Cloud Computing Whitepapers and Ebooks

This sections provides whitepapers on Cloud Computing that details on trends, analysis and latest happenings in the industry.

  • Data Center Automation: Accelerating Market Maturity Through Investment in IT
    IDC recently conducted international research by surveying 164 IT professionals via Web interviews on the topic of datacenter automation. This research covered key issues such as the role of automation across "IT silos," cost efficiencies and process standardization, and market maturity. Key findings include: ! 84% of IT organizations view automation as a top investment priority for delivering on business outcomes. ! 85% of IT organizations agree or strongly agree that datacenter automation should span multiple "IT silos" (servers, storage, networks, etc.). ! 79% of IT organizations agree or strongly agree that automation is very important in deploying, provisioning, and managing virtualized environments. ! Another finding is the top management challenge when virtualizing is the integrated management of all related infrastructure. ! 77% of IT organizations believe that the number of changes made to their infrastructure will increase in 2009 by 10% or more. A total of 164 Web surveys were used to create this research, which is international in scope. The respondents were 70% from the United States, 20% from Western and Central Europe, and 10% from Asia/Pacific and Latin America. Additional information can be found in the demographic information in the survey. The following survey results focus more specific demographic information.
  • Key Considerations for Adopting Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
    Web application security requirements should align with an organization's overall security policy. In addition, there are some basic steps you can follow to produce a short list of essential security features for any Web application. In this expert E-Guide, find answers to four key Web application security questions. Also discover best practices for application-level firewall selection and deployment. SearchVirtualDataCentre.co.uk Over the past two years, we have seen a sharp rise in the different types of computing platforms that are available to organizations. Companies are now able to choose from building their own data centers, deploying traditional colocation in a data center or using a range of virtualized or cloud computing services. One of the many cloud options is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) -- the rental of virtualized computing processing, memory, data storage and networking for the purpose of running an operating system. It offers many of the benefits that other areas of cloud computing do -- notably reduced costs -- and this is the area that I would like to focus on, because it is where we are seeing dramatic change. Until recently, implementation levels for IaaS have been low, mainly because of associated connectivity costs. However, in past six months this has changed.
  • The New Math: Double Your Results for Half the Cost with a Cloud-Based Contact Center
    The contact center performs one of the most vital functions within an organization, forging the essential link between a company and its customers that builds loyalty and reinforces the values of the company brand. In keeping with its critical role, enterprises have traditionally invested millions of dollars into building and maintaining best-in class contact centers. For decades, this strategy made sense. In today's environment of rapid technological change and economic volatility, an on-premises contact center is no longer an asset; in most cases, it is a clear disadvantage. Hardware, software, and other related equipment require major capital expenditure in a world where technology is evolving so quickly that an on-premises contact center starts to become obsolete nearly as soon as it is assembled. When market conditions inevitably shift, companies saddled with aging equipment and massive maintenance fees are unable to stay flexible, making them vulnerable to more nimble competitors. Building a culture of innovation requires a shift in focus, putting an emphasis on agility while maintaining IT functions more efficiently and affordably. Today, on-demand contact centers are being recognized as a smart way for companies to stay agile while still delivering tremendous value to their customers. On-premises contact centers once the only reliable choice for the enterprise, a necessary investment with no real alternatives.
  • Connectivity and SOA: Embracing Old Assets, Furthering the New
    Current trends in technology are leading to application decomposition As adoption of Web Services increases, traditional applications (e.g. ERP, CRM) are being seen as too siloed in their approach to the business needs. � The move to SOA will drive connectivity needs The move to a more services-led approach will drive the need for the adaptors at an exponential rate. With services providing discrete functions, a single process may well involve the need for hundreds of these to interoperate and exchange data to facilitate the process needs. � Organisations need to look at outwards connectivity "Value chains", where processes include suppliers and customers, can provide distinct market differentiation where process connectivity is used successfully. � "Point-to-point" solutions will rapidly become unusable "Point-to-point" connectivity solutions require adaptors at the rate of the number of data stores/end points squared plus 1 (n�+1), whereas a busbased approach only requires one adaptor per data store/end points (n). This means that managing a point-to-point architecture will rapidly become infeasible. � Contextuality of data connectivity is key To maintain business and technical flexibility, data mapping and transformations need to be carried out by adaptors associated with the data store/end point, and abstraction needs to be by a bus architecture.
  • Functional Re-Use and SOA: The Service Interface as an Enabler for Software Re-Use Best Practice
    � Re-invention is a major cost to businesses Many organisations continue to buy or re-create similar, if not identical, functionality across different applications. The management of such separated function can result in sub-optimal business process support, and additional costs to the organisation. The drive for rationalisation means that similar functions must be combined As organisations strive for infrastructure rationalisation, functional rationalisation should be a large part of this. The "culling" of similar functionality across multiple applications cuts down on overall complexity and provides greater business flexibility. Discrete functional components create greater flexibility By providing a service infrastructure, functionality can be provided as discrete components, callable by those processes requiring such function. Discrete functional components are more scalable and resilient Through the provision of discrete functional components via an SOA, scalability can be provided through simple utility-style provisioning, and resilience can be managed through the use of stateless services. Software re-use speeds up response to market threats The capacity to make use of discrete functions that have already been proven, and are simple to include within new composite applications means that solutions are faster to create, and organisations can be more flexible in how they create strategies to meet market Granularity of function is the main issue that has to be addressed When looking at functional components, a suitable level of granularity must be maintained.
