These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Cloud Services Brokerage

FOR

DUMmIES

LIAISON SPECIAL EDITION

by Lawrence C. Miller, CISSP Foreword by Paul J. Stamas

Vice President, Information Technology, Mohawk Fine Papers

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies Liaison Special Edition ,

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com Copyright 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Liaison and the Liaison logo are trademarks of Liaison Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Business Development Department in the U.S. at 317-572-3205. For details on how to create a custom For Dummies book for your business or organization, contact info@dummies.biz. For information about licensing the For Dummies brand for products or services, contact BrandedRights& Licenses@Wiley.com. ISBN: 978-1-118-35891-7 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Publishers Acknowledgments
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following: Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development Senior Project Editor: Zo Wykes Editorial Manager: Rev Mengle Business Development Representative: Melody Layne Custom Publishing Project Specialist: Michael Sullivan Composition Services Senior Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees Layout and Graphics: Claudia Bell, Lavonne Roberts Proofreader: Melissa Cossell Special Help from Liaison: Shana DeLuca, Robert Fox, Chris Hale, Gary Palgon

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
About This Book ........................................................................ 1 Icons Used in This Book ............................................................ 2 Where to Go from Here ............................................................. 2

Chapter 1: Defining Cloud Services Brokerage . . . . . . . .3

The Cloud Goes Mainstream .................................................... 3 Managing Data in the Cloud...................................................... 5 What CSB Is ................................................................................. 7 What CSB Isnt ............................................................................ 8

Chapter 2: Recognizing the Business Value of CSB . . . .9

Integration in the Cloud and How CSB Fits............................. 9 Data translation and transformation woes................. 11 Connectivity concerns .................................................. 11 System scalability .......................................................... 12 Performance planning ................................................... 12 Security sensitivities ..................................................... 13 Expert help ..................................................................... 13 Practicality wins out...................................................... 14 Data-as-a-Service ...................................................................... 14

Chapter 3: Getting Started with CSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Managing Multiple Back-end Systems in the Cloud ............. 17 The Role of the CSB ................................................................. 18 All CSBs Are Not Created Equal ............................................. 19 The Future of CSB .................................................................... 20

Chapter 4: Ten (Okay, Five) Security Questions to Ask Your CSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Foreword
he intent of cloud computing is to abstract the technical complexity (by offering computing as a service) to enable the enterprise to focus on business objectives. For many firms, these business objectives are increasingly focused on the extended enterprise and a value network of customers, suppliers, business partners, and cloud providers. The objective of cloud service brokerage is to manage the complexity of the growing number and types of multi-enterprise integrations. Mohawk Fine Papers has leveraged Liaison Technologies as a cloud service brokerage to seamlessly integrate hundreds of external business partners with internal business applications, processes, services, and data. This model has unleashed the potential of the Cloud as a platform for multi-enterprise partnerships designed to deliver new and innovative products and services to customers. Paul J. Stamas Vice President, Information Technology Mohawk Fine Papers

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Introduction
ou know firsthand that the challenges of integrating, transforming, managing, and securing your enterprises critical business applications and data are many. You also know that you need to overcome these hurdles with agility and dependability. The demand to make data move as fast as business in real-time is huge. So much so that many companies are re-thinking their entire approach to strategic IT initiatives and moving integral parts of their business infrastructure to the cloud. But the reality is that the cloud isnt an all-in-one solution to all of your technology woes, and no single cloud services provider can fulfill all of your enterprises various requirements. More often than not, businesses moving to the cloud will require the services of many providers, and integrating your applications and data between these different providers can be a challenge in itself. Enter the cloud services broker!

About This Book

This book consists of four short chapters described here. Chapter 1: Defining Cloud Services Brokerage. Here, I define what cloud services brokerage is and what it isnt. Chapter 2: Recognizing the Business Value of CSB. This chapter takes a look at the benefits that your business can realize with cloud services brokerage. Chapter 3: Getting Started with CSB. This chapter explains the role of the cloud services broker in helping you manage your cloud providers, and takes a look at what the future holds for cloud services brokerage. Chapter 4: Ten (Okay, Five) Security Questions to Ask Your CSB. Finally, in that familiar For Dummies style, I include an abbreviated Part of Tens (abbreviated, as in five!) chapter chock full of information!
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

Icons Used in This Book

You occasionally see special icons that call attention to important information. Heres what you can expect. This icon points out information that may well be worth committing to your nonvolatile memory, your gray matter, or your noggin along with anniversaries and birthdays! You wont find a map of the human genome here, but if you seek to attain the seventh level of NERD-vana, perk up! This icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon and is the stuff legends well, nerds are made of! Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy the book, please take care of your writers! Seriously, this icon points out helpful suggestions and useful nuggets of information.

