Cloud Technology
As with any other technology, different models of Cloud computing have been proposed to harvest its benefits. These are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Each of these models is focused at achieving specific objectives by introducing novel mechanisms at respective layers of the modern software architecture
Attributes for Successful Cloud Solutions
MoxieWise believes that a successful cloud solution for any enterprise must be
- Secure—guaranteeing delivery of agreed-upon security levels (e.g., threat protection, privacy, and compliance) and data and intellectual property protection
- Open, not locked in—comprising modular infrastructure and services that support heterogeneous environments
- Automated—incorporating policy-based automation and management that integrates cloud with legacy assets and services to provide integrated service catalogs and end-to-end service quality
- Resilient—making sure delivery of agreed-upon availability, quality, and performance service levels
- Seamless—combining public and private cloud services with traditionally deployed services and outsourced services to deliver a seamless experience
Thus, cloud-initiated service delivery is set to completely revamp and revitalize how IT is used by businesses and people.
Guide to Cloud Computing: Principles and Practice
Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically reconfigured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guarantees are offered by the infrastructure provider by means of customized SLAs.
Cloud Infrastructure Solutions
As mentioned above, adept and assistive tools are very essential for the design and maintenance of a responsible cloud infrastructure. They enable quick identification of the environmental health status to facilitate effective capacity and environment planning, problem anticipation and instant resolution, and capacity expansion and contraction as needed to rapidly adjust to changing support requirements. Data center asset and configuration information is collected into a centralized repository that provides a holistic view of the cloud implementation. Not only does this provide a single point of access for viewing details about individual IT components, but it also provides insight into how those components interact.
Modeling solutions can provide easily digestible and actionable infrastructure intelligence, which is critical for enabling rapid cloud expansion to meet changing customer requirements. Intelligent modeling solutions go further to allow organizations to generate hypothetical scenarios so that quick and informed decisions can be made on infrastructure growth and improvement. For instance, before adding a new server to an existing cluster, a modeling solution can identify if there is sufficient rack space, power, networking, and structural support for the new server. Since responsible cloud environments must rapidly adapt to support requirement changes without diminishing infrastructure reliability, a modeling solution can be an indispensable tool.
Automated tools go a long way in moderating the management complexity of IT infrastructures. Dashboards are very important in indicating the correct status in real time so that administrators and others involved in manning mission-critical infrastructures can contemplate tactical as well as strategic decisions.