerned about integrating internal and external services

SOURCE:IDC,ENTERPRISE PANEL SURVEY,NOVEMBER 2010

A risk management process must be used to balance the benefits of Cloud with the security risks

associated with your business handing over control to a Cloud Vendor.

A risk assessment should consider whether your business is willing to trust your reputation,

business continuity, and data management to a 3rd party vendor that may transmit, store andprocess your data in ways or means which do not fit with your corporate policies or industry

governance requirements. For example Payment Card Infrastructure (PCI) for your eftPOS.

The contract between a vendor and their customer must address mitigations to governance and

security risks, and cover who has access to the customers data and the security measures used

to protect the customers data.

Vendors responses to important security considerations must be captured in a Service Level

Agreement (SLA) or other contract, otherwise the customer only has vendor promises and

marketing claims that can be hard to verify and may be unenforceable.

Here are some of the more common mission critical risks to consider.


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Maintaining Availability and Business Functionality

Business criticality of data or functionality

Vendors business continuity and disaster recovery plan

Your data backup plan

Your business continuity and disaster recovery plan

Your network connectivity to the Cloud

Vendors guarantee of availability

Impact of outages

SLA inclusion of scheduled outages

SLA compensation

Data integrity and availability

Data restoration

Scalability

Changing vendor / Vendor Lock-in

Protecting Data from Unauthorised Access by a Third Party

Choice of Cloud deployment model

Sensitivity of my data

Legislative obligations

Countries with access to my data

Data encryption technologies

Media sanitisation

Vendors remote monitoring and management

Your monitoring and management Data ownership

Gateway technologies

Gateway certification

Email content filtering

Policies and processes supporting the vendors IT security posture

Technologies supporting the vendors IT security posture

Auditing the vendors IT security posture

User authentication

Centralised control of data

Vendors physical security posture Software and hardware procurement.

Protecting Data from Unauthorised Access by the Vendors

Customers

Customer segregation

Weakening my security posture

Dedicated servers

Media sanitisation


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Protecting Data from Unauthorised Access by Rogue Vendor Employees Data encryption key management

Vetting of vendors employees

Auditing vendors employees

Visitors to data centre

Physical tampering by vendors employees

Vendors subcontractors


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Sample Cloud Scenarios

Cloud Enable your Datacenter

This is excellent if you want your own dedicated, virtual environments. You can Self-serviceprovision through the use of service offerings that provide standard IT configurations. Templates

can include detailed server, storage, and network requirements for simple or complex

infrastructure needs.

IDC has found that it is possible to achieve 96 percent ROI over five years on such a solution.

These gains are achieved while improving cash flow and accelerating time to market for new

service offerings.

Private Infrastructure as a Service

In this case the actual physical resources would be hosted in your own datacenter. You would

also need to select a hypervisor for virtualisation.

DIAGRAM X:SHOWS USERS SUBSCRIBING TO PRIVATE INFRASTRUCTURE THROUGH A SELF-SERVICE CATALOGUE.

Cloud based Service Management

Consider an alternative to your current Service Management processes. By Cloud enabling these

services, you could move to a more efficient, self-service model. For example,, the help desk

would benefit here. Users could self-serve request changes and Cloud would automate the

fulfillment of these requests. Common examples are mounting shared drives,moves/add/changes to email, and password resets.


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DIAGRAM X:SHOWS USERS SUBSCRIBING TO PRIVATE SOFTWARE THROUGH A SELF-SERVICE CATALOGUE.

Development and Testing Cloud

Developers and testers can benefit from Cloud Services too.

A common scenario for developers is the need for a sandbox environment. Rather than having

your developers source public Cloud servers, provide your own private Infrastructure as a service

offerings.

Testers require the deployment of applications for testing purposes. Sometimes this can involve

different operating systems, databases, application versions and data. Cloud would allow the

tester to self-service provision a complete end to end environment which would be ready in

minutes. The benefit is a great increase in the test cycle rate.

Both would be far more efficient if Cloud enabled. And both could be source in a private, public or

hybrid model.

DIAGRAM X:SHOWS DEVELOPERS SUBSCRIBING TO HYBRID INFRASTRUCTURE THROUGH A SELF-SERVICE CATALOGUE.


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Application Transformation

Amongst the benefits we have covered, are the ways in which as a service offerings can benefit

applications, from the Infrastructure, the Platform and all the way through to a Cloud Sourced

Application as a Service.

Many options exist as you transform your existing apps and deploy new apps.

Existing apps could be migrated to PaaS offerings. This would alleviate the need to maintain

everything except the application itself.

Legacy apps can be redeveloped to be Cloud enabled. Or even better, they can be replaced with

SaaS offerings.

