![30 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud
standard workloads in-house and extend outwards when required should allow for
the best of both worlds. Sensitive systems can be kept entirely in-house if required.
Some e-commerce organisations can adopt a hybrid approach to help with the
activity associated with the front-end during peak shopping periods whilst main-
taining secure back-end services in their own private cloud. This prevents them
having to invest in many servers which may be idle for long periods just to cope
with occasional high loads.
The other likely driver towards a hybrid approach is the organisation’s existing
infrastructure and their IT strategy. Hybrid may well be an interim approach which
means that wholesale in-house architectural changes do not need to happen imme-
diately as some changes are contracted out to service providers and some existing
systems continue to function. Interoperability between these different systems here
is a key issue (see below).
Another way that hybrid is likely to happen is by accident. An organisation with
its own private cloud platform for its main systems may, for example, decide that
Google’s Gmail email solution is the right one for their organisation. The security
risks with noncritical systems like email will seem relatively minor, and the cost-
effectiveness of such a solution may attract many organisations. Part of their IT
stack then becomes private, part public—de facto a hybrid cloud solution.
2.4.2 What Are the Issues with Hybrid Cloud?
Whilst suppliers, such as Citrix and their CloudBridge, will be keen to suggest that
hybrid offers the best of both private and public worlds, it is also arguable that it is
the worst of both. After all, as we saw in the private section above, one of the biggest
drivers for private solutions is the ability to control your own, independent data
centre for security reasons. Claybrook (2011) suggests
The challenges of building a bridge between private and public clouds are real.
(http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217158/Cloud_interoperability_Problems_
and_best_practices)
The report goes on to quote Joe Skorupa, a Gartner vice president, as saying that
… users and cloud vendors are in very different places on this issue [interoperability], and
true cloud interoperability will likely not occur for some time -- if ever. Standards are
nascent and will take years to fully develop.
The lack of standards is indeed likely to be a major stumbling block when it
comes to trying to pass data, which will usually be encrypted, between different
systems in a hybrid cloud solution. It is not unusual in IT for technology to get so
far ahead of standards. And in the absence of standards, there is little reason for the
various providers to ensure ease of communications between themselves and other
providers. Indeed, the cynical amongst us may even think that these different
approaches can help tie in the customer to a provider.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2072229-250609223614-af98c0d9/85/Guide-To-Cloud-Computing-Principles-And-Practice-2013th-Edition-Richard-Hill-53-320.jpg)
Guide To Cloud Computing Principles And Practice 2013th Edition Richard Hill
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- 6. The Computer Communications and Networks series is a range of textbooks, monographs and handbooks. It sets out to provide students, researchers and nonspecialists alike with a sure grounding in current knowledge, together with comprehensible access to the latest developments in computer communications and networking. Emphasisisplacedonclearandexplanatorystylesthatsupportatutorialapproach, so that even the most complex of topics is presented in a lucid and intelligible manner.
- 7. Richard Hill • Laurie Hirsch • Peter Lake Siavash Moshiri Guide to Cloud Computing Principles and Practice
- 8. TOGAF is a registered trademark of The Open Group. ISSN 1617-7975 ISBN 978-1-4471-4602-5 ISBN 978-1-4471-4603-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-4603-2 Springer London Heidelberg New York Dordrecht Library of Congress Control Number: 2012953098 © Springer-Verlag London 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Richard Hill School of Computing and Mathematics University of Derby Derby, UK Peter Lake Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield, UK Laurie Hirsch Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield, UK Siavash Moshiri Metanova and Vistex Inc. London, UK Series Editor A.J. Sammes Centre for Forensic Computing Cranfield University Shrivenham campus Swindon, UK
- 9. To Dad Richard Hill To Andy McEwan Laurie Hirsch To my Dad and Julia Peter Lake To my wonderful family Siavash Moshiri
- 11. vii More so than most IT trends we have seen come and go over the past couple of decades, cloud computing has infiltrated the IT mainstream as a collection of innovations, technology advances and intelligent new applications of not-so-new IT models and technologies. The proliferation of cloud computing is a double-edged sword, readily swung by both professionals and amateurs alike. The broad commer- cialisation and attractive price points of public cloud computing platforms make cloud-based IT resources accessible to pretty much any organisation with interest and a sufficient credit rating. Methodology, governance and even a project plan are not prerequisites, leaving the door wide open for those who want to create (or recreate) convoluted and ineffective technology architectures that are distinguished from past failed on-premise environments only with the ‘cloud’ label. In other words, cloud computing provides us with technology innovation that we must choose to apply based on how and to what extent it helps us fulfil our business requirements. It can improve scalability and reliability and provide cost-effective access to vast pools of resources—but it does not automatically help us improve how we align our business with IT automation, nor does it automatically improve our IT automation (even if it is already aligned). In fact, it can make things significantly worse, especially for those entering the nebulous cloud industry with tunnel vision. Understanding and making the most of what cloud computing has to offer all comes down to education. This book provides clear guidance in the most essential areas of cloud computing, ranging from its technologies and models to its applica- tions for real-world business. When it comes to considering or planning for cloud adoption, we must make educated decisions or not even attempt that path. Clarity amongst the clouds is critical to determining not just how cloud technologies can solve business problems, but what distinct problems introduced by cloud computing can be addressed and, hopefully, avoided. Arcitura Education Inc. & CloudSchool.com Thomas Erl Foreword
- 12. viii About Thomas Erl Thomas Erl is a renown IT author, a speaker of international fame and founder of SOASchool.com® and CloudSchool.com™. Thomas is also the editor of the SOA Magazine. With over 140,000 copies in print world-wide, his seven published books in SOA related areas have become international bestsellers. As CEO of Arcitura Education Inc. and SOA Systems Inc. Thomas has led the development of curricula for the internationally recognized SOA Certified Professional (SOACP) and Cloud Certified Professional (CCP) accreditation programs. Foreword
- 13. ix Overview and Goals Although the term cloud computing is relatively new, some of the concepts that underpin this rapidly expanding area of computing have been with us for a while. IT professionals need to be able to separate the hype from the facts and understand how the new platforms can help organisations become more efficient and more responsive to internal and external systems users. A Guide to Cloud Computing: Principles and Practice addresses the need for a single text to describe the cloud computing landscape from first principles. It consi- ders both the technologies involved in designing and creating cloud computing platforms and the business models and frameworks that result from the real-world implementation of those platforms. Key objectives for this book include: Present an understanding of the key technologies involved in cloud computing • Explore the potential use of cloud computing in a business environment • Demonstrate the technologies and approaches utilised to build cloud computing • infrastructure Understand the social, economic and political aspects of the ongoing growth in • cloud computing use Consider the legal and security concerns of cloud computing, which may act as • barriers to its success Identify areas for further research in a fast-moving domain • Organisation and Features This book is organised into three parts: Part I introduces cloud computing concepts and principles. • Part II discusses the technological aspects of cloud computing. • Part III is devoted to issues and challenges with business aspects of cloud com- • puting architecture, both now and in the future. Preface
- 14. x Target Audiences A topic as disruptive as cloud computing immediately draws interest from a wide body of individuals. We have written this book to specifically support the following audiences: Advanced undergraduate students and postgraduate students will find the combi- nation of theoretical and practical examples of cloud computing, of particular rele- vance to a modern computer science, software engineering, computer networking, distributed systems or any course that makes reference to the latest developments in computing as a utility. As such, university instructors may adopt this book as a core text. Similarly, researchers will find the direct application of theory to practice of use, especially when using clouds for research projects. Since this book adopts a learning-by-doing approach, the extensive worked examples that explain how to construct a cloud platform will no doubt be relevant to IT infrastructure technicians, as well as application developers who will also be able to understand the issues faced when developing upon a cloud platform. Business leaders, IT infrastructure managers and technical consultants will have a need to understand how cloud computing can positively affect their organisations and will find the chapters on adoption strategies, financial appraisal, security and governance of particular interest, when they are faced with making critical strategic and operational decisions. Suggested Uses Guide to Cloud Computing: Principles and Practice can be used as a solid introduc- tion to the concept of computing resource as a utility, and as such it is suggested that readers acquaint themselves with Part I of this book to start with. This book is suitable as both a comprehensive introduction to cloud computing, as well as a reference text, as the reader develops their skills and abilities through practical application of the ideas. For university instructors, we suggest the following programme of study for a 12-week semester format: Weeks 1–2: Part I • Weeks 3–7: Part II • Weeks 8–11: Part III • Week 12: Assessment • Part I defines what cloud computing is and places it in context by comparing it with its underlying technologies. It also examines some of the typical cloud models from a business perspective. Themes such as cloud types, cloud deployment models and sustainability are covered. Part II elaborates upon cloud technologies, service models and data storage within the cloud environment. It also introduces knowledge discovery through intelligent analysis of structured and unstructured data, a rapidly emerging area of cloud develop- ment. It introduces topics such as virtualisation, scaling beyond traditional relational models, collective intelligence and visualisation. Preface
- 15. xi Part III examines the business context of cloud. It addresses the strategic con- text of the cloud option and the mechanisms used to extract business value from cloud investments. These chapters introduce topics such as cloud economics, investment appraisal for cloud, strategic planning, cloud security and Enterprise Cloud Computing. Review Questions Each chapter concludes with a set of review questions that make specific reference to the content presented in the chapter, plus an additional set of further questions that will require further research. The review questions are designed in such a way that the reader will be able to answer them based on the chapter contents. They are followed by discussion questions that often require research, extended reading of other material or discussion and collaboration. These can be used as classroom discussion topics by tutors and prompts for extended self-study research or used as the basis of sum- mative assignments. Hands-On Exercises The technology chapters include extended hands-on exercises, commencing with the installation of a virtual machine (VM). Readers will then use the VM to practice cloud environment configuration, before progressively engaging in more complex activities, building skills and knowledge along the way. Such an approach ensures that a solid foundation is built before more advanced topics are undertaken. To facilitate the maximum uptake of this learning experience, only open source technologies that are freely available for download have been utilised. Chapter Summary A brief summary of each of the twelve chapters is as follows. Chapter 1 is an introduction to cloud computing, and we define what is meant by the cloud. The cloud is placed in its historical context and some of the key concepts such as service orientation, virtualisation and utility computing are described. In Chap. 2, we examine the different approaches that can be taken when imple- menting cloud-based solutions and discuss how an organisation can begin to evaluate which approach is right for them. We then go on to look at the legal implications of this fundamental shift in business practice. In Chap. 3, we examine the impact of the cloud on society, economy and politics. We look at how people around the globe are beginning to use cloud as a way to provide them with more influence than traditional decision-making approaches. We go on to critically review the claims that cloud computing offers a ‘greener’, more sustainable approach to IT. Preface
- 16. xii Chapter 4 reviews the current state of web, virtualisation and distributed compu- ting technology. We examine how the underlying technologies support key cloud features such as elasticity and scalability. At the end of the chapter, you will build a simple system using MapReduce. Chapter 5 examines the architecture of cloud systems focusing on the layered model often referred to as the ‘cloud stack’. In particular we examine infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) using examples. At the end of the chapter, readers build a cloud application using Google App Engine. In Chap. 6, we begin by examining the myriad types of data that are found in organisations. We then go on to look at different ways of storing that data, many of which have sprung to prominence because of the cloud. We also look at cloud-based solutions to a typical database administrator’s tasks, such as backup and disaster recovery. In Chap. 7, we discuss various approaches to extracting useful information from data stored in the cloud. In particular, we examine approaches to utilising user- generated content in an intelligent way, to produce practical functionality such as recommendation engines. In Chap. 8, we consider the strategic context of business investment into cloud computing by discussing key economic drivers. Approaches to investment appraisal are also considered, illustrating how common financial techniques can be used to assemble a business case for cloud adoption (or rejection). Chapter 9 considers the topic of Enterprise Cloud Computing; how can the busi- ness potential of cloud computing be utilised to develop enhanced customer-centric systems? This chapter explores cloud services, as a fundamental building block of the service-oriented enterprise, and introduces enterprise architecture as a proactive means of managing emergent IT infrastructure. Chapter 10 examines the impact of cloud computing upon security and gover- nance, in particular the use of public cloud services. Approaches to mitigate security risks are described in terms of processes, methods and applicable technologies for protection against accidental and malicious threats. In Chap. 11, we take the reader through the process of developing a strategic roadmap for cloud adoption, including the selection of appropriate tools and tech- niques to assist strategic decision-making, as well as understanding the importance of demonstrating business and technological alignment. Finally, in Chap. 12, we note that the future of cloud computing, like much in the IT arena, is unpredictable. We attempt to highlight drivers and barriers that can help anticipate cloud trends, and report what some experts have said, that might help us make sense of the uncertainty. Preface
- 17. xiii Part I Cloud Computing Fundamentals 1 Introducing Cloud Computing .............................................................. 3 1.1 What Is Cloud Computing? ........................................................... 3 1.2 Utility Computing.......................................................................... 4 1.3 Service Orientation ........................................................................ 4 1.4 Grid Computing ............................................................................. 6 1.5 Hardware Virtualisation................................................................. 7 1.6 Autonomic Computing................................................................... 8 1.7 Cloud Computing: A Definition..................................................... 9 1.8 Cloud Computing Service Models................................................. 10 1.9 Cloud Computing Deployment Models......................................... 11 1.10 A Quick Recap............................................................................... 12 1.11 Beyond the Three Service Models................................................. 13 1.11.1 The Business Perspective................................................. 13 1.12 When Can the Service Models Help?............................................ 14 1.12.1 Infrastructure as a Service................................................ 14 1.12.2 Platform as a Service ....................................................... 14 1.12.3 Software as a Service....................................................... 15 1.13 Issues for Cloud Computing .......................................................... 16 1.14 Summing Up.................................................................................. 18 1.15 Review Questions........................................................................... 18 1.16 Extended Study Activities.............................................................. 19 References................................................................................................. 19 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud ............... 21 2.1 What Services Are Available? ....................................................... 21 2.2 What Is Meant by Public Cloud?................................................... 22 2.2.1 Who Is Using Public Cloud?............................................ 23 2.2.2 Another Easy Win for SMEs ........................................... 24 2.2.3 Who Is Providing Public Cloud Services?....................... 25 2.2.4 Security: The Dreaded ‘S’ Word...................................... 25 Contents
- 18. xiv 2.3 What Is Meant by Private Cloud?.................................................. 26 2.3.1 Who Is Using Private Cloud?........................................... 27 2.3.2 Who Is Supplying Private Cloud?.................................... 28 2.4 What Is Meant by Hybrid Cloud?.................................................. 29 2.4.1 Who Is Using Hybrid Cloud? .......................................... 29 2.4.2 What Are the Issues with Hybrid Cloud? ........................ 30 2.5 What Is Meant by Community Cloud?.......................................... 31 2.5.1 Who Is Using Community Cloud?................................... 31 2.6 Which Cloud Model?..................................................................... 33 2.6.1 Internal Factors ................................................................ 35 2.6.2 External Factors ............................................................... 36 2.7 Legal Aspects of Cloud Computing............................................... 37 2.7.1 A Worldwide Issue........................................................... 37 2.7.2 The Current Legal Framework for Cloud ........................ 38 2.7.3 Privacy and Security ........................................................ 39 2.8 Summary........................................................................................ 40 2.9 Review Questions........................................................................... 40 2.10 Extended Study Activities.............................................................. 40 2.10.1 Discussion Topic 1........................................................... 40 2.10.2 Discussion Topic 2........................................................... 41 References................................................................................................. 41 3 Social, Economic and Political Aspects of the Cloud........................... 43 3.1 How IT Has Historically Made an Impact on Society................... 43 3.2 The Ethical Dimension .................................................................. 45 3.3 Social Aspects................................................................................ 46 3.3.1 Web 2.0 ............................................................................ 47 3.3.2 Society in the Clouds ....................................................... 48 3.4 Political Aspects............................................................................. 49 3.5 Economic Aspects of Cloud Computing........................................ 53 3.6 Cloud and Green IT ....................................................................... 56 3.7 Review Questions........................................................................... 59 3.8 Extended Study Activities.............................................................. 59 3.8.1 Discussion Topic 1........................................................... 59 3.8.2 Discussion Topic 2........................................................... 60 References................................................................................................. 60 Part II Technological Context 4 Cloud Technology.................................................................................... 65 4.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 65 4.2 Web Technology ............................................................................ 66 4.2.1 HTTP................................................................................ 66 4.2.2 HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)................................... 67 Contents
