One solution is the enterprise cloud, which can link all devices of various kinds with a single enterprise platform. Email, applications, security, and file storage can be managed at the user level and not at the device level. IT does not have to worry about the security of a device at the other end because all the processing is being done right in the cloud; the device merely acts as a control unit for the application in the cloud
The enterprise cloud can become a closed environment where data is virtually passing from app to app without ever passing through a single external device. There will be no downloading of sensitive files that need to be processed by the employee. The employee will be directly manipulating it through his smartphone or tablet without ever touching the data, and there will be no data to transport because only control signals back and forth are being transported.
This will prove to be the safest and most secure way of working remotely. No data leaves the enterprise cloud, but the employees can work from anywhere.
Summary
The rapid evolution of business and technology creates complexity that needs to be man- aged, and it has become the job of CIOs to ensure that an organization does not get lost in the confusion. This requires equally complicated IT systems that tie up different portions of the organization, with each part seemingly appearing quite different to its counterparts, leading to confusion and maintenance problems. Thankfully, cloud computing has arrived to take the edge off a bit and make things in the world of IT and business a bit more coherent and simpler, not to mention more affordable.
At the forefront of this battle against complexity are cloud management platforms.
They allow different cloud systems to be integrated and managed as a single coherent whole, making it possible for an organization to benefit from using different cloud systems from different service providers to fill their needs yet avoid the complexity that comes with it. The management platform is built on a layer above these separate silos as an umbrella that man- ages them all from a single point. For service providers, cloud management platforms allow integration of different geographical locations and different systems because of different product offerings. As a consumer, you can integrate all of your different cloud subscriptions and monitor and manage them from a single point.
The cloud is undoubtedly big business now, so service providers are quickly trying to mon- etize on this. The most straightforward way to do this is by creating solutions that appeal to
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a lot of businesses at an affordable price. Creating solutions and products takes a lot of plan- ning, and that includes market analysis and knowledge of current business trends, especially in internal business processes that companies use. This is because cloud services are mostly enterprise-based solutions, which may also cater to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and not simple consumer-grade products. Also, when a business needs to move into the cloud space, the staff is not always well versed in what it would entail to move to the cloud and has very little idea as to what solutions they actually require. So for both service providers looking to create solutions and organizations that want to know what solutions they need, the cloud service solution planning workshop is ideal. It involves getting all repre- sentatives of each stakeholder in the organization that will be affected by the change, such as those that will actually use the system or those that will create them. The seven steps to do this are mentioned under Cloud Service Solution Planning Workshop.
The workshop should focus on the organization’s strengths and ensure that it has the capacity to implement and maintain solutions and, in the case of service providers, deliver them to customers in such a way that creates satisfaction with the product.
Planning is followed by the implementation phase. When building your cloud infrastruc- ture, you should be mindful of the technologies used and how they interact with each other, ensure homogeneity within the system, and also make sure upgrades and maintenance can be handled easily.
Customers of cloud solutions should also consider cloud management platforms that would enable them to better control the solutions that they have adopted. This includes monitoring system performance metrics, which also helps with root-cause analysis and report generation. The CMP must cater to governance, automation, and integration in order to meet all of the organization’s needs.
But how do we know you are getting what you pay for? Apart from the metrics, you must also have a clear understanding of what you get for the money you spend. This is the purpose of the service-level agreement (SLA). It will clearly show what the service provider is offering in terms of performance and the amount of resources that will be supplied to your organization. It will also show what penalties both sides may incur in failing to adhere to the promises held in the SLA. So essentially, the SLA is the promise the service provider makes for the type of service it is providing, and it also serves as an agreement for both parties on certain points.
Upon launching a cloud computing system, an organization must have set policies and procedures in place that will guide the operation and maintenance of the system. These policies and procedures will guide most of the actions of employees and management in relation to the cloud system.
Other documentation is required, such as network and IP planning documentation, which will highlight how the network infrastructure is built and will help immensely with maintenance and root-cause analysis. Through this documentation, the cloud system and applications can be optimized to better utilize the traffic flow of the system, dubbed as application-optimized traffic flow. And as we mentioned, cloud computing requires a homogeneous infrastructure, which helps to bring simplicity to a complicated system and helps with scalability and future maintenance and upgrades.
Together with documentation and set policies and procedures, standard configurations across the board are required for a cloud system, only differing in certain ways to cater to different user groups. Standard configurations can simply be loaded for certain user pro- files instead of building resources such as virtual machines from the ground up. Change management is the best way to control configuration changes. The changes may come from external or internal sources, but with proper management, these sources can be controlled.
External sources may be attributed to the market itself, which changes over time and influ- ences how we configure our systems. While internal sources usually stem from reasons such as budget, infrastructure, and manpower, they may also be reactions to the external busi- ness climate. Changes, especially undocumented or improperly documented ones, are often the leading causes of business failure. Therefore, each change must be reviewed by experts, and the consequences must be evaluated before the change is implemented. A configuration management database is maintained to monitor all changes approved or otherwise as well as the previous state of the system prior to the change.
