Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Provider Analysis

 

Research 3 IaaS vendors, and provide an analysis of their potential benefits and savings, with particular attention to the following:

• Virtualization
• Scaling and storage
• Clustering
• At least one reference and any table or chart useful to project

CLOUDPROPOSAL 2

CLOUD PROPOSAL 16

Cloud Proposal

Connie Farris

Colorado Technical University

Introduction to Cloud Computing

(IT175-1801B-01)

Tavon Reid

Running head: CLOUD PROPOSAL 1

March 6, 2018

Title Page…………………………………………………………………………

.

.. 1

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………. 2

Section 1: Cloud Providers and Cost Saving Analysis……………………………. 3

What is Cloud Computing?…………………………………………………………………………… 3

Types of Cloud Deployments ……………………………………………………….3

Types of Service Models…………………………………………………………… 3

Cost of Operation of a Physical Server…………………………………………. 4

Cloud Computing Company Comparisons………………………………………. 4

Recommendation for General Office Function…………………………………… 5

Section 2: Software as a Service (SaaS) and Identity as a Service (IDaas) Plan…. 5

Software as a Service Providers…………………………………………………… 8

First SaaS Provider………………………………………………………………… 8

Second SaaS Provider……………………………………………………………… 9

Identity as a Service Providers……………………………………………………. 9

First IDaaS Provider……………………………………………………………….10

Second IDaaS Provider…………………………………………………………… 10

Migration Plan……………………………………………………………………….11

Section 3: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and

Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Supply Chain

…………………………………………………………………………………12

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud based solutions have been on the rise in the recent past in providing many solutions. Various companies are doing away with the in-house staff operations method and instead they are shifting their focus to the technology-oriented approach. Cloud Computing is a wide term that is used to describe web-based services that the individual can use to reduce the requirements for physical hardware, software, and personnel. (“What is Cloud Computing?”, 2018)

Types of Cloud Deployments

Public Clouds

A public cloud is considered a publicly accessible cloud environment usually offered by a third-party cloud provider. The resources on public clouds are replaced from the previously described cloud delivery models and given to cloud consumers at a cost. The cloud provider is responsible for the creation and on-going maintenance of the public cloud and its IT resources (“What is Cloud Computing?”, 2018).

Community Clouds

This cloud is defined to an exclusive member of the community. Owned by community members or other parties they establish a public cloud that has restricted access. Being a member of the community does not assure access to all the IT resources. Outside parties are rarely given access. (“What is Cloud Computing?”, 2018)

Private Clouds

In a private cloud, the same company is the cloud consumer and cloud provider. To differentiate these roles: a separate organizational department typically assumes the responsibility for provisioning the cloud (and therefore assumes the cloud provider role) departments requiring access to the private cloud assume the cloud consumer role. (“What is Cloud Computing?”, 2018)

Hybrid Clouds

A hybrid cloud is a cloud environment containing two or more different cloud deployment models. The cloud consumer may deploy cloud services sending sensitive data to a private cloud and less sensitive cloud services to a public cloud. (“What is Cloud Computing?”, 2018)

Types of Service Models

After researching and choosing the deployment model, then next step is to study the three types of service models that are available to your company, Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

(Schultz, 2011)

Software as a Service provides all hardware and software required and preforms all upgrades. This type of service is generally chosen for web- delivered content such as email and collaboration software. Requires very little administration.

Platform as a Service will provide all hardware, generally in the form of virtual servers, and background software such as operating systems, and database software. (Schultz, 2011)

Infrastructure as a Service provides and maintains only hardware resources, these resources are either physical servers or virtual servers. The user must purchase, install and maintain all software requirements (Schultz, 2011)

Cost of Operation of a Physical Server

When deciding on a physical server or a cloud server, there is a lot of research to help

figure out if the cost is worth keeping a physical server maintained and running or moving to a different option such as a cloud server.

The chart below shows the expected expenses that a company is looking forward to the first year an in-house server, the software portion is examples of typically used software and operating systems. This is for a single server, if the company decides it needs more servers the more it will cost.

