Unit Ii
Unit Ii
Cloud Strategy Fundamentals, Cloud Strategy Management Framework, Cloud Policy, Key Driver
for Adoption, Risk Management, IT Capacity and Utilization, Demand and Capacity matching,
Demand Queueing, Change Management, Cloud Service Architecture
• A cloud strategy refers to a comprehensive plan for how an organization will adopt,
integrate, and manage cloud computing services. It involves defining objectives, selecting
the right cloud services, and setting the path for migration, governance, and optimization.
• Public Cloud: Cloud services provided by third-party providers (like AWS, Azure, or
Google Cloud), offering scalability and cost-efficiency but with less control.
• Hybrid Cloud: A mix of private and public cloud, allowing flexibility in managing
workloads across both environments.
• Multi-Cloud: Using multiple cloud services from different providers to avoid vendor lock-
in and enhance resilience.
• Aligning cloud adoption with business goals like cost reduction, innovation, scalability, or
geographical expansion.
• Identifying specific use cases like disaster recovery, web hosting, machine learning, or big
data analytics.
• Defining policies for cloud resource usage, security standards, data privacy, compliance
(GDPR, HIPAA), and user access.
• Implementing tools for monitoring, auditing, and managing cloud environments to ensure
cost optimization and risk mitigation.
• Setting up policies for cost control, like automatic scaling, usage restrictions, or reserved
instances.
Cloud Migration Strategy
• Rehost (Lift and Shift): Moving applications and data as-is from on-premise to cloud.
• Ensuring your team has the necessary skills to manage and optimize cloud technologies.
Security Policies:
• Access control: Who can access cloud resources and what level of access they have (e.g.,
role-based access control).
• Incident response: Procedures for handling security breaches and data leaks.
Compliance and Regulatory Policies
• Organizations must comply with industry regulations and legal requirements when using
cloud services. Policies should ensure adherence to:
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) for data privacy in the EU.
• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) for healthcare data
protection.
• These policies manage how data is stored, accessed, and shared in the cloud. They cover:
• Data classification: Identifying sensitive, public, and confidential data.
• Data retention: Defining how long data is stored and when it should be deleted.
• Backup and disaster recovery: Ensuring regular data backups and a recovery plan in case
of failure.
• Cloud resources are billed based on usage, so organizations need cost policies to optimize
spending. Policies include:
• Budget controls: Setting spending limits and alerts for cloud usage.
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Guarantees for uptime, performance, and reliability
from cloud providers.
• Redundancy and failover: Ensuring high availability and disaster recovery mechanisms.
• IAM policies ensure that only authorized users and services have access to cloud resources.
These policies include:
• Single Sign-On (SSO): Allowing users to access multiple cloud applications with a single
login.
These policies define how cloud resources are used and governed within an organization. They
include:
• Cloud vendor selection criteria: Guidelines for choosing cloud providers (AWS, Azure,
Google Cloud).
• Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies: Rules for using multiple cloud providers or
integrating with on-premise infrastructure.
• Organizations across industries are rapidly adopting cloud computing due to its flexibility,
scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
• According to the Infosys Cloud Radar, cloud adoption can boost profit growth by as much
as 11.2 per cent.
Cost Efficiency
• Pay-as-you-go model: Organizations only pay for what they use, reducing waste.
• Global reach: Deploy applications worldwide without investing in multiple data centers.
• Support for remote work: Employees can access cloud services from anywhere.
• Seamless integration: Easily connect with AI, IoT, and big data technologies.
• Automatic updates & patching: Cloud providers manage security updates and
compliance.
• Compliance certifications: Built-in support for GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and SOC2.
• Backup & disaster recovery: Minimize data loss with built-in redundancy and recovery
options.
• Data analytics & AI: Leverage cloud-based analytics for better decision-making.
Digital Transformation & Remote Work
• Cloud-based collaboration tools: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Slack enable
remote work.
• Hybrid & multi-cloud strategies: Companies can combine public, private, and on-
premise infrastructure.