- 19. xv 4.2.3 XML (eXtensible Markup Language) ............................... 68 4.2.4 JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) ................................... 68 4.2.5 JavaScript and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)......................................................... 68 4.2.6 Model-View-Controller (MVC)......................................... 69 4.3 Autonomic Computing................................................................... 70 4.4 Virtualisation.................................................................................. 70 4.4.1 Application Virtualisation.................................................. 71 4.4.2 Virtual Machine ................................................................. 71 4.4.3 Desktop Virtualisation ....................................................... 71 4.4.4 Server Virtualisation .......................................................... 72 4.4.5 Storage Virtualisation......................................................... 73 4.4.6 Implementing Virtualisation .............................................. 73 4.4.7 Hypervisor.......................................................................... 73 4.4.8 Types of Virtualisation....................................................... 74 4.5 MapReduce .................................................................................... 75 4.5.1 MapReduce Example......................................................... 76 4.5.2 Scaling with MapReduce................................................... 78 4.5.3 Server Failure..................................................................... 78 4.5.4 Programming Model.......................................................... 78 4.5.5 Apache Hadoop.................................................................. 79 4.5.6 A Brief History of Hadoop ................................................ 79 4.5.7 Amazon Elastic MapReduce.............................................. 80 4.5.8 Mapreduce.NET................................................................. 80 4.5.9 Pig and Hive....................................................................... 80 4.6 Chapter Summary .......................................................................... 80 4.7 End of Chapter Exercises............................................................... 80 4.8 A Note on the Technical Exercises ................................................ 81 4.9 Create Your Ubuntu VM................................................................ 81 4.10 Getting Started ............................................................................... 83 4.11 Learn How to Use Ubuntu ............................................................. 83 4.12 Install Java...................................................................................... 84 4.13 MapReduce with Pig...................................................................... 86 4.14 Discussion...................................................................................... 88 4.15 MapReduce with Cloudera ............................................................ 88 References................................................................................................. 89 5 Cloud Services......................................................................................... 91 5.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 91 5.2 Web Services.................................................................................. 92 5.3 Service-Oriented Architecture ....................................................... 93 5.4 Interoperability............................................................................... 93 5.5 Composability................................................................................ 93 5.6 Representational State Transfer (REST)........................................ 94 5.7 The Cloud Stack............................................................................. 95 Contents
- 20. xvi 5.8 Software as a Service (SaaS) ......................................................... 96 5.8.1 Salesforce.com................................................................. 97 5.8.2 Dropbox ........................................................................... 98 5.8.3 Google Services .............................................................. 98 5.8.4 Prezi ................................................................................. 98 5.9 Platform as a Service (PaaS).......................................................... 99 5.9.1 Portability......................................................................... 100 5.9.2 Simple Cloud API............................................................ 100 5.9.3 Java................................................................................... 100 5.9.4 Google App Engine.......................................................... 101 5.9.5 Google Web Toolkit......................................................... 103 5.9.6 Microsoft Azure............................................................... 103 5.9.7 Force.com......................................................................... 104 5.9.8 VMForce.......................................................................... 104 5.9.9 Heroku.............................................................................. 104 5.9.10 Cloud Foundry ................................................................. 104 5.10 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)................................................... 105 5.10.1 Virtual Appliances ........................................................... 105 5.10.2 Amazon Web Services ..................................................... 106 5.10.3 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)........................... 106 5.10.4 Amazon Storage Services ................................................ 107 5.10.5 Amazon Elastic Beanstalk ............................................... 108 5.10.6 FlexiScale......................................................................... 108 5.10.7 GoGrid ............................................................................. 108 5.10.8 Eucalyptus (‘Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs to Useful Systems’) ............. 108 5.10.9 Rackspace ........................................................................ 109 5.11 Chapter Summary .......................................................................... 109 5.11.1 End of Chapter Exercises................................................. 109 5.11.2 Task 1: Prepare Eclipse and Install GAE Plug-In............ 109 5.11.3 Task 2: Create the First Web Application ........................ 110 5.11.4 Task 3: ISBN App............................................................ 111 References................................................................................................. 119 6 Data in the Cloud .................................................................................... 121 6.1 Historic Review of Database Storage Methods ............................. 121 6.2 Relational Is the New Hoover........................................................ 122 6.3 Database as a Service..................................................................... 123 6.4 Data Storage in the Cloud.............................................................. 123 6.5 Backup or Disaster Recovery?....................................................... 123 6.6 If You Only Have a Hammer – Or Why Relational May Not Always Be the Right Answer ......................................... 125 6.7 Business Drivers for the Adoption of Different Data Models ....... 125 6.8 You Can’t Have Everything ........................................................... 126 Contents
- 21. xvii 6.9 Basically Available, Soft State, Eventually Consistent (BASE)......................................................................... 127 6.10 So What Alternative Ways to Store Data Are There?.................... 127 6.11 Column Oriented............................................................................ 128 6.12 Document Oriented........................................................................ 128 6.13 Key–Value Stores (K–V Store)...................................................... 129 6.14 When to Use Which Type of Data Storage? .................................. 129 6.15 Summary........................................................................................ 130 6.16 Further Reading ............................................................................. 131 6.17 Tutorials ......................................................................................... 131 6.18 BookCo .......................................................................................... 131 6.19 The Column-Based Approach........................................................ 131 6.20 Cassandra Tutorial ......................................................................... 132 6.20.1 Installation and Configuration ....................................... 132 6.20.2 Data Model and Types................................................... 133 6.20.3 Working with Keyspaces ............................................... 134 6.20.4 Working with Columns.................................................. 138 6.20.5 Shutdown ....................................................................... 144 6.20.6 Using a Command-Line Script...................................... 144 6.20.7 Useful Extra Resources.................................................. 145 6.20.8 The Document-Based Approach.................................... 146 6.21 MongoDB Tutorial......................................................................... 146 6.21.1 Installation and Configuration ....................................... 146 6.21.2 Documents, Data Types and Basic Commands ............. 147 6.21.3 Data Types ..................................................................... 148 6.21.4 Embedding and Referencing.......................................... 148 6.21.5 Advanced Commands and Queries................................ 153 6.21.6 More CRUDing.............................................................. 153 6.21.7 Sample Data Set............................................................. 154 6.21.8 More on Deleting Documents........................................ 156 6.21.9 More on Updating Documents....................................... 156 6.21.10 The Modifiers................................................................. 156 6.21.11 Querying Documents..................................................... 158 6.22 Review Questions........................................................................... 161 6.23 Group Work Research Activities ................................................... 162 6.24 Discussion Topic 1......................................................................... 162 6.25 Discussion Topic 2......................................................................... 162 References................................................................................................. 162 7 Intelligence in the Cloud......................................................................... 163 7.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 163 7.2 Web 2.0 .......................................................................................... 164 7.3 Relational Databases...................................................................... 164 7.4 Text Data........................................................................................ 164 7.5 Natural Language Processing ........................................................ 165 Contents
- 22. xviii 7.6 Searching........................................................................................ 166 7.6.1 Search Engine Overview.................................................. 166 7.6.2 The Crawler ..................................................................... 166 7.6.3 The Indexer ...................................................................... 167 7.6.4 Indexing ........................................................................... 169 7.6.5 Ranking............................................................................ 169 7.7 Vector Space Model....................................................................... 169 7.8 Classification.................................................................................. 171 7.9 Measuring Retrieval Performance.................................................. 171 7.10 Clustering....................................................................................... 172 7.11 Web Structure Mining.................................................................... 173 7.11.1 HITS................................................................................. 173 7.11.2 PageRank ......................................................................... 174 7.12 Enterprise Search ........................................................................... 174 7.13 Multimedia Search......................................................................... 174 7.14 Collective Intelligence ................................................................... 175 7.14.1 Tagging............................................................................. 176 7.14.2 Recommendation Engines ............................................... 177 7.14.3 Collective Intelligence in the Enterprise.......................... 177 7.14.4 User Ratings..................................................................... 177 7.14.5 Personalisation................................................................. 179 7.14.6 Crowd Sourcing ............................................................... 179 7.15 Text Visualisation........................................................................... 180 7.16 Chapter Summary .......................................................................... 181 7.17 End of Chapter Exercise ................................................................ 181 7.17.1 Task 1: Explore Visualisations......................................... 181 7.17.2 Task 2: Extracting Text with Apache Tika....................... 182 7.17.3 Advanced Task 3: Web Crawling with Nutch and Solr ......................................................... 184 References................................................................................................. 184 Part III Business Context 8 Cloud Economics..................................................................................... 187 8.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 187 8.2 The Historical Context................................................................... 189 8.2.1 Traditional Model ............................................................ 189 8.2.2 Open Source..................................................................... 190 8.2.3 Outsourced and Managed Services.................................. 190 8.2.4 Services in the Cloud ....................................................... 191 8.3 Investment in the Cloud ................................................................. 191 8.4 Key Performance Indicators and Metrics....................................... 192 8.5 CAPEX Versus OPEX ................................................................... 193 8.6 Total Cost of Ownership ................................................................ 194 8.7 Categories of Cost Efficiencies...................................................... 195 Contents
- 23. xix 8.7.1 Infrastructure.................................................................... 195 8.7.2 Software Application ....................................................... 196 8.7.3 Productivity Improvements.............................................. 196 8.7.4 System Administration and Management........................ 196 8.8 Things to Consider When Calculating Cloud TCO....................... 196 8.9 Return on Capital Employed.......................................................... 198 8.10 Payback Period............................................................................... 198 8.11 Net Present Value........................................................................... 199 8.12 Internal Rate of Return................................................................... 199 8.13 Economic Value Added.................................................................. 201 8.14 Key Performance Indicators........................................................... 202 8.15 Measuring Cloud ROI.................................................................... 203 8.15.1 Enhanced Cloud ROI ....................................................... 204 8.15.2 Business Domain Assessment.......................................... 204 8.15.3 Cloud Technology Assessment........................................ 205 8.16 Summing Up.................................................................................. 205 8.17 Review Questions........................................................................... 206 8.18 Extended Study Activities.............................................................. 206 References................................................................................................. 207 9 Enterprise Cloud Computing................................................................. 209 9.1 Just What Is Enterprise Cloud Computing?................................... 209 9.2 Cloud Services ............................................................................... 210 9.3 Service-Oriented Enterprise........................................................... 211 9.3.1 Realising the Service-Oriented Enterprise....................... 211 9.4 Enterprise Architecture.................................................................. 213 9.4.1 Enterprise Architecture Frameworks ............................... 214 9.4.2 Developing an Enterprise Architecture with TOGAF .................................................................... 214 9.4.3 The Architectural Development Method (ADM) ............ 215 9.5 Building on Top of SaaS................................................................ 217 9.6 Managing a Process-Centric Architecture ..................................... 219 9.6.1 Business Operations Platform.......................................... 219 9.6.2 Even More Agility ........................................................... 220 9.7 Summary........................................................................................ 221 9.8 Review Questions........................................................................... 221 9.9 Extended Study Activities.............................................................. 222 References................................................................................................. 222 10 Cloud Security and Governance............................................................ 223 10.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 223 10.2 Security Risks ................................................................................ 224 10.3 Some Awkward Questions............................................................. 226 10.4 Good Practice for Secure Systems................................................. 226 10.4.1 Identity Management ....................................................... 227 10.4.2 Network Security ............................................................. 228 Contents
