July 2022 – Xorlogics

Green #CloudComputing: An energy-efficient Technology and Sustainable Business Model

In the ear of digitalisation, more and more companies are looking for sustainable technologies to support their new post-covid business models. The cloud is playing a huge role in this transformation project because it combines two important corporate goals: digitization and sustainability. With an increased pressure to addressee environmental and sustainability problems, IT executives are looking to the cloud to meet business needs while decreasing their impact on the environment. Cloud enables the quick and easy exchange of information via a single platform, it allows companies to use resources more efficiently and to develop sustainable strategies on the basis of data.

From a technical point of view, companies can better achieve their goals in the area of climate protection and sustainability by moving to the cloud. A survey conducted by 451, in which more than 300 companies with their own data centers in Germany, France, Ireland, Sweden and Spain participated highlighted that European companies could reduce their energy consumption by almost 80 percent by moving their workloads from on-premises to the cloud.

The CO2 footprint can also be significantly reduced with cloud technologies. According to the study, a data center with an energy consumption of one megawatt (assuming an electrical load of 30 percent) can reduce pollutant emissions by more than 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. This corresponds to removing up to 500 cars from roads or offsetting 50 average households in Europe. If the energy source is 100 percent renewable, it can reduce the CO2 emissions of an average workload by up to 96 percent. Cloud computing can thus help companies to achieve their ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) goals more quickly.

The use of big data analysis, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) in the cloud also leads to cost savings, energy efficiency and growth. AI in particular is considered a key element for sustainable business models. A study by the ITIF (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation) shows that innovations can be implemented faster and more cost-effectively with it. The flexibility, agility and scalability of the cloud enables companies to develop sustainable, environmentally friendly products or services – such as solutions that make emissions transparent.

But the cloud is not only much more energy-efficient than conventional data centers. The internal data centers are not always fully utilized, but they still consume constant energy. Virtual servers, which can store and process up to 20 times more data, can be used by multiple organizations at the same time. The cloud not only saves enormous amounts of energy resources, but also the cooling energy of physical devices.

Cloud also enables companies to aggregate and analyse data across all departments and across the entire supply chain – including information on the ESG initiatives of suppliers, partners or third parties. Companies can use the results, for example, to analyse how planned changes will affect energy efficiency and CO2 emissions in the supply chain. The analyses also simplify the obligation to provide evidence to regulators, investors and general transparency – a factor that today’s customers are increasingly demanding.

Thus, in order to make optimal decisions in terms of sustainability, a comprehensive and holistic approach to digitization is required.

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Cloud Encryption: Best practices to deal with Data Security Issues

For modern businesses, digital transformation is critical, and cloud services offer a proven path to thrive in the digital economy. However, the shared responsibility model states that the cloud service provider is responsible for the security “of” the cloud, while the customer is responsible for the security “in” the cloud, for network controls, identity and access management, application configurations, and, most importantly, data security. Although data in the cloud is often stored abroad, this data storage is the safest option for companies to store files in compliance with the GDPR thanks to end-to-end encryption.

Data is already in the cloud: We all know that growing amounts of data and the desire for flexibility made the cloud increasingly popular as a data storage medium. The advantages are obvious: the files hardly need any local storage space, the cloud is highly available and the data can be accessed from anywhere.

Many programs use the cloud as data storage or backup without the customers being aware of it. This happens when synchronization is set by default or when the program is specially designed for cloud use. This is the case, for example, with Microsoft Office. This is at the root of a serious privacy problem: loss of control. Eventually, information is sent to servers that are beyond the control of whoever owns the data.

Beware of collaboration software: Hesitations about the cloud relate primarily to the lack of data protection. Despite this, too few companies are still taking the initiative. Countermeasures are only slowly being implemented. As a result, the number of data leaks reported to Belgium’s Data Protection Authority, APD, increased significantly every year. “Over the past twelve months, reported cases of breached data have gone up to 1,529,” the newspaper cites APD spokesperson Aurélie Waeterlinckx as saying. “The year before, there were 1,232.” Many companies are aware of their security problems. But too few actively take care of the solution.

Particular caution is required when using collaboration tools: software such as Microsoft Teams enables the simple exchange of messages and files. It’s a cloud-based team collaboration software that is part of the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suite of applications, thus the data is sent to the cloud.

Simple solution: always remember that your business is at the mercy of cloud file attacks or that you are in the grip of data leakage. Only then you’ll take data protection into your own hands with the most important tool: encryption.

Encryption is effective when files are still encrypted on the device on which they are created or edited. In this way, the information is protected during transmission to the cloud and during the entire storage period. You can use it to ward off attacks by ransomware and protect yourself from access by the cloud provider or foreign authorities.

Encryption is a good tool for more data security. High-quality encryption software fits seamlessly into existing workflows. This additional layer of protection is also ideal for backups. Data encryption for information stored on the cloud network makes sure that even if the data is lost, stolen, or mistakenly shared, the contents are virtually useless without the encryption key as the keys are only made available to authorized users.

Serverless: Knowing its limitations means using it properly

Serverless infrastructure advantages

“Serverless” is one of the new hype words in the IT industry. According to MarketsandMarkets Analysis, the global serverless architecture market size is projected to grow from USD 7.6 billion in 2020 to USD 21.1 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 22.7% during the forecast period. The major growth driving factors of the serverless architecture market include the rising need to shift from CAPEX to OPEX by removing and reducing the infrastructure cost. Gartner analysts also predict that half of all companies worldwide will have implemented a serverless model by 2025, compared to 20 percent today.

However, the term “serverless” is sometimes misunderstood. It’s not about getting rid of system hardware entirely. Rather, it’s about a new idea of managing applications and apps while still carrying out basic operations as usual. In plain language, this means: With serverless, the technical, application-relevant level of system architecture is managed independently of hardware-specific issues. The app managers only take care of the top functional level or the service. The cloud platform takes care of the provisioning logic, right through to the virtualization of resources and server control, giving the app manager room for other activities.

Serverless computing is an architecture where a cloud provider fully manages code execution, instead of the traditional method of developing & deploying applications on servers. Gartner believes that serverless computing requires IT leaders to take an application-centric approach. Instead of physical infrastructure, interfaces for application programming (APIs) and service level agreements (SLAs) are managed. Thus, developers and businesses can run their services without carrying the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure. Pricing is based on an application’s actual resource consumption, not prepaid capacity units. Also, server management decisions and capacity planning decisions are transparent to the user.

Even though the entry into the world of serverless is quite easy, the complexity increases very quickly when developers want to use more sophisticated resources, such as API gateways that sit between the client and several backend services and the calls management. The more the respective company builds on serverless architectures, the greater the danger of vendor lock-in. Decision-makers should keep this in mind if they want to define a serverless strategy that allows them to avoid long-term vendor and security risks. If there is a corresponding awareness in the company, it can use the advantages of serverless without having to fear potential pitfalls.

You must also acknowledge that serverless architecture is not the right choice for all cases. If the designated “serverless” application requires significant scaling and generates extremely high traffic for prolonged periods of time, it can become expensive. In this case, a cheaper alternative is a computer cloud such as Amazon EC2, which provides computing capacity in the cloud. Serverless scenarios are also unsuitable for applications that require noticeably short response times, such as real-time applications.

The mindset of the developers must also match the specific requirements of serverless. For example, it is imperative that they have an in-depth understanding of how serverless and event-driven architectures are built. Developers must also know the specifications and limitations of the platform used and keep an eye on application and data security. The risks and consequences of implementing serverless are severe unless the benefits have been demonstrated for a specific use case and the organization has carefully considered the ultimate costs and outcomes. Decision-makers should therefore only decide on a potential switch to serverless based on a detailed cost-benefit analysis.

The benefits of serverless computing are increased agility, unlimited scalability, easier maintenance, lower costs, and back-end services provided by the provider. It also ensures that companies and their developers no longer must worry about the servers and their configuration. In addition, serverless computing supports multi-cloud environments and makes the pay-as-you-go model a reality. Furthermore, the serverless approach promotes the sustainability of data-supported strategies in financial terms. And that’s exactly why serverless computing is reshuffling the cards in data integration. Now the possibilities in the field of data-on-demand are almost unlimited. Because companies can decide how, where, and when they process data in a way that makes economic sense for them.

Best practices for Cloud cost Optimization

Cloud Cost Management

Cloud computing is the driver of digitization because firms expect competitive advantages and massive financial savings from moving their business to the cloud. But they are often unaware that they end up paying more for their cloud infrastructure than they have to. This is often due to a lack of cloud governance, a lack of global overview of the resulting cloud costs, and/or rising prices for increased storage capacities. A study by Gartner shows that in many cases, the cloud costs of companies are up to 70 percent higher than what they would need. This leads to massive profit losses.

Therefore, cost management for multi-cloud environments is a crucial step not to be ignored. A wide range of options is available for optimization – if they are properly understood and used. This guideline clarifies what is important and which criteria are essential.

Scalability and cost transparency, such as the “pay-per-use” principle common to cloud providers, are two of the main arguments in favor of the cloud. Accordingly, the cost savings for small and medium-sized companies is the main argument for migrating their IT environment to the public cloud. However, this thesis is only true if they keep an eye on the topic of cost optimization before, during, and above all after the migration. The cost-optimized use of IT resources in the cloud is only possible if the company hires someone who keeps an eye on numerous factors such as the number of users, budgets, storage space, and instances used. In other words: without someone in charge who knows what to look for in cost-optimized cloud usage and how to proceed in cases of budget overruns, it becomes expensive.

Waste management, identifying unused cloud resources, and avoiding unnecessary spending. It sounds easy at first, but with typically several hundred thousand cloud resources, it is not possible to find out manually which resources are not required. By comparing billing data with monitoring data, tools identify potentially redundant cloud spending. In addition, among all the hundreds of thousands of cloud resources, those that are not needed at night or at the weekend can be identified. A distinction can also be made between productive and non-productive environments. The cloud architects and DevOps teams can make informed decisions about which cloud services are redundant and which are not.

Workload management, The costs for virtual machines are quite different for individual providers. The designation of the workloads in the cloud, and the offers and configurations of the cloud providers also vary significantly. This makes it difficult to compare offers.

But the price of workloads isn’t the only reason to choose a provider. With ready-made cloud services, cloud providers try to bind customers to their cloud platform. And indeed, their offers may seem attractive because the provider promises to care for maintenance and updates.

To help in decision-making, tools can indicate which cloud instances are most likely to cover a given workload. Usually, there are between 40 and 50 similar configurations that could be suitable in principle. If the tool knows the configurations of existing on-premises servers, it can also determine which cloud instances they could be replaced with. This enables comparisons to be made as to which cloud offerings are most suitable in terms of price/performance ratio.

Rightsizing computing services, there are a number of right-sizing tools that provide more or less good suggestions for sizing cloud servers so that they are the right size for actual use. Right-Sizing also helps with cloud optimization, which means achieving peak performance from the resources you are paying for. Another special benefit of the rightsizing compared to the data center is its elasticity. This means if you need to scale up for a few days and then scale back down, you’re able to continuously right-size your infrastructure to match your needs so you’re not stuck with one size.

Monthly Archives2022 July

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2022 July