Cloud Services
IT transformation journey with measurable outcomes
Define and Architect customers every need
Our implementation services drive scaled, secured, and resilient adoption of cloud and mainframe technologies with Advisory services leading the way to help clients define and chart their digital transformation journey and accelerate business outcomes.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment which uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. By allowing workloads to move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.
For example, an enterprise can deploy an on-premises private cloud to host sensitive or critical workloads, but use a third-party public cloud provider, such as Google Compute Engine, to host less-critical resources, such as test and development workloads. To hold customer-facing archival and backup data, a hybrid cloud could also use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). A software layer, such as Eucalyptus, can facilitate private cloud connections to public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Hybrid cloud is particularly valuable for dynamic or highly changeable workloads. For example, a transactional order entry system that experiences significant demand spikes around the holiday season is a good hybrid cloud candidate. The application could run in private cloud, but use cloud bursting to access additional computing resources from a public cloud when computing demands spike. To connect private and public cloud resources, this model requires a hybrid cloud environment.
Another hybrid cloud use case is big data processing. A company, for example, could use hybrid cloud storage to retain its accumulated business, sales, test and other data, and then run analytical queries in the public cloud, which can scale to support demanding distributed computing tasks.
Public cloud’s flexibility and scalability eliminates the need for a company to make massive capital expenditures to accommodate short-term spikes in demand. The public cloud provider supplies compute resources, and the company only pays for the resources it consumes.
Despite its benefits, hybrid cloud can present technical, business and management challenges. Private cloud workloads must access and interact with public cloud providers, so hybrid cloud requires API compatibility and solid network connectivity.
For the public cloud piece of hybrid cloud, there are potential connectivity issues, SLA breaches and other possible public cloud service disruptions. To mitigate these risks, organizations can architect hybrid workloads that interoperate with multiple public cloud providers. However, this can complicate workload design and testing. In some cases, workloads slated for hybrid cloud must be redesigned to address the specific providers’ APIs.
Management tools such as Egenera PAN Cloud Director, RightScale Cloud Management, CliQr’s CloudCenter and Scalr Enterprise Cloud Management Platform help businesses handle workflow creation, service catalogs, billing and other tasks related to hybrid cloud.
Public Cloud
A public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as virtual machines (VMs), applications or storage, available to the general public over the internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model.
- it reduces the need for organizations to invest in and maintain their own on-premises IT resources;
- it enables scalability to meet workload and user demands; and
- there are fewer wasted resources because customers only pay for the resources they use.
Public cloud is a fully virtualized environment. In addition, providers have a multi-tenant architecture that enables users — or tenants — to share computing resources. Each tenant’s data in the public cloud, however, remains isolated from other tenants. Public cloud also relies on high-bandwidth network connectivity to rapidly transmit data.
Public cloud storage is typically redundant, using multiple data centers and careful replication of file versions. This characteristic has given it a reputation for resiliency.
Public cloud architecture can be further categorized by service model. Common service models include:
- software as a service (SaaS), in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the internet;
- platform as a service (PaaS), in which a third-party provider delivers hardware and software tools — usually those needed for application development — to its users as a service; and
- infrastructure as a service (IaaS), in which a third-party provider offers virtualized computing resources, such as VMs and storage, over the internet.
The term public cloud arose to differentiate between the standard cloud computing model and the private cloud, which is a proprietary cloud computing architecture dedicated to a single organization. Private cloud differs from public cloud, as it serves as an extension of a company’s existing data center and is accessible only by that company.
Cloud Backup
Define and Architect customers every need
Cloud backup, also known as online backup, is a strategy for backing up data that involves sending a copy of the data over a proprietary or public network to an off-site server. The server is usually hosted by a third-party service provider, who charges the backup customer a fee based on capacity, bandwidth or number of users. In the enterprise, the off-site server might be owned by the company, but the chargeback method would be similar.
Implementing cloud data backup can help bolster an organization’s data protection strategy without increasing the workload on information technology staff.