Migration to Cloud Computing: a Sample Survey Based on a Research in Progress on the Investigation of Standard Based Interoperability Protocols

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1 Migration to Cloud Computing: a Sample Survey Based on a Research in Progress on the Investigation of Standard Based Interoperability Protocols for the Convergence of Cloud Computing, Servcie Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Architecture Susan Sutherland and Girija Chetty Susan.Sutherland@canberra.edu.au Abstract This paper highlights the results of the survey undertaken within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Australia of the issues relating to the migration to cloud computing. The sample survey was administered on the readers of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) members within the ACT and who are also in the strategic management positions to either influence their respective Information Communications and Technology (ICT) strategies and/or have the decision making powers to deploy cloud computing. The paper is based on a research in progress on the investigation of standard based interoperability protocols for the convergence of cloud computing, service oriented architecture (SOA) and enterprise architecture (EA). Keywords: Cloud Computing, Standard based Protocols, Interoperability, Issues with Migration to Cloud Computing, SOA and EA 1. Introduction This research report presents the results of the survey to gauge the extent to which enterprises, large, medium and small both public and private sectors are strategically engaging in or plan to deploy cloud computing within their respective enterprises. This paper also highlights the background research in progress on the convergence of the cloud computing, SOA and EA. Furthermore it states the purpose and the population of the survey; and discusses the results of the data collected via the survey and draws inferences from the survey responses. 2. Motivation The key motivating factor for this survey was to establish at least in the immediate geographical surrounds whether there was sufficient impetus in migrating to cloud computing. Furthermore, as an emerging ICT trend, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) views cloud computing becoming both a business and an ICT challenge if not managed by enterprises. In its strategic direction paper, AGIMO [1] provides a high level direction for cloud based implementations, emphasising the benefits of using cloud and supports its deployment in the federal government. Such benefits include scalability, flexibility, availability, and productivity. 3. Research in Progress: Standard based Interoperability Protocols for the Convergence of Cloud Computing, SOA and EA. This section of the paper places the survey in the context of the research in progress and justifies for such a survey. In order to establish the significance of the research in progress on standard based interoperability protocols for the convergence of cloud computing, SOA and EA, the authors undertook a survey to check the oraganisaitonal readiness and the uptake of cloud computing within the ACT, Australia. As a preliminary study, the authors provide an overview of the current state of art of the three areas of convergence of interoperability. This section of the paper also establishes that non dynamic interoperability exists between EA and SOA. Furthermore it establishes that in theory there is interoperation between SOA and CC. It goes on to articulate that there is a need for a research study on the convergence of cloud computing, SOA and EA as an original piece of research. International Journal of Information Processing and Management(IJIPM) Volume 5, Number 1, February

2 3.1. Overview of Cloud Computing Cloud computing is an emerging technology and has been classed as a disruptive technology similar to that of the emergence of the Internet in the enterprises. As such, to understand the implications of this paradigm shift, it requires the same amount of diligence by the users and cloud service providers as when Internet services were launched to make an appropriate level of changes in the areas of transition, service level agreements; and deployment of cloud computing. Cloud computing is still in its early stages of development and as such has tended to be based on vendor specific technology solutions such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM. There is no doubt cloud computing is a large-scale distributed computing ever witnessed before and thus is bound to disrupt businesses at their core. For this reason enterprises need to understand the concept of cloud computing so as to better prepare the businesses in the areas of: managing risks, return on investments, service level agreements; and transition to the paradigm. Cloud computing is a scalable computing model that delivers a service over a network as opposed to a product. The industry literature suggests that it is an extension of the services provided via virtualisation and grid computing infrastructure along with the use of other enabling technologies such as SOA that will contribute to the business as usual activities within an enterprise. It is the use of enabling technology such as SOA that will be leveraged by the enterprises where enterprises using SOA will need to incorporate cloud computing and SOA into their existing and new enterprise ICT architecture Concepts of cloud computing, enterprise architecture and service oriented architecture Service Oriented Architecture SOA is a method of design, deployment, and the management of both applications and the software on the infrastructure where all software is organized into business services that are accessible and executable and where service interfaces are based on public standards for interoperability [2]. SOA is also a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable tasks or services. The key technical concepts of SOA are: services, interoperability, and loose coupling. For the purpose of this paper, the authors define SOA as a set of predefined services that are held in a repository and that can be accessed dynamically when required via the use of web services technology. These services can also be discovered even if and when calls for such services are not clearly defined. These services are built on the specific procedures, policies and framework. The services are based on protocols and can be discovered and published and are independent of platform in a non-coupling manner. The following protocols are commonly used in a SOA environment: Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration, UDDI. The UDDI defines the publication and discovery of web service implementations; the Web Services Description Language, WSDL, is an XML-based language that defines Web Services; SOAP is the Service Oriented Architecture Protocol. It is a key SOA in which a network node (the client) sends a request to another node (the server); 51