Initial Cost

Microsoft Exchange Server

$4.000

Hardware

$1.000

Exchange 2010

$4,000

SQL

$900

Total

$9,500

Annual Expenses

Hardware Maintenance

$1,000

Server Administrator

$75,000

Facility Cost

$850.00

Cloud Computing Company Comparisons

It has been decided to move forward constructing your General Offices Function requirements in the cloud, this means a lot of research will be done to compare different cloud computing companies to find one that meets your needs for your company. Some of the main things to look for is the cost, how quick they can have you set up and running, ability to scale as the business

grow, the type of scaling they are capable of, operating system platforms. Here is a comparison of four major cloud providers. (Liu, 2016)

AWS

Microsoft Azure

Google

IBM

Cost

$0.0058 per Hour

$0.008/hour
With free trial

$0.026 per GB

$0.0060 per GB

Compute

Ec2

Virtual Machine

Computer Engine
App Engine

Bare Metal
Servers
Virtual Servers
Power8

Storage

S3
EBS
EFS
Glacier

Blob Storage
Queue Storage
File Storage
Disk Storage

Cloud Storage
Persistent Disk

Object Storage
Block Storage
File Storage
Mass Storage
Servers

Back up and Data Storage

Back up
Site Recovery

Backup

Database and Data Warehouse

Auroa
RDS
DynamoDB
Redshift

Data Lake Store
SQL Database
DocumentDB
Table Storage
SQL Data
Warehouse

Cloud SQL
Cloud Bigtable
Cloud Spanner
Cloud Datastore

Data Services
Big Data Hosting
MongoDB Hosting
Riak Hosting

Containers

Container Registry
Container Service

Container Registry
Container
Service

.

Recommendation for General Office Function

The General Office Function allows for communication within the company. This function requirements including being able to send and receive an email, the ability to collaborate on a project, and easily compile and share information. To utilize cloud computing for this I would recommend use of a Hybrid Cloud with a Platform as a Service and IDaaS

A Hybrid Cloud will give the employees access their email, and collaboration resources anywhere in the world, while the PaaS would give the company the ability to manage their user accounts and securely access to collaboration tools based on administrative guidance. PaaS will a prevent the need for a high-level server administrator to maintain operating systems and secondary software. IDaaS includes user authentication, Single Sign-on (SSO), and authorization enforcement which will reduce the need to remember a lot of passwords. (Edward, 2017)

Section 2: Software as a Service (SaaS) and Identity as a Service (IDaas) Plan

Software as a Service Providers

With all the Software as a Service (SaaS) companies within the cloud, being able to pick the proper company to provide services for the Widget division, since each one has their own available software specialties and advantages and disadvantages, think about the requirements that these companies will need to support. XYZ has claimed they were interested in a SaaS provider for basic office administration and collaboration functions in the Widget division. I have developed an analysis of two SaaS companies that are able to provide web mail, messaging, document sharing, and project management.

1st Cloud9

Cloud9 has is made BI more available at the field level so frontline workers can take advantage of it and make better decisions. It has deconstructed traditional data warehouse infrastructures and processes and uses a technique called versioned replication. This automated data warehouse technology comprises a replication service and proprietary data management technology called versioned database. The advantages over a traditional relational database, such as the ability to ensure that changes are cumulative rather than destructive.

(Schultz, 2011)

Hosted Mail by OCcloud9 offers high availability and load balanced platform that provides optimal protection against downtime. Our Servers are self-monitoring. When a problem is detected, as a performance slowdown or a lack of available disk space, the server will automatically act and seamlessly move users to another mail server.

2nd Reval.

