Five Considerations When Evaluating Cloud Computing Architectures

An excellent starting point
for an organization looking
at cloud computing
platforms is to examine their
IT architectures. Only by
aligning the architecture - compute, network, data
center, power and storage
resources - with applications
can a company be on the
path to achieve the reliability
and performance it requires within a cloud environment. In cloud computing, true
protection is an outcome of
the right architecture for the
right application.
Organizations need to fully
understand their individual application requirements
and, if using a cloud
platform, the corresponding
cloud architecture. With that
knowledge, they can make
informed decisions about what cloud platform best
meets the reliability and
performance requirements
of their specific applications. Here are five considerations
for companies looking at
cloud computing
architectures. Availability. Not all
applications are created
equal, nor are all cloud
platforms the same.
Organizations need to tier
their applications, identifying which
applications need to be
highly available, which can
accept downtime and how
much downtime is
acceptable. They need to understand the business risk
associated with a lack of
availability of their data. For
those applications that need
to be highly available,
businesses should consider enterprise-class technologies
that have been rigorously
tested versus looking at
building something
internally. It's also
important to look at multi- site solutions and disaster
recovery/business continuity
planning. For most
businesses, this means
working with a service
provider or consultant because they usually have
access to greater levels of
expertise and provide these
services as their core
business. Security. Security is still the
primary concern for
businesses regarding the
cloud. Concerns include the
loss of control of their
sensitive data, the risks associated with a multi-
tenant environment, and
how to address standards and
compliance. Organizations
need to know how a shared,
multi-tenant environment is segmented to prevent
customer overlap. How is the
solution architected and is
the service provider's cloud
infrastructure - network,
virtualization and storage platforms - secure? Manageability. Businesses
need to understand what they
are accountable for versus
what they expect from a
service provider. Most public
cloud vendors do not provide administrative support.
Organizations need to either
have the technical expertise
in-house to design the right
solution or seek the services
of an outside provider. There should be an understanding
of what level of
management their
applications require and have
an identified change
management process. Performance. As with a more
traditional hosting model,
it's important to understand
workload demands on the
infrastructure. Companies
also need to understand what the bottlenecks are and how
the cloud architecture they
have or are evaluating can
meet those needs.
Organizations should
perform their own testing to understand how a cloud
environment affects
compute, storage and
network resources. Compliance. Organizations
need to understand where
their data will reside as well
as who will interact with it
and how. They need to
understand which areas of compliance the service
provider controls and how to
audit against the standards
and regulations to which
they need to adhere. Janel Ryan is a Solutions
Marketing Manager, Product
Marketing at SunGard
Availability Services