Author Archives: Tejinder Rai

From Cloud to Cloud: WinWire Technologies

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I’ve always wondered how many organizations have considered moving to the cloud, moved to the cloud and back again but I’m still researching to find the right numbers. Out of personal interest I came across a company which moved from one cloud service provider to another. I recently came across a case study where WinWire Technologies had moved from Google Apps to the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. There are a number of questions raised when this type of migration occurs, but usually these could just lead down to a few significant and important areas:

  • Integration Issues
  • Performance Issues
  • Service Outage problems
  • Cost
  • Maturity of the service providers solution
  • Contractual Issues
  • Regulations
  • Data Corruption

After reading the case study it was very clear that one of the main issues was integration. Specifically, WinWire wanted integration with Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint which unfortunately was an issue with utilizing Google Apps. I was surprised to read the fact that they had some difficulty with formatting when moving documents Microsoft Office Applications and SharePoint to GMail, but this would be a useful test during a pilot of the solution.

The case study can be reviewed here

I will be writing more on considerations a business should take when moving to the cloud in future posts.

Cloud Computing, The Basics

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When it comes to ‘ Cloud Computing’ there are a few acronyms which are referenced in most articles which I will explain in my first official blog about cloud computing basics. The main acronyms are described below.

SaaS (Software as a Service): A Service provided by a vendor which is typcially provided as a packaged solution to multiple customers. The service is usually provided, but not limited to, through a web browser. The vendor provides the service over the internet and is managed and maintained by the vendor. The customer does not need to worry about upgrades, patching and the security architecture of the service. Examples of SaaS include Facebook, Microsoft Online and Google Apps. SaaS has been around for a number of years.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): Infrastructure as a Service is a service model where a company would outsource the servers, network and storage to a service provider. All the hardware is owned and managed by the service provider and the resources are provided over the internet. The service provider can also provide the operating system, messaging and databases. The company obtaining the services would usually pay on a transaction or per use basis. Examples of IaaS include Amazon Web Services AWS), Microsoft Hyper-V Private Cloud, Apples iWork.com and IBM’s Blue cloud services. Utilizing IaaS effectively allows the architecture of a dynamic datacenter which can be flexible to a organizations requirements.

PaaS (Platform as a Service): Platform as a Service is a architecture framwork that allows a complete development platform to build and assemble solutions, similar to SaaS, but with development tools for customization. The underlying Operating System and Hardware is still provided by the service provider. PaaS offers the ability to run full rich applications over the internet offered as a utility computing. The model is still usually provided on a pay per use or on a subscription basis. Rich internet applications can be developed by businesses utilizing a rhobust platform with faster application delivery times. PaaS includes modules which can be integrated to build the applications necessary for the business. Examples of PaaS include Microsoft Azure, Salesforce.com, Rollbase, Google App Engine and BungeeConnect.

Cloudstream An integration template which provides the required nuts and bolts to secure, provide governance and manage the communication between two services at the Application Programming Interface (API). The integration can be enterprise to cloud and cloud to cloud. The cloudstream captures configuration information for cloud brokers and packages the configuration information to connect the endpoints together. CloudStream will become the standard for integration across the cloud and enterprise. For on premise systems, appliances/software solutions can help with cloud integration such as the  Vordel Cloud Service Broker, Forum Sentry SOA Security Gateway .Layer 7 CloudSpan Products, Ping Federate Connectors and Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services 2.0.

SharePoint Server 2010 Service Applications

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The architecture in SharePoint 2010 has completely changed from its predecessor, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). In the previous version of SharePoint a Shared Services Provider (SSP) was used to provide services for a group of applications which were associated to a SSP. These included the following services:

  • Office SharePoint Server Search: Necessary to crawl web applications in order to index content into a single index.
  • Excel Services: Used to provide access to Excel workbooks in trusted data connection libraries
  • My Sites: Provide a method for web applications to leverage the mysite functionality
  • Usage Data: A Central location to store site usage data
  • Business Data Catalog: A schema for stored business data

A web application in this case would only be associated with one SSP.

In SharePoint Server 2010 the architecture has been redesigned to be far more flexible and scalable. The ‘Service Applications’ are now what make up the above Shared Services with some additional services included in the new version. These are as follows:

 (Read the full TechNet article here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc560988.aspx)

Access Services Lets users view, edit, and interact with Access 2010 databases in a Web browser.
Business Data Connectivity service Gives access to line-of-business data systems.
Excel Services Application Lets users view and interact withExcel 2010 files in a Web browser.
Managed Metadata service Manages taxonomy hierarchies, keywords and social tagging infrastructure, and publish content types across site collections.
PerformancePoint Service Application Provides the capabilities of PerformancePoint.
Search service Crawls content, produces index partitions, and serves search queries.
Secure Store Service Provides single sign-on authentication to access multiple applications or services.
State service Provides temporary storage of user session data for SharePoint Server components.
Usage and Health Data Collection service Collects farm wide usage and health data, and provides the ability to view various usage and health reports.
User Profile service Adds support for My Site Web sites, profile pages, social tagging and other social computing features.
Visio Graphics Service Lets users view and refresh published Visio 2010 diagrams in a Web browser.
Web Analytics service Provides Web service interfaces.
Word Automation Services Performs automated bulk document conversions.
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service Provides multi-tenant functionality for service applications. Tracks subscription IDs and settings for services that are deployed in partitioned mode. Deployed through Windows PowerShell only.

 

The farm services are now far more extensible and scalable and can be shared with other farms via service application proxies.

I’ll be writing more about service applications in future posts.

Cloud Computing Contracts

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I recently came across this article which includes a link to a research paper funded by Microsoft. The research paper specifically reviewed several Cloud vendors T&C’s to identify the legal impact to organizations. I highly recommend reading the post and at least the conclusion of the research paper to understand the issues which could potenitally affect your business.

Cloud Computing Journal article: http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1629419

Direct link to the research paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1662374