- 24. xx 10.4.3 Data Security ............................................................... 229 10.4.4 Instance Security.......................................................... 230 10.4.5 Application Architecture ............................................. 231 10.4.6 Patch Management....................................................... 232 10.5 Assessing a Cloud Provider ......................................................... 233 10.6 The Need for Certification ........................................................... 234 10.7 Governance and the Cloud........................................................... 236 10.8 Governance in Practice ................................................................ 237 10.9 Summary...................................................................................... 237 10.10 Review Questions......................................................................... 238 10.11 Extended Study Activities............................................................ 238 References................................................................................................. 239 11 Developing a Cloud Roadmap ............................................................... 241 11.1 Cloud Strategy ............................................................................. 241 11.2 Planning for the Cloud................................................................. 242 11.3 Some Useful Concepts and Techniques....................................... 244 11.4 Developing a Cloud Strategy ....................................................... 245 11.5 Benefits of Developing Strategies for Cloud ............................... 246 11.6 Issues Around Implementing Strategies ...................................... 247 11.7 Stages in the Planning Process: Cloud Roadmap ........................ 247 11.8 As-Is Analysis.............................................................................. 247 11.8.1 Analysing the Business Context and Technology Requirements and Opportunities ................................. 248 11.8.2 Analysing the As-Is Business Architecture................. 249 11.8.3 Analysing the Current IS and IT Provisions................ 249 11.9 To-Be Analysis............................................................................. 250 11.9.1 Data for the Cloud ....................................................... 250 11.9.2 Cloud Application........................................................ 251 11.9.3 Technology for the Cloud ............................................ 251 11.10 Transition Plan............................................................................. 252 11.10.1 Fit-Gap Analysis.......................................................... 252 11.10.2 Change Management ................................................... 253 11.10.3 Risk Analysis............................................................... 254 11.11 Realisation Plan ........................................................................... 254 11.12 Adapting the Roadmap ................................................................ 255 11.13 Review Questions......................................................................... 256 11.14 Group Exercise: Developing a Cloud Business Case .................. 256 References................................................................................................. 258 12 Cloud Computing Challenges and the Future...................................... 259 12.1 Drivers and Barriers..................................................................... 259 12.2 Examining the Gartner Hype Curve............................................. 263 12.2.1 On the Way Up ............................................................ 265 12.2.2 Towards Disillusionment ............................................. 265 12.2.3 Upwards Again ............................................................ 266 Contents
- 25. xxi 12.3 Future Directions ........................................................................... 266 12.4 What Do Other People Think About the Future of Cloud? ........... 269 12.5 Views from the Industry................................................................. 270 12.6 Summing Up.................................................................................. 271 12.7 Review Questions........................................................................... 272 12.8 Extended Study Activities.............................................................. 272 References................................................................................................. 273 Index................................................................................................................. 275 Contents
- 26. Part I Cloud Computing Fundamentals
- 27. 3 R. Hill et al., Guide to Cloud Computing: Principles and Practice, Computer Communications and Networks, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-4603-2_1, © Springer-Verlag London 2013 What the reader will learn: That ‘cloud computing’ is a relatively new term, and it is important to clearly • define what we mean Cloud computing is a new delivery model for IT but that it uses established IT • resources That the concept of abstraction is critical to the implementation of cloud • architectures Businesses will adopt cloud computing because it offers financial benefits and • business agility, not because the technology is inherently ‘better’ 1.1 What Is Cloud Computing? Everybody seems to be talking about cloud computing. As technology trends go, cloud computing is generating a lot of interest, and along with that interest is a share of hype as well. The aim of this book is to provide you with a sophisticated under- standing of what cloud computing is and where it can offer real business advantage. We shall be examining cloud computing from historical, theoretical and practical perspectives, so that you will know what to use, in which situation, and when it will be most appropriate. So first of all, just what is cloud computing? This isn’t such a silly question. That many things now attract the cloud computing badge, that it is difficult to understand what cloud actually means. In a nutshell, cloud computing is a means by which computational power, storage, collaboration infrastructure, business processes and applications can be delivered as a utility, that is, a service or collection of services that meet your demands. Since services offered by cloud are akin to a utility, it also means that you only pay for what you use. If you need extra processing power quickly, it is available for use in an instant. When you’ve finished with the extra power and revert back to your nominal 1 Introducing Cloud Computing
- 28. 4 1 Introducing Cloud Computing usage, you will only be billed for the short time that you needed the extra boost. So you don’t need to invest in a lot of hardware to cater for your peak usage, accepting that for most of the time it will be underutilised. This aspect of the cloud is referred to as elasticity and is an extremely important concept within cloud computing. That’s the short answer and not necessarily the key to becoming an expert in cloud computing; for some extra information, read on. To understand what makes a cloud different from other established models of computing, we shall need to consider the conceptual basis of computing as a utility and how technology has evolved to date. 1.2 Utility Computing Utility computing was discussed by John McCarthy in the 1960s whilst working at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (McCarthy 1983), and the concept was thoroughly expanded by Douglas Parkhill in 1966 (The Challenge of the Computing Utility, Parkhill 1966). Parkhill examined the nature of utilities such as water, natural gas and electricity in the way they are provided to create an understanding of the characteristics that computing would require if it was truly a utility. When we consider electricity supply, for example, in the developed world, we tend to take it for granted that the actual electrical power will be available in our dwellings. To access it, we plug our devices into wall sockets and draw the power we need. Every so often we are billed by the electricity supply company, and we pay for what we have used. In the summer time, the daylight hours are longer and we place less demand on devices that provide lighting, hot water or space heating. During the winter months, we use electric lighting and space heating more, and therefore, we expect our bills to reflect the extra usage we make of the utility. Additionally, we do not expect the electricity to ‘run out’; unless there is a power cut, there should be a never-ending supply of electricity. So the same goes for computing resources as a utility. We should expect the resource to be available where we want, by plugging into or by accessing a network. The resource should cater for our needs, as our needs vary, and it should appear to be a limitless supply. Finally, we expect to pay only for what we use. We tend to consider the provision of utilities as services. 1.3 Service Orientation The term service orientation refers to the clear demarcation of a function that operates to satisfy a particular goal. For instance, businesses are composed of many discrete services that should sustainably deliver value to customers now and in the future. Utility companies offer their services in the form of energy supply, billing and perhaps, as energy conservation becomes more widespread, services that support a customer’s attempt to reduce their energy consumption. The services that are offered to the consumer are likely to be aggregations of much finer-grained services that operate internally to the business. It is this concept of abstraction,
- 29. 5 1.3 Service Orientation combined with object-oriented principles such as encapsulation and cohesion, that helps define services within an organisation. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) utilises the principle of service orientation to organise the overall technology architecture of an enterprise. This means that technology is selected, specified and integrated to support an architectural model that is specified as a set of services. Such an approach results in technologically unique architectures for each enterprise, in order to realise the best possible chance of supporting the services that the business requires. However, whilst the overall architecture may appear bespoke, the underlying services are discrete and often reusable and therefore may be shared even between organisations. For instance, the processing of payroll information is common to most enterprises of a certain size and is a common choice for service outsourcing to third-party suppliers. From an organisation’s perspective, SOA has some key advantages: The adoption of the principles of service orientation enables commonly utilised • functionality to be reused, which significantly simplifies the addition of new functionality, since a large portion of the existing code base is already present. Additionally, the emergence of standard protocols for service description and invocation means that the actual service is abstracted away from the implementa- tion program code, so it doesn’t matter if the constituent parts of a newly composed service are implemented in different ways, as long as their specification conforms to a commonly declared interface contract. Changes in business demand that require new services to be specified can be • accommodated much easier, and it is quicker to react to business market forces. This means that an SOA is much more fleet of foot, enabling new business opportunities to be explored quickly with less cost. The abstraction of service also facilitates consideration of the enterprise’s • performance at the process level; quality of service (QoS), lead times and defect rates become more obvious measures to observe and therefore targets to specify, since the underlying complexity is shrouded behind a service declaration. Tighter integration along value chains is enabled, as a particular functionality • can be made available as a service between an enterprise and its satellite suppliers. A supplier may deal with several business customers, and it might not be practical to adopt a number of different systems to integrate with. SOA simplifies this by the publication of services that suppliers can ‘hook into’ with their own systems. This has the added advantage that any changes to a customer’s system are encapsulated behind the service description, and there- fore, no other modifications will be required from those that consume that service. Service orientation and its architectural model SOA are key concepts for the realisation of utility computing. Now, we shall consider some technological devel- opments that can support this realisation. Later, in Chap. 5, we shall encounter SOA again, where you will be building a Google App as an exemplar use of web services.
- 30. 6 1 Introducing Cloud Computing 1.4 Grid Computing Grid computing emerged in the 1990s, as Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman suggested that access to compute resources should be the same as connecting to a power grid to obtain electricity (Foster and Kesselman 1999). The need for this was simple: Supercomputers that could process large data sets were prohibitively expensive for many areas of research. As an alternative, the connection and coordination of many separate personal computers (PC) as a grid would facilitate the scaling up of compu- tational resources under the guise of a virtual organisation (VO). Each user of the VO, by being connected to the grid, had access to computational resources far greater than they owned, enabling larger scientific experiments to be conducted by spreading the load across multiple machines. Figure 1.1 gives a brief overview of a grid archi- tecture. A number of separate compute and storage resources are interconnected and managed by a resource that schedules computational jobs across the grid. The collec- tive compute resource is then connected to the Internet via a gateway. Consumers of the grid resource then access the grid by connecting to the Internet. As network speeds and storage space have increased over the years, there has been a greater amount of redundant computational resource that lays idle. Projects such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI@HOME, http://setiathome. berkeley.edu/) have made use of this by scavenging processing cycles from PCs that are either doing nothing or have low demands placed upon them. If we consider how computer processors have developed in a relatively short time span, and then we look at the actual utilisation of such computational power, particularly in the office desktop environment, there are a lot of processor cycles going spare. These machines are not always used during the night or at lunch breaks, but they are often left switched on and connected to a network infrastructure. Grid computing can harness this wastage and put it to some predefined, productive use. One characteristic of grid computing is that the software that manages a grid should enable the grid to be formed quickly and be tolerant of individual machines (or nodes) leaving at will. If you are scavenging processor cycles from someone Internet Grid Consumer Grid Consumers Gateway Job Scheduler Compute Grid Fig. 1.1 Overview of grid computing architecture
- 31. 7 1.5 Hardware Virtualisation else’s PC, you have to be prepared for them turning their machine off without prior warning. The rapid setup is required so that a grid can be assembled to solve a particular problem. This has tended to support scientific applications, where some heavy analysis is required for a data set over a short period, and then it is back to normal with the existing resources when the analysis is done. Collaboration and contribution from participants has been generally on a voluntary basis, which is often the basis of shared ventures in a research environment. Whilst grid computing has started to realise the emergence of computing resources as a utility, two significant challenges have hindered its uptake outside of research. Firstly, the ad hoc, self-governing nature of grids has meant that it is difficult to isolate the effect of poorly performing nodes on the rest of the grid. This might occur if a node cannot process a job at a suitable rate or a node keeps leaving the grid before a batch job is completed. Secondly, the connection of many machines together brings with it a heterogeneous collection of software, operating systems and configurations that cannot realistically be considered by the grid software developer. Thus, grid applications tend to lack portability, since they are written with a specific infrastructure in mind. 1.5 Hardware Virtualisation Hardware virtualisation is a developing technology that is exploiting the continued increase in processor power, enabling ‘virtual’ instances of hardware to execute on disparate physical infrastructure. This technology has permitted organisations such as data centres to improve the utilisation and management of their own resources by building virtual layers of hardware across the numerous physical machines that they own. The virtualisation layer allows data centre management to create and instantiate new instances of virtual hardware irrespective of the devices running underneath it. Conversely, new hardware can be added to the pool of resource and commissioned without affecting the virtualised layer, except in terms of the additional computational power/storage/memory capability that is being made available. Figure 1.2 illustrates the key parts of a virtualised architecture. Working from the physical hardware layer upwards, firstly there is a hypervisor. The role of the hypervisor is to provide a means by which virtual machines can access and communicate with the hardware layer, without installing an operating system. On top of the hypervisor, virtual machines (VM) are installed. Each VM appears to function as a discrete computa- tional resource, even though it does not physically exist. A host operating system (OS) is installed upon each VM, thus enabling traditional computing applications to be built on top of the OS. Virtualisation offers three key advantages for data centre management. Firstly, applications can be confined to a particular virtual machine (VM) appliance, which increases security and isolates any detrimental effect of poor performance on the rest of the data centre. Secondly, the consolidation of disparate platforms onto a unified hardware layer means that physical utilisation can be better managed, leading to increased energy efficiency. Thirdly, virtualisation allows guest operating systems
- 32. 8 1 Introducing Cloud Computing to be stored as snapshots to retain any bespoke configuration settings, which allows images to be restored rapidly in the event of a disaster. This feature also facilitates the user capture of provenance data so that particular situations can be realistically recreated for forensic investigation purposes or to recreate a specific experimental environment. Virtualisation is discussed in more detail in Chap. 4. 1.6 Autonomic Computing As computing technology becomes more complex, there is a corresponding desire to delegate as much management as possible to automated systems. Autonomic computing attempts to specify behaviours that enable the self-management of systems. Self-configuration, self-healing, self-optimising and self-protection (otherwise known as self-CHOP) are the four principles defined by IBM’s autonomic computing initiative (IBM Research 2012). If we consider the cloud computing concept of elasticity, we can see that to obtain the ‘resource-on-demand’ feature will require a variety of computational resources to be configured and, once running, optimised for performance. If we now consider a grid architecture as a computational resource, then the operations described above will need to take into account some more aspects particular to the technologies involved, including disparate and heterogeneous hardware and software standards. Finally, if we add to the mix hardware virtualisation, there will be a requirement to instantiate and migrate virtual machines (VM) across disparate hardware, dynamically as demand dictates. Such is the complexity of myriad physical and virtualised hardware architectures and software components, that it is essential that this management is automated if true, seamless elasticity is to be realised. We have now explored the key concepts and technologies that have shaped the emergence of cloud computing, so we shall now explore a more formal definition and observe how this informs the present description of cloud computing architectures. Hardware Physical Layer Hypervisor Virtual Machine 1 Application Virtual Machine 2 Application Virtual Machine x Application Fig. 1.2 Virtualisation overview
- 33. 9 1.7 Cloud Computing: A Definition 1.7 Cloud Computing: A Definition It won’t take you long to find a number of ‘definitions’ of cloud computing. The World Wide Web is awash with attempts to capture the essence of distributed, elastic computing that is available as a utility. There appears to be some stabilisation occurring with regard to an accepted definition, and for the purposes of this book, we’ll be persevering with that offered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): 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 man- agement effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models. NIST, US Department of Commerce, http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/ SP800-145.pdf The essential characteristics that NIST’s definition refers to are as follows: • On-demand self-service. Traditionally, hosted computing has enabled consumers to outsource the provision of IT infrastructure, such as data storage, so that hard- ware purchases could be minimised. However, whilst these solutions allowed customers to increase the storage available without purchasing any extra hard- ware, the request for data storage was typically an order that was fulfilled some time later. The time lag between request and actual availability meant that such increases had to be planned for and could not be depended upon as a reactive resource. Cloud computing should incorporate sufficient agility and autonomy, that requests for more resource are automatically and dynamically provisioned in real time, without human intervention. • Broad network access. As a utility, cloud computing resources must be available over networks such as the Internet, using established mechanisms and standard protocols. Access devices can include (though are not limited to) personal computers, portable computers, mobile phones and tablet devices. • Resource pooling. This characteristic brings together aspects of grid computing (where multiple compute resources are connected together in a coordinated way) and hardware virtualisation. The virtualised layer enables the resources of a cloud computing provider to be pooled together into one large virtual resource, enabling large-scale efficiencies to be achieved by the dynamic management of hardware and virtualised resources. This results in the appearance of homogenous resources to the consumer, without indicating the physical location or granularity of that resource. • Rapid elasticity. Requests for extra resource are self-managed and automatic in relation to demand. From the consumer’s perspective, the supply of compute resources is limitless. • Measured service. In the same way that energy usage can be monitored, controlled and reported, cloud computing resource providers dynamically optimise the underlying infrastructure and provide a transparent metering service at a level of abstraction that is relevant to the consumer.