• Energy-efficient data centers: Cloud providers use optimized infrastructure for lower
carbon footprints.
• Shared resources: Reduces the need for individual companies to maintain power-hungry
data centers.
• Increasing business agility:IT resources can be acquired and deployed more quickly and,
once deployed, they can be increased or decreased as needed to meet the demand.
• Reducing cost – This is definitely one of the key drivers behind Cloud adoption.
• Cloud risk management is a process used to find, evaluate, and reduce the risks of using
cloud computing services.
• Businesses take a proactive approach with risk management to protect their applications,
data, and infrastructure from potential threats.
Common Cloud Security Risks
Misconfiguration
• Cloud security settings are foundational to your cloud environment and can also be a
significant culprit for data breaches. Small misconfigurations can leave large
vulnerabilities, such as exposed sensitive data or easier entry points for unauthorized
access.
Data Breaches
• Cloud environments are attractive to cybercriminals because of how much data can be
stored there.
• If you don’t understand what your security responsibilities are in relation to your cloud
provider (more on the shared responsibility model below), you may be leaving your data
open to infiltration.
Unauthorized Access
• The two most prevalent attack vectors in 2023 included phishing and stolen or
compromised credentials. When hackers gain access to credentials, they can quickly work
their way into other systems and may even lock the rest of your organization out of part or
all of your data and applications with a ransomware attack.
Insecure APIs/Interfaces
Lack of Visibility
• It can be hard to understand your security risks if you can’t see your entire cloud
environment.
• Without the right tools and processes in place, businesses may not be able to effectively
monitor their cloud environments and identify suspicious activity.
These steps are referred to as Risk Management Process and are as follows:
• Identify the risk - The organization should uncover, recognize and describe risks that
might affect the working environment.
• Some risks in cloud computing include cloud vendor risks, operational risks, legal risks,
and attacker risks.
• Analyze the risk - After the identification of the risk, the scope of the risk is analyzed. The
likelihood and the consequences of the risks are determined.
• In the analysis phase, the organization develops an understanding of the nature of risk and
its potential to affect organization goals and objectives.
• Evaluate the risk - The risks are further ranked based on the severity of the impact they
create on information security and the probability of actualizing. The organization then
decides whether the risk is acceptable, or it is serious enough to call for treatment.
• Treat the risk - In this step, the highest-ranked risks are treated to eliminate or modified
to achieve an acceptable level. Risk mitigation strategies and preventive plans are set out
to minimize the probability of negative risks and enhance opportunities. The security
controls are implemented in the cloud system and are assessed by proper assessment
procedures to determine if security controls are effective to produce the desired outcome.
• Monitor or Review the risk - Monitor the security controls in the cloud infrastructure on
a regular basis including assessing control effectiveness, documenting changes to the
system and the working environment. Part of the mitigation plan includes following up on
risks to continuously monitor and track new and existing risks.
• Apart from these risks, cloud computing possesses various security risks bound under 2
main categories.
• Data breaches: Data breaches can be incredibly damaging to your business. They cost
organizations, on average, $4.45 million. Plus, 82% of breaches included data stored in the
cloud.
• Financial losses: Financial losses tied up in the cost of a data breach include lost business,
labor costs associated with identifying and mitigating the breach, regulatory fines, legal
costs, and more.
• Reputational damage: While cloud risk management can improve your reputation, failing
to account for potential risks can result in a damaged reputation and a loss of trust. Some
customers may never come back.
• Definition: Cloud IT capacity refers to the amount of resources (such as CPU, memory,
storage, and bandwidth) that are available in a cloud environment to handle workloads.
• Types of Cloud Resources:
– Storage Capacity: Databases, file storage, and object storage for saving data.
– Network Capacity: The bandwidth and connectivity required for data transfer
between cloud services or end-users.
• Provisioning Capacity:
– On-Demand and Reserved Instances: Cloud providers offer the ability to choose
between on-demand (pay-as-you-go) or reserved (long-term commitment)
instances.
