Cloud Computing Online Spatial Delivery System

Question: Describe about the "Online Spatial Delivery System". Answer: Introduction Online Spatial Delivery System (OSDS) has to be migrated to a cloud provider through PaaS model. PaaS provides the platform and environment to build the applications upon the same ("What is PaaS?", 2016). Each and every entity plays a crucial role and a phased approach needs to be followed for achieving the best results out of them. The six components that would have a significant involvement are discussed further. Remote Administration Remote Administration perform the administration tasks and activities to be done from a location that is remote (cbigconsulting.com, 2016). The use of Remote Administration is however, discouraged owing to the shortcomings that it comes with. There are multiple tools that do not scale properly. It becomes tedious for the administrators to simultaneously work upon the network with varied speeds and that too in a secure manner. Multi-platform support is another issue that is seen with the implementation of Remote Administration in the architecture. Organizations make use of different operating systems such as Linux, Windows, iOS and many other and all of them need to be supported in an efficient manner. Mobile devices are also being used by most of the organizations and the OS of those devices need support too. Use of varied tools and devices with different platforms and operating systems is difficult to manage by the remote administrator. Regulatory requirements such as encryption, authentication and access controls also appear as an issue in the implementation of remote administration (sans.org, 2016). Resource Management Resource Management is the next in the list for successful implementation and migration of the services and applications on the cloud. There are multiple resources across various departments that are associated with OSDS. The key resources are as listed below. Business owners Database admin and team Operations head and team Development team Design team Network team Network admin Support and maintenance team DSI needs to develop strategies to efficiently mannage resources and other departments. The basic step in achieveing the same is to find answers to the following list of questions. Is there an already implemented resource tagging strategy in place? What is the internal resource management team that is associated with DSI and how does it link to the overall company model? What is the process that is used in the allocation of resources to a particular project or department? Is the metadata that is available with the company sufficient or further additions are required? (s3.amazonaws.com, 2016) There are a number of advantages for this component as: There is an automated and centralized repository where all the information and the resources and their management is contained ("Project Resource Management Benefits | Innotas", 2016) There is a transparency that is formed between the employee and the employer It becomes easier to manage the change along with the time sheets (Singh, 2013) A bridge is formed connecting the employees and the employer with the goals that have been set ("Human Resource Management (HRM) - duties, benefits", 2016). There is an improved resource utilization that leads to increased productivity and efficiency. SLA Management Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management is a contract that is signed between the service user and the service provider. In case of OSDS, the service user is DSI and the service provider is the cloud provider. Levels of SLA in SLA Management OSDS has its base as cloud computing. Shared access is the prime feature of the technology (Bose et al., 2011). The following factors play a crucial role in OSDS: The services that have been confirmed and have attained go-ahead between OSDS and the cloud provider The team that deals with supply chains and its management The assigned roles and designated responsibilities of each and every team member The role of internal partners in every service Every minute detail around the service such as description and cost High level flow chart depicting the major and critical factors Performance indicators (mitsm.de, 2016) Application Resilience Every application and service has a set of requirements and specification that have a higher priority and are critical for the same. There are High Availability (HA) requirements that are present in OSDS and it is necessary to fulfill these without any failures. It is suggested that a planned business strategy covering the below mentioned points should be set up for attaining best results: An application that is fault tolerant in nature which means that availability and reliability are maintained at all times Use of best practices and techniques Supreme measures for data storage Cloud architecture Data Storage and Backup Big Data tools and databases such as NoSQL can be used for efficienct storage and backup of the information associated with OSDS. NoSQL is the database that performs the Big Data Analytics with extreme ease. It provides rich visualization for creation of reports and documents that support the analytics results. It allows the flexible mode of exploration that is on the basis of various parameters such as time, geographical locations, revenues, quantities and many more. Predictive analysis with powerful and advanced algorithms such as classification, regression and exploration is also possible with the help of NoSQL (Pentaho, 2016). NoSQL consists of thousands of APIs as well. (Goes, J. 2016). Here are some of the examples of NoSQL databases: MongoDB It is an open source agile database that offers scalability, supreme performance and high availability. Elasticsearch It is the database that provides the much in demand RESTful web interface on a multitenant-capable full-text search engine. CouchDB It is a document storage database that is used to query the indexes through web browsers with the use of HTTP. MarkLogicServer It is an enterprise level database that provides a unified solution to all the analytics requirements. Terrastore It is an advanced database that promises consistency along with the scalability and supreme performance in the document and data storage and indexing (Big Data Made Simple - One source. Many perspectives., 2014). Disaster Recovery There are a number of risks that are associated with the cloud services and the measures need to be adapted such that the impact of harm in occurrence of such an event is minimum and the services are brough back to normal in a quick turnaround time. These are the measures that should be adopted to avoid the risks at the first place and recover from the same. Preventative These are the primary points of security that must be present in any organization and its architecture such as use of anti-virus, set up of firewalls and physical security measures such as guards at entry points and use if an identity check. Reactive These come in the picture when the event has already taken place. Detective Measures such as intrusion detection and motion detection fall in this category of countermeasures Administrative There are always a defined policy or a set of guidelines that is associated in the business strategy. These measures make sure that all the processes adhere to the same. Disaster Recovery (DR) in cloud computing is the method to have proper backup and recovery strategy in place which focuses upon management of data on the cloud. DR would allow the recovery process to be enabled in multiple locations (Kiblin, 2011). There are a number of strategies that have been developed in order to have a correct DR procedure (aws.amazon.com, 2016). Cloud for disaster recovery is a viable option for DSI both from the financial perspective and from the control perspective as well (Dix, 2016). Conclusions Opportunities and Risks OSDS is a collection of web services and application that is based on the PaaS model of cloud computing. In order to migrate OSDS to a cloud provider, there are six components that play a crucial role in deciding the success of the migration process. The first in the list is remote administration that does suffer from certain shortcoming such as inadequate multi-platform support. Resource management and SLA management are also significant to manage the asserts and agreement at the service level. Application resilience revolves around the High Availability (HA) requirements and there are also measures to correctly store and recover the data in case of a disaster. Cloud suffers from certain potential and probable risks as well that mainly revolve around data protection and information security. These risks include loss of data, accessing of the data by an unauthorized user, denial of services, attack of malicious software, spoofing, phishing and inadequate due diligence. Such risks possess a threat to the confidentiality, integrity and authneticty of the information, Use of authorizations measures along with proper access controls are mandatory to protect the data belonging to OSDS. The data associated is private and confidential in nature and the landing of the same in unauthorized hands could be extremely adverse for DSI. ("Risks of cloud computing | Queensland Government", 2016). References Bose, S., Pasala, A., Ramanujam A, D., Murthy, S. and Malaiyandisamy, G. (2011). SLA Management in Cloud Computing: A Service Provider's Perspective. Cloud Computing, pp.413-436. A deep dive into NoSQL: A complete list of NoSQL databases. (2014). Big Data Made Simple - One source. Many perspectives.. Human Resource Management (HRM) - duties, benefits. (2016). Referenceforbusiness.com. Retrieved 21 May 2016 Kiblin, T. (2011). How To Use Cloud Computing For Disaster Recovery. CRN. Retrieved 21 May 2016 mitsm.de,. (2016). Mitsm.de. Retrieved 21 May 2016 Pentaho and NoSQL Databases. (2016). Pentaho. Retrieved 21 May 2016.