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Cloud-enable application through reference architectures

Porting existing applications onto various cloud resources, through using reference architectures where applicable

Consulting related to Cloud-based Platform Software Cloudification

Provided by SZTAKI - Institute for Computer Science and Control 2 years, 8 months ago (last modified 2 years, 8 months ago); viewed 1191 times and licensed 0 times

Scope:

The success of new industry innovation is increasingly dependent on the efficient storage and processing of copious amounts of data originating from previous experiences, measurements, and observations. On-premise storing and processing usually meets a bottleneck with the increasing demand, both in terms of hardware and staff terms. Instead of processing locally, cloud systems can facilitate a company's innovation intention by providing high-capacity hardware infrastructures and in some cases special software environments necessary for the process. Leveraging the applied scalability and virtualization technologies offered, clouds can serve various and constantly changing user demands, resulting in significant economic savings.

However, the large number of services offered by Cloud providers makes moving an existing innovation project onto cloud systems a difficult task. The consultancy service offered by SZTAKI helps companies to find the best approach and solution for cloudifying their existing applications.

Approach:

Migrating an existing innovation application onto the cloud is not a straightforward task. SZTAKI's approach to supporting interested companies follows these steps:

  • Learn about the application: it is necessary to get an overview about the application's characteristics, including the required execution environment, input data set availability, expected output data set features, and computing requirements. An application may depend on various additional services as well.
  • Evaluate feasible services: based on the profile of the application, the possible target cloud provider(s) and their services are described in detail. Multiple possible high-level implementation are presented whenever possible, so the company has the possibility to choose a solution which fits its needs the most. Innovation often requires complex, large-scale platforms based on the coordinated operation of multiple components. SZTAKI provides customisable, reliable and scalable templates, best-practices, called as Reference Architectures. These can be safely adapted as the body or as building blocks of a possible implementation.
  • Cloud-enabled application: the innovation application is migrated onto the cloud, deployed as a ready-to-use service (Software-As-A-Service), so users of the innovation application can start using it with additional data sets as well.

Outcome:

By the end of the process, the cloudified application will be available for a broader user community, and should have increased storage and computing capacity available for running innovation tasks.

As such, the company's innovation package or software can scale beyond its former setting, and will have the potential to reach additional user communities and wider audience.

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Phases
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Survey application characteistics

In this initial project phase, SZTAKI tries to learn as much about the application as possible. This includes, but is not limited to the following main topics:

  • system requirements: what type of operating system(s) is the application using, what are its memory and CPU requirements, are there any special hardware requirements?
  • data characteristics: applications usually rely on some sort of input data (simple files, data sets from database, data coming from message queues), and produce output data as well.
  • special dependencies: it can happen, that the application relies on special services, or additional components, this needs to discussed.

As the outcome, SZTAKI should have a clear picture about all the main characteristics of the application. A reproducible documentation should be ready, based on which the porting team can reproduce an execution of the application.

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Collect possible implementation approaches

The goal of this phase is to present a set of possible implementation approaches for the customer based on the collected application characteristics and requirements.

Each implementation approach should include the following items:

  • High-level architecture: the overview of the solution, highlighting the necessary services, and the deployment plans
  • Description of services used: this point should present details on how the application integrates into the architecture, what interactions happen between the different components, etc.
  • Cost estimate: this point should detail the expenses of the implementation, including fixed and variable costs as well.

The presented solutions should enable the client to choose an implementation approach which fits the most its requirements.

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Cloudify application

Based on the selected implementation, SZTAKI will perform the cloud-based implementation of the application, or will give support to the company to do so.

Once the cloudification is ready, the application should be usable with increased capacity, and should be available for a broader user base then earlier.