A Process Framework for Managing Quality of Service in Private Cloud

As information systems leaders tap into the global market of cloud computing-based services, they struggle to maintain consistent application performance due to lack of a process framework for managing quality of service (QoS) in the cloud. Guided by the disruptive innovation theory, the purpose of this case study was to identify a process framework for meeting the QoS requirements of private cloud service users. Private cloud implementation was explored by selecting an organization in California through purposeful sampling. Information was gathered by interviewing 23 information technology (IT) professionals, a mix of frontline engineers, managers, and leaders involved in the implementation of private cloud. Another source of data was documents such as standard operating procedures, policies, and guidelines related to private cloud implementation. Interview transcripts and documents were coded and sequentially analyzed. Three prominent themes emerged from the analysis of data: (a) end user expectations, (b) application architecture, and (c) trending analysis. The findings of this study may help IT leaders in effectively managing QoS in cloud infrastructure and deliver reliable application performance that may help in increasing customer population and profitability of organizations. This study may contribute to positive social change as information systems managers and workers can learn and apply the process framework for delivering stable and reliable cloud-hosted computer applications

Toward Customizable Multi-tenant SaaS Applications

abstract: Nowadays, Computing is so pervasive that it has become indeed the 5th utility (after water, electricity, gas, telephony) as Leonard Kleinrock once envisioned. Evolved from utility computing, cloud computing has emerged as a computing infrastructure that enables rapid delivery of computing resources as a utility in a dynamically scalable, virtualized manner. However, the current industrial cloud computing implementations promote segregation among different cloud providers, which leads to user lockdown because of prohibitive migration cost. On the other hand, Service-Orented Computing (SOC) including service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web Services (WS) promote standardization and openness with its enabling standards and communication protocols. This thesis proposes a Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Architecture by combining the best attributes of the two paradigms to promote an open, interoperable environment for cloud computing development. Mutil-tenancy SaaS applicantions built on top of SOCCA have more flexibility and are not locked down by a certain platform. Tenants residing on a multi-tenant application appear to be the sole owner of the application and not aware of the existence of others. A multi-tenant SaaS application accommodates each tenant’s unique requirements by allowing tenant-level customization. A complex SaaS application that supports hundreds, even thousands of tenants could have hundreds of customization points with each of them providing multiple options, and this could result in a huge number of ways to customize the application. This dissertation also proposes innovative customization approaches, which studies similar tenants’ customization choices and each individual users behaviors, then provides guided semi-automated customization process for the future tenants. A semi-automated customization process could enable tenants to quickly implement the customization that best suits their business needs.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

Concurrency Lock Issues in Relational Cloud Computing

The widespread popularity of Cloud computing as a preferred platform for the deployment of web applications has resulted in an enormous number of applications moving to the cloud, and the huge success of cloud service providers. Due to the increasing number of web applications being hosted in the cloud, and the growing scale of data which these applications store, process, and serve – scalable data management systems form a critical part of cloud infrastructures. There are issues related to the database security while database is on cloud. The major challenging issues are multi-tenancy, scalability and the privacy. This paper focuses on the problems faced in the data security of Relational Cloud. The problems faced by various types of tenants and the type of access into the database makes a rework on the security of data, by analyzing proper locking strategies on the records accessed from the database. Data security in cloud computing addresses the type of access mode by the users (for analytical or transaction purpose) and the frequency of data access from the physical location (in shared or no-shared disk mode). Accordingly, the various data locking strategies are studied and appropriate locking mechanism will be implemented for real-time applications as in e-commerce. Keywords: Relational Cloud, Multi-tenant, two-phase locking, concurrency control, data management

Cloud enterprise resource planning development model based on software factory approach

Literature reviews revealed that Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (Cloud ERP) is significantly growing, yet from software developers’ perspective, it has succumbed to high management complexity, high workload, inconsistency software quality, and knowledge retention problems. Previous researches lack a solution that holistically addresses all the research problem components. Software factory approach was chosen to be adapted along with relevant theories to develop a model referred to as Cloud ERP Factory Model (CEF Model), which intends to pave the way in solving the above-mentioned problems. There are three specific objectives, those are (i) to develop the model by identifying the components with its elements and compile them into the CEF Model, (ii) to verify the model’s deployment technical feasibility, and (iii) to validate the model field usability in a real Cloud ERP production case studies. The research employed Design Science methodology, with a mixed method evaluation approach. The developed CEF Model consists of five components; those are Product Lines, Platform, Workflow, Product Control, and Knowledge Management, which can be used to setup a CEF environment that simulates a process-oriented software production environment with capacity and resource planning features. The model was validated through expert reviews and the finalized model was verified to be technically feasible by a successful deployment into a selected commercial Cloud ERP production facility. Three Cloud ERP commercial deployment case studies were conducted using the prototype environment. Using the survey instruments developed, the results yielded a Likert score mean of 6.3 out of 7 thus reaffirming that the model is usable and the research has met its objective in addressing the problem components. The models along with its deployment verification processes are the main research contributions. Both items can also be used by software industry practitioners and academician as references in developing a robust Cloud ERP production facility

An Analysis of Software Testing Practices on Migrations From on Premise to Cloud Hosted Environments

This research project examines the differences between software testing practices that are carried out on software that is installed locally (i.e. on premise) versus software that has migrated to a cloud hosted environment. In conjunction with this, focus was placed on determining what methodologies and frameworks are in existence for assisting with software migrations to the cloud. The reason for carrying out this research project was that the transition to cloud computing is becoming more and more mainstream, as a result organisations are required to focus their efforts on how best to move their software to the cloud while ensuring that its functionality remains intact. To determine what software testing differences are apparent and what migration strategies are available, existing literature in this area was reviewed and qualitative data was collected. Once all data was collated, results showed that there were in fact key differences in the complexity of software testing that was required for software that has migrated to the cloud. In addition, no generic strategy was found for carrying out a software migration to the cloud. Based on the findings of this research project, it is paramount that an organisation which plans on migrating any of if its software or infrastructure to the cloud needs to have a clear road map in place prior to any development or migration work commencing. By clearly planning and executing this process, clear testing and validation phases can be put in place which will ensure than an element of precaution and prior validation can be incorporated into the transition to the cloud

Cloud-native databases : an application perspective

As cloud computing technologies evolve to better support hosted software applications, software development businesses are faced with a multitude of options to migrate to the cloud. A key concern is the management of data. Research on cloud-native applications has guided the construction of highly elastically scalable and resilient stateless applications, while there is no corresponding concept for cloud-native databases yet. In particular, it is not clear what the trade-offs between using self-managed database services as part of the application and provider-managed database services are. We contribute an overview about the available options, a testbed to compare the options in a systematic way, and an analysis of selected benchmark results produced during the cloud migration of a commercial document management application