Where to Go from Here

With our apologies to Lewis Carroll, Alice, and the Cheshire Cat: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat err, the Dummies Man. I dont much care where, said Alice. Then it doesnt matter which way you go! Thats certainly true of Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Special Edition, which, like Alice in Wonderland, is also destined to become a timeless classic! If you dont know where youre going, any chapter will get you there but Chapter 1 might be a good place to start! However, if you see a particular topic that piques your interest, feel free to jump ahead to that chapter. We promise you wont get lost falling down the rabbit hole!

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 1

Defining Cloud Services Brokerage

In This Chapter
Recognizing the cloud computing trend Going beyond B2B integration with enterprise application integration

in the cloud

Understanding what cloud services brokerage (CSB) is about

ost people think of puffy, cotton ball-like fair weather cumulus clouds when talking about clouds in general and metaphorically expect that same fair weather experience when talking about cloud computing. But like clouds in nature, not all cloud services and cloud services providers are the same. For example, the cumulonimbus is an awesome and powerful cloud, capable of producing mighty thunderstorms and often extending into the stratosphere with a majestic anvil plume. It can also launch golf ball-sized hail stones many miles and unleash a maelstrom of deadly tornados. And a stratus cloud can immerse an entire city in a dense fog for days. A cloud services broker, like your favorite TV meteorologist, can help your business make sense of the different clouds and cloud systems and prepare appropriately for a rainy day. This chapter delves into the growing cloud computing trend, and what cloud services brokerage is and what it isnt.

The Cloud Goes Mainstream

For years network architects have used clouds in network diagrams to depict wide area networks (WAN) and the Internet.
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

The cloud dynamic, nebulous, and at times unstable proved to be a particularly apt symbol to represent the boundless complexities of the Internet. An architect could focus on the minute details of a local area network (LAN) and simply drop in a few communications links depicted by lightning bolts to connect an enterprise to the Internet! Today, the cloud has become part of our modern lexicon, with major technology companies like Apple, Google, IBM, and Microsoft advertising cloud services during our favorite prime time TV shows and beckoning us to the cloud! In fact, many consumers are already using the cloud to store their photos and music, or to back up their home computer files. Likewise, many businesses are increasingly turning to thirdparty cloud services providers to host various back-office systems and B2B (business-to-business, for example, partner and supplier management) processes, such as their customer relationship management (CRM) databases and applications. Thus, the cloud now represents much more than a WAN or the Internet it provides services that include systems, data, and applications that were once traditionally located onpremises, inside the enterprise firewall. Cloud computing is fast becoming the wave of the future for both home and business computing with widespread adoption of a few high-profile cloud services. Because of this growing acceptance, we can expect an explosion of diverse cloud services providers in the coming years. These providers will rise up to meet the demand of organizations ready to embrace cloud computing technology more fully and outsource many facets of their business to the cloud. Be aware, however, that expanding the use of cloud services for both your back-office systems and B2B processes requires a high level of coordination and integration. Its one thing for these different services to exist as independent islands that never need to interconnect, or as loosely connected point-topoint interfaces. Thats easy to do. However, when you outsource interdependent business processes to multiple cloud services providers, it becomes very complex, very quickly. That can mean adding staff and resources whether its for writing code or just managing the integration process which can negate many of the benefits of cloud computing.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 1: Defining Cloud Services Brokerage

Back-office systems and B2B processes both on-premise and in the cloud have interdependencies. Business process efficiencies can be tuned, and valuable information can be obtained by joining these disparate systems across an organizations technical landscape. This level of integration adds power and creates competitive advantage for businesses that can harness it. But you need an integration specialist or cloud services broker with experience integrating across the various layers to avoid the point-to-point conundrum of integrating traditional, on-premise, back-office systems and B2B processes and to help optimize and simplify these systems and processes. Social networking, cloud services, and mobile touch points have turned business-to-consumer (B2C) services and applications on their ear. The increase in B2C activity will result in companies upgrading their on-premise and cloud-based B2B platforms to meet the challenge of real-time processing, from consumers to the back-end systems and back again.

Managing Data in the Cloud

Cloud-based technology provides leverage, scalability, and technology-refresh intervals that simply cannot be matched with traditional software models. Cloud technology is the means to an end not the primary focus of the service. Cloud computing provides scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies. Cloud technology supports three specific layers of service that build upon each other (see Figure 1-1), defined by Gartner, Inc., as follows: Software as a Service (SaaS). This includes the applications such as dashboards and charting programs that help visualize services provided in the cloud. Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). This layer incorporates the tools, capabilities, and services that help solve problems. Components of PaaS help take client data and transform it into useful and usable information. Although less familiar to most people, PaaS is critical to any successful interaction with the cloud.
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

iPaaS is an integration specialty that involves the ability to perform integration in the cloud.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

Figure 1-1: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and anything in the cloud.