- 34. 10 1 Introducing Cloud Computing One theme that is emerging here is that of abstraction; the characteristics above are reliant upon a fundamental architecture of hardware resources that are discrete and varied, upon which there is an abstraction layer of software that realises the characteristics of cloud computing. The physical hardware resource layer includes processor, storage and networking components, and the abstraction layer consists of at least a self-managed virtualisation infrastructure. 1.8 Cloud Computing Service Models Of course, in cloud-speak we refer to services, and there are three categories of service model described by NIST as illustrated in Fig. 1.3. Working from the physical layer upwards, the first service model layer is known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). IaaS is usually the lowest level service available to a cloud computing consumer and provides controlled access to a virtual infrastructure upon which operating systems and application software can be deployed. This can be seen as a natural extension of an existing hardware provision, without the hassle and expense of buying and managing the hardware. As such, there is no control over the physical hardware, but the consumer retains control over operating system parameters and some aspects of security. There is a trend emerging for ‘bare metal’ services, where access to the hardware at its most basic is provided, but this is more akin to traditional data centre or ‘hosting’ services. For the majority of potential cloud consumers, there is a desire to move away from as much of the detail as possible and therefore progress upwards through the cloud service model stack. Platform as a Service (PaaS) sits atop IaaS. This layer is ready for applications to be deployed, as the necessary operating system and platform-related tools such as language compilers are already installed and managed by the cloud computing provider. Consumers may be able to extend the existing tool set by installing their own tools, but absolute control of the infrastructure is still retained by the provider. Thus, the consumer has control over application development, deployment and configuration, within the confines of the hosted environment. This situation has most in common with traditional web hosting, where consumers rented remote servers that had existing Hardware Physical Layer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software as a Service (SaaS) Fig. 1.3 Cloud service models
- 35. 11 1.9 Cloud Computing Deployment Models development platforms installed upon them. The key difference with cloud computing in this case, however, is the rapid provisioning or elasticity; classic web hosting relied upon manual management of provisioning and therefore required human intervention if demand increased or decreased. Finally (for the NIST definition), there is Software as a Service (SaaS). This service model abstracts the consumer away from any infrastructure or platform level detail by concentrating upon the application level. Applications are available via thin client interfaces such as internet browsers or program interfaces such as mobile phone apps. Google’s Gmail is one popular example of a cloud computing application. An organisation can adopt Gmail and never concern itself with hardware maintenance, uptime, security patching or even infrastructure management. The consumer can control parameters within the software to configure specific aspects, but such inter- ventions are managed through the interface of the application. The end user gets an email service and does not worry as to how it is provided. So far, we have described the essential characteristics of cloud computing and then three different service models. As the abstraction concept develops, consumers are finding new ways of using cloud computing to leverage business advantage through the creation of a Business Process as a Service model (BPaaS). Strictly speaking, this sits within SaaS and is not a fourth layer which would fall outside of the NIST definition. We shall revisit this service model later in Chap. 4, so for the time being, we shall consider the models by which cloud computing can be deployed. 1.9 Cloud Computing Deployment Models A public cloud, as its name implies, is available to the general public and is managed by an organisation. The organisation may be a business (such as Google), academic or a governmental department. The cloud computing provider owns and manages the cloud infrastructure. The existence of many different consumers within one cloud architecture is referred to as a multi-tenancy model. Conversely, a private cloud has an exclusive purpose for a particular organisation. The cloud resources may be located on or off premise and could be owned and managed by the consuming organisation or a third party. This may be an example of an organisation who has decided to adopt the infrastructure cost-saving potential of a virtualised architecture on top of existing hardware. The organisation feels unable to remotely host their data, so they are looking to the cloud to improve their resource utilisation and automate the management of such resources. Alternatively an organ- isation may wish to extend its current IT capability by using an exclusive, private cloud that is remotely accessible and provisioned by a third party. Such an organisa- tion may feel uncomfortable with their data being held alongside a potential com- petitor’s data in the multi-tenancy model. Community clouds are a model of cloud computing where the resources exist for a number of parties who have a shared interest or cause. This model is very similar to the single-purpose grids that collaborating research and academic organisations have created to conduct large-scale scientific experiments (e-science). The cloud is
- 36. 12 1 Introducing Cloud Computing owned and managed by one or more of the collaborators in the community, and it may exist either on or off premise. Hybrid clouds are formed when more than one type of cloud infrastructure is utilised for a particular situation. For instance, an organisation may utilise a public cloud for some aspect of its business, yet also have a private cloud on premise for data that is sensitive. As organisations start to exploit cloud service models, it is increasingly likely that a hybrid model is adopted as the specific characteristics of each of the different service models are harnessed. The key enabler here is the open standards by which data and applications are imple- mented, since if portability does not exist, then vendor lock-in to a particular cloud computing provider becomes likely. Lack of data and application portability has been a major hindrance for the widespread uptake of grid computing, and this is one aspect of cloud computing that can facilitate much more flexible, abstract architectures. At this point, you should now have a general understanding of the key concepts of cloud computing and be able to apply this knowledge to a number of common use cases in order to hypothesise as to whether a particular cloud service model might be appropriate. The next part of this chapter will dig a bit deeper into the deployment models and explore some finer-grained challenges and opportunities that cloud computing presents. 1.10 A Quick Recap Before we proceed, let us just quickly summarise what we understand by cloud computing: It’s a model of computing that abstracts us away from the detail. We can have • broad network access to computing resources without the hassle of owning and maintaining them. Cloud computing providers pool resources together and offer them as a utility. • Through the use of hardware virtualisation and autonomic computing tech- nologies, the consumer sees one homogenous, ‘unlimited’ supply of compute resource. Computing resources can be offered at different levels of abstraction, according • to requirements. Consumers can work at infrastructure level (IaaS) and manage operating systems on virtualised hardware, at platform level (PaaS) using the operating systems and development environments provided, or at application level (SaaS), where specific applications are offered by the provider to be configured by the consumer. Cloud computing provides metered usage of the resource so that consumers pay • only for what they use. When the demand for more computing resource goes up, the bill increases. When the demand falls, the bill reduces accordingly. Cloud computing can be deployed publicly in a multi-tenancy model (public • cloud), privately for an individual organisation (private cloud), across a community
- 37. 13 1.11 Beyond the Three Service Models of consumers with a shared interest (community cloud), or a mixture of two or more models (hybrid cloud). 1.11 Beyond the Three Service Models The explanations and discussions so far have allowed us to gain a broad understanding of cloud computing. However, like most things in life, it isn’t that simple. When chief executive officers declare that an organisation will embrace ‘the cloud’, the chief information officer (CIO) may be less enthusiastic. We shall now consider more deeply some of the business drivers and service models for cloud adoption and explore the issues that these drivers can present. 1.11.1 The Business Perspective Large IT vendors have realised for some time that new technology is sold most successfully on its ability to improve profitability. Grid computing and service- oriented architecture (SOA) are two relatively recent examples. Grid computing has demonstrated massive benefits when disparate compute resources are harnessed together to do supercomputing on the cheap. The problem was that the software and protocols that made these large distributed systems perform were inaccessible to those outside of the grid community. Vendors such as IBM and Oracle have both attempted to sell the advantages to business of grid computing, but the lack of reali- sation of the concept of utility (which informed the selection of the name ‘grid’) has meant that insufficient consumers were interested and the ultimate benefits could not be enjoyed. SOA has had a similar ‘reduce your business costs’ drive over the years, with many organisations reporting an overall increase in expenditure after the costs of migrating to SOA have been accounted for. So what is different about cloud computing? One of the attractions of cloud computing is the rapid provisioning of new compute resources without capital expenditure. If the marketing director makes claims about a new market niche, then it is much more cost-effective to experi- ment with new products and services, since cloud computing removes tradi- tional barriers such as raising capital funds, lengthy procurement procedures and human resource investment. Also, if cloud computing is already part of the organisation’s IT infrastructure, then new requests merely become additional demands upon the systems, rather than designing and specifying new systems from scratch. Business agility is therefore one key driver for the adoption of cloud computing. The other key business driver is the potential reduction in ongoing capital expenditure costs afforded by cloud computing. As the use of IT becomes more sophisticated, greater demands are placed upon IT fundamentals such as data
- 38. 14 1 Introducing Cloud Computing storage, and if the requirements fluctuate significantly, the pay-per-use model of cloud computing can realise operational savings beyond the costs of the potential extra hardware requirement. 1.12 When Can the Service Models Help? 1.12.1 Infrastructure as a Service As described earlier, IaaS is about servers, networking and storage delivered as a service. These resources will actually be virtualised, though the consumer wouldn’t know any different. The resources may come with or without an operating system. IaaS is a form of computing rental where the billing is related to actual usage, rather than ownership of a discrete number of servers. When the consumer wants more ‘grunt’, the IaaS management software dynamically provisions more resources as required. Typically, there will be an agreed limit between the consumer and the provider, beyond which further authorisation is required to continue scaling upwards (and thus incur extra cost). IaaS is particularly suited to organisations who want to retain control over the whole platform and software stack and who need extra infrastructure quickly and cheaply. For instance, the research and development department of an organisation may have specific applications that run on optimised platforms. Sporadically, applications are required to process massive data sets. Using a cloud, it would cost the same to have 500 processors run for 1 hour, as it does to run 1 processor for 500 hours, so the research unit opts for speed without having to invest in hardware that would be nominally underutilised. 1.12.2 Platform as a Service PaaS has parallels with web hosting, in that it is a complete set of software that enables the complete application development life cycle within a cloud. This includes the tools for development and testing as well as the actual execution environment. As with IaaS, the resources are dynamically scaled, and for the most part, this is handled transparently by the cloud provider without making any extra demands upon the developer. For specialist applications that require low-level optimisation, either IaaS or a private cloud is more suitable. One of the potential drawbacks of PaaS is lack of portability and therefore vendor lock-in, as you are developing applications with the tool sets that are supplied by the cloud provider. If, at a later date, you would like to move provider or you want to use another cloud service concurrently, there may be a substantial effort required to port your application across to another vendor’s cloud platform. PaaS is a good option if your existing application’s development environment is matched by that of a cloud provider or if you would like to experiment with new products and services that can be rapidly composed from pre-existing services that are provided by the platform.
- 39. 15 1.12 When Can the Service Models Help? 1.12.3 Software as a Service In some ways, SaaS is the easiest way into cloud computing. You see some software and you try it out for a limited time. If you like it, you continue and start paying to use it, otherwise you look for something else. The software automatically scales to the number of users you have (but you don’t notice this), and your data is backed up. You will probably have to invest a bit of time in getting your existing data into the application, and any tweaks to existing systems that you have may also require some work to get them to connect to your new cloud application. SaaS is useful if you are in the situation whereby a legacy application you own has been replicated by a SaaS provider or if a particular SaaS application offers a capability that you don’t currently have but can see the business benefit of having it. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one example; many organisations operate without CRM systems as they can be expensive and it is impossible to justify the initial investment. Salesforce.com saw the opportunity to bring enterprise-level CRM to the masses via SaaS and has subsequently opened up their own platform, Force.com, as part of a PaaS service model. Applications like CRM SaaS have enabled organisations to abstract themselves away from the infrastructure headaches, and as a result, they can think more about the actual business workflows that take place. Whilst it would seem that SaaS is all about pre-packaged software, the vendors have realised that consumers should be able to configure these offerings so that the application can be suitably customised to integrate with existing systems. This has led to a new interest in the abstraction of business process management (BPM), whereby organisational units create high- level process descriptions of their operations, within software that interfaces the process descriptions to an underlying, transactional code base. This offers substantial benefits including: No knowledge of the underlying program code is required. • Process descriptions are closer to the real operations and are easier to derive and • communicate between business users. Process optimisation and waste identification is simplified and easier to • implement. Process commonality is more visible, and therefore, process reuse is more • prominent, both internally within an organisation and outside of the normal process boundaries with suppliers. Libraries of process descriptions enables the rapid composition of new • processes. From a conceptual stance, Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) might be viewed as a fourth layer, above SaaS, but from an architectural perspective, it is clearly a subset of SaaS as Fig. 1.4 illustrates. BPaaS creates new opportunities for organisations to exploit the cloud, as the abstraction away from technical and integration issues gives organisations a new way to conduct their business. This topic will be explored more fully in Chap. 10, which is all about enterprise cloud computing.
