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07.31.2012

With larger numbers of companies shifting their operations to the cloud, users are getting overwhelmed with remembering a large number of access codes, passwords and URLs. There is also a need to manage user accounts and authentication to ensure that the requirements of rights management and security are followed. This, as any serious IT practitioner will know is the basic cost of doing business. You have to be able to take access control and user authentication as a given.

The problem is becoming more complex because of the proliferation of smart phones and tablet computers.  The days of only connecting through a LAN are over and any solution has to cater to a very large number of mobile devices as well.

With companies also opting to use hybrid clouds and at times selecting to keep some critical parts of their applications in-house, the problem of authentication and single sign on is becoming worse. At times companies could even be working with different cloud vendors and still expect to manage access control and user authentication from a single point. Under such circumstances, IT staff can have a difficult time supporting security, access control and user rights management.

New SaaS Offering

A new branch of cloud services is now beginning to be offered that promises to handle these issues. Access control and user authentication services are now being offered by Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors. These services work in the background with the user company’s Active Directory (AD) or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Service (LDAP) to map the rights and privileges granted to individual users and map them to cloud based services and applications that the company uses.  This makes it easy for individual users to work while leaving the work of managing access control to the access control service provider.

A key issue in being able to offer such a service is being able to ensure near perfect availability for the authentication company itself. Most such companies take extreme steps to ensure that they have a service availability of greater than 99.99% because if they were to be off the grid for any substantial amount of time, they would have a cascading effect on their users who would not be able to log in. Even a 99.99% uptime means that there are nearly 53 minutes in a year that the service is not available and even this may not be acceptable to many users.

The authentication vendor offers much more than the mere capability to log in and achieve a single sign on for several applications. It is able to create a workflow consisting of several applications and is able to direct the user from one application to the other – giving him an illusion of a single application while he is actually being transferred between applications. A comprehensive audit trail and report is maintained and all user actions are logged. Since this is a third party service, in some kind of regulatory environments, this kind of audit trail could have more value than an internal company audit trail.

Since the authentication service is aware of the applications the users are accessing, it can automatically hire larger numbers of instances of the cloud service based on pre-defined thresholds and release these instances back to the cloud vendor when the user logs off. This ensures a ‘just in time’ kind of provisioning and de-provisioning and can result in substantial savings while always ensuring that a minimum level of service response is never violated.

Major gains

What does the user company get from the service that it could not have done itself? The answer is time. Given enough time and manpower, one could shift the active directory to the cloud and integrate with every application you are running – both in the cloud and off it. But this process takes time and for a company just beginning to move to the cloud, it is far simpler to outsource its access control and rights management to an expert in the field. The overall stability of the applications and processes in the cloud improve and as a result, the company can concentrate on managing the application rather than its access control and right management. This also brings down the time it will take you to start generating revenue.

You can think of the access control layer as an overlay on all your (possible different) applications. It makes it easier for applications to work together since trust is inherently ensured between the applications.

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About the Guest Author:

Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.

07.30.2012

The importance of backing up data is something that all people involved in IT learn very early, usually from a bad experience. It all comes down to redundancy, to having multiple copies of everything and keeping them separated so that they do not fail all at once. However unlikely, if it can happen, it probably will happen at some point. When adopting cloud computing for your business, making sure that your data is properly backed up and that not all of your “eggs are in one basket” can save you money and time and ensure that your data is safe. Most cloud services providers will give you options with regard to cloud hybridization and avoiding risks with multiple locations. However, these are often all on the same cloud, which may pose a risk. So how to get around that? The fact is that using multiple cloud providers for redundancy is a better way to manage risk since not all the responsibility for your data is in the hands of a single vendor.

Even With Distributed or Hybrid Models, There’s a Risk When Using a Single Provider

The fact is that depending on a single cloud services provider has its advantages. However, the negative effects of a single problem are compounded when this is the case. After all, if all of your data is residing on a single cloud, all it takes is one specific issue to affect the whole negatively. So, even a distributed cloud that attempts to provide ideal regional distribution can have issues. A more fluid operating model can help avoid these problems by adopting multiple cloud platforms in order to reduce the inherent risk mentioned above. If well implemented, multiple clouds do not have to be complicated to manage and actually make your cloud ecosystem richer thanks to the diversity of options and greater geographic distribution. All it takes is better up-front planning of your cloud ecosystem.

