Using Microservices to Customize Multi-Tenant SaaS: From Intrusive to Non-Intrusive

Customization is a widely adopted practice on enterprise software applications such as Enterprise resource planning (ERP) or Customer relation management (CRM). Software vendors deploy their enterprise software product on the premises of a customer, which is then often customized for different specific needs of the customer. When enterprise applications are moving to the cloud as mutli-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the traditional way of on-premises customization faces new challenges because a customer no longer has an exclusive control to the application. To empower businesses with specific requirements on top of the shared standard SaaS, vendors need a novel approach to support the customization on the multi-tenant SaaS. In this paper, we summarize our two approaches for customizing multi-tenant SaaS using microservices: intrusive and non-intrusive. The paper clarifies the key concepts related to the problem of multi-tenant customization, and describes a design with a reference architecture and high-level principles. We also discuss the key technical challenges and the feasible solutions to implement this architecture. Our microservice-based customization solution is promising to meet the general customization requirements, and achieves a balance between isolation, assimilation and economy of scale

Security and Privacy Issues in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing transforming the way of information technology (IT) for consuming and managing, promising improving cost efficiencies, accelerate innovations, faster time-to-market and the ability to scale applications on demand (Leighton, 2009). According to Gartner, while the hype grew ex-ponentially during 2008 and continued since, it is clear that there is a major shift towards the cloud computing model and that the benefits may be substantial (Gartner Hype-Cycle, 2012). However, as the shape of the cloud computing is emerging and developing rapidly both conceptually and in reality, the legal/contractual, economic, service quality, interoperability, security and privacy issues still pose significant challenges. In this chapter, we describe various service and deployment models of cloud computing and identify major challenges. In particular, we discuss three critical challenges: regulatory, security and privacy issues in cloud computing. Some solutions to mitigate these challenges are also proposed along with a brief presentation on the future trends in cloud computing deployment

Challenges for the comprehensive management of cloud services in a PaaS framework

The 4CaaSt project aims at developing a PaaS framework that enables flexible definition, marketing, deployment and management of Cloud-based services and applications. The major innovations proposed by 4CaaSt are the blueprint and its lifecycle management, a one stop shop for Cloud services and a PaaS level resource management featuring elasticity. 4CaaSt also provides a portfolio of ready to use Cloud native services and Cloud-aware immigrant technologies

Software-Defined Cloud Computing: Architectural Elements and Open Challenges

The variety of existing cloud services creates a challenge for service providers to enforce reasonable Software Level Agreements (SLA) stating the Quality of Service (QoS) and penalties in case QoS is not achieved. To avoid such penalties at the same time that the infrastructure operates with minimum energy and resource wastage, constant monitoring and adaptation of the infrastructure is needed. We refer to Software-Defined Cloud Computing, or simply Software-Defined Clouds (SDC), as an approach for automating the process of optimal cloud configuration by extending virtualization concept to all resources in a data center. An SDC enables easy reconfiguration and adaptation of physical resources in a cloud infrastructure, to better accommodate the demand on QoS through a software that can describe and manage various aspects comprising the cloud environment. In this paper, we present an architecture for SDCs on data centers with emphasis on mobile cloud applications. We present an evaluation, showcasing the potential of SDC in two use cases-QoS-aware bandwidth allocation and bandwidth-aware, energy-efficient VM placement-and discuss the research challenges and opportunities in this emerging area.Comment: Keynote Paper, 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI 2014), September 24-27, 2014, Delhi, Indi