Federated Cloud: A unified framework for cloud computing environments

In any way, the concept of the Union Cloud (Federated Cloud) is surprising. With the ability to manage multiple complex legacy environments while consolidating the infrastructure, cloud computing is rapidly evolving. But as companies advance their cloud computing programs more quickly, a large part of the CIO is now coping with the messy cloud computing environment, as if the cloud computing environment is not in control.

Peter High, President of Metis Strategy, said: "We can see that a large part of the business unit is smart enough to invest in private clouds without working with the CIO to develop a unified plan to make the most effective use of cloud computing." If so many departments of an enterprise want to make independent decisions, then when it comes to statistics, we will find that these decisions may be very different. ”

Beth Cohen, technical leader of Cloud Technology partner company (Cloud Marvell Partners), agrees. "We also see that many business units are catching up with cloud computing in a variety of ways, but it poses a tricky problem for CIOs," she said. There is no doubt that CIOs are starting to think about union clouds. ”

The following facts may be considered:

The head of the business department was intent on shortening the time-to-market and almost whim of increasing public cloud application services. In that way, executives who fill out online forms and produce corporate credit cards can access customer relationship management, human resources management, and many other high-end services in just a few minutes. The enterprise's IT departments are often unaware that external providers are supporting these business processes. But external providers do support these business processes, and the pace is accelerating. Gartner, a research firm, predicts that output in the global software-Services (SaaS) market is expected to grow by 21% in 2011 alone.

An increasing number of application development teams have recourse to external infrastructure resources. Faced with rigorous and critical project deadlines, many developers are enabling external infrastructure providers to provide processing and storage resources to test new ideas and even launch new services. They have no time or financial resources to wait for it to apply and implement traditional servers and platforms. Many demand factors have prompted TechNavio analysts to predict that the global infrastructure, the service (IaaS) market will grow at a rate of 48% per cent from this year to 2014, and application development is only one factor.

At the same time, the way IT departments respond to unexpected challenges from public cloud providers is to give Web functionality to their internal infrastructure. One of the reasons many companies are bypassing the IT department is that many public cloud services provide self-service. "It is a necessary condition for in-house IT departments to develop some kind of self-service mechanism," Cohen said. TechNavio said the private cloud server market is growing at a compound growth rate of 12.7% a year.

In short, CIOs face a mix of cloud computing environments that need to be integrated and managed to ensure operational efficiency, high security, and good governance. At this time, the union cloud emerges. The Federated Cloud Framework facilitates the deployment and integrated management of multiple cloud computing services within and outside the enterprise.

There are three basic types of contacts that need to be established:

• Public cloud to private cloud connection

• Private cloud connection to private cloud

• Public cloud to public cloud connections

Integration of public cloud into private cloud

One of the main challenges that CIOs face at first is understanding how much public cloud activity is going on. In many cases, calls have been made to address cloud provider issues, and it has been the first time that the IT department has been aware of the use of external services.

Once this is clear, it executives can then identify why the business unit is bypassing internal resources, rather than the cloud provider, and then identifying a path that is reasonable for end users and IT departments. Many CIOs find that there are not many options internally available to replace external cloud providers. This gives the IT department the option of resisting end-user service requirements, or figuring out how to responsibly enable business units to access these services in a more secure and compliant manner.

If the company chooses the latter option, which is becoming more common, the IT department can serve as the central Data Interchange Center for the Public Cloud Provider (Clearinghouse). It is the CIO's responsibility to develop reasonable processes and mechanisms that end users can use to purchase Third-party services in an adjusted, reasonably regulated manner. The primary responsibility of the IT department is to ensure that appropriate data control measures are in place. It is also important to ensure that organizations can quickly and securely retrieve enterprise data that is sent to a public cloud provider when it is really needed.

In addition, it can explore the opportunity to use application programming interfaces (APIs) to establish integration points between public cloud applications and internal assets.

Private cloud integration into private cloud

Most companies that actively implement private cloud projects implement such projects at the departmental level. In many cases, cloud computing projects are based on a virtualized project that consolidates data center systems and optimizes resource utilization. As a result, most of Fortune 1000 companies have multiple private cloud environments at different stages of maturity.

There is a growing consensus that the key to managing the scattered problems of internal private clouds is to adopt and control the deployment of IT service management guidelines. This provides a unified approach to designing a web-based cloud service configuration for the entire enterprise. It will also be very helpful in facilitating the integration of internal clouds.

The integration of public cloud into public cloud

One of the things that CIOs want to avoid when they develop their own federated cloud strategy is that they are tightly bound by one vendor or one service provider. As a result, many IT departments are trying to ensure that data can be ported. CIOs want to be able to migrate data from one cloud provider to another if they are dissatisfied with the service they are getting.

At the current stage of cloud computing development, there is a lack of broad, recognized public cloud standards. However, because most cloud architectures focus on the web, it is easier to develop APIs that ensure that data is portable.

Best practices

The Federated Cloud concept is still a new concept. However, given that the various types of enterprise cloud computing are growing at double-digit rates, it is critical that CIOs develop a unified framework for managing these environments.

Erik Sebesta, founder and chief architect and technology officer of Cloud Technology partner company, has been helping customers build the application development framework. After careful analysis of their own set of applications, customers determine which environment each application should run in and which are mission-critical applications that contain sensitive data that are critical to the enterprise.

"Thus, this boils down to the environment under which the application should be built," Sebesta said. Should the application be built on a public platform, a service environment, or in a private platform, a service environment? Should it be migrated to the SaaS platform? Should it be introduced into a hosting service environment? In fact, the first task is to develop the application decision-making framework, and then expand the solution on this basis. ”

The common framework must be guided by governance to determine what types of applications and data are allowed into the public cloud environment, and what types of applications and data must be inside firewalls in a private cloud environment due to regulatory and corporate compliance requirements. The framework should also allow organizations to understand how to share and optimize management and monitoring resources to ensure transparency and facilitate integration across all cloud environments.

Irfan Saif, who is in charge of the security and privacy operations of the technology, media and telecoms industries, believes it is important to determine a holistic strategy for any cloud computing platform that is implemented. Users must also be aware of the responsibilities they have to shoulder, especially with respect to regulatory compliance, security and risk management. Where is the line of responsibility? What specific requirements do you have? How to ensure that these requirements have been fully reflected in the contract?

"Make sure you have the means to go out and test these third-party solution providers, make sure they do the same as they say, and make sure they meet your requirements," Saif. Ultimately, the responsibility is on your side. After all, this is your data or data about your customer. ”