Liam Hogan

April 10, 2023

Our Direction to the Cloud with Microsoft Windows Azure

Rev 2.0 01102010 Copyright © Open Text Corporation. All rights reserved.

Why Cloud?

Cloud is a major focus within OpenText Supports rapid delivery of vertical solutions Opportunity to engage with out customers

Many customers expect “on-cloud” as an option

What’s driving customer demand?

Minimize infrastructure concerns Quick start-up (no hardware / software provisioning) –

all this is handled by the host. Low up-front cost Easier disaster recovery and storage management Elastic Computing (pay for what you need only when

you need it) Global Distribution, Geolocation and Cacheing

Process Design / Deployment

Azure Services Platform

BPM Designer

Our initial cloud offerings?

A SAAS platform delivering pre-packaged BPM solutions on Windows Azure

Operated by OpenText Initially Single Tenant Load Balanced / Redundant infrastructure

What might follow?

A PAAS environment for customers/partners to run up and manage in the Cloud (single tenant only)

Multi-Tenant (for shrink wrapped ‘low touch’ solutions with low cost of sale)

Automatic Elastic Computing support (driven by application instrumentation)

Business Challenges for ISV’s

New disruptive business model (ISV -> Service Provider) New operating model for Customer Support (Operations) SAAS -> PAAS (if a business case can be made to

support the investment required) Billing (how to charge customers to cover variable costs

and still be competitive) Defining a Service Level Agreement (which aggregates

SLA’s from the services you rely upon)

Cloud Disadvantages

Perceived lack of control of application environment – particularly where sensitive data (health, banking) is concerned.

Someone else worries about OS patches, but application testing is still our responsibility.

Higher Costs Internet Latency Application adaptations are required

Microsoft Azure

Azure components we use Compute: Single Role Type – Web Role Storage: Azure Blob Storage – Installation and Process Attachments SQL Azure: BPM System, SBW System, BPM Process Data

Maximising ROI

Optimise Performance – to minimise the number of Azure instances needed

Add support for auto scaling (when system detects it is under load)

Operate in Multi-Tenant mode (if possible) Minimise chattiness between components Understand the characteristics of your application (and

charges incurred) – e.g data storage requirements.

Microsoft’s Pricing Calculator

Sweet Spot for Cloud Applications

Off the shelf ‘light touch’ software applications requiring little or no modification (with low cost of sale)

Self-contained applications with limited (or no) dependence on on-premise data / systems

Self-contained enterprise applications supporting large numbers of distributed users

Moving MBPM onto Azure

Automated cloud application deployment (for Development Purposes) from build server

Scripts to auto deploy platform and provision new role into live environment using Azure Services Management API

Removed reliance on MS Distributed Transaction Co-ordinator (DTC) – any complex roll-back of distributed transactions must be written in custom code.

Changed storage of large images and documents from Database (SQL Server) storage to local BLOB storage

Abstract any application functions that require file system access to use Azure Storage.

Other Adaptations

Add support for service management and monitoring Add support for auto scaling (based on load, or based

on calendar events / marketing initiatives) Add multi-tenant capabilities (if your applications serves

as a platform and requires user isolation and data separation)

SQL Azure does not support CLR stored procedures (for good reason) – use standard (non .NET) stored procedures instead.

Management of configuration settings (Azure Config) – setting changes are rolled out without having to re-provision all role instances

Summary

Opportunities Opens new revenue streams Closer relationship with customers Competitive advantage

Challenges Technical Operational Business