Existing apps can be integrated with Cloud offerings to provide greater functionality in an easier

to maintain method. This becomes similar to SOA models whereby little services are sourced

independently and combined within the app itself.

Source Public Cloud Services - (No Ops Cloud)

One company we like to talk about is Freelance.com. Freelancer.com is the world's largest

freelancing, outsourcing, and crowdsourcing marketplace for small business. They have over 10

million users, and have no physical infrastructure of their own! Instead of a datacenter, they use

Cloud Services to host everything. This is a No Ops Cloud.

Not every business is ready to go No Ops, but there are places to start. Moving your storage to

the Cloud for backup and archive is a great start.

DIAGRAM X:SHOWS USERS SUBSCRIBING TO PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE THROUGH A SELF-SERVICE CATALOGUE.

Build, operate, and host Service Provider Cloud

If you are a service provider, then consider adding the letters CSP to your titles. CSP stands for

Cloud Service Provider. Become the provider of Cloud for your customers.

You can own your own resources, acquiring the Hardware and Software, integrating and

aggregating your service offerings for others to consume.


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Or you could white label and resell public Cloud Services to your customers.

DIAGRAM X:SHOWS CUSTOMERS SUBSCRIBING TO YOUR HYBRID SERVICES THROUGH A SELF-SERVICE CATALOGUE.


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Conclusion

Everywhere you turn these days, someone is talking about Cloud, and with good reason.

The Cloud represents a paradigm shift in computing - one that enables highly scalable

applications and services to be delivered on demand - making your life and work faster, better

and simpler.

What did we cover

By now you should have a good understanding of Cloud. Although we have not delved into the

technical depths of how Cloud Services are delivered, it is more important at this stage to

understand the business benefits of Cloud.

This eBook will empower you to articulate what Cloud is. An easy way to remember is by the

numbers.

FIVE - Stratospheric Features of Cloud Self-Service

Automated Delivery

Pay Per Use

Elastic

Network Accessible

FOUR - Primary Cloud Models Community Cloud

Public Cloud

Private Cloud

Hybrid Cloud

THREE - Cloud Service Models Infrastructure as a Service

Platform as a Service

Software as a Service

Points for Consideration

When the time comes for you to embark on your journey to Cloud Services, there are many points

that should be considered. Stratospherics business goals are to make our customers operate

Faster, Better and Smarter. We break down many of the points to be considered by using these

business goals.


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As part of any consulting or strategic engagement, Stratospheric will use these points as a

guideline of what to consider in order for you to enjoy a smooth transition. Put simply, we will

work with you to ensure we understand at least all of the points below in relation to your

business.

Operate Faster Open & Accessible

Push button deployment

Instant access

Faster time to market

Cloud Service Lifecycle Management

Catalogues

Multi-platform ( VMware / OpenStack / XenServer )

Windows / Linux

Operate Better Governance

Policies

Compliance

Security

Controls

Service Level Agreements

Private Cloud

Hybrid Cloud

Public Cloud

Operate Smarter Measure

Reporting

Alerting

Response

Analyse

Continuous improvement

Planning & Capacity

Cost Management


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Where to next

After you have decided on the role you want Cloud to play in your organization, Stratospheric can

support you in your efforts to create actionable next steps and execute them.

Whether you decide to build a detailed roadmap or start your implementation right away for

testing your first private Cloud Service, we can help. No matter where you are on your path to

Cloud, it is important to set a strategy of where you want to go.

You may be virtualised, but not yet automated.

You may be virtualised and automated, but not yet empowered with Cloud Services.

Stratospheric will work with you to answer a lot of your questions, including:

Which Cloud products are right for me?

What's the best option: Public, Private or Hybrid Cloud? How do I manage my Cloud?

What about all the investments in operations we've made over the last few years?

Our enterprise-grade Cloud management will help your IT departments increase agility, simplify

operations and enhance business across your hybrid Cloud.

In addition can give you an understanding of:

Why a flexible architecture matters to you

How to simplify your day-to-day operations

How to stage your applications, platform and infrastructure service seamlessly for hybridCloud

Importance of advanced operations management tools, such as end-to-end performance

management and Cloud security

Lets continue the conversationWe would like very much to hear from you today, to learn how we can help you with your Cloud

strategy, existing or new projects.

To contact Stratospheric, email us at the email address below and visit our website to learn more

about us.

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://www.stratospheric.com.au

Please ensure you provide your full name, company name, and your preferred contact phone

numbers (i.e. desk & mobile) to ensure we are able to contact you.

We look forward to learning more about your plans for Cloud and how Stratospheric can help you

realize your desired outcomes.

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