- 40. 16 1 Introducing Cloud Computing 1.13 Issues for Cloud Computing As with any new approach or technology, there are limits by which benefits can be realised, and a new way of working may introduce additional risks. Cloud com- puting is no different in this respect, particularly as the model is still maturing. From a consumer’s perspective there is a great deal of focus upon security and trust. Many users are ambivalent about where ‘their’ data is stored, whereas other users (specifically organisations) are more sceptical about delegating the location of the data along with the management processes that go with it. For many smaller organisations, the cloud computing providers will be bringing enterprise-level security to the masses as part of the offering. Most private individuals and small businesses are unaware of the risks of lost data and the adverse impact that it can have upon daily operations. As a consequence, it is likely that they have not put the appropriate security measures in place. In this case, a move towards the cloud can bring real benefits. However, there may be specific legislation that exists to govern the physical location of data; a multi-tenanted public cloud may place your data in a country that is outside the scope of the jurisdiction that you need to comply with. Additionally, the notion of service as a core component of the cloud leads to new service compo- sition from readily available services. The use of third-party services potentially introduces security and privacy risks, which may therefore require an additional auditing overhead if the services are to be successfully and reliably trusted. Another concern is that of vendor lock-in. If an organisation utilises IaaS, it may find that the platforms and applications that it builds upon this service cannot be transferred to another cloud computing provider. Similarly, services at PaaS and SaaS can also introduce nonstandard ways of storing and accessing data, making data or application portability problematic. Quality of service (QoS) is an issue that many organisations already face either as consumers or providers of services. Whilst cloud computing providers offer Hardware Physical Layer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software as a Service (SaaS) Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) Fig. 1.4 Business process as a service (BPaaS) in the context of the cloud computing stack
- 41. 17 1.13 Issues for Cloud Computing measurement and monitoring functions for billing, it might be considered incumbent upon consumers to develop their own monitoring mechanisms to inform any future actions. Much has been claimed about the potential energy-saving opportunities of organisations moving to the cloud. The ability to pool resources and dynamically manage how these resources are provisioned will of course permit computing resource usage to be more optimised. However, there is an assumption that this occurs at a certain scale, and perhaps less obviously, it is dependent upon the service model required. For instance, an IT department may decide to evaluate the potential of hardware virtualisation as part of a private cloud. The hardware already exists, and the maintenance costs are known. In theory, the more flexible provisioning that cloud architectures offer should release some extra compute resources. In terms of any investment in cooling, for example, then better utilisation of the existing hardware will come cheaper than the purchase of additional air-conditioning units. Unfortunately, it is only through the provision of compute resources on a massive scale that significant amounts of resource can be redeployed for the benefit of others. The private cloud may be able to scavenge extra processor cycles for heavier computational tasks, but storage management may not be that different from that achieved by a storage area network (SAN) architecture. Thus, significant energy savings can only be realised by using the services of a cloud provider to reduce the presence of physical hardware on premise. It follows therefore, that it is the massive data centres who offer SaaS that can maxi- mise scalability whilst significantly reducing energy usage. For everyone else, energy reduction might not be a primary motivator for adopting a private cloud architecture. Of course, as organisations move to the cloud, there is a heightened awareness of measures of availability and the financial impact that a temporary withdrawal of a service might incur. Good practice would suggest that there should be ‘no single point of failure’, and at first glance a cloud-based system would offer all the resource redundancy that an organisation might want. However, whilst the IaaS, PaaS or SaaS may be built upon a distributed system, the management and governance is based upon one system. If Google or Microsoft went bust, then any reliance upon their comprehensive facilities could be catastrophic. This risk gets greater the higher up the cloud stack that the engagement occurs—if Salesforce.com collapsed, then a great deal of an organisation’s business logic would disappear along with the data, all wrapped up in a SaaS application. Software bugs are a major concern for all software development activity, and many instances of ‘undocumented features’ occur only when an application is under significant load. In the case of a distributed system, it is not always practical to recreate the open environment conditions, so there remains the potential risk that something catastrophic might occur. Hardware virtualisation can be a way of con- taining the scope of software bugs, but as many SaaS vendors created their offerings before the widespread use of virtualisation, this form of architectural protection cannot be relied upon. This is clearly a case for open architectural standards for cloud architectures to be established.
- 42. 18 1 Introducing Cloud Computing As cloud use increases, organisations will place ever-increasing demands that present significant data transfer bottlenecks. Additionally, the distributed archi- tecture of a cloud application may result in a data transfer that would not have occurred had the application been hosted in one physical space. Even though network speeds are getting faster, in some cases the volume of data to be trans- ferred is so large that it is cheaper and quicker to physically transport media between data centres. Of course this only works for data that is not ‘on demand’ and therefore is relevant when data needs to be exported from one system and imported into another. With regard to the benefits of scalability, the case for optimising processor cycles across a vast number of units is clear; processors can be utilised to perform a com- putation and then returned back to a pool to wait for the next job. However, this does not translate as easily to persistent storage, where in general the requirement just continues to increase. Methods for dealing with storage in a dynamic way, that preserve the performance characteristics expected from an application that queries repositories, have yet to be developed and remain a potential issue for cloud computing going forward. 1.14 Summing Up Cloud computing is a new delivery model for IT that uses established IT resources. The Internet, hardware virtualisation, remote hosting, autonomic computing and resource pooling are all examples of technologies that have existed for some time. But it is how these technologies have been brought together, packaged and delivered as a pay-per-use utility that has established cloud computing as one of the largest disruptive innovations yet in the history of IT. As organisations shift from concen- trating on back-office processes, where transactional records are kept and main- tained, towards front-end processes where organisations conduct business with customers and suppliers, new business models of value creation are being developed. There is no doubt that the cloud is fuelling this shift. You’ve now had a whistle-stop tour of the exciting world of cloud computing. We have covered a lot, and you will probably have some questions that haven’t been answered yet. The rest of this book explores a number of important areas in more depth, so that by the end you will not only have a broad understanding of cloud computing, but if you have completed the exercises, you’ll be able to implement the technology as well! 1.15 Review Questions The answers to these questions can be found in the text of this chapter. 1. Explain how energy utility provision has informed the emergence of cloud computing. 2. Briefly discuss the differences between cloud computing service models.
- 43. 19 References 3. Which combination of cloud computing characteristics is the best case for reducing energy consumption? 4. Explain the similarities between grid and cloud computing. 5. Describe the different levels of abstraction that cloud providers can offer. 1.16 Extended Study Activities These activities require you to research beyond the contents of this book and can be approached individually for the purposes of self-study or used as the basis of group work. 1. You are a member of a team of IT consultants, who specialise in selling IT systems to organisations that have between 100 and 500 staff. Prepare a case for the adoption of cloud computing. Consider the types of IT architecture and systems that might already be in place and whether there are specific business functions made available by cloud computing that an organisation might benefit from. 2. An IT department has decided to investigate the use of cloud computing for application development. What are the issues that they should consider, and how would you advise that they mitigate any risks? References Foster, I., Kesselman, C.: The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco (1999). ISBN 1-55860-475-8 IBM Research: Autonomic Computing. http://www.research.ibm.com/autonomic/ (2012). Last Accessed July 2012 McCarthy, J.: Reminiscences on the History of Time Sharing. Stanford University. http://www- formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html (1983) Parkhill, D.: The Challenge of the Computer Utility. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1966). ISBN 0-201-05720-4
- 44. 21 R. Hill et al., Guide to Cloud Computing: Principles and Practice, Computer Communications and Networks, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-4603-2_2, © Springer-Verlag London 2013 What the reader will learn: That cloud computing has a number of adoption models • What is meant by public cloud, and why businesses may choose to adopt this • What is meant by private cloud, and why businesses may choose to adopt this • What is meant by hybrid cloud and community cloud, and why businesses may • choose to adopt this That these new ways of doing business bring with them legal issues that need to • be considered as part of any plan to adopt cloud computing 2.1 What Services Are Available? There are alternative ways a business might adopt cloud computing, and we will be reviewing those approaches in this chapter. As we saw earlier, there are many some- thing-as-a-service options available, and many providers provide all of them, whilst some concentrate on specialist areas like data storage or application platforms. In a 2011 paper, Li et al. (2010) indicated four general types of service that are currently available from leading cloud providers: 1. Elastic compute clusters which include a set of virtual instances that run a customer’s application code. 2. Persistent storage services in which application or other data can be stored in a cluster. 3. Intracloud networks, which connect an application’s components. 4. Wide-area networks (WANs) connect the cloud data centres, where the application is hosted, with end hosts on the Internet. This is a useful categorisation of service types. The other things we will need to consider are metrics. We will need to have some understanding of measures such as performance, cost and availability if we are to have any hope of assessing which 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud
- 45. 22 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud provider offers the best solution for any of these services. We will examine these in the ‘Which Cloud Model?’ section (Sect. 2.6) at the end of this chapter. As we saw in the last chapter, there are many definitions of cloud. Vaquero et al. (2009) attempted to collate these and come up with a single, all-encompassing definition: Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically reconfigured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilisation. This pool of resources is typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guarantees are offered by the infrastructure provider by means of customised SLAs. We must also not forget that to businesses, it matters not how we define cloud computing but rather it matters whether this form of IT supports their business by reducing costs or adding revenue and profit. You will see more of this discussion in Chap. 8. These elements too are reviewed by cloud type. The three types of cloud adoption we shall review are public, private and hybrid. As the latter is a combination of the other two, it may be worth starting by examin- ing the key differences between typical public and private clouds (Table 2.1). 2.2 What Is Meant by Public Cloud? The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests in a recent draft that the definition of a public cloud is as follows: The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organisation selling cloud services (Mell and Grance 2011). The authors of this book believe the general public or a large industry group should be replaced with the general public or organisations as there is no evidence that industry groups need to be of any particular size to adopt cloud computing. The key element here is that services are offered by the resource owner (usually referred to as the service provider) to anyone who wants to make use of that service. The service can be any of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and DaaS (see the previous chapter for definitions). The service provider may charge, usually on a utility basis, but sometimes on a termly basis, or may give the service for free and earn revenue from other income streams, such as advertising. Table 2.1 A summary of the key differences between public and private cloud models Public Private Network Internet Private network Server and data centre location Global In company Costing By usage or free Internal mechanism, often by capacity and processor Tenancy Multiple Single Scale orientation Vertical (i.e. user focused) Horizontal (i.e. application focused) Key selection rationale Cost Security
- 46. 23 2.2 What Is Meant by Public Cloud? 2.2.1 Who Is Using Public Cloud? The short answer is millions of people! Mail providers can be evasive about the size of their user-base. Specialist email marketing site http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/ gathered some statistics that give us a feel for the scale of the browser-based email usage. These figures are for the ‘big 3’, and we can safely assume the other providers (such as Excite, AOL, Rediffmail) will amount to >200 million. The dates for these figures are different but all in or after 2010 as illustrated in Table 2.2. Remember that our definition of cloud services is that a provider owns the resources required to provide a service (such as email) and rents this service to users on a pay-for-use basis. This means there are already at least a billion users of cloud email services worldwide. We talk about the phenomenon of social networks in the Social, Economic and Political Aspects chapter. Again, the numbers using these services are over a billion. Many will also use email, but nonetheless, when added to other free, privately focused services like image storage and editing, drop boxes for file sharing and presentation tools like Prezi, there is little doubt that public cloud-based services are here to stay. From the business perspective, however, the view is different. As reported in Computerworld (Mearian 2011), some research by ThelnfoPro, a market research firm, which approached 247 Fortune 1000 corporations showed that 87% of the respondents indicated that they had no plans to use the public cloud for storage- as-a-service. Only 10% said that they would use it. We should also bear in mind that this sort of large corporation will have been in business for many years and will have invested heavily in IT infrastructure before the cloud existed. They will already have in place their own processes based on internal systems. Heavy investment in enterprise systems like ERP systems such as SAP or PeopleSoft, and RDBMS like Oracle or DB2, not to mention the investment they will have had to make in the specialist people needed to run these business processes, means there is really very little need for them to look elsewhere for solu- tions. There are, however, two exceptions to this general rule: The eternal search for efficiency and cost reduction • When an innovative solution is only, or primarily, available from a service provider • We have also seen that security and ownership of the data storage are big issues for all potential cloud users. Even if the search for value leads a corporation to begin to use virtualisation to maximise resource usage, they will often prefer to keep that Table 2.2 Services and estimated number of users of public clouds Provider Estimated users (millions, as of 2010) Hotmail 330 Yahoo 302 Gmail 193 Others 200
- 47. 24 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud transformation in-house to keep a tight control of security. Set in this context, the indications that large corporates are not racing to take up public cloud offerings are not surprising. For such organisations, private or hybrid clouds may be more appealing (see sections below). For small-to-medium businesses (SMEs), the argument for adopting public cloud appears a little easier to win. Especially at the micro end, with less than ten employees, businesses are very unlikely to be able to attain the sorts of economies of scale that the megacorporations can achieve with their large-scale IT systems. However, if they, in effect, ‘club together and share’, they can achieve significant economies of scale. The fact that this collaboration is enabled by a for-profit-making service pro- vider is not consequential. When you add to this the ease of access to on-demand services which are paid for on a utility basis, the argument is even stronger. If some service providers are to be believed SMEs need never employ an IT specialist again since all their business needs can be made available after signing up and simply completing a series of online questions which act as setup wizards for this application or the other. Of course life is not always that simple. Apart from the ever-present concern about security (see below) being just as relevant to SMEs as to large corporations, there is the age-old debate between whether you should adapt your business pro- cesses to allow the use of off-the-shelf software or keep your processes but have to build, or at least tailor, the software. In terms of IT spent, the former is usually seen as the cheaper, but if your processes are part of what gives you competitive advantage, you may be willing to pay for the privilege of using unique software. Most of these IT strategy-type questions are not new. The control and specialisa- tion which comes from in-house IT solutions has always been balanced against the savings that can come from off-the-shelf solutions. What is new to cloud, however, is that the cash-flow improvement, at least in the short term, can be very significant as costs become revenue rather than capital, spreading the load over years rather than needing high-cost up-front payments. The other advantage of the move to pay-for-use is the flexibility that it gives a small firm. Should your business suddenly begin to take off and you need more in the way of IT infrastructure and services, you just pay more to your service provider. Conversely, if part of your business fails, you can stop the IT costs immediately, as opposed to being left with expensive servers doing nothing. Both ways seem to significantly reduce the risks involved in an SME opting to use an IT service. As usual with business decisions, the preferred solution will be a balance of risks and expected benefits. For SMEs, the balance may seem slightly more biased towards the benefits outweighing the risks. However, every company will be different, and contex- tual issues like company culture, national norms, sector best practice and government and legal guidelines will all play important parts in the decision-making process. 2.2.2 Another Easy Win for SMEs One area traditionally less well attended to by smaller organisations is disaster recovery (DR). Even backup and recovery strategies may be relatively unsophisti- cated. An occasional take backup stored in a fireproof safe may well keep a company’s
- 48. 25 2.2 What Is Meant by Public Cloud? vital data safe, but recovering the data after, for example, a catastrophic server failure, can take days as a new server is purchased, commissioned and brought back to the state of its predecessor. Major corporations have business continuity plans that look to keep their core operations active with as little as a few minutes between disaster and response. But they have to pay—considerably—for this sort of service. For a multinational bank, for example, this expense is almost a no-brain decision. They can’t afford to lose the business that would occur whilst their systems were down. For an SME, however, a DR plan revolving around a multisite fully mirrored server solution can be seen as a nice-to-have extra as the expense is high and what it buys may never be needed. Cloud provides a small business with an easier, less costly way to run at least two live data centres with automatic failover. This dramatically reduces mean time to recovery (MTTR)—the time between system failures and recovery. With the cloud, backup need never be to slow tapes. It can be easily automated to happen without human intervention by uploading backup data to a cloud data cen- tre. A centre which will itself have built-in redundancy, meaning you automatically get multiple copies of your valuable data. 2.2.3 Who Is Providing Public Cloud Services? Those who have seen Larry Ellison’s 2009 tirade lampooning cloud computing as nothing other than a hyperbole (see YouTube) may be surprised to see that Oracle now provide pay-for-use services in the cloud (http://cloud.oracle.com). Other corporates with long track records in the IT arena also now have public cloud offerings and are joined by some newer names. Just as examples, these well- known brands all offer some sort of cloud service now: IBM, AT&T, Fujitsu, Microsoft, HP and Rackspace. And there are many smaller, new market entrants too. Competition is already hot, which is a good indicator that the cloud is well on its way to being accepted by the market. When we see that these different providers are moving in the same immature market, we should perhaps be a little cautious about predicting the future. Many examples exist of one brand of technology winning out over others and not necessarily because of its excellence. Perhaps the most famous marketing war like this was that between Sony’s Betamax and JVC’s VHS video formats. The public chose VHS and Betamax died. But there were many people who lost money by investing in Betamax before it declined. The same thing could happen with cloud. These providers of services do not currently abide by any universally accepted standards. Getting tied into one provider is indeed a risk that needs to be considered. There is a fuller review of interoperability issues in the hybrid section. 2.2.4 Security: The Dreaded ‘S’ Word As we will see in the Cloud Security and Governance chapter, privacy and security are big concerns for all potential users of cloud. All the anxieties that may be
- 49. 26 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud expressed are most acute with public cloud, where the profitability of the service provider is the key driver to all technology decisions. As Kaufman (2010) puts it, To achieve the gains afforded through virtualisation, such providers are colocating virtual machines (VMs) from disparate organisations on the same physical server. From a profit/loss perspective, this matching seems to provide a win-win scenario for both the user and service provider. However, this operational profile introduces a new era of security concerns. As we have said elsewhere, there isn’t much new, in terms of technology, with cloud. There is no real reason why cloud platforms should not be as secure as a traditional platform. Indeed, in some cases, it may be more secure. For example, a server in a locked room may not be as well protected as the Google data centres, as described in this YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SCZzgfdTBo In these places, biometrics, multi-checkin and log-in make access to hardware from outsiders virtually impossible—probably far more secure than an average SME’s premises. Of course, one of the aspects about public cloud is that services are accessed through the Internet: an Internet that is available worldwide to both friend and foe. This shared remote access model can potentially allow cyberattacks. All this means that security can be an issue with cloud, but there are issues with current IT infrastructures too. The perception of insecurity is, however, probably the biggest barrier to cloud adoption. For the non-technically minded amongst business decision-makers, it is not difficult to understand why they may be wary about parcelling up their valuable data and giving it to another company to look after, instead of having it sit on a server behind a locked door on their site. These doubts are compounded when you explain that their data will be multi-tenanting, sharing the same physical resources, perhaps, as their biggest competitor. How could that be seen as a sensible move? Nor is it just data that can be worrisome. Even IT-literate decision-makers are likely to have grown up in an era when modems went down, when Internet connec- tions broke and when speed of transmission plummeted. How can it be sensible to replace your reliably performing single-purpose system connected to a few clients in a small LAN, all under the control of your network team, with a barely under- stood worldwide web of entangled connections? Why move ERP from in-house to in-Indonesia or some other foreign domain? It is not this book’s place to counter these concerns. The major service providers will fight that battle, but we do need to be aware that security can be a human prob- lem, rather than a technical one. 2.3 What Is Meant by Private Cloud? The technology stack need be no different to that used by service providers in public cloud solutions. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests in a recent draft that the definition of private cloud is as follows: The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organisation. It may be managed by the organisation or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.
