In the earlier post, we have tried to understand the concept of cloud and the emerging paradigms, now before we decide to transition to cloud let us examine the uncertainties that require attention. Moving the system to cloud will require proactive management of risks, load and performance testing and managing cost and compliance issues.
Cloud Performance
First things first-
I) Are Hypervisors ready to provide optimal server experience in productions?
ii) Are Networks ready to handle the traffic and guarantee predictable production response time?
A load testing of the network bandwidth and performance testing of the application will provide definitive answers.
A make or break issue for transitioning to cloud is uncertainty with intermediary network. Cloud providers have yet not collaborated with network providers to come up with a predictable performance and cost projections for requirements of client while taking responsibility of network connectivity. Thus customers are required to live with the critical issue of network uncertainty.
No wonder CTOs have to solve the performance and bandwidth maze by being assertive and proactive with cloud providers about network requirements. Additional representative load and performance tests have become necessary before making the decision.
The existence of ‘network expressway’ between cloud and clients is necessary for business continuity which should also incorporate bandwidth scalability to incorporate future growth.
A possible scenario that emerges is of localized cloud offerings, i.e. a client in region A could most probably be optimally served from a cloud nearest to region A rather that a getting services from a cloud sitting half way around the globe.
Cloud experience would vary like mobile services with each operator being able to provide acceptable services only in particular regions, because the cloud performance and operating cost is based on not only bandwidth but also on length of network from cloud to client’s region.
Such a localized cloud infrastructure and service provider concept requires some more time to materialize, while this happens companies which have significant computing resources in-house can set up their own cloud.
Most of the software applications available are not performance tested on cloud but are optimized for client server environments. The cloud puts a different usage load on applications than client server apps. For example Cloud Apps have to handle increased number of I/o interrupts or connections to transfer data through slow network .
Cloud Apps would handle almost all computing on server side to work with increasingly thin clients.
Costs
Clouds like any other option have their tradeoffs. They may prove to be more costly if the business has large user base and cloud costs are charged per user.
Also network cost will increase with distance between cloud provider and client. Cloud services will require a guaranteed bandwidth from cloud to user, instead of relying on inexpensive but uncertain bandwidth of existing internet infrastructure.
Managing risk and compliance issues -
Clouds bring new focus to i)Business continuity , network and security risks ii)Compliance strategies to various regulatory requirements or in house policies. Let’s examine three prominent scenarios of usage of clouds and the risks and compliance issues they pose or address.
- Dumb terminals connected to a public cloud – It will be difficult to manage compliance issues with critical show stopper network risks and vendor lock in issues.
- Dumb terminals connected to a private cloud which is also connected to a public cloud.
This would be an ideal clou d solution, thin private cloud has same portfolio of risk exposure and compliance as of in house IT infrastructure. The company has its own cloud to reduce impact of network outages and it provides in house computing to data applications dealing with confidential data. This cloud solution provides manageable network risks, compliance issues and vendor lock in risks by retaining sufficient computing capability in-house. As of now, Interoperable clouds standards are evolving and are in their early stage.
- Not so dumb terminals connected to one or more clouds-In this approach companies keep some hardware but don’t opt for private cloud to cater to applications that could not be put on public clouds owing to risk or compliance issues.
The solution needs thick clients for users. It has more flexibility but no clear benefits. It adds to complexity of managing IT infrastructure and cloud as well and has network risks.
The awareness of cloud usage alternatives and the associated risk, performance and cost portfolios as discussed above will help in putting a successful cloud transition strategy in a yet to mature Cloud computing environment.
It also emerges that acceptable computing experience on cloud needs a regional cloud rather that global clouds serving over national and international regions.
The diagrams and data paths have been chosen carefully and they can be debated over redundancy, risks and costs.
More coming on this space…
