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Cloud Software Development:Lower Costs, Improved Quality and Quicker Deployments

Presented by Green House Data

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G r e e n H o u s e D a t a3 0 4 P r o g r e s s C i r c l eC h e y e n n e , W Y 8 2 0 0 7

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Executive SummaryThis whitepaper explores how the convergence of cloud computing has transformed application lifecycles and details how organizations can use public, private, or hybrid clouds to shorten and simplify test and development cycles, deliver higher quality code, and ultimately accelerate time to market.

Points covered include:

• Ways cloud virtualization helps accommodate unpredictable workloads

• Quick deployment of applications• Use cases • Avoiding DevOps logjams• Impact of “self-service” clouds

AudienceThe information contained within this whitepaper is useful for development teams, PMO leaders, and IT managers who are concerned about providing critical infrastructure.

IntroductionThe convergence of cloud computing has vastly impacted the IT industry, from early Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings to the era where everything is offered as a Service (XaaS), and from prickly relations between application teams and admins to the rise of DevOps (see page 4 sidebar). Cloud computing has led to a fundamental shift in IT, with increased access to computing resources and the power to truly improve business agility for nearly every industry. Clouds can free companies from the burden of building, maintaining, and tearing down infrastructure so they

can focus on their core competencies. While IT roles are consolidating, workloads are moving to shared infrastructure.

In the software industry specifi cally, virtualization and now virtualization in the cloud helps accommodate unpredictable workloads, manage user traffi c spikes, and provide fl exibility in environments where resources are increasingly consolidated, or even allocated for internal use. The ability to self-provision development and testing environments has helped teams get started on application builds without having to wait for resources to be deployed in the data center. New highly virtualized environments also reduce capital costs while boosting resource utilization. As a result, software is completed sooner, tested more vigorously, and pushed to market more easily.

Use CasesShorten & Improve Development Cycles

The ability to self-provision development and testing environments (which can fall under the rubric of DevOps) helps teams start building out applications without waiting for hardware to show up in the data center, nor supplemental software deployed. In addition, while virtualization changed the conversation in many organizations regarding what type of server to buy for specifi c applications, cloud hosting simplifi ed this even further by dissolving the need to purchase servers at all1. 1. http://devops.com/2013/02/11/defi ning-the-dev-and-the-ops-roles-in-devops/, accessed April 12, 2013

C l o u d i s c u r i n g t h e l a c k o f r e s p o n s i v e n e s s a n d e c o n o m i c f l e x i b i l i t y t h a t a i l s o n - p r e m i s e s I T.

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A s d e m a n d i n c r e a s e s , o r g a n i z a t i o n s c a n e i t h e r p r o v i s i o n i n - h o u s e , a l a r g e i n c r e m e n t a l i n v e s t m e n t , o r u s e c l o u d r e s o u r c e s t o s c a l e e l a s t i c a l l y. T h e r e d p o r t i o n r e p r e s e n t s t h e m o n e y l o s t w h e n r e s o u r c e s c a n n o t b e s c a l e d f o r s u d d e n s p i k e s i n d e m a n d .

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One note of caution: Gartner analysts do warn that despite its benefi ts, virtual data centers are still maturing in a rapidly evolving market. Service providers have unique offerings, and sourcing of services must be done with care. Support, security, and network availability are all important considerations2.

When developers, architects, and designers have the ability to collaborate with their peers and stakeholders, application code quality is improved and these truly scalable resources are not constrained by the traditional boundaries of server hardware. Individual VMs can be pre-confi gured with different operating systems, development tools and testing environments, allowing a standard environment to be modifi ed by various teams according to anticipated development or testing needs. For customer-facing or other external applications, the ability to replicate client systems through virtualization will save project management offi ces (PMO) and QA teams headaches, whether or not they are in the lifecycle of a cloud-aware application. Testing quality is vastly improved with unlimited environments that can be tested according to real-world stresses.

Reduce Cost

The ability to leverage economies of scale in cloud clusters within third party data centers is useful for IT budgets already straining under pressure. Beyond simply shifting expenses from a CapEx to OpEx model, avoiding hardware purchases altogether removes the burden of managing physical infrastructure and enables modular expansion.

Just as subscription software has disrupted traditional licensing—and put enterprise apps into the hands of

2. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure, October 2012

organizations who might not otherwise have budget—cloud infrastructure pay-as-you-go (PAYG) models allow resource billing to be driven by true consumption, rather than clunky estimates.