- 50. 27 2.3 What Is Meant by Private Cloud? The key element here is that the resource owner (known as the service provider in public cloud) is the organisation that is using the services. The service can be any of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and DaaS (see earlier chapters for definitions), and there may be internal charging mechanisms for these services, but they are not normally made available to anyone outside of the organisation and hidden behind a firewall. 2.3.1 Who Is Using Private Cloud? Because of the expense involved in creating multi-server operations, early adopters tend to be large organisations with existing infrastructures that lend themselves to the adoption of a cloud platform to increase server efficiency (and thus reduce costs) and allow broader availability to systems within the organisation. We must also remember that organisations have been using some of the building blocks, such as virtualisation and SaaS, for years without calling it cloud. There is an argument that private cloud is not really that different to the ways large organisations typically manage their infrastructures. Stand far enough away and the technology of a large server farm making good use of virtualisation looks very similar to a cloud. To make matters worse, the organisation doesn’t even get the advantages of flexibility, which come from sharing resources, nor do they benefit from the move to revenue costing that is also one of cloud’s oft-trumpeted advantages. Whether or not a move to a private cloud will be beneficial to an organisation depends upon many things, but their existing infrastructure is one of the key ones. A recent big spend in modernising the company data centre can be an indicator that investing in cloud is not an immediate need. If it is time to upgrade anyway, then perhaps internal cloud is a solution worth reviewing. Especially in the current economic conditions, companies are looking at all their costs to see if they can run more efficiently. IT is no different to any other part of the business in this. Most big organisations depend upon a set of core IT processes. The question being asked is ‘are we paying too much for this service?’ and that question plays into the hands of those arguing the benefits of cloud computing. Gartner (2010) suggests that … cloud computing has become more material, because the challenges inherent in managing technology based on the principles of previous eras — complex, custom, expensive solu- tions managed by large in-house IT teams — have become greater, and the benefits of cloud computing in addressing these challenges have matured to become more appropriate and attractive to all types of enterprises. The question on the lips of many larger organisations’ CIOs will not be private versus public but rather legacy versus private. The ability of a cloud infrastructure to flexibly move computing resources to deal with spikes in workload means that cloud-based data centres can run much more efficiently than existing ones, and that may be the biggest single factor in the decision.
- 51. 28 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud For organisations who have taken the decision that cloud will be their preferred technology solution, the question of public versus private is likely to force them to think about the value of security to their business. Private allows, or at least seems to allow, organisations to have greater control over their data. There are, however, many more barriers to private since in-house expertise in virtualisation and opera- tions automation may not currently exist and will be expensive to acquire. Moreover, a move to public cloud can happen much more quickly and allows for maximum flexibility in resource management. The ultimate question, therefore, is likely to be how much are we willing to spend to maintain control over our data? A whole later chapter is reserved for further investigation into enterprise cloud, and many of the issues which surround the process of adopting a private cloud in a large organisation are covered there. 2.3.2 Who Is Supplying Private Cloud? Most of the big players are now fully committed to selling products or services badged as cloud. Even Oracle, once more famous for laughing at cloud, sells cloud- related services and products, mostly private cloud solutions. They say Cloud computing promises to speed application deployment, increase innovation, and lower costs, all while increasing business agility. It also can transform the way we design, build, and deliver applications.... (http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dialogue/ns/dlgwelcome.jsp?p_ext=Y&p_dlg_id=92 70949&src=7054580&Act=13&sckw=WWMK10058758MPP002.GCM.9322) IBM has been in cloud from very early days. Lotus Notes has now become iNotes, and one prong of the IBM cloud marketing campaigns is clearly aimed at public, with the catchy strapline of Install nothing. Access everything. But IBM clearly recognises the need for private cloud too. They have a suite of underpinning technologies they call SmartCloud Foundations which they describe as an integrated set of technologies for enabling private and hybrid clouds, and the virtualisa- tion, automation and management of service delivery. SmartCloud Foundation capabilities allow organisations to easily build and rapidly scale private cloud environments. (http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/) HP is a big player too, playing heavily on the reputation for cloud to be rapid and flexible; they can deliver private cloud computing services within 30 days (http:// www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100830a.html). On their website, their senior vice president and general manager, Technology Services, HP, uses the concept of an ‘internal provider’: To better serve the needs of their enterprises, clients are asking us to help them become internal service providers with the ability to deliver applications through a highly flexible private cloud environment.
- 52. 29 2.4 What Is Meant by Hybrid Cloud? Citrix too has been in the market since it really started. Their solutions also play on the speed of change possible from cloud: With CloudStack, customers can quickly and easily build cloud services within their existing infrastructure and start realizing the benefits of this transformative service delivery model within minutes—without the overhead of integration, professional services and complex deployment schedules. (http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/product.asp?contentID=2314749) An interesting development with Citrix is their CloudBridge technology which tackles the perceived security issues in public cloud head-on and seeks to help create secure hybrid solutions: Citrix CloudBridge lowers the risk and reduces the effort and cost for enterprises to move production workloads to the cloud by …. making the cloud provider network look like a natural extension of the enterprise datacenter network. (http://www.citrix.com/site/resources/dynamic/salesdocs/Citrix_NetScaler_Cloud_ Bridge.pdf) As well as suppliers of hardware and software, consultancies too are very much in the market for helping customers migrate to a cloud solution. And it isn’t just Western companies who are pushing cloud. TCS and Infosys in India, for example, are major global players. Simply type private cloud supplier in a Google search, and (at the time of writing) 95 million hits are reported. There can be no doubt that the cloud market is well and truly active! 2.4 What Is Meant by Hybrid Cloud? NIST definition: Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds). The key aspect is that hybrid includes some mix of public and private cloud in a non-specified ratio. 2.4.1 Who Is Using Hybrid Cloud? If an organisation has a steady and quantifiable use of IT resources, they are able to adopt private cloud, gaining the benefits of efficiency and availability, without missing the other strength of cloud—flexible scalability. If, on the other hand, like many organisations, they have spikes of activity, planned or not, then public cloud’s ability to offer unlimited and immediate scal- ability on an occasional basis may well appeal. Building your systems to cope with
- 53. 30 2 Business Adoption Models and Legal Aspects of the Cloud standard workloads in-house and extend outwards when required should allow for the best of both worlds. Sensitive systems can be kept entirely in-house if required. Some e-commerce organisations can adopt a hybrid approach to help with the activity associated with the front-end during peak shopping periods whilst main- taining secure back-end services in their own private cloud. This prevents them having to invest in many servers which may be idle for long periods just to cope with occasional high loads. The other likely driver towards a hybrid approach is the organisation’s existing infrastructure and their IT strategy. Hybrid may well be an interim approach which means that wholesale in-house architectural changes do not need to happen imme- diately as some changes are contracted out to service providers and some existing systems continue to function. Interoperability between these different systems here is a key issue (see below). Another way that hybrid is likely to happen is by accident. An organisation with its own private cloud platform for its main systems may, for example, decide that Google’s Gmail email solution is the right one for their organisation. The security risks with noncritical systems like email will seem relatively minor, and the cost- effectiveness of such a solution may attract many organisations. Part of their IT stack then becomes private, part public—de facto a hybrid cloud solution. 2.4.2 What Are the Issues with Hybrid Cloud? Whilst suppliers, such as Citrix and their CloudBridge, will be keen to suggest that hybrid offers the best of both private and public worlds, it is also arguable that it is the worst of both. After all, as we saw in the private section above, one of the biggest drivers for private solutions is the ability to control your own, independent data centre for security reasons. Claybrook (2011) suggests The challenges of building a bridge between private and public clouds are real. (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217158/Cloud_interoperability_Problems_ and_best_practices) The report goes on to quote Joe Skorupa, a Gartner vice president, as saying that … users and cloud vendors are in very different places on this issue [interoperability], and true cloud interoperability will likely not occur for some time -- if ever. Standards are nascent and will take years to fully develop. The lack of standards is indeed likely to be a major stumbling block when it comes to trying to pass data, which will usually be encrypted, between different systems in a hybrid cloud solution. It is not unusual in IT for technology to get so far ahead of standards. And in the absence of standards, there is little reason for the various providers to ensure ease of communications between themselves and other providers. Indeed, the cynical amongst us may even think that these different approaches can help tie in the customer to a provider.
- 54. 31 2.5 What Is Meant by Community Cloud? The two key proprietary virtualisation technologies (VMWare and Hyper-V) will be trying to keep their own customers whilst also fighting off open-source alternatives in the PaaS area. As trust is one of the likely decision factors for cloud platform providers’ customers, some form of industry-wide standard is being actively sought. Unfortunately, however, there are several agencies keen to seek to take the lead in this area. At the time of writing, these included: IEEE, self styled as ‘the world’s largest professional association advancing tech- • nology for humanity’ Open Grid Forum • Cloud Security Alliance • NIST • All these agencies are themselves liable to lobbying from the industry. This lob- bying is generally for financial reasons, but it is also true that individual providers naturally believe their particular solutions are the best! It is unlikely that a truly global and agreed standard will happen for a few years yet, so interoperability is likely to remain one of the biggest barriers to hybrid adoption. 2.5 What Is Meant by Community Cloud? NIST definition: The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organisations and supports a specific commu- nity that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organisations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. The key aspect here is that of inter-organisational collaboration. Community cloud is just like a private cloud except that several organisations share the respon- sibility for resourcing the cloud, instead of just one. 2.5.1 Who Is Using Community Cloud? Trust between companies operating in a competitive marketplace is not a usual phe- nomenon, and so community is not a realistic option for them. However, organisa- tions which are about care and support have naturally tended to help each other in the past. Charitable organisations, for example, have been coming together to share all sorts of resources, including IT. One example is the International HIV/AIDS Alliance which is a partnership for ‘… everyone who works with and for NGOs and CBOs and is involved in commu- nity and health system strengthening worldwide’. Whilst the political advantages which come from small charities coming together as a single pressure group are their reason d’être, the support provided by IT across the partnership can also be important. Working with Cisco, the alliance has imple- mented online collaboration and SaaS platform:
- 55. Another Random Scribd Document with Unrelated Content
- 56. neglect of other parts of the croft, and that there was no just claim. His other reason for refusal was that he wanted an allowance made to him for Mr. Watson's sheep being permitted to graze over the Cruagan crofts after the crops were reaped." "And why not?" said Mary again. "Why should Mr. Watson's sheep graze over the crofts? That seems to me a great injustice— unless compensation is given." "Well, it is a practice of long standing," said the young man (and Käthchen, who cared very little about rents and holdings and drains, nevertheless thought he had so agreeable a voice that it was quite a pleasure to listen to him). "The crofters took the crofts knowing of this condition, and the rents were fixed accordingly. However, this is the present state of affairs, that the sheriff-substitute has decided against Macdonald—as he was bound to do, I admit. He has found him liable for arrears of rent, with interest and costs; and he has granted a warrant to turn him out. Now Macdonald is a stiff-necked man, a difficult man to deal with; and he doesn't know much English; it will be no use for the sheriff-officer to argue, and say he is only doing his duty——" "I disapprove of the whole proceedings," said Mary, with decision. "Mr. Purdie had no right to go to such extremes without consulting me—and I will take care that it does not happen again. By the mail-car, did you say? Well, that won't be coming by Cruagan before half-past two; and I can be there by then. The sheriff's officer and his—his what did you call them?" "His concurrents—assistants." "They must wait for further instructions; and I will inquire into the matter myself."