“There’s so little innovation in some legacy functions, and this is just one example where SaaS brings much-needed newer functionality,” he adds. Reval is an example of how the SaaS model is penetrating critical business areas – in this case, finance – at even the largest of companies, says Commonwealth’s Perreault. Reval is the leading, global provider of cloud treasury software. Our scalable Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution helps more than 650 companies around the world to better manage cash, liquidity, financial risk and hedge accounting. Reval runs over a service-oriented architecture, using a Microsoft .Net framework and providing a Simple Object Application Protocol-compliant distributed system built on a Web Services architecture, provides the ability to integrate treasury management and other enterprise systems using common data exchange protocols,

(Schultz, 2011)

Identity as a Service Providers

This a cloud-based service that provides a set of identity and access management functions to target systems on customers’ premises and/or in the cloud and includes user authentication, Single Sign-on (SSO), and authorization enforcements

1st Okta

Management service provides directory services, SSO, strong authentication, provisioning, workflow, and reporting, all delivered as a multitenant. Okta’s directory service has the capabilities to automatically import existing users from a variety of directories, easily provision (create) and deprovision (deactivate). You save a lot of time using Okta because there is no need to try remembering lots of credentials. It allows you to connect to your services from the same UI. Its interface is very easy to use and learn. Packaging a good number of components into a single pane of glass (unlike, say, Microsoft’s solution which requires a bunch of disparate systems). You get a log of value for your money. The support and development teams are responsive. The support for single sign-on to non-SSO apps with the browser plugin is very helpful. The product looks nice and is easy for end users to use. The Okta Application Network has far more apps total, with SAML support, and with provisioning support than the competitors. (Edward, 2017)

2nd OneLogin

OneLogin provides an on-demand IDaaS solution of single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, directory integration, user provisioning, and a catalog of pre-integrated applications OneLogin has taken a standards-based approach to application integration and established itself as a thought leader in the field of authentication added adaptive authentication support to its platform. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is the norm to preventing unauthorized users accessing corporate data with passwords alone. Protect your organization against attacks with policy-based access control for sign-in and password reset based on location, application and user privilege level. (Edward, 2017)

Migration Plan

The First Step in Migration

License costs / plan – does the company have a good understanding of them? You must go over what you already have in place and what your budget will be.

R&D development / Maintenance costs –Are the costs internal, outsourced or part of a service? Integrations / Interfaces – Be aware the places that your systems connect, integrate, and interface with other systems and other services. This is something that you do not want to discover post-migration. Risks – Find out what risks you are exposed to and determine how to overcome these in your move to the cloud. (“6 steps to successfully migrate your organization to cloud”, 2014)

The Second Step in Migration

Identify key users and encourage them – Get them involved in the project from the start and listen to their feedback. Get all of management on board (at high- and mid-level) explain new features and give them training. Revise your policies, working procedures and assure that everything is ready for the new work environment. Monitor usage, interfaces, data migration. Check that emails are coming in, check that transactions are going through, check the logs of your interfaces to ensure that they are working. Hold status meetings and expect surprises. IT teams are only human, small mistakes can happen, the important thing is to fix them as soon as you are made aware of them. (“6 steps to successfully migrate your organization to cloud”, 2014)

Section 3: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Supply Chain

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Platform as A Service (PaaS) refers to a type of cloud computing services which offers a platform that allows the development, running and management of applications while at the same time avoiding the complexity that involves building and maintenance of infrastructure which are typically related to the development and launching of an app. There are three possible ways in which PaaS can be delivered; first, it can be delivered in terms of public cloud service that originates from a provider. Here, the customer controls the deployment of the software with limited configuration options, while the provision of the servers, networks, storage, middleware (for example; Java runtime, integration and .NET runtime), operating system, database as well as other services that are necessary for hosting consumer applications are left to the provider. Secondly, PaaS could be delivered like a private service (appliance or software) inside a firewall. Thirdly, it could be provided as deployed software and as a service on public infrastructure (Sullivan, 2014).

When selecting and evaluating PaaS provider certain things are considered, for example, server-side technologies offered by the vendor, programming languages and options of data storage. Support for the integration of applications and developer tools are also an important consideration as since it will determine integration of PaaS with other applications. It is also vital to consider the costs involved through an evaluation of the pricing model. The following are three potential PaaS providers; Engine Yard, Google App Engine and Red Hat Open Shift.

