What's in the Cloud
INTRODUCTION
Times R Us is planning to expand in size shortly, and would like to explore options for Cloud Computing - to obtain an understanding of the benefits, explore options, and obtain recommendations. The focus of this document will be on the Private Cloud (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) as opposed to the Public Cloud.
Saas may be defined as software residing on a website, provided on a subscritpion basis - popularized by Salesforce.com; TRU provides the data, vendor provides everything else
Paas may be defined as software residing at a datacenter, owned by TRU managed by the vendor
Iaas may be defined as software which resides on TRU hardware, but network, and datacenter is owned by the vendor, software licenses and data are owned by TRU, vendor provides servers, power, space, and network - TRU manages the software and but the infrastructure owned by the vendor
BACKGROUND
This document serves to respond to questions regarding the Cloud (given that we are looking to increase our size and are currently Iaas with Rackspace). You expressed the following questions / concerns:
What Cloud Computing can do for Times R Us
What the various Cloud Computing Options Are
What makes sense for us in terms of increasing our presence in the cloud
Which Applications make sense there
Should we use it to extend data center
Move there completely?
SOLUTION
What Cloud computing can do for Times R Us
Currently Times R Us uses RackSpace for offline archival storage of data. While RackSpace does provide Cloud Services, this current environment may be considered very basic in terms of Cloud Sevice offerings.
Times R Us would be able to move some services to the Cloud that it currently performs in-house. From my experience, moving one more simple application to the Cloud on a trial basis would enable Times R Us to “get its feet wet” in Cloud usage and enable Times R Us to give a vendor (prehaps RackSpace) a test in its implementation of Cloud Services.
I recommend Times R
Times R Us is planning to expand in size shortly, and would like to explore options for Cloud Computing - to obtain an understanding of the benefits, explore options, and obtain recommendations. The focus of this document will be on the Private Cloud (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) as opposed to the Public Cloud.
Saas may be defined as software residing on a website, provided on a subscritpion basis - popularized by Salesforce.com; TRU provides the data, vendor provides everything else
Paas may be defined as software residing at a datacenter, owned by TRU managed by the vendor
Iaas may be defined as software which resides on TRU hardware, but network, and datacenter is owned by the vendor, software licenses and data are owned by TRU, vendor provides servers, power, space, and network - TRU manages the software and but the infrastructure owned by the vendor
BACKGROUND
This document serves to respond to questions regarding the Cloud (given that we are looking to increase our size and are currently Iaas with Rackspace). You expressed the following questions / concerns:
What Cloud Computing can do for Times R Us
What the various Cloud Computing Options Are
What makes sense for us in terms of increasing our presence in the cloud
Which Applications make sense there
Should we use it to extend data center
Move there completely?
SOLUTION
What Cloud computing can do for Times R Us
Currently Times R Us uses RackSpace for offline archival storage of data. While RackSpace does provide Cloud Services, this current environment may be considered very basic in terms of Cloud Sevice offerings.
Times R Us would be able to move some services to the Cloud that it currently performs in-house. From my experience, moving one more simple application to the Cloud on a trial basis would enable Times R Us to “get its feet wet” in Cloud usage and enable Times R Us to give a vendor (prehaps RackSpace) a test in its implementation of Cloud Services.
I recommend Times R
Citations: 1Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing Michael Armbrust, Armando Fox, Rean Griffith, Anthony D. Joseph, Randy H. Katz, Andrew Konwinski, Gunho Lee, David A. Patterson, Ariel Rabkin, Ion Stoica, Matei Zaharia; Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences; University of California at Berkeley; Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2009-28; http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.htm; February 10, 2009 2 Gartner Cloud Iaas: Service and Support Models Analyst: Lydia Leong Published March 8, 2011 ID: G00210094