An effective remote administration system

Question:

Discuss about the Analysis and Evaluation of a Cloud Computing Service Provider.

The concept of cloud computing is used by various organizations to lower their operational costs. This is because the cloud computing service provider will be responsible for overseeing the delivery of services to the clients and as such the company has less to worry in terms of the hardware and software configurations and maintenance. However, this does not imply that all the delivery of the services is left to the cloud computing vendor and therefore, the company will be required to have the necessary requirements in place. Thus, a company will have to develop an effective strategy for moving its services to a cloud platform. The strategy should consider various factors including remote administration, resource management and the available cloud computing vendor SLA guidelines (Buyya, Yeo, & Venugopal, 2008, p.98). The various factors to consider are discussed below.

The concept of remote administration

There are many definitions with regard to remote administration. However, the general explanation of remote administration is that it involves the process of configuring and controlling a computer system with the physical presence of the administrator. It therefore, implies that the computer system is managed and controlled from a different location from where it is located. The advancement of technology has led to the discovery of new inventions regarding remote administration and this has been accelerated by the increase in the number of software that are been developed around the world to help in managing computer systems from a distance. It is therefore necessary for DSI to have an effective remote administration system before launching its services.

An effective remote administration system

The remote administration system is a very vital component in an organization that is considering launching it services on a cloud computing platform. Thus, the management of DSI will have to ensure that there is a well set up and configured remote administration system before they can launch the Online Spatial delivery System (OSDS) on cloud computing platform. The system will be necessary especially where DSI’s administrators need to ensure that the IT resources available on the cloud computing platform are effectively managed. For the remote administration to work effectively, the company should ensure that they have a well established internet connection between its systems and the cloud platform from the service provider. Connecting to the cloud computing platform will ensure that DSI can view how OSDS resources are utilized. In general, the remote administration system connects an organization to the cloud platform and thus they can be able to regulate their resources and services without their physical presence. Some of the tasks that DSI’s administrator will be able to perform using the remote administration system include;

• DSI will set up and configure the OSDS services on the cloud
• DSI’s administrator will be able to observe and evaluate the performance of OSDS

The concept of resource management

In an organization, there exists a variety of resources that are utilized to help in the operations of the company. These resources are what give an organization a competitive advantage and as such the resources need to be managed effectively for the organization to keep competing favorably. The resource could be in terms of raw materials, labor, or any other existing infrastructure. This, therefore, requires the management of DSI to have a well structured strategy that will ensure that the existing resources are well managed leading to the realization of the outlined goals and objectives. Also an organization should ensure that its resources are well utilized. DSI should consider the resource management system provided by the existing vendors before deciding on moving the OSDS services on the cloud computing platform.

The concept of resource management

Well structured resource management system

It is necessary for the cloud computing service provider to have a well structured system that will be used to coordinate the OSDS resources and services based on the terms of agreement that the service provider and DSI will have developed. It is necessary for the provided resource management system to incorporate virtual infrastructure machine (VIM) that will help in coordinating the various OSDS hardware resources (Patel, P., Ranabahu, & Sheth, 2009, p.123). in general, the resource management system will be important to DSI as it will help in accomplishing the following task;

• It will facilitate the coordination of the various OSDS resources
• With a well structured resource management system, DSI will be able to implement the necessary OSDS user policies.

Consideration of the available SLA guidelines

For any organization that is considering outsourcing IT resources or service it is necessary to consider the SLA guidelines that are provided by the cloud vendor. These guidelines are what defines the relationship that the cloud service provider has with the client in this case, department of spatial information (DSI) that is, the SLA guidelines outlines the terms of contract that the between the service provider and DSI. The SLA guidelines may vary from vendor to vendor but the basic aspects that should be covered include; the terms of agreement, the duration of the contract, and the metrics that an organization can use to measure the performance of the services provided which includes the availability and the reliability of the services provided.

Therefore, DSI should compare the SLA guidelines for different vendors so that it may choose on the one that is suitable for its OSDS services. In addition, DSI management should consider drafting some of the SLA requirements that it is looking for so that it becomes easier to select those that are almost similar to its expectations. Having a well structured SLA guidelines will ensure that the process of launching the OSDS services on a cloud computing platform is done in a professional way that I both satisfactory to the service provider and the client. This will, in turn, ensure that the OSDS does not experience frequent failures (Buyya, Yeo, & Venugopal, 2008, p.145).

The Concept of Backup and Disaster Recovery

While using the cloud computing services, DSI should ensure that there are necessary measures and mechanisms to backup or recover the date in case of a system failure. This, therefore, implies that DSI will have to develop the necessary backup and disaster recovery plan for its Online Spatial Delivery System. A backup plan involves having a well outlined strategy that is used to archive data such that when the system fails the data is not destroyed or lost. Thus, DSI should ensure that they have a well structured strategy and the necessary facilities that will be used in case there is a system failure. Apart from having an effective backup plan, DSI should also develop a disaster recovery strategy which will be used to restore data after the system has failed due to the occurrence of unforeseen circumstance or natural disaster.  Hence, with an effective recovery strategy, DSI can continue its operations in the event of a disaster occurring.

