Demand maturity: New development layer for cloud application requirements

Early adopters carefully took the first step in their cloud-computing resources for application testing and development-and support for back-end systems did not require much effort. But as corporate confidence increases and the industry-level applications are delegated to cloud providers, the growing risk is prompting providers to sharpen the need for automation and staffing.

The cloud computing and hosting services provider CSC, a 1959-established IT outsourcing company, has been plagued by growth in the past year, and more and more business applications are being moved to CSC's cloud computing as the size and confidence of the customer base grow.

"Three years ago, the focus of cloud computing was just testing and development, plus ... There are also very limited differences in the demand for and diversification of the production layer. What the client wants is a server and maybe a database, and the rest of them do it themselves, "said Sunil Bhargava, president of the CSC global portfolio of cloud computing and hosting." "When we started to expand our business because of the product load ... We found our technology a little stretched. ”

What are the limitations of Vcloud Director?

Automation and compilation layers are important components of cloud services that allow users to supply, adjust, and cancel services in a timely manner through self-service portals. Software automatically "coordinates", matches or executes, and a series of complex configurations at the back end requires adding or changing services-such as removing human errors, and accelerating time-consuming manual operations for vendors.

But not all of the automation and production layer products have been created identically, Bhargava found. As the CSC cloud strategy matures, it needs to be layered to automate the provisioning of resources for special application and application loads. Its existing automation and presentation layer is based on VMware's Vcloud director, which is excellent at starting the operating system, databases and development platforms, but Bhargava thinks it is not the best choice for future stacks.

"When you go into Sap,exchange or similar applications-the higher you walk, the more manual configuration you need, because these more advanced applications require more complex configuration," he said. "It takes a lot of effort to supply them, so we want to automate them." ”

Users are also trying to find better ways to integrate with their information technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes. In particular, the remedy it Service Management Suite, based on BMC Software, is another area that Vcloud director has yet to reach, Bhargava said.

CSC did not intend to abandon its existing investment in Vcloud director, but wanted to find a tier of tiers that could work with the legacy platforms.

"Retention is important for us, and it means consolidation opportunities with other users, such as internal virtual machine clusters based on VMware," he said. "We need our own cloud computing to still have vcloud Director, but Vcloud Director can't effectively meet our need for a higher level of production." ”

The compilation layer is the key to cloud computing agility

Looking for a service provider level of preparation layer that can meet CSC's needs is difficult at the moment. Bhargava assessed all the "big names" in the field, but declined to disclose the name of the supplier. He found that most of them were either too focused on the business or failed to integrate Vcloud Director.

"Business users are complex, service providers are complex. People tend to think that what they need is the same, but that's not the case, "he said. "Cisco understands the prospects of service providers and has structured its own software from three perspectives: Product features and features, product license models, and how to organize employees to support users in their implementation and development." ”

Cisco's intelligent Don for cloud software provides three key features for cloud providers: building and maintaining reusable service catalogs that allow users to purchase these services through self-service portals and automate the supply of selected services. This kind of service is based on its special application configuration requirements library.

Once a service is supplied, Cisco's compilation layer will "learn" what storage, server, and network resources are needed in "minutes or seconds," and how to deliver them. Flint Brenton, senior vice president of Cisco's Intelligent Automation Solutions business Unit, said.

"It reduces our work by starting a production process that would have shortened a few weeks to a few days before we ever had a workout," Bhargava said. "Once you've done it once, the second time it's ... A few minutes or seconds to make the new service deployment successful. This is the key to agility, and agility is not the key to cloud computing. ”

Cisco regularly upgrades the tier library, which currently supports about 180 business applications and provides a software development kit (SDK) for providers to increase demand, Brenton said.

Cloud compilation: The Way to the future

CSC has won more users who want to migrate business applications to cloud computing-with the help of the Vblock architecture of the Federated Virtualization Computing Environment (VCE)--bhargava wants to see Cisco provide some consolidation between its production layer and the professional application vendor's programming capabilities. SAP's tier-making tool (NetWeaver Landscape virtualization Management) "is better than using Cisco's standard workflows in compiling SAP," he said.

"Cisco's performance is excellent, but it's not as good as a professionally crafted product provider," Bhargava said. "I hope to increase support for this in their development path," he said.

In short, Cisco has left a deep image of Bhargava for the intelligent Don for cloud-especially the product's focus on the user experience. CSC is working with Cisco to build the Portal components and Control Panel for the user portal, he said.

"We have not yet deployed, because some [largely implemented] have not yet been implemented ... But we can already see that it will significantly improve the usability of our solution, and it will accelerate our ability to consolidate other solutions [to cloud computing], "Bhargava said. "It will accelerate our future development." ”

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)