As projects spin up, or are torn down, those organizations developing in the cloud should not experience impact to other projects, even when resources spike. However, it is extremely important to fi nd a cloud model that accommodates application release cycles in terms of resource availability.

O n e o f t h e t r u e “ k i l l e r ” u s e c a s e s f o r c l o u d c o m p u t i n g i s a p p d e v a n d t e s t . T h e p a y b a c k f r o m u s i n g p u b l i c c l o u d - b a s e d a s s e t s t o b u i l d , t e s t , a n d d e p l o y a p p l i c a t i o n s i s a l r e a d y c o m p e l l i n g , b u t i t w i l l b e c o m e i m -m e n s e i n t h e n e a r f u t u r e .

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Importance of Reasons to Switch to Cloud Computing (% who rated “Critical/Very Important”)

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Accelerate Time to Market

In Cisco’s 2012 Global Cloud Networking Survey, IT decision makers said that given a choice of moving only one application to the cloud, they’d start with storage and then move to ERP. Surprisingly, productivity and collaboration applications (like email) came last. Yet, in the same survey, only 5% of IT decision makers were able to migrate at least half of their total applications to the cloud. Though the number is expected to signifi cantly rise, it points to some of the challenges faced by IT and underscores why the cloud has become key for software development organizations who need to move quickly.

Standalone cloud environments provide options for all enterprises, even those who have not formally moved to the cloud—or who do not intend to. Further, hybrid environments can bridge the space between internal environments and external environments. High-level support means development and test cycles are not slowed down by technical problems that may be assigned lower priorities because of an internal designation.

Perhaps most important is the ability to quickly get applications into production and to scale those applications as required. The nature of cloud-based development allows pre-confi gured VMs to easily be migrated to public environments. Resources can be scaled up for spikes in demand swiftly and at low

cost. As more and more applications are developed cloud-native, or traditional on-prem deployments are transitioned into SaaS offerings, the expectation that development teams will be able respond quickly to both internal and external customers will only increase.

Selection CriteriaThe savvy software development team should have all of the above considerations in mind when choosing a cloud service provider. While a “self-service” cloud is advantageous in terms of autonomy, service and support are vital. Many large scale public cloud

… [ O ] p t i o n a l i t e m s t h a t a r e o f t e n b u n d l e d w i t h c o m p e t i t i v e o f f e r i n g s , i n c l u d i n g e n t e r p r i s e - g r a d e s u p -p o r t [ m e a n ] p r o s p e c t i v e c u s t o m e r s s h o u l d b e c a r e f u l t o m o d e l t h e c o s t s a c c u r a t e l y, e s p e c i a l l y n e t w o r k - r e l a t -e d c h a r g e s , t o n o r m a l i z e c o m p a r a -t i v e c o s t s b a s e d o n a c t u a l c o m p u t e p e r f o r m a n c e , a n d t o c o m p a r e t h e c o s t s o f r e s e r v e d a n d u n r e s e r v e d c a p a c i t y. ”

G a r t n e r M a g i c Q u a d r a n tf o r C l o u d I n f r a s t r u c t u r e , O c t o b e r 2 0 1 2

“ What is DevOps?

DevOps was coined from “development” and “operations”.

“ D e v O p s i s e v o l v i n g i n t o l e t t i n g t h e o p e r a t i o n s t e a m f o c u s o n t h e i n f r a s t r u c t u r e a n d I T p o l i -c i e s w h i l e e m p o w e r i n g t h e d e -v e l o p e r s t o e x e r c i s e t r e m e n d o u s o w n e r s h i p f r o m t h e O S l e v e l a n d u p . W i t h a s o l i d i n f r a s t r u c t u r e d e v e l o p e r s c a n o w n t h e a p p l i -c a t i o n s t a c k , b u i l d i t , d e p l o y i t , a n d c o v e r m u c h i f n o t a l l o f i t s s u p p o r t . T h i s e n a b l e s d e v e l o p -m e n t t e a m s t o b e m o r e s e l f - s e r -v i c e a n d i n d e p e n d e n t o f a b u s y c e n t r a l i z e d o p e r a t i o n s t e a m . D e v O p s e n a b l e s m o r e a g i l i t y, b e t t e r e f f i c i e n c y, a n d u l t i m a t e l y a h i g h e r l e v e l o f s e r v i c e t o t h e i r c u s t o m e r s . ”

M a t t W a t s o n , C E O , S t a c k i f yw w w. d e v o p s . c o m

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providers offer 24/7 support—at a price. Monthly fees for support of $400 or more are not unheard of and must be factored into the ultimate value proposition.