3 the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol or LDAP is protocol for querying and modifying directory services; and extract, transform, and load, ETL, is a process of moving data from an older system and loading it into a SOA application [3]. The figure below (figure 1) illustrates how these services can be dynamically called from the repository of services: Figure1. Concept of Service Oriented Architecture Enterprise Architecture Enterprise architecture is the blueprint for the organisational ICT road map. It forms a core and significant part of the ICT strategic plan which is unpinned by the respective corporate business plan. Enterprises generally use either vendor specific technology architecture such as Microsoft s application architecture and or an architecture framework such as the Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) or Zachman [4]. There are two key enterprise frameworks, namely Zachman and TOGAF frameworks. The Zachman frameworks focuses on the process of what, how, where, who, when and why. It also includes such models as business, system, technology. TOGAF) is a framework using a detailed method and a set of supporting tools for developing enterprise architecture. The Open Group describes itself as a vendor neutral and technology-neutral consortium, whose vision of Boundary will enable access to integrated information, within and among enterprises, based on open standards and global interoperability. TOGAF is a freely available framework, architectural development methodology and tool set for creating a number of architectural solutions. The key parts of an EA include information architecture, infrastructure architecture, applications architecture, and governance including management practices. SOA, Virturalisation and Grid are the major trends in ICT architecture. Cloud computing is not an architectural trend but such a deployment has drawn attention by enterprise architects to ensure that cloud computing aligns with any given enterprise architecture Cloud Computing There are various definitions articulated by experts of cloud computing. For the purpose of this paper, a definition of cloud computing has been adopted from NTIS and documented by Mell and Grance [5] as per below: Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models. The five base characteristics of cloud computing are: on demand, broad network access, 52

4 resource pooling, rapid elasticity; and Measured service NIST identifies three of the key cloud computing services as Saas, Paas, and Iaas. These services are illustrated in the figure below along with their respective activities: Figure 2. A generic model of cloud computing The four deployment models of cloud computing as identified by NIST are: private Cloud, community Cloud, public Cloud; and Hybrid Cloud Challenges of the Deployment of Cloud Computing The key challenges for the vendors will be to make their cloud computing service more interoperable with their respective partner cloud computing products and services so that a user can be selective with her/his choice of the services across multiple service providers. Also the service level agreements between a vendor and a user will be a challenge as much as the challenge of deploying a sound service level agreement among the vendors. For the enterprises the challenges will be vast and varied. Firstly the enterprises will require a mindset change from computing being a product to a cloud computing as a service. Other challenges that will need to be addressed are: billing, security, compliance, significant change to the role of the IT project managers, IT support and downtime, understanding the complexity of cloud computing infrastructure; and complex nature of setting up management services such as backup and recovery and contingency plan. 53