- 57. He rose. "I hope you will forgive me, Miss Stanley," said he, as he had said before, "for seeming to interfere. I have no wish to do anything of the kind. But I thought you ought to know in case there might be any trouble—which you could prevent." "Mr. Ross," said she, "I am very much obliged to you. I—I don't get very much help—and—and I want to do what little I can for the people." "Good morning!" said he; and he bowed to Kate Glendinning: he was going away without so much as shaking hands with either of them, so distant and respectful was his manner. But Mary, in a confused kind of fashion, did not seem to think this was right. She accompanied him to the door; and that she left open; then she went out with him into the hall. "I cannot believe that James Macdonald should have any serious grudge against me," she said, "for I told Mr. Purdie to tell him that the tax for the dyke was abolished, and also that fifteen years of it was to be given back. And, besides that, I said to Macdonald myself that thirty shillings an acre was too much for that land; and I propose to have it reduced to a pound an acre when I have all the rents of the estate looked into." "Do you think Purdie did tell him?" young Donald Ross asked coldly. "If he has not!" said Mary ... "But I am almost sure he did—I spoke to Macdonald myself almost immediately afterwards. And— and I wished to tell you, Mr. Ross," she continued (as if she were rather pleading for favour, or at least expecting approval), "that I have been down to the stranger fishermen at Ru-Minard, and I think
- 58. it is all settled, and that they are going away peaceably. I am paying them for the lobster-traps that were burned—and perhaps a little more; and they understand that the Vagrant Act can be brought to bear on any others who may think of coming." "Oh, they are going away?" said he. "Yes." "Mr. Purdie will be sorry for that." "Why?" "He could have had them removed, if he had wanted; but so long as they were an annoyance and vexation to the people here, he allowed them to remain—naturally." These accents of contemptuous scorn: she was sorry to hear them somehow; and yet perhaps they were justified—she did not know. "Good-bye," said she, at the hall door, and she held out her hand. "I am so much obliged to you." And then of course he did shake hands with her in bidding her farewell—and raised his cap—and was gone. Mary returned to the dining-room. "Well, Mamie," said Käthchen, with a demure smile, "that is about the most extraordinary interview I ever heard of. A most handsome young gentleman calls upon a young lady—his first visit— and there is nothing talked of on either side but sheriff officers and summonses, rent, compensation, drains, crofts, grazing, and Acts of Parliament. Of course he was quite as bad as you; but all the same, you might at least have asked the poor man to stay to lunch." "Oh, Käthchen!" Mary exclaimed, starting to her feet, her face on fire. "Shall I send Barbara after him? I never thought of it! How
- 59. frightfully rude of me—and he has come all the way over from Heimra to tell me about this eviction. What shall I do? Shall I send after him?" "I don't think you can," said Käthchen; "it would make the little oversight all the more marked. You'd better ask him the next time you see him—if you have forgotten certain warnings." "What warnings?" "Why, about his general character and his occupations," said Kate Glendinning, regarding her friend. Mary was silent for a moment or two; then she said— "We need not believe the worst of any one; and when you think of that old woman coming all the way from Canada to see him, that of itself is a testimonial to character that not many could bring forward—" "But you must remember," said Käthchen, "the young master was a little boy of ten when Mrs. Armour left; and little boys of ten haven't had time to develop into dangerous criminals." "Dangerous criminal?" said Mary, rather sharply; "that is hardly the—the proper phrase to use—with regard to—to a stranger. However, it is not of much consequence. Käthchen, are you going to drive with me to Cruagan to get that sheriff's officer and his men sent back?" "Yes, certainly," said Käthchen, in her usual business-like fashion, "as soon as we have had lunch. And remember, Mamie, it wasn't I who forgot to ask him to stay." Luncheon did not detain them long, and immediately thereafter they got into the waggonette that was waiting for them, and drove off. But it was not of the eviction and the possibility of another riot
- 60. that Mary was mostly thinking; something very different was weighing, and weighing heavily, on her mind. They drove through the village in silence; they crossed the bridge; and they had begun the ascent of the steep hill before she spoke. "The more I consider it," she said, "the more ashamed I am." "Consider what?" said Käthchen. "Why, neglecting to ask him to stay to lunch," she made answer —for this was what she had been brooding over. "Why should you worry about such a trifle!" Käthchen protested. "It isn't a trifle—in a Highlander's estimation, as you know well enough. They pride themselves on their hospitality; and they judge others by their own standards; so that I cannot but keep wondering what he must be thinking of me at this moment. Remember, Käthchen, when we went over to Heimra, even the old housekeeper entertained us, and did her best for us, in that out-of-the-world place; and here he comes to Lochgarra House—his first visit—he comes to do me a kindness—he comes to prevent mischief—and comes into the house that once was his own—and I don't offer him even a biscuit and a glass of sherry——" "Really, Mary, you needn't worry about such a mere trifle!" Käthchen protested again. "But I do worry!" she said. "I can imagine what he thought of me as he went away. For you must not forget this, Käthchen: it was a very awkward position he put himself into in order to do me a good turn. Think of his coming to the house, that ought to be his own—asking the servants if he might be admitted—sending up his name as a stranger—then he remains standing in the drawing-room —and he is for going away without shaking hands—as if he were
- 61. hardly to be considered one's fellow-creature." She was silent for a second or two; then she said, with a sudden touch of asperity: "At the same time there is this to be remembered, that the pride that apes humility is the very worst kind of pride. Often it simply means that the person is inordinately vain." "Poor young man!" said Käthchen, with a sigh. "He is always in the wrong. But I'm sure I did not object to his manner when he showed us the way out of the Meall-na-Fearn bog." About a couple of hundred yards on the Lochgarra side of Cruagan they met the mail-car; and when, a minute or two thereafter, they came in sight of the scattered crofts, it was obvious from the prevailing commotion that the sheriff's officer and his assistants had arrived. Indeed, when Mary and Käthchen descended from the waggonette and walked up to James Macdonald's cottage, the business of getting out the few poor sticks of furniture had already begun—the only onlooker being an old white-haired man, Macdonald's father, who was standing there dazed and bewildered, as if he did not understand what was going forward. Just as Mary got up, one of the concurrents brought out a spinning-wheel and put it on the ground. "Here—what are you doing?" she said, angrily, to the man who appeared to be the chief officer. "Leave that spinning-wheel alone: that is the very thing I want to see in every cottage!" "I've got the sheriff's warrant, ma'am," said the man, civilly enough. "And we must get everything out and take possession." "Oh, no, you mustn't!" she said. "This man Macdonald claims compensation—the case must be inquired into——"
- 62. "I have nothing to do wi' that, ma'am," said the officer, who seemed a respectable, quiet-spoken, quiet-mannered kind of a person. "I'm bound to carry out the warrant—that's all I've to heed." "But surely I can say whether I want the man turned out or not?" she protested. "He is my tenant. It is to me he owes the money. Surely, if I am satisfied, you can leave the man alone. But where is he? Where is Macdonald?" "As for that, ma'am," said the officer, "he is away down the road, and he says he is going to fetch a gun. Very well. If he presents a gun at either me or my concurrents I will declare myself deforced, and he will have to answer for it before the sheriff." "A gun?" said Mary, rather faintly. "Do you mean to drive the poor man to desperation?" But there was a more immediate danger to be considered. As the two girls had driven up they had heard a good deal of shrill calling from croft to croft and from house to house; and now there had assembled a crowd of women—a crowd hostile and menacing— that came swarming up, uttering all sorts of angry and reproachful cries. Each time that the sheriff's officer's assistants appeared at the door of the cottage there was another outburst of hooting and groaning; while here and there a bare-armed virago had furnished herself with an apron-full of rubbish—potato-peelings, cabbage- stalks, stale fish, and the like—and these unsavoury missiles began to hurtle through the air, though for the most part they were badly aimed. The sheriff's officer affected to pay no heed. He calmly watched the proceedings of his men; the rubbish flew past him unregarded; and the women had not yet taken to stones.
- 63. But Käthchen beheld this advancing crowd with undisguised alarm. "Mary," she said, hurriedly, "don't you think we should go back to the waggonette? Those people think it is you who are setting the sheriff's officers on—they are hooting at us as well——" There could be no doubt of the fact; and the infuriated women were drawing nearer and nearer; while, if their taunts and epithets were to her unintelligible, their wrathful glances and threatening gestures were unmistakeable. Mary Stanley found herself helpless. She could not explain to them. She had not the self-possession with which to address this exasperated mob, even if she knew the language in which alone it was possible to appeal to them. Nor dared she retreat, for would not that be simply inviting a general attack? So she was standing, irresolute and bewildered, when there was a new diversion of interest: the man Macdonald made his appearance. She looked at him; she hardly recognised him—so ashen-grey had his cheeks become with excitement and wrath. One trembling hand held a gun; the other he clenched and shook in the face of the officer as he went up to him. "I—not owing any money!" said the Russian-looking crofter, and his features were working with passion, and his eyes were filled with a baleful light under his shaggy eyebrows. "No—no—God's curse to me if I pay money when I not owing any money! Go away, now—go away back to Dingwall—or it is murder there will be——" Mary was very pale; but she went forward to him all the same. "Put away that gun," she said, and she spoke with firmness, though her lips had lost their natural colour. "Put away that gun! These men are doing their duty—you have brought it on yourself."
- 64. He turned upon her savagely. "You—it's not you—my laird—Ross of Heimra, he my laird—you come here, ay, to steal the land—and—and put me from my croft— ay—will you be putting me from my croft?" In his fury he could find no more English; but he advanced towards her, his clenched fist raised; and here it was that Käthchen (though her heart was beating wildly) thrust herself forward between them. "How dare you!" she said, indignantly. "Stand back! How dare you!" For an instant the man's eyes glared at her—as if in his indescribable rage he knew neither what to do or say; but just at this moment his attention was drawn else-whither; a volley of groans and yells from the crowd had greeted the reappearance of the assistants. At sight of these enemies bringing out his poor bits of things, Macdonald's wrath was turned in a new direction; he made a dash for the cottage—managed to get inside—and the next second the two men were flung headlong out, while the door was instantly slammed to behind them. A great shout of triumph and laughter arose from the crowd, while the discomfited officers picked themselves up and gazed blankly at the barred way. "I call you to witness," said their chief to Miss Stanley—and he spoke in the calmest manner, as if this were quite an every-day occurrence—"that I have been deforced in the execution of my duty. This man will have to answer for it at Dingwall." But his assistants were not so imperturbable. Smarting under the jeers of the crowd, they proceeded to cast about for some implement with which to effect an entrance; and presently they
- 65. found an axe. With this one of them set to work; and crash! crash! went the weight of iron on to the trembling door. The wood began to yield. Splinters showed—then a narrow breach was made—the hole grew wider—and just as it became evident that the demolition of the door was but a matter of a few minutes, a heavier stroke than usual snapped the shaft of the axe in twain, the iron head falling inside the cottage. By this time the attitude of the crowd had again altered— from derision to fierce resentment; there were groans renewed again and again; missiles flew freely. And then again, and quite suddenly, an apparently trivial incident entirely changed the aspect of affairs. At that ragged opening that had been made in the door there appeared two small black circles, close together; and these were pushed outward a few inches. The concurrents fell back—and the crowd was silent; well they perceived what this was; those two small circles were the muzzle of a gun; at any moment, a violent death—a shattered corpse—might be the next feature of the scene. "What does that madman mean to do!" Mary exclaimed, in a paralysis of terror—for it appeared to her that she was responsible for all that was happening or might happen. "Mary," said Käthchen, under her breath—and she was all trembling with excitement, "you must come away at once—now— while they are watching the gun. Perhaps they won't interfere with us—we may get down to the waggonette—we may have to run for it, too, if those women should turn on us." "I cannot go and leave these poor men here," Mary said, in her desperation. "They will be murdered. That man in there is a madman—a downright madman——" Käthchen lowered her voice still further.
- 66. "There is Mr. Ross coming—and oh! I wish he would be quick!" Indeed it was no other than Donald Ross, who, immediately after leaving Lochgarra House, had struck off across the hills, hoping by a short cut to reach Cruagan not long after Miss Stanley's arrival. And now that he appeared, all eyes were turned towards him; there was no further groaning, or hooting, or hurling of missiles. He seemed to take in the situation at a glance. He asked a question of the sheriff's officer. "I'll just have to come back, sir," said the man, "with an inspector and a dozen police; but in the meantime I declare that I have been deforced, and this man Macdonald must answer for it. I hope ye'll give evidence, sir, if the leddies would rather not come over to Dingwall. You were not here when my assistants were thrown out of the house; but at least you can see a gun pointed at us—there it is—through that door." Young Ross did not go directly forward to the muzzle of the gun —which would have been the act of a lunatic, for the man inside the cottage might make a mistake; but he went towards the front of the house, then approached the door, and struck up the gun with his fist. One barrel went off—harmlessly enough. "Hamish!" He called again; and added something in Gaelic. The door was opened. There was some further speech in the same tongue; the shaggy-browed crofter laid aside the gun, and came out into the open air, looking about him like a wild-beast at bay, but following the young master submissively enough. Donald Ross went up to Miss Stanley.