Service Level Agreements are another item with a large impact on cloud subscribers. SLAs guarantee a certain degree of uptime (generally 99%), and many also include power and network clauses as well. Some large cloud providers require multiple availability zones (AZs) to be compromised before an SLA takes effect; customers must replicate their environments across many AZs in order to maintain coverage.

Proprietary software stacks or vendor lock-in are real concerns for any organization focused on agility. VMware and other platforms can interface through cloud-based services like Cloud Foundry, which also offers robust development tools. OVF images, developed to liaison between clouds, can also be implemented in order to move apps between providers.

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In

Software developers have major concerns when it comes to choosing a cloud provider, and one of the largest is vendor lock-in. Because of the variety of virtualization platforms, very few standards used to exist. Recently, the industry has seen a push to standardize platforms to some extent. Here are two ways to move environments between providers:

OVF ImageThe Open Virtualization Format is an open standard for packaging and distributing software to run on virtual machines. It is not locked into a particular hypervisor or processor type. OVF was developed by a group of virtualization developers and is currently supported by VirtualBox, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, VMware, IBM SmartCloud, OpenNode Platform, Oracle VM, rPath and SUSE Studio.

Cloud FoundryCloud Foundry is an application Platform as a Service (PaaS) offered both through a web portal and as a download. It is an open-source project developed by VMware, allowing developers to deploy and scale applications in seconds to the cloud provider of their choice.

Cloud Foundry includes a myriad of pre-confi gured tools and support including Spring Java, Rails and Sinatra for Ruby, Node.js, Scala, PHP, Python, .NET, MySQL, MongoDB, and more. Cloud Foundry is a worthwhile automation engine for application deployment and lifecyle management.

Enterprise Cloud Adoption: Objective Fullfi llment

We met our objectives for cost savings

AGREE 64%

31%

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14%24% 27%

82%71% 67%

NEUTRAL

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We met our objectives for fl exible infrastructure

We met our objectives for quicker time to market

We met our objectives for higher satisfaction of business units

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For businesses dealing with sensitive customer data, like ecommerce applications or healthcare databases, security and compliance becomes another issue. Requirements and audits like HIPAA, SSAE and PCI can be out of reach for small to medium sized application developers, making an already compliant cloud very attractive.

SummaryOf course, other factors impact the choice of cloud providers as well. Location affects the likelihood of natural disaster-related outages as well as latency and network availability. Pricing has to be justifi ed. But for software developers, the value of cloud providers should be evaluated based on their platform, support levels, SLA, and resource availability. Secondary considerations like compliance or security requirements, bonus services or pre-installed development tools will make the decision easier depending on the anticipated development needs.

Once a provider is chosen, development teams are sure to experience equipment cost savings, more agile development and testing, and a higher quality end product.

A b o u t G r e e n H o u s e D a t a - G r e e n H o u s e D a t a p r o v i d e s V M w a r e p o w e r e d c l o u d h o s t i n g a n d c o l o c a t i o n b a c k e d b y 2 4 / 7 l i v e s u p p o r t . H e a d q u a r t e r e d i n C h e y e n n e , W y o m i n g , t h e c o m p a n y h a s d a t a c e n t e r s i n C h e y e n n e , P o r t l a n d , O R , a n d N e w a r k , N J . T h e f a c i l i t i e s a r e H I PA A a n d S S A E 1 6 Ty p e I I c o m p l i a n t , p o w e r e d e n t i r e l y b y w i n d a n d s o l a r p o w e r , a n d d e s i g n e d t o b e 4 0 % m o r e e n e r g y e f f i c i e n t t h a n c o m p a r a b l y s i z e d d a t a c e n t e r s .

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T h a t ’s o n e o f t h e r e a s o n s w h y w e l o v e G r e e n H o u s e D a t a . T h e s u p p o r t l e v e l - w e c a n a l w a y s r e a c h s o m e b o d y, a n d t h a t p e r s o n u s u a l l y c a n r e s o l v e t h e p r o b l e m r i g h t a w a y.

M a t t J a f f e , C o - F o u n d e r3 0 3 S o f t w a r e

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