5 For the research community there are a number of areas of research with the shift to the cloud computing paradigm. Some of these are: aligning business to cloud computing; deployment of the kind of enterprise cloud private or public; service level agreements; data security and storage; migration of the legacy systems to a cloud computing environment; and Interoperability between and among EA, CC and enabling technologies such as SOA. Literature reviewed indicate a number of challenges to those enterprises that uptake cloud computing deployment. Wyld [6] has outlined the following challenges which will be experienced by the USA federal government in deploying cloud computing: scalability, reliability, security of data, interoperability, review of procurement practices, resolving certain political and legal issues, regulating cloud market, redefining roles of the IT Workforce, assessment of ROI (return on investment) of cloud computing; and setting up of a government cloud coordinator agency. It is the challenge of interoperability that this research paper examines in a three dimensional interoperability of CC, SOA and EA Interoperability Architecture Between Service Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Government agencies tend to use architecture framework as a backbone of their ICT implementations as such framework lends itself to unpinning the enterprise ICT strategic plans which in turn is driven by a whole of government enterprise policies, governance and legislative requirements. Such enterprises have also used SOA to drive their business processes and business engineering processes. At the base line, a number of business processes are collated to form business architecture. Large and complex enterprises have a number of business processes which in turn run a number of common services across these business processes. As for example, staff details are captured in the following processes: HR process, finance process, buildings/locations process; and user provisioning process. Staff details are clearly a common service across various business processes and can be set up and reused multiple times for different instances. For this reason enabling technologies such as SOA can be used to make dynamic calls for the services that are required for processing a number of different business processes where common services permeate across the enterprises. Creating a dynamic interoperability between SOA and EA is fundamental to the authors research in progress Interoperability Between Cloud Computing and Service Oriented Architecture Wei and Blake confirm that the there is an overlap of services between service oriented architecture and cloud computing. As such, the challenges for one could be leveraged as an opportunity for the other. Wei and Blake s research also argues the application of uniform standards to achieve 54

6 interoperability between cloud and SOA. Tang [7] documents a view of cloud services within the framework of SOA. This is a significant research work but needs further testing. With the emergence of cloud computing, researchers are finding a place for SOA in the transition of existing applications to cloud computing. This no doubt will be leveraged by the technologies that emerged as part of the web 2.0 technologies, especially those that had been based on SOAP. SOAP is an XML based open source message transport protocol - simple object access protocol. The enabling technologies such as virtualisation at the operating systems and infrastructure level could be also leveraged in the delivery of services using SOA. At a conceptual level, services will need to be identified and created in SOA. The aim of using SOA is to create a service once and use it multiple times for a variety of processing. The created service in SOA dynamically makes a call to the cloud computing services such that the processing occurs. Examples of calls for the cloud services can be found below: access software Saas, use disk space Iaas, and access to OS for administration - Paas There are standards and technologies that will enable this operation between SOA and cloud computing but this needs to be tested. However, there is a lack of research in the space of interoperation of enterprise architecture and the architecture technology such as SOA. Therefore when linking EA to CC, the enabling technology such as service oriented architecture is deemed necessary to providing an end solution to creating a convergence of interoperability of the SOA, EA and CC. 4. Methodology for the Survey In order to create the survey questionnaire, a literature research on cloud computing was undertaken. This was followed by a further review of industry literature to ascertain the impetus given to cloud computing by the private sector. Dialogues with some of the senior staff of quasi private and public sectors were also held. With this as the background information, the questionnaire was designed Questionnaire The following questions were developed specifically for the purpose of this survey: 1. Does your ICT strategic plan include a migration to Cloud Computing? (Yes, No) 2. If you are planning to migrate to Cloud Computing, what is your time frame for this migration? (1 Year, 18 Months, 3 Years, 5 Years) 3. If your Enterprise were to migrate to Cloud Computing, which of the following will it give impetus to in the first instance? (Infrastructure, Applications or Collaborations). 4. Enterprises that migrate to cloud computing tend to do on a service by service basis. In your enterprise, which of the services is most likely to get migrated to cloud computing? (HR Service Financial Services, Resource Planning, Collaborations and Desktop Service, and A Specific Business Service) 5. Which of the following Business Services if any is of your interest to your enterprise if planning to migrate to Cloud Computing? (Online Payment services, Medical Services, Online Travel, Other, None) 6. If your Enterprise has plans to migrate to Cloud Computing, how important is the incorporation of Cloud Computing into the Enterprise Architecture? (Very Important, Not Important, Not Sure). 55