Capacity is also an important aspect of cloud computing. Despite claims of virtually unlimited resources, the reality is that resources are quite finite and must be managed accordingly. All resources should be allocated and used so none are idle or allocated but not used. Capacity can be managed in the form of horizontal and vertical infrastructure scalability, which means that resources can be added by simply adding more hardware or upgrading to more powerful ones.
The proper management of resources and configuration ties in to the system’s overall life cycle management process, which is a collection of processes meant to aid in the develop- ment, control, management, coordination, delivery, and support of configuration items, from the initial ideas until the end of their life. Two standards for systems life cycle management are provided by ITIL and Microsoft (the Microsoft Operations Framework). The life cycle of the system includes the service strategy, the service design, the service transition, the service operation, and the continual improvement of the service. The cycle ensures that good solu- tions and systems that cater to actual business needs are designed, developed, deployed, and then continuously improved.
At the back of every good solution or service lies proper maintenance. The best-case scenario is that maintenance would not impact the system at all, but we usually settle for minimal impact or downtime. That is why maintenance has to be well thought out ahead of time. The maintenance process should adhere to strict time limits. Usually, new maintenance processes have to be worked on in a sandbox environment that mimics the actual production environment to test whether the new processes or upgrades work.
Only routine maintenance that has been performed multiple times without problems should be done directly in the production environment.
Managing workloads within the cloud systems is also important. Workloads differ, even on the same system, and sometimes they can be erratic depending on conditions. Intelligent workload management (IWM) is a new approach in which, workloads are actually smart enough to know what their priority and resource needs are and can choose where they should be processed. The workload is automatically sent to specific servers, so there is no longer overhead as a result of job schedulers.
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Finally, risk can be everywhere, and the sources can vary. Because it affects workload management and our system as a whole, risk has to be minimized. This includes securing processing servers from external attacks and securing data to prevent sensitive information from being stolen or corrupted. There are many security systems for managing risk and securing your infrastructure, and all of them use some sort of encryption as their primary defense. But awareness and best practices, especially in change management and policies, can go a long way in terms of lowering risk and increasing the security of a system.
Chapter Essentials
Network and IP Planning/Documentation Network and IP planning and documentation is an essential step that most organizations skip because they feel that it is not important enough. But the essence of network planning is to have full control over the network and all of its nuances, from implementing proper homogeneity and configuration standardization to root-cause analysis of network problems. This will also help in planning upgrade paths.
Configuration Standardization and Documentation Simplicity through homogeneity and standardization is one of the hallmarks of cloud computing. When every piece of hard- ware and every configuration are based on a well-defined standard, there is little room for error. An important note to consider here is timeliness of hardware upgrades and a proper upgrade path plan to ensure that configurations stay standard, homogeneity is not affected too much, and systems stay optimized. Formal documentation for different configurations for all system pieces must be kept on hand and updated. A configuration officer is often assigned to ensure this.
Change management best practices Everything changes, and only the process of change is constant. There is no exception to that, so preparation for any sort of change is important.
Change can be brought about by internal or external forces, but the most favorable change, and one over which we have absolute control, is internal change, meaning that we initiate the change ourselves as an act of innovation or part of a larger plan for growth. The opposite is change brought on by an external force, which almost always forces an organization to make unfavorable changes or ones that they are unprepared for. Change management minimizes the negative impacts of externally influenced changes and ensures the success of internal initiative changes. Changes can be initiated through requests or change proposals and can be catego- rized as normal, standard, or emergency. All changes should go through the change advisory board, and a change manager should oversee every aspect.
Configuration Management Change brings about configuration changes as well, so configuration management is important. It ensures that all IT assets that are essential to service and function delivery are properly controlled and documented. ITIL and ITISM provide the standard for configuration management. The process involves the identifying configuration items (CIs), controlling and protecting them, and maintaining the configu- ration system, which includes the configuration management database (CMDB) to keep CIs accurate and updated.
Capacity Management Capacity management is about the management of capacity for present and, especially, future demand. The aim is to strike a balance between scalabil- ity and usage, that is, between having too much unused capacity and not being able to scale with rapid spikes in demand. Capacity management relies on two activities, namely, change monitoring and trending. Change monitoring, as the name suggests, involves monitoring for changes that may affect the capacity of a system. For example, when hard- ware like storage and computing resources is upgraded, there will be some downtime, not of the whole system but some of its parts and resources, which will lessen the capacity of the entire system during the duration of the upgrade process. Capacity management takes this into consideration and ensures that capacity is available as expected through other means. Trending, on the other hand, looks at historical data and monitors current events to predict spikes or valleys in usage and ensure that there is always enough capacity, even when there is an extreme load on the system.
Systems Life Cycle Management Life cycle management in cloud computing is tied to the life cycle of services rather than tangible products. The ITIL framework specifies five phases: service strategy or planning, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement. The phases are executed in sequence, except for contin- ual improvement, which is part of all phases because the cycle goes back to the beginning, where lessons learned are applied to the next cycle.
Maintenance Windows To a cloud computing provider, scheduling maintenance (and how long it will take) is important so that customers will not be burdened and their busi- nesses interrupted. As a customer, you can actually set the dates for downtime in your SLA.
Depending on the number of nines (99%, 99.9%, 99.99%, etc.) you specify, you can tell your provider which periods can be used as downtime for maintenance of the hardware where your system happens to reside.