Well structured resource management system

Assessing the Effectiveness of the SLA using Erl’s guidelines

There are various factors that an organization should consider before accepting on the SLA provisions of any given service provider. Based on the Erl’s guidelines an effective SLA provision should have the following aspects well outlined;

Outline of the Business Policies

The SLA provisions of any cloud computing service provider should give an outline of various policies which governs the relationship of the client and the service provider. The policies outlined will in many circumstances vary based on the nature of the business. The provisions can be based on the business services or products. In this case, the cloud service provider should clearly state their responsibility in ensuring that the OSDS services will reach the clients.

The SLA should guarantee the delivery of service by the Cloud service provider

After the cloud service provider has clearly outlined the responsibilities, the provider should be able to guarantee to the client through the SLA provisions that the services will be delivered effectively as required. In this case, the service provider should outline the measures to be used to assess its performance. The performance can be assessed by monitoring the availability and reliability of the service. The cloud service provider should also state on the measures to be taken in case the service provided does not meet the expectations of the client that is, DSI.

SLA guideline should outline the Services offered

According to Erl’s guidelines, the cloud service provider should vividly state the services that will be provided to DSI.

Outline how governance and versioning is done

The SLA guideline for any cloud service provider should clearly define the role of the cloud service provider and the client. Specifying the roles eliminates the aspect of confusing roles between the provider and he client.

Have the necessary support mechanisms

The SLA provided by any service provider need to outline the support mechanisms that the client will be provided with in case of the system failure or when the cloud computing platform is down.

Thus, from the Erl’s guidelines outlined above, DSI should be careful while selecting a cloud computing vendor to ensure that the launch of OSDS is effective according to the management expectations. DSI should carefully scrutinize the vendor’s SLA guidelines to ensure that there are no loopholes that the provider can use to exploit the clients.

The evaluation above was carried out to assess various requirements and effectiveness of cloud computing platforms. The results of the assessment will be of great help to the Department of Spatial information (DSI) that is considering launching its Online Spatial Service Delivery (OSDS). It is observed from the assessment that before launching the OSDS service on a cloud platform, DSI should ensure that;

• The necessary technical requirements are met. This includes having an effective remote administration system, and resource management system.
• DSI should also effectively scrutinize the SLA provisions of the various vendors so as to be able to choose on the suitable vendor.
• Other factors that need to be considered are an effective backup and disaster recovery plan

With the launch of the OSDS on a cloud computing platform, DSI will benefit greatly because; they will be able to lower their cost of operations, and ensure fast delivery of OSDS services to the clients. Despite of the cloud computing benefits, there are a lot of risks that are associated with the cloud computing platform including the risk of losing confidential information and operations of the business may be impaired where the cloud fails.

References

Amazon, E. C. (2015). Amazon web services. Available in: https://aws. amazon. com/es/ec2/(November 2012).

Buyya, R., Yeo, C. S., & Venugopal, S. (2008, September). Market-oriented cloud computing: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering it services as computing utilities. In High Performance Computing and Communications, 2008. HPCC’08. 10th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 5-13). Ieee.

Casalicchio, E., & Silvestri, L. (2013). Mechanisms for SLA provisioning in cloud-based service providers. Computer Networks, 57(3), 795-810.

Liu, Y., Ngu, A. H., & Zeng, L. Z. (2004, May). QoS computation and policing in dynamic web service selection. In Proceedings of the 13th international World Wide Web conference on Alternate track papers & posters (pp. 66-73). ACM.

Ercolani, G. (2013). Cloud Computing Services Potential Analysis. An integrated model for evaluating Software as a Service. Cloud Computing, 77-80.

Patel, P., Ranabahu, A. H., & Sheth, A. P. (2009). Service level agreement in cloud computing.

Raimondi, F., Skene, J., & Emmerich, W. (2008, November). Efficient online monitoring of web-service SLAs. In Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of software engineering (pp. 170-180). ACM.

Subashini, S., & Kavitha, V. (2011). A survey on security issues in service delivery models of cloud computing. Journal of network and computer applications, 34(1), 1-11.

Terry, D. B., Prabhakaran, V., Kotla, R., Balakrishnan, M., Aguilera, M. K., & Abu-Libdeh, H. (2013, November). Consistency-based service level agreements for cloud storage. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (pp. 309-324). ACM.

Younis, M. Y. A., & Kifayat, K. (2013). Secure cloud computing for critical infrastructure: A survey. Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom, Tech. Rep.

Zhang, Q., Cheng, L., & Boutaba, R. (2010). Cloud computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges. Journal of internet services and applications, 1(1), 7-18.

Zheng, Z., & Lyu, M. R. (2012). Optimal fault tolerance strategy selection for web services. Web Service Composition and New Frameworks in Designing Semantics: Innovations: Innovations, 218.