7 7. If migrating to Cloud Computing, does your Enterprise believe that interoperation of Cloud Computing into its existing Enterprise Architecture is an issue?( Interoperability will be an issue, Interoperability will not be an issue, Not sure about the stance on interoperability). 8. If planning to migrate to Cloud Computing, does your enterprise see interoperability of convergence of Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture and enabling technologies such as SOA a challenge?( Yes,No,Don t know) 9. Which of the following management and planning issues are of your concern if you were and are migrating to Cloud Computing? (SLA, Data, Security, Risk Management). 10. In relation to SLA (Service Level Agreement), if migrating to cloud Computing, would your Enterprise: (Extend the existing SLA with your infrastructure and networks vendor, Set up new SLA based on the specific service provided by a Cloud Computing vendor, Don t know) 11. Which would be the preferred supplier of cloud computing if you were or are migrating to Cloud Computing? (Microsoft, Google, IBM, or Amazon). 12. As a senior member of the enterprise executive team, what strategic directions will you be directing/setting in terms of the paradigm shift to cloud computing. What will be your business drivers to migrate to cloud computing? 4.2. Sponsorship of the Project The survey was sponsored by the ACT Branch of Australian Computer Society and the following questions were sent out as a link to potential respondents. The following link has the questions that were asked of the survey population Population of the Survey The survey population was mostly those who are members of the ACS in some position of authority within their respective enterprises to influence their Information Communications and Technology (ICT) Strategy and those who already have an in depth understanding of their enterprises vision and implementation strategy on cloud computing. Given the strategic nature of the survey, a target population was small but the responses still reflect the planning and management of migrating to cloud computing in the ACT. 5. Analysis of the Survey Responses The purpose of the questionnaire was to elicit the views and planning timeframe of enterprises that are interested in migrating to cloud computing within the next few years. The responses provided will assist this research to determine the following: Timeframe with the respect to migrating to cloud computing; The service preferences of the enterprises; The vendor preference of the enterprises; The management and planning issue that will impact the enterprises most; The preferred type of service level agreement for the enterprise; The incorporation of cloud computing into Enterprise Architecture; The business drivers for migration to cloud computing; and The significance of interoperability when migrating to cloud computing. 56

8 5.1. Strategic Planning A sample survey (Migration to Cloud Computing) on the uptake of cloud services confirmed that 71 % of the respondents had included migration to cloud computing as per the chart below: Figure3. Strategic Planning of Migration to Cloud. The uptake of cloud computing by the enterprises has already been articulated in the strategic assumptions of Gartner Group [8]. As a recognised research group, Gartner Research Group (2011) predicated that by the use of cloud-delivered development tools will be involved in 25% of new projects; and the shift toward cloud architecture will create demand for new skills, practices and objectives for software quality. Furthermore Gartner Group has also listed cloud computing as one of the key strategic issues of the modern enterprises. It is generally the industry practice to take note of the strategic planning assumptions highlighted by the Gartner Research Group Incorporation into Enterprise Architecture Up to 75% of the respondents see the need to incorporate cloud services into their respective enterprise architecture as per the response chart below: Figure 4. Incorporation of Cloud into Enterprise Architecture Raj and Periasamy [9] highlight the need for the convergence of cloud computing and enterprise architecture. These authors allude to enterprise architecture framework and how the cloud services implementation will provision and mold enterprise architecture and state that such a convergence will be imminent in the migration to cloud services but does not mention the convergence of enabling technologies such as SOA with cloud services Interoperability Almost 62 percent of respondents saw interoperability as an issue with cloud computing as per the diagram below. The survey did not delve into the level and kinds of interoperability issues enterprises will need to address when migrating to cloud computing. However, the interoperability issues within enterprises connecting to cloud services is implicit in the responses as these were discussed in the dialogues held with the managers of the some of the enterprises. 57

9 Figure 5. Interoperability of Cloud and the Enterprise Research by Dillion, Wu and Chang [10] highlight the implementation issues and challenges of the cloud computing. It identifies issues relating to the lack of standards that will pose implementation problems for the enterprises. Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF) is working towards developing standards for cloud computing. While standards have alleviated this issue in other emerging technologies such as SOA, the issue of interoperability standards are to be further addressed when deploying cloud computing. Kim [11] raises the issue of vendor locking when enterprises use vendor solutions of cloud computing. Furthermore, Loutas et al [12] state that the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) have recognised the vendor locking in problem as a high risk issue Preferred Services and Priorities on Migration The sample survey results reveal that 42 % of the respondents answered medical services as their preferred service to migrate to cloud, including medical payment systems and medical systems that affect every day living such as Medicare payments. Figure 6. Preferred Services to Migrate to Cloud Furthermore, when given an opportunity to select one of the core business services was given, the respondents selected specific business areas in sample survey as illustrated below: 58

