Frequently Asked Questions
Key aspects of the cloud are becomgin (more or less) understood by the cloud consumers and cloud providers alike, but there are still a lot questions still to be answered. Key among them is the simple question "how can I be in better control of my cloud services?" Let's break this down a little:
A 'control app' (cApp) is a unit of control value to the cloud user.
A cApp responds to a specific instance of control that a cloud user would like to apply to their cloud services. Each control app is self-contained and can be configured by the user to match specific business and technical requirements of the cloud service being managed. A user will apply a collection of one or more control apps to mange their cloud services.
Federation is a key architectural component of sense. The overall system is able to automatically establish real-time relationships with all the auto-discoverable sense nodes in a network and domain. This auto-discovery is not dependent on the physical location and runtime infrastructure of the nodes. A sense node is a server instance that is able to manage and conduct all sense services....
SLA@SOI is a European Union funded research project looking to formalize the definition and lifecycle of Service Level Agreements (SLA) as they pertain to supporting a service oriented economy.
The goal of the project is to provide a formalized and standard approach for all service economy participants to the argument of service level. This will cover the full lifecycle of services and SLAs from definition and negotiation through to monitoring, guarantees, and penalties....
Like its ancestors; “what is client-server?” and “what is SOA?”, questions like “what is cloud computing?” are attracting a near infinite number of viewpoints from technology based marketing, analysts, discussions and blogs. Here we’ll try to put a clear and simple label (with pictures) on cloud computing. Feel free to join the debate with your comments below.
Cloud computing is the evolution and convergence of a number of mature and fast maturing technology market threads; virtualization, utility computing and software as a service (SaaS). Cloud computing already extends beyond the sum of these three to represent the core of what is fast becoming the most disruptive computing model of the 2010′s....
For more than a decade virtualization solutions have been maturing, to the point where they are now accepted as a core element of data center operations, and in fact form the foundation of the IaaS layer of cloud computing. This is largely the result of businesses being driven by the need to better utilize the enormous capital and maintenance expenses invested in computer hardware and communications infrastructure. A sector of information technology receiving a lot of attention is virtualization servers. The prime outcome of virtualization technology is to provide a logical division (partitioning) of available computer servers, within the physical computer hardware....
A service level agreement is a target of performance and quality for a service that is agreed to by the provider and client. SLA attributes and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to be measured for any service is dependent upon the value perceived by each of the stakeholders. Stakeholders include business owners, business managers, IT operations and development, administrators, executives, and also customers and partners....
In the same model as IaaS and PaaS, SLA-as-a-Service or SLAaaS implies the delivery of a business related IT service to provide cloud service SLA management using a software-as-a service delivery model.
‘Inter Cloud SLA Broker’ is a term assigned to Sensible Cloud’s senseTM platform by an industry analyst.
The term refers to sense’s core mission to define, implement and to automatically apply cloud service management within and across mixed cloud services through the use of formalised business SLAs. This encompasses SLA management across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS cloud deployment models from all three cloud distributions; private, public and hybrid clouds. ...
An SLA broker mediates between the consumer and provider parties by establishing the appropriate grade and implementation of service levels for the agreed business service.
Business and IT organizations are more familiar to SLA brokering, in regard to the contractual services provided to external customers, partners and suppliers. Who or what “brokers” the service levels between these business users and IT, within the enterprise?
The term service has been increasingly over used in marketing brochures of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions.
In the view of information technologies, a simple description of a service could be: a self-describing software entity, designed and developed in isolation offering near frictionless interoperability to deliver business value or input. This covers a wide spectrum of services including web, application, hardware, virtualization, cloud and others....