Cloud IT Utilization
• Definition: Cloud IT utilization refers to how efficiently the cloud resources are being
used. High utilization indicates that the resources are being effectively leveraged to meet
business needs, while low utilization can lead to wasted resources and higher costs.
– CPU Utilization: Measures the percentage of CPU capacity in use. Low CPU
utilization could indicate that the instance is oversized for the current workload.
– Storage Utilization: How much storage is being used compared to the available
storage capacity.
• Forecasting and Capacity Planning: By analyzing past usage patterns, businesses can
predict future needs and adjust their capacity ahead of time. Tools like AWS Auto Scaling
or Azure Cost Management can help here.
• Monitoring and Analytics: Tools like CloudWatch (AWS), Azure Monitor, or Google
Cloud Operations Suite track resource usage and provide insights into performance,
which is crucial for both capacity planning and utilization optimization.
• Cost and Performance Trade-offs: Balancing performance with cost, for example by
choosing different instance types (e.g., CPU-optimized or memory-optimized instances)
based on the workload.
• Cost Savings: Proper management ensures that you don’t overpay for unused or
underutilized resources.
• Flexibility and Scalability: Cloud environments allow you to easily scale up or down
based on demand.
• Risk Mitigation: Predictive scaling and proper resource allocation help prevent issues like
system crashes or downtime caused by resource shortages.
• Third-Party Tools: Tools like CloudHealth or CloudBolt can provide more cross-cloud
visibility.
Demand and capacity matching
• "Demand and capacity matching in the cloud" refers to the practice of aligning the amount
of cloud computing resources available (capacity) with the actual usage needs (demand)
of an organization, ensuring they have enough resources to meet current and anticipated
workloads without overspending on unused capacity;
• this is typically achieved through features like auto-scaling, which dynamically adjust
resources based on real-time demand fluctuations.
• it can improve your performance and user experience, by avoiding issues such as latency,
downtime, or errors.
• Second, it can reduce your costs, by optimizing your resource utilization and avoiding
overprovisioning or underprovisioning.
• Third, it can enhance your sustainability, by minimizing your environmental impact and
carbon footprint.
• first estimate how much traffic, data, and processing power you will need at different times
and scenarios, which can be affected by seasonality, trends, events, or user behavior.
• Then you need to decide how much resources to allocate to your cloud services such as
compute, storage, network, or memory, taking into account availability, performance,
reliability, or security.
• Finally, you need to monitor your usage by tracking how much resources you are using
and comparing them to your demand and capacity with the help of metrics, alerts,
dashboards, or reports.
• Scaling, resizing, and scheduling are used for demand and capacity matching
• With scaling, you can adjust your capacity up or down manually, automatically, or
dynamically.
• Resizing allows you to change the size or type of resources vertically or horizontally.
Vertical resizing involves increasing or decreasing the power of resources like CPU, RAM,
disk. Horizontal resizing involves adding or removing the number of resources
• Scheduling can help you reduce costs and improve efficiency by turning off or on resources
when needed
• Amazon Web Services offers Auto Scaling, EC2 Instance Types, CloudWatch, and Trusted
Advisor.
• Microsoft Azure offers Azure Autoscale, Virtual Machine Sizes, Azure Monitor, and Azure
Advisor.
• Google Cloud offers Cloud Run, Compute Engine Machine Types, Cloud Monitoring, and
Cloud Recommendations AI. These tools can help you match your cloud demand and
capacity.
Demand and capacity matching - Measuring success
• Cost can be measured through billing reports, cost management, or cost optimization.
• Instead of processing each task immediately upon arrival, the tasks are placed in a queue.
• This queue acts as a buffer, allowing for controlled processing and resource allocation,
which is particularly important in cloud environments where resources are shared among
multiple users and applications.
1. Request Arrival
Cloud services receive requests from users and applications for various tasks such as
data processing, storage operations, computational tasks, or software execution. These tasks
contribute to the overall workload of the cloud infrastructure.
2. Queue Formation
Upon receiving a task, cloud services place it in a queue. The queue functions as
a temporary storage area, ensuring that tasks are processed in an orderly manner rather
than overwhelming the system with simultaneous processing attempts.
3. Priority Assignment
• Demand queuing enables tasks to be assigned priorities based on factors such as business
criticality, user expectations, or defined service level agreements (SLAs).
4. Resource Allocation
• Demand queuing facilitates the allocation of these resources based on task priorities.
High-priority tasks receive more resources to ensure prompt processing.
5. Scheduling Algorithms
6. Scalability Implementation
• Resource Efficiency
• Meeting SLAs
• Cost Savings
Change Management
• Cloud change management refers to the policies, strategies, and people that help move a
company’s digital assets from on-site to cloud-based computing systems.
• It focuses on minimizing risks, ensuring alignment with business objectives, and adapting
traditional change management practices to the dynamic and scalable nature of cloud
computing environments.
Technical complexity
• Cloud change management deals with complicated technical challenges arising from the
dynamic nature and diverse architectures of cloud environments.
Organizational adaptation
Cultural shifts
• Overcoming resistance, addressing job displacement fears, and breaking away from
established practices are obstacles to the cultural transformation vital for successful cloud
adoption.
• To meet these challenges, organizations can rely on several established practices to support
risk management, facilitate the deployment process, and continuously monitor the impact
of the change.
• Conduct pilot migrations to validate the migration plan and identify issues
• Cloud service architecture refers to the design and structure of cloud computing systems,
which are used to deliver IT resources and services over the internet.
• a) Service consumption
Service consumption:
• service usage refers to how resources and services are consumed by the user or
organization, while billing is how the cloud provider charges for those services based on
their usage.
• The combination of service usage and billing is central to cloud computing’s pay-as-you-
go model, where customers are charged for what they use rather than fixed costs.
• The amount of compute power used is typically measured in terms of the instance size,
CPU, RAM, and the time the instance runs.
• Typically, you’re billed by the hour or minute based on the size of the instance and the time
it’s running. Additional costs may apply for features like load balancing or higher
performance
Service security:
• service security refers to the measures, protocols, and practices that protect data,
applications, and infrastructure from unauthorized access, misuse, and threats in cloud
environments.
Service monitoring:
• Service monitoring involves tracking the health, performance, and availability of services
and resources in the cloud.
Service control:
Cloud self-service:
Service support :
• Service support ensures that organizations can address issues quickly, ensure smooth
operation, and optimize their cloud environments for performance, cost-efficiency, and
security.
Service Function:
• Service Function in the context of cloud computing refers to the specific capabilities,
operations, or tasks that a cloud service is designed to perform.
• These functions are the core offerings of cloud services, which may range from providing
computing resources to managing data or enabling development environments.
Service Economics :
• Service Economics refers to the financial aspects of adopting, using, and maintaining cloud
services, including the cost structure, pricing models, and overall value proposition of
cloud solutions for organizations.
• Service chain entity refers to a set of interconnected services or components that work
together to deliver a specific functionality or application.
Benefits of cloud services
1.Cost Efficiency
Pay-as-you-go: Cloud services typically use a pay-per-use model, which means you only pay
for the resources you actually use, such as compute power, storage, or network bandwidth.
2. Scalability and Flexibility
Elasticity: Cloud platforms provide flexible, on-demand resource scaling. Whether it’s
storage, processing power, or networking capacity, cloud services can scale based on real-time
needs, so you can adjust resources dynamically as workloads increase or decrease.
3. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery:
Data Redundancy: Cloud providers replicate data across multiple data centers, which ensures
business continuity in case of disasters.
4. Security and Compliance:
Cloud service providers invest heavily in security measures to protect data. Features include
encryption, identity and access management, firewalls, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and
monitoring tools to detect vulnerabilities
Cloud providers handle the maintenance of infrastructure, software patches, and security
updates.
7. Simplified IT Management:
Cloud platforms often provide centralized dashboards and management consoles that allow
users to monitor, manage, and configure resources efficiently without the need for complex on-
site management.