- 67. "I was afraid there might be a little trouble," said he. "Well, I can answer for this man—if you will get the sheriff's officer and his assistants to go away." "I want them to go away!" she said. "I have no wish at all to put James Macdonald out of his croft—not in the least—and I will give him time to pay up arrears, especially as there is to be a re- valuation. I wish you would tell him that. I wish you would tell him that I had nothing to do with these proceedings. Tell him I want to deal fairly with everybody. You can talk to him—I cannot—I cannot explain to him——" But Macdonald had been listening all the same. "That woman," said he, sullenly, "she—no business here. The land—Ross of Heimra's——" Young Ross turned to him with a muttered exclamation in Gaelic, and with a flash of flame in the coal-black eyes that did not escape Käthchen's notice. The stubborn crofter was silent after that —standing aside in sombre indifference. "The officer can bring his action for deforcement, if he likes," Ross said, "and I suppose Macdonald will be fined forty shillings. But no one has been hurt; and it seems a pity there should be any further proceedings, if, as you say, you are going to have a re- valuation of the crofts"—and then he suddenly checked himself. "I hope you will forgive me for interfering," he said, quite humbly; "I did not intend to say anything; it is Mr. Purdie's business—and I do not wish even to offer you advice." "I wish I could tell you how much I am obliged to you," she said, warmly. "If you had not let me know about those men coming, and if you had not appeared yourself, I believe there would have
- 68. been murder done here this day. And now, Mr. Ross, would you get them to go on at once to Lochgarra, so as to be out of harm's way— and to-morrow they can go back by the mail-car? I will write to Mr. Purdie. There must be no further proceedings; and James Macdonald will not be put out of his croft—not if I have any say in the matter." So the three officials were started off for the village; the morose crofter proceeded to pick up his bits of furniture and get them into the house again; and the crowd of women began to disperse—not silently, however, but with much shrill and eager decision—towards their own homes. Young Ross of Heimra went down with the two young ladies to the waggonette, which was waiting for them below in the road. He saw them into the carriage. "But won't you drive back with us?" said Mary. "Oh, thank you—if I may," he said, rather diffidently; and therewith he went forward to get up beside the coachman, just as Mr. Purdie would have done. The colour rushed to Mary's forehead. "Mr. Ross," she said, "not there!"—and she herself opened the door of the waggonette for him, so that perforce he had to take his place beside them. And was this again (she may have asked herself) the pride that apes humility; or was it only part of his apparent desire to keep a marked distance between himself and her? She was vexed with him for causing her this embarrassment. He had no right to do such things. He might be a little more friendly. She, on her part, had been frank enough in expressing her obligations to him;
- 69. nay, she had gone out of her way to ask, in a kind of fashion, for his approval. Were all the advances to come from her side? But Kate Glendinning noticed this—that as they drew near to the dried-up waste that had once been Loch Heimra, and as they were passing the tumbled-down ruins of the ancient stronghold, he pretended that he did not see anything. He rather turned away his face. He talked of indifferent matters. Mary had forgotten that they would have to pass by Loch and Castle Heimra, or perhaps she might have thought twice about inviting him to drive with them. But quite simply and resolutely he turned away from those things that all too eloquently spoke of the irreparable wrong that had been done to him and his, and affected not to see them or remember them; and Käthchen—a not uninterested observer—said proudly to herself: "If that is not Highland courtesy, I do not know what is." Wonders will never cease, truly. That evening the astounding rumour had found its way through the length and breadth of the township: there were eye-witnesses who could testify: Young Donald of Heimra had been seen in the same carriage with the two ladies from Lochgarra House. CHAPTER III. A CROFTERS' COMMISSION. One morning Mary Stanley and her companion had been away on some distant errand, and when on their return they came to the summit of the hill overlooking the bay, Mary paused for a moment to
- 70. take in the prospect—the wide, grey, wind-swept plain of the sea, the long headlands, and the lonely Heimra Island out in the west. But Käthchen did not cease her discourse—in which she was endeavouring to account for the comparative failure, so far, of her friend's fine philanthropic schemes. "The truth is, Mamie," said she, "what has disappointed you here has been the prevalence of hard facts—very hard facts—facts as hard as the rocks on which the poor people try to live. You wanted to play the part of Lady Bountiful; and you yourself are just full of enthusiasm, and generous emotion, and ideals of duty and self-sacrifice, and—and—romanticism generally, if I may say so. And for all these qualities you find no exercise, no outlet. I can imagine you in very different circumstances—in London, perhaps, or in some English village: I can imagine your going into a squalid room where there is a poor widow by the bedside of her dying boy; and the Lady Bountiful brings little comforts for the sick child, and words of kindness and consolation for the mother; and the poor woman looks on you as an angel, and would kiss the hem of your gown; and it's all very pretty and touching. But, you see," continued the practical Käthchen, "how you are baffled and thwarted in this obdurate place; for there isn't a single case of illness in the whole district—not one— which is no doubt owing to the valuable antiseptic properties of peat-smoke!" "Oh, well," said Mary, cheerfully, as they went on again. "I can put up with being disappointed on that score—and the longer the better. But, Käthchen, when you said there was nothing but hard facts about here—no pretty sentiment and sympathy—you weren't keeping your eyes open. Look down there at the bridge; what is that
- 71. if not pretty sentiment?—two lovers talking—why, it is quite a charming picture!—and isn't there some rustic custom of pledging troth over a running stream?" Her face suddenly grew grave; and Käthchen, also regarding those two figures, was struck by the same surmise. "It is Mr. Ross, Mamie!" she exclaimed, in an undertone—though they were still a long way off. Mary said nothing. She walked on calmly and indifferently, sometimes looking up to the hills, sometimes looking out to Heimra Island and the sea. It was Käthchen, keeping her eyes covertly on those two figures by the bridge, who observed that the girl suddenly separated herself from her companion, and disappeared into the woods by the side of the Garra. As for Donald Ross, he made no sign of going away: on the contrary, he remained idling by the rude stone parapet, occasionally looking into the water underneath. And he must have known that he was intercepting the two ladies from Lochgarra House—there was no escape for them. Mary maintained a perfect self-possession; and when they came up to him she was for passing with a little bow of recognition; but he spoke. "I have a small petition to put before you," said he, with a smile (Käthchen thought that, though he looked extremely handsome, this pleasant and familiar smile was in the circumstances something of an impertinence). "Indeed," said Mary—and she waited. "From a very humble petitioner," he continued (and Käthchen began to consider him a most unabashed young man—so easily and lightly he spoke), "one who has no English, and she has asked me to
- 72. interfere and tell you all about her case. She was talking to me just now; but when she caught sight of you she fled off into the woods, like a hare." "Why?" said Mary, coldly. "Because she is afraid of you," said he. "She thinks you are a friend of the Troich Bheag Dhearg—the Little Red Dwarf—as they call Mr. Purdie about here. And that is quite enough to frighten Anna ——" "Anna?" said Mary. "Do you mean Anna Chlannach—the half- witted girl?"—and as she guessed the simple and harmless truth an indescribable confusion appeared on her forehead and in the self- consciousness of her eyes. "Yes," said he, apparently not noticing. "Anna says that you spoke to her once; but she has no English, and could not tell you anything; and she saw Purdie with you, and ran away. So much I made out, though she talks rather wildly, and mysteriously as well." "Oh, but Mr. Ross," said Mary, with some eagerness, "I wish you would tell Anna Chlannach that she has no reason to be afraid of me —surely not! Why, she was the first creature in the place who seemed a little friendly. Will you tell her I will do everything for her I can; and that she must come and see me; and there will be no fear of her meeting Mr. Purdie; and Barbara can be the interpreter between us? Will you tell her that? Could you find her now?" "There's no one in this neighbourhood who could find Anna Chlannach if she wants to be hidden," he said, with a bit of a laugh that showed beautiful teeth—as Käthchen remarked. "But I shall come across her some other time, and of course, if you grant her petition, she must go to you and thank you."
- 73. "What is her petition?" said Mary, who had recovered from her momentary confusion, and was now prepared to be entirely bland and magnanimous—which, indeed, was her natural mood. "Well," said he, "Purdie—Mr. Purdie—has been threatening to have her shut up in some asylum for imbeciles—so they say—-and Anna is in a great state about the possibility of her being taken away from among the people she knows. I don't think it is true, myself; indeed I doubt whether he could do anything of the kind, without the consent of her relatives, and she has got none now; but I am not quite sure what the law is; anyhow, what I imagine to be the case is simply that Mr. Purdie has been making use of these threats to spite the people with whom Anna Chlannach is a favourite. For she is a general favourite—there is no harm in the girl——" "Why, so Barbara said!" Mary exclaimed. "It is quite true that she is rather useless about the place," Donald Ross went on. "Sometimes they have tried her with a bit of herding; but then, if she saw a boat out at sea, she would imagine her mother was coming back, and she would go away down to the shore to meet her, and spend her time in gathering white shells, that she thinks is money, to give to her mother. Well, you see, that is awkward. You couldn't leave sheep or cows under Anna's care without asking somebody to keep an eye on Anna herself. The truth is, she is useless. But there's no harm in the lass; and the people are fond of her; there's always a bit of food, or a corner for her to sleep in; so that she's not a cost to anyone except to those that are willing to pay it—a mere trifle—and in any case it does not come out of Mr. Purdie's pocket——"
- 74. "She shall not be shut up in any asylum, if I have any say in the matter!" Mary interposed, with a touch of indignation. "I asked her to stay and appeal to yourself," he continued. "But she was frightened of you——" "Yes," said Mary, "everyone is frightened of me—or set against me—in this place!" "There is another thing I should mention," he proceeded— ignoring this taunt, if it was meant as a taunt; "the young girls and lads about here are not very considerate if there's any fun going on; and they've heard of this proposal of Purdie's; and so they amuse themselves by telling Anna Chlannach that she is going to be taken away and shut up in an asylum, and the poor girl is dreadfully frightened. But if you can assure her that you will not allow Purdie to do any such thing——" "Well, of course I will, if you will only bring her to me!" said Mary, impetuously. "Why haven't you brought her to me before?" He hesitated. Then he said— "I am very much obliged to you. I will tell Anna Chlannach the first time I see her. Good morning, Miss Stanley!" But Mary would not have that; she said boldly— "Are you not going down to the village?—won't you walk with us?" He could hardly refuse the invitation; and as they went on towards the little township, what she was saying in her heart was this—'Here, you people, all of you, if you are at your cottage doors or working on your crofts, don't you see this now, that Mr. Ross of Heimra is walking with me, with all the world to witness? Do you understand what that means? It is true my uncle drained Loch
- 75. Heimra and tore down Castle Heimra into a heap of ruins; and the Rosses of Heimra, and you also, may have had reason to hate the name of Stanley; But look at this—look at Young Donald walking with me—in a kind of a way proclaiming himself my friend—and consider what that means. A feud? There is no feud if he and I say there shall be none. I cannot restore Castle Heimra, but it is within his power to forgive and to forget.' That is what she was somewhat proudly saying to herself as they walked into the village—past the smithy—past the weaver's cottage—past the school-house—past the post-office—past the inn and its dependencies; and she hoped that everyone would see, and reflect. But of course she could not speak in that fashion to Donald Ross. "You might have told me about Anna Chlannach before," she said. "I did not like to interfere," he made answer. "You seem very sensitive on that point!" she retorted. "Well, it is natural," he said, with something of reserve; and instinctively she felt that she could go no further in that direction. "Are you remaining long on the mainland at present?" she asked, in an ordinary kind of way. "Until this afternoon only: I shall go back to Heimra after the mail-cart has come in." "It must be very lonely out there," she said—glancing towards the remote island among the grey and driven seas. "It is lonely—now," he said. And then she hesitated. For he had never spoken to her of his circumstances in any way whatever; he had always been so distant
- 76. and respectful; and she hardly knew whether she might venture to betray any interest. But at length she said— "I can very well understand that there must be a charm in living all by one's self in a lonely island like that—for a time, at least—and yet—yet—it does seem like throwing away one's opportunities. I think I should want some definite occupation—among my fellow creatures." "Oh, yes, no doubt," said he, in no wise taking her timorous suggestion as a reproach. "In my own case, I could not leave the island so long as my mother was alive; I never even thought of such a thing; so that being shut up in Eilean Heimra was not in the least irksome to me. Not in the least. She and I were sufficient companions for each other—anywhere. But now it is different. Now I am free to look about. And I am reading up for the Bar as a preliminary step." "Oh, indeed?" said she. "Do you mean to practise as a lawyer?" "No, I think not," he made reply; and now Käthchen was indeed listening with interest—more interest than she usually displayed over rents and drains and sheriff's decrees. "But being a barrister is a necessary qualification for a good many appointments; and if I were once called to the Bar I might perhaps get some sort of post in one of the colonies." "In one of the colonies?" Mary repeated; "and leave Eilean Heimra for ever?" "Well, I don't know about that," said he, absently. "At all events, I should not like to part with the island—I mean, I should not like to sell it. It is the last little bit of a foothold; and the name has been in our family for a long while; and—and there are other associations.
- 77. No; rather than sell the bit of an island, I think I should be content to remain a prisoner there for the rest of my life. However, all that is in the air at present," he continued more lightly. "The main thing is that I am not quite so lonely out at Eilean Heimra as you might imagine—I have my books for companions any way." "Then you are very busy?" she said, thoughtfully. "I must not say I am sorry; and yet I was going to ask you——" "I should be very busy indeed," said he, "if I could not find time to do anything for you that you wished me to do." (And here Käthchen said proudly to herself: 'Well, Mamie, and what do you think of that as a speech for a Highlander?') "Ah, but this is something rather serious," said she. "The fact is, I want to form a little private commission—a commission among ourselves—for the resettlement of the whole estate. I want every crofter's case fully investigated; every grievance, if he has any, inquired into; all the rents overhauled and reduced to what is quite easy and practicable and just; and a percentage of the arrears— perhaps all the arrears—cut off, if it is found desirable. I want to be able to say: 'There, now, I have done what is fair on my side: are you going to do what is fair on yours?' And I have got Mr. Watson to consent to give up the pasturage of Meall-na-Cruagan; and that must be valued and taken off his rent; and then when the pasturage is divided among the Cruagan crofters—oh, well, perhaps I shan't ask them for anything!" "You seem to wish to act very generously by them," said he, with a grave simplicity. "Oh, I tell you I have plenty of schemes!" she said, half laughing at her own enthusiasm. "But I get no sympathy—no encouragement.
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