10 Figure 7. Priorities to Migrate to Cloud 5.5. Enterprise Size/Type The responses on this question indicate the readiness of large public sector enterprises to migrate to cloud as per the chart below: Figure 8. Size of the Enterprises that Responded 5.6. Preferred Supplier To plan and manage the migration path to cloud services deployment within enterprises will entail referencing the right partnership with the cloud service providers as the chart below illustrates the respondents preferred partners. Figure 9. Preferred Supplier to Migrate to Cloud However, Gartner Group depicts Microsoft favorably as the market leader for the deployment of cloud services. In August 2013, Gartner recognized Microsoft as a Visionary in the market for its 59

11 completeness of vision and ability to execute according to its 2013 Magic Quadrant report for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)(130: as illustrated below: Figure 10. Magic Quadrant for Cloud Iaas Business Drivers Enterprises that view the significance of migrating to cloud computing have responded to the sample survey with the following business drivers in terms of their strategic direction: Improving application development and deployment, Return on investment, Customer satisfaction, and Customer relationship management. 6. Conclusions and Contributions The gap identified in the research in progress on the convergence of cloud computing, SOA and EA by Sutherland [14] requires further research into standard based interoperability protocols for the convergence of the three areas. This research will include extending a given enterprise architecture by developing a logical model for the purposes of matching and cross matching the services between and among CC, SOA and EA and further testing this via the use of standard based interoperability standards and protocols. This survey provides an overview of the significance of interoperability in the process of migrating to cloud migrating along with the preferred services that the enterprises find need to migrate and their preferred vendors. The enterprises will need to evaluate the cloud computing services on offer against their respective requirements to ensure all organizational aspects such as interoperability, data migration and security, service level agreement; and risk management are addressed during evaluation. Furthermore, the survey will form a preamble to the pending report of the ACS of the impetus given by enterprises to migrating to cloud computing based on the structured interviews held across Australia by the ACS. Finally, this survey confirms that interoperability is perceived as an issue when migrating to cloud computing. Dillion, Wu and Chang research points out the issue of interoperability has not taken the center stage as yet as large and complex enterprises have not been drawn to the total migration of systems to cloud services. For this reason, the research in progress will be testing the interoperability between and among cloud computing, SOA and EA. 60

12 PS. The authors acknowledge the support of the president, Jeff Mitchell (for the year 2013) of the ACT Branch of ACS in distributing the questionnaire via the ACS Newsletter. 7. References [1] AGIMO (Australian Government Information Management Office), Cloud Computing: a strategic direction paper, [2] Blake, B and Wei, Y. Service Oriented Computing and Cloud Computing. Published by IEEE Computer Society, [3] Blatzan, P, Lynch, P, K and Blakely, P, Business driven information systems, McGraw Hill Australia Pty Ltd, [4] S. Leist, S and Zellner, G. Evaluation of current architecture frameworks. Symposium on Applied Computing: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Applied Computing (2006). [5] Mell, P and Grance, T. The NIST definition of cloud computing (draft). NIST special publication 800: 145,2011. [6] Wyld, D.C, Moving to the cloud: an introduction to cloud computing in government, IBM Centre for the Business of Government, [7] Tang, L and J.L Dong, J. L, Enterprise cloud service architecture. Cloud Computing (CLOUD), IEEE 3rd International Conference on, IEEE, [8] Gartner Group, The 2011 Gartner Scenario, Current state and future directions of the IT industry 20 January 201, ID Number: G [9] Ray, P and Periasamy, M, Convergence of enterprise architecture. London, Springer, (2011). [10] Dillion, T, Wu, C and Chang, E, Cloud computing: issues and challenges, 24th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, [11] Kim, W, Cloud computing, today and tomorrow. Journal of Object Technology, Vol. 8, No.1, pp , [12] Loutas, Nikolaos, Cloud computing interoperability: the state of play, 2011 IEEE Third International Conference on Cloud: pp [13] Gartner Group, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Iaas, [14] Sutherland, S, Convergence of cloud computing, SOA and EA, Third International Conference on Digital Processing and Communications (ICDIPAC), 2013, United Arabs, Emirates: