Creating Value Can Cloud Technology Help You to Improve Performance, Scalability, and Cost of Geo- Spatial Applications When Your Budget is shrinking? Delivering Solutions
Overview of the Presentation Performance and scalability requirements are essential now Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of traditional technology stack and deployment may be your limiting factors in meeting those performance and scalability demands Moving to cloud TCO consideration Portable technology stack that enables cloud service provider switch swiftly and economical Case Study: NJDOT Traffic Monitoring Web Portals: Q&A Traffic Monitoring Counts Search Engine Website (general access) Data Submission Website (password protected access)
Performance and scalability requirements are essential now Geo-Spatial Application User Profile Evolution Traditional desktop and fat GUI web applications may be niche applications Small number of users Intense geospatial applications Goolge Map type of users want instant gratifications, easy and simple GUI Performance and scalability requirements are much higher Server applications (SOA and Web Services) may have high requirement on scalability A GUI application s poll on your Web Services may spike during crisis, for example
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of traditional technology stack and deployment may be your limiting factors in meeting those performance and scalability demands TCO components have shifted in weights Software, hardware, infrastructure, hosting, staffing, solution development and maintenance Commercial software cost has risen in many cases, but in general it is expected and managed Performance and scalability cost may weigh much more now but difficult to predict and manage
Moving to cloud TCO consideration Changing technology stack has cost and business practice impacts Development and maintenance cost Initial investment (internal staff training and/or contractors) This cost may come down in weight Data currency» Technologies will get cheaper and easier ETL would address this issue in most cases Portable technology stack that enables cloud service provider switch swiftly and economical Use known technology components, even though they may be overkill For long term, aim at lean and mean customized applications that demands less overhead
Total Cost of Ownership Components The following is a hypothetical template Cost and speed to scale up and down Components Your existing stack Stack for the cloud Framework/platform GIS Server software RDBMS software Web Server software Customized server applications Admin tools (security, remote access, load balancing ) Hardware Servers Backups, Power ISP Charges (including bandwidth)
Design to Deploy in Cloud: Technology Considerations The technology stack should consider Free or lower software licensing cost Leverage on pre-packaged software stacks as much as possible, especially the low cost or free Open Source ones. You have options now. For commercial software, check with your vendors on the licensing approach and cost. Easy installation and maintenance Less support effort. Stable and mature Amazon Machine Image (AMI) needs to be stable. Portable so that it can easily switch from one service provider to another Cloud service market is very dynamic. You need to protect your solutions by being able to move them to another provider quickly (sometimes for economical reasons)
NJDOT Traffic Monitoring Systems Web Reporting Tool & Data Submission Portal Technology Stack NJDOT TMS Web Reporting Tool publishes the location and count information(http://www.state.nj.us/transportation/refdata/roadway/t raffic_counts/ ) Data Submission Portal Stable and proven technologies Glassfish version 3 PostgreSQL version 8.3 With PostGIS extension Customized JEE application Google Maps APIs File storages Currently hosted on an commercial ISP Web Server and Application Server Database Server No commercial software licenses Software licensing cost: $0.00
Amazon EC2 Scaling Up Demo We will scale up by changing EC2 Instance from the least to the most expensive one. We will see how much time we will need to do it and how easy or difficult is to execute.
Monitoring the EC2 EC2 Tools for monitoring services You are on your own to maintain and monitor the system and cost
Monitoring the EC2 - Continued Resource Usage
Deployed TMS Application on EC2
Deployed Data Submission Portal
Conclusions Choose a technology stack that can reduce the software cost and support effort Choose a technology that is portable so that you do not have to be locked into a particular cloud service provider Use ETL type of workflow methods to maintain your data currency Start with low cost EC2 instances and monitor the usage. Ideally your application runs well on one instance so that scaling is less expensive.
Questions? Chris Zajac, NJDOT Email: Chris.Zajac@dot.state.nj.us Phone: 609-530-4548 Bud Luo, Baker Email: yluo@mbakercorp.com Phone: 215-442-5347