For Engine Yard, there are various benefits associated. First of all, there is easy integration as far as integration with both private and public Git repositories is concerned. Again, with this provider, there is optimum control in regard to virtual machine instances in comparison to other providers of PaaS. Furthermore, there are dedicated instances which do not have multi-tenancy at the level of virtual machine. Again, Engine Yard allows faster innovation as it enhances agility. This is because with Engine Yard servers can easily be configured. Finally, the provider enables the client to save money and other resources. This is because the costs would be lowered by five times compared to a situation whereby the client would have to pay the indirect and direct costs of managing own infrastructure. However, the PaaS provider has its supported languages confined to Grubby, REE, Node.js, PHP and Rubiniu. The pricing is settled based on model of ‘pay as you go’ which has options premium and standard support. The prices fall between US$ 0.05 an hour per every instance and US $ 2.19 an hour for every instance which depends on the client’s configuration.

The benefits associated with Red Hat Open Shift include among others; offering a multiple of languages, components and databases. Secondly, with this provider, the PaaS is greatly customizable. Furthermore, Open Shift enables the automation of system administration activities including provisioning of virtual servers, scaling and configuration along with supporting Git repositories for the management of codes. However, although it works perfectly with Git, non-Git deployments may demand extra steps. The budgeting of Open Shift would entail an online pricing based on types and number of components referred to as gears that is deployed. The prices of such gears fall between US$ 0.02 an hour and US$ 0.10 an hour but it depends on the size, for example, 2 GB (big), 1 GB(medium) and 512 MB(small). A support plan goes for US$20 a month in addition to usage costs (Sullivan, 2014).

Google App Engine is beneficial to the client in the sense that it supports developers and web applications using Python, Java Go and PHP. The Java supports various languages. The PaaS provides managed runtime environments and infrastructure which are assured to scale if the apps suit the Google App Engine’s restrictions. The risk involved is that the programming languages are restricted to Python, Java, PHP and Go. The budgetary information in terms of pricing are; US$ 0.08 an hour per instance on demand or US $ 0.05 an hour (for a reserved instance). The price for data store is US$ 0.18 per GB for every month while the cost of bandwidth is US$ 0.12 per GB. There are other service costs and might apply.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) for Supply Chain

Among the three PaaS providers, I would go for Red Hat Open Shift due to a number of reasons. First and foremost, it supports multiple languages, databases and frameworks on the same platform. This means that clients can take the advantage of the Docker ecosystem. Secondly, Open Shift offers container-based platform that is immutable and there is the possibility of deploying and running micro services and applications. Thirdly, Open Shift allows the automation of deployments, application builds, scaling etc. from Kubernetes. Additionally, with Open Shift there are multiple interaction models. Lastly, there is the capability of incorporating persistence into application components while at the same time providing stateless cloud natural design (Sullivan, 2014). The table below represents budgetary information in relation to pricing.

Gear Prices

Size

US$ 0.02 to 0.04 per Hour

500MB to around 0.9 GB

US$ 0.05 to 0.07 per Hour

1GB to around 1.9 GB

US$ 0.08 to 0.10 per Hour

More than 2 GB

Note: Silver support plan goes for US$ 20 per month in addition to usage costs. Bonus of three small gears as well as 1 GB of storage for every gear are free of charge

References:

What is Cloud Computing? (2018). What is Cloud Computing? Retrieved 20 February 2018, from http://www.whatiscloud.com/origins_and_influences/a_brief_history

Schultz, B. (2011). 10 Software as a service (SaaS) companies to watch. Retrieved 23 February 2018, from http://ttps://www.networkworld.com/article/2177308/saas/10-saas-companies-to-watch.html?page=2

Seven IDaaS Vendors to Watch in 2018. solutionsreview. Retrieved 22 March 2018, from https://solutionsreview.com/identity-management/idaas-vendors-to-watch-2018/

6 steps to successfully migrate your organization to cloud. (2014). /blog.sysaid.com/. Retrieved from http://://blog.sysaid.com/entry/6-steps-to-successfully-migrate-your-organization-to-cloud

Liu, A. (2016). Top 10 Best Cloud Providers 2016. cloudspectator. Retrieved 27 February 2018, from http:///cloudspectator.com/best-cloud-providers-2016/

Sullivan, D. (2014). PaaS Providers List: Comparison and Guide. Retrieved from Https://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/paas-providers,1-1517.html.