Managing Multiple Cloud Platforms

The critical aspect of managing multiple cloud platforms is having a management platform that is strong and well-implemented. Regardless of the applications being used and the various nodes involved, without a strong oversight, change management, and governance, moving apps to production can be a nightmare. Because of this, it is important that all clouds have a strong automation and management platform. This is even more crucial when dealing with multiple clouds. A common mistake is to keep many aspects of management manual, ultimately slowing everything down to a crawl. Learning to adapt to widespread management tools with high degrees of automation is crucial when managing multiple cloud platforms. This is often one of the hurdles that keeps many companies from adopting a more effective cloud strategy involving multiple platforms. The fact is that having all your data on a single cloud is not ideal but it is even worse to implement any cloud computing strategy with ineffective management tools, or even having to carry out all management functions manually.

What Your Cloud Services Vendor Needs to Provide

Not all cloud providers have services that are ideal for use with other clouds. A few important features that your cloud services vendor needs to provide include:

1. Low data transfer costs. With multiple clouds, you will be moving high volumes of data from one to the other constantly. Does your cloud service provider give you a cost-effective way of doing this?
2. Data portability. Can this data be moved with a few problems quickly and in a usable format?
3. API. Since management is such an important part of using multiple clouds, making sure that your IT staff have the skills and resources to write effective management scripts is very important. Does the cloud service provider have a well-implemented API that allows your IT professionals to re-write management scripts?

In conclusion, building redundancy with the use of multiple cloud platforms means that you will be more resilient to disasters and outage risks. Depending on a single vendor may mean that all of your services will be halted until that vendor solves the issue. With multiple cloud platforms, issues in a single provider’s cloud become less critical to your operations. This strategy also allows you to take advantage of each provider’s strongest features while minimizing their weaknesses. For example, you can choose the vendor with the best storage facilities to ensure that your database performance is at its best while using a cloud services provider with weaker storage facilities to cover in case of problems with the primary cloud – that’s the beauty of using multiple cloud platforms.

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Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.

07.27.2012

If you want to learn what the crazy buzz is all about surrounding cloud computing, then better listen up. For years cloud computing has been in the scene, growing bigger not only in its market but also in its offered technologies that aim for the specific needs of its targeted consumers. Cloud computing companies know exactly what can generate millions of users based on their daily activities that are made easy by accessing various software online.

For those living under a shell, there has been a new wave of applications made available without having to drain your personal savings in purchasing that software. Cloud applications which are often referred to as Software-as-a-Service have certainly made an impact on the lives of businessmen, on-the-go professionals and the youth who mainly patronize these applications. As mentioned, one of the main reasons for such constant support is the opportunity to cut on costs not only on the software application but also in the installation, maintenance, technical support, and purchase of computers with higher memory or faster performance. Look at it this way, if you own a small IT company, you’d be able to reduce your overhead with fewer hardware, fewer employees to monitor each hardware and fewer customer service agents to face irritated consumers that use different versions of the product instead of just one uniform version online.

On the part of the end-user, cloud applications allow for the most needed convenience they have been searching for in their, well, digital life. One of the most basic and popular examples of this incredible benefit is Google Docs which provides the platform for anyone to create, store and share documents and spreadsheets with intended people. The capability to store information somewhere that you cannot really touch or hold but is definitely and often securely there is the bread and butter of cloud applications. Without having to get stuck on your desktop computer at home, you can access any information or file on the cloud by just bringing your laptop or mobile phone anywhere with a simple connection to the Internet. The flexibility of these applications makes them a sure-fire hit with the modern consumer.

Sharing of these data also requires minimal time and effort instead of slow uploading, sending via email or saving on flash drives. No matter where the intended addressee is, he can easily get a hold of these files by just connecting to the internet. Dropbox is also a good example of this main feature. Pictures often have high resolution and take a longer time to upload or attach. By just sharing a folder in Dropbox, anyone can quickly view and have a copy of their most cherished photos.

The storage capability of these cloud applications also come in handy for any user when their main computers break down. By having their files on the cloud, they immediately have a back-up drive that won’t just crash at any moment. These applications are as we have said, quite inexpensive compared to the back up hardware that you could be paying for especially for big businesses. Scalability is also a strong suit for any of these cloud applications since user needs are often diverse and changing as the need arises.

The scope of services offered by cloud applications is also evolving and getting better by the hour. More than storage functions, available cloud applications now conquer customer relationship management, sales database, and finance applications among others. While some simple applications are free, others could charge the consumer but at a very affordable price than actually hiring someone to build and run a needed database.

The only hard pill to swallow with regard to cloud applications is the question of security for any shared information online. Since you are basically putting your information out there, confidentiality is put to the test especially for the cloud hosting company. How safe will your data be on the cloud when control is primarily not in your hands? The guarantee that it won’t be used by the company for advertising campaigns or be uploaded into Youtube should be your one and only motivation to find a cloud application that provides a highly secure and safe environment that respects your privacy. For all its immense benefits, cloud applications must first and foremost uphold what they promise, which is ultimate customer service including strict user protection.

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About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

07.26.2012

One of the aspects of this year’s E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) that caught the attention of most of the people covering the event was that no new gaming consoles or major hardware were on display. While many gamers were disappointed at this, perhaps this is a sign of the times. After all, many industry experts have noted that the future of gaming is probably in cloud computing and, in a world of cloud-based gaming, hardware on the client side is irrelevant.

Particularly in Japan, Sony’s purchase of Gaikai, a pioneer of cloud gaming infrastructure and technology, makes it likely that Sony will soon be able to offer high-quality streaming games to PlayStation owners. Perhaps the PlayStation 4 will no longer require actual game discs and will stream all of its games? One of the great things about device virtualization is that it is easy to envision a future where gamers can receive their games on any device, from tablet PCs and smartphones to many modern TV devices. In fact, cloud computing may be used to prolong the lives of current consoles considerably since client-side processing is not nearly as demanding with cloud gaming due to the fact that cloud gaming is a basic Hardware as a Service (HaaS) operation. We can already see this happening in Japan and other countries with a high average connection speed, although we are still a few years away from gamers being able to stream blockbuster games with high system requirements at ideal speeds and quality.

Cloud Gaming Allows Gaming Companies to Offer Better Backwards Compatibility

One of the most promising uses of cloud computing and streaming for gaming companies is bringing backwards compatibility to their newer systems and consoles. Many factors, such as the fact that many older games are freely available due to software piracy or that releasing them again on physical media is prohibitively expensive, make backwards compatibility impractical for many gaming companies. However, not allowing gamers to access these older games means not tapping into an available market and having this wealth of older games lying around is a considerable waste of potential. Fortunately, the fact that these older games do not have heavy system requirements makes them ideal for streaming. By placing them on the cloud and establishing a payment model per transaction, Sony, Nintendo, and other gaming companies could conceivably make their whole back catalog available for streaming.

Cloud Gaming Solves Many of the Industry’s Most Important Problems

Since its beginnings, the gaming industry has been at the mercy of retailers and distributors. After all, no matter how good your game is, if it does not hit the store shelves it will probably not make any money. It is very common for developers to have to make numerous concessions, in everything from pricing to content. However, cloud gaming enables a new model that places less power in the hands of the middleman and gives more freedom to developers. Not having to manufacture physical media will also allow greater profits while giving companies the freedom to reduce the price of their games substantially. However, the most obvious and attractive feature of cloud gaming is how it solves the problems of software piracy and the pre-owned market.

Companies spend millions of dollars every year implementing expensive DRM which ultimately prove ineffective while also alienating loyal customers. Within a couple of weeks, almost all games are pirated and available for free on peer-to-peer file sharing networks, despite the efforts of gaming companies. However, with a streaming gaming model, the actual games’ code will not be available to be pirated at all and thanks to the fact that the actual games are not on the clients’ side, it effectively neuters the second-hand market.

Cloud Gaming’s Availability

Unfortunately, due to bandwidth caps and low connection speeds and availability in many countries,  effective high-end cloud gaming is probably a few years away from being a worldwide phenomenon. However, there is no doubt that countries such as Japan or South Korea, where the infrastructure already exists, are ready to adopt this technology now. And, as seen at E3 and in recent news, it seems that the major gaming companies are betting on the cloud as the future of PC gaming.

Be Part of Our Cloud Conversation

Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.