  • Information and SOA: Gaining Greater Insights Through MDM
    Executive Summary Information management, which includes both data and content management, is an essential building block for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). By taking a service oriented approach to information, you can achieve much greater value from your information assets. Implementing Master Data Management services provides a multiplier effect by delivering high value business services on top of an information integration services. Main Findings � Data is a critical component of an organisation's IT infrastructure However, multiple different applications and databases contain common information, making it difficult to maintain an accurate and complete understanding of master data entities such as customers, products, and accounts. � Information as a Service is required to drive process efficiencies Organisations need to look at the creation of a capability of providing a single view of data to any application or other calling service is required � Master Data Management (MDM) provides a key to opening up information as a service MDM enables an organisation to take the common data held across and organisation and its value chains and make this a "single source of truth", providing greater data fidelity, greater responsiveness and greater capabilities for corporate governance and audit � Data integration and database federation have their parts to play The idea behind MDM is not the creation of a single, corporate database holding every piece of data but rather to create a common set of business services to manage master data both in a master data repository, and in application databases if required.
  • Microsoft Dynamics: Enabling Real-World SOA to Connect Your Business Vision with Software
    Businesses need to connect processes, people, and information both within the organization and across organizational boundaries. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an emerging architectural style that helps meet these demands. Microsoft Dynamics has made investments in Web services and other SOA technologies across our product lines to help customers take a "Real-World" approach to SOA. This paper walks you through the tools and technologies that enable service orientation. The purpose of this paper is to share with you the value of RealWorld SOA and a few success stories from our customers who have taken on Real-World SOA projects to support their business vision Business solutions don't work in silos. The free flow of information within and across organizational boundaries coupled with the ability to adapt to changing business requirements, are key business needs. With organizations increasingly relying on their information technology (IT) infrastructure to help drive success, lack of integration among IT assets can make it difficult for IT to respond quickly and effectively to changing business needs. Such inflexibility can increase costs, decrease customer responsiveness, hinder compliance, impede information flow and decrease worker productivity. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) enables IT to meet the changing demands of businesses and to new business opportunities.
  • People and SOA: Improving Productivity through People Collaboration
    Organisations depend on processes � and processes still depend on people The major decisions within organisations are still made by people, no matter how much automation is put in place. There remain many touchpoints between technically automated processes and people, and these can no longer be regarded as exceptions People must have the capability to easily interact with technical systems Applications that force people to work in a prescribed manner do not provide the flexibility that organisations require. There is a strong need to provide sets of functional services from heterogeneous applications that can be easily accessed and utilised as composite solutions by the users themselves Existing siloed applications need to be part of the solution Existing technology investments should not be written off, but should be included in any new solutions. A portal approach provides the front end interface, as well as the back end integration, to provide a suitable solution The capabilities of today's portal platforms have reached a point where a good portal can become a user's main interface to many of their daily tasks. Employee self-service and management capabilities can provide strong business benefits while establishing a platform for further growth By providing sets of functions that can be flexibly linked, many tasks such as expense claims, new starter set up, employee changes, vacation booking can be pushed out to the employee, creating an environment of greater trust and better responsiveness, while maintaining management visibility of what is happening.
  • Standardised Battlespace SOA
    The battlespace environment presents a distinct set of issues that have been a challenge historically for information technologies (IT) and traditional architectural approaches. The inherent demands of the battlespace include the availability and reliability of information systems, with appropriate and available bandwidth for data transference, and total security. The emergence of service oriented architectures (SOA) and web services present a means of bringing a high degree of standardisation to the fore. Such an approach can deliver long-term benefits and enable defence forces to embrace and utilise new functionality rapidly and as cost-effectively as possible. Responding to the increasing dynamics of the modern battlespace is more complex and demands a faster response than ever before: As defence forces seek information superiority in the battlespace, there is a consequential demand for a far broader linkage of information systems than previously considered technically possible. There is now the expectation that platforms and individual soldiers are linked to increase situational awareness, improve inclusive decision-making and, most importantly, respond to the demand for increasing speed and accuracy in the application of force. SOA provides the best means of doing this, bringing existing systems and new functional components together in a secure manner such that resources can be rapidly accessed and acted on.
  • Implementing SOA with an Offshore Partner
    Offshore implementation of software projects has for several years been accepted as an effective manner to overcome constraints in terms of cost and time. The selection of an offshore partner and the role played by the partner in projects involving a migration towards service oriented architecture are discussed in this document. The topics addressed include a description of the benefits, challenges and governance involved in such a partnership. Tasks and responsibilities of each of the partners, the client and the service provider, specific activities that are better executed within the onsite environment and those that can safely be transferred to an offshore location, thereby effectively utilizing the resources at both ends are explicitly described. This document is written as a guide to an alternative mechanism for project implementation for business owners holding responsibility to deliver IT solutions in the SOA space. It could also be of interest to enterprise architects, project managers, and others involved in creating and executing software projects who would like to know more about how the phenomenon of offshore/onsite coordination, that emerged in the nineties, can be effectively applied towards realizing the promise of SOA . Offshore/onsite partnerships rightly managed, with an awareness of the and the correct set of mutual expectations established early in the project cycle, help considerably in realizing these projects, be it a full scale enterprise adoption, or a series of small iterative steps towards increasing reuse of technical assets.