A cloud services brokerage model provides the flexible technical infrastructure and domain expertise needed to define your unique business service and process requirements. Whether you are evaluating IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS, cloud-based data services and solutions offer the freedom and flexibility of the cloud while leveraging the data models you currently have in place. Benefits of cloud-based data services include Data harmonization and agility. Enable organizations to replicate, cleanse, enrich, and synchronize their external application data seamlessly and securely with their onpremise enterprise business applications and databases, and to realize the benefits of analytics/business intelligence/informatics with data that is clean and understood. Predictable anytime, anywhere access to IT resources. Take data integration, transformation, management, and security capabilities out of their physical silos and make them readily available for whenever and wherever you need them. Flexible scaling of resources. As your business changes, so do your data needs. Scale your data solution investments on-demand for maximum resource optimization.
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Anything-as-a-Service

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Chapter 1: Defining Cloud Services Brokerage

Rapid, request-driven provisioning. Ramp up cloudbased services with a few mouse clicks or a phone call. Lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Expedite delivery of your complex data projects while minimizing resources and costs.

What CSB Is
With the advent of cloud computing, a new model of integration has emerged the cloud services brokerage. Every company that adopts a broad cloud computing strategy will encounter, and likely engage, multiple third-party cloud services providers. The published APIs (application programming interfaces) that enable organizations to interact with the various cloud services providers can be very complex. A cloud services broker buffers your organization from the technical details of interacting with these clouds. By consolidating (or brokering) multiple cloud services into a single connection, a cloud services broker helps to simplify and leverage cloud services and can aggregate, normalize, customize, and enhance business information in the cloud. Cloud computing overall, and cloud services brokerage in particular, is a high-impact trend that is expected to dramatically affect the entire $865 million IT services industry. The cloud services broker role is rapidly being incorporated into IT services including consulting and system integration, application services, business process outsourcing and utility (BPO/BPU), and B2B commerce. The U.S. Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines a cloud broker as an entity that manages the use, performance, and delivery of cloud services and negotiates relationships between cloud providers and cloud consumers. NIST identifies three categories of services provided by cloud brokers, including Service intermediation. Providing value-added services or improving a capability such as managing access to the cloud, performance reporting, or security. Service aggregation. Combining and integrating multiple services (for example, by providing data integration or securely moving data between multiple cloud providers).
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

Service arbitrage. Similar to service aggregation, but the cloud services are not fixed (for example, checking multiple cloud services for competitive shipping rates or providing access to multiple e-mail services). Gartner defines the cloud services broker role as consolidating all third-party external technical and commercial interfaces into one on behalf of cloud services consumers.

What CSB Isnt

It is important to remember that a cloud services broker is not a cloud services provider and is not part of the traditional cloud hosting model for services. A cloud services broker doesnt actually host any applications for a business or provide access to specific applications. A cloud services broker doesnt sell cloud services of his own or on behalf of a cloud services provider. However, a cloud services broker can help you find different cloud services providers to meet your various business needs and negotiate services with those providers.

Recognizing a cloud services broker

Gartner has defined several characteristics that identify a cloud services broker, including the following. A cloud services broker: Has a direct contractual relationship with service consumers May or may not have a contractual relationship with service providers Brokers at least one cloud service Adds non-trivial value on top of original service Retains and leverages intellectual property to avoid one-off solutions Brokers one service to many customers, many services to one customer, or many services to many customers

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 2

Recognizing the Business Value of CSB

In This Chapter
Understanding cloud-based data integration models Delivering competitive advantage in the cloud

e live in a world that is always on, always active, always connected, and always changing. In our global marketplace, the connected enterprise has a competitive advantage. The ability to integrate your value chain and share information beyond the edge of the enterprise in the cloud with global offices, customers, suppliers, and other value chain partners gives you the potential to significantly reduce transactionprocessing costs, improve customer satisfaction, work more effectively with suppliers, improve order accuracy, and increase flexibility, agility, and adaptability to enable you to respond quickly to new challenges. This chapter goes into how integrating your systems, applications, and data in the cloud can transform your enterprise and how a cloud services broker can help!

Integration in the Cloud and How CSB Fits

Data integration is critical for companies that need to combine systems and databases for example, after a merger or

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

10

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

acquisition or need to link legacy systems to new business applications. This task can be daunting, particularly in smallto medium-sized businesses where IT staffs and budgets may be constrained. Several models for cloud-based data-integration services exist, including Cloud-to-cloud: Services and integration from outside the firewall and hosted systems or applications to other outside-the-firewall hosted systems or applications Cloud-to-on-premise applications: Services/integration from on-premise, back-end systems or applications to outside-the-firewall hosted systems or applications Application-to-application (through the cloud platform): Services/integration from on-premise, back-end systems or applications through a cloud platform provider (public, private, or hybrid cloud) Its not always feasible for businesses to move all of their data integration functions to the cloud. Instead, some may prefer to dip their toes into the cloud the trick is figuring out which toes to dip in or, more explicitly, which business processes to move. You want to be confident that your data integration processes will work as well in the cloud as they do on-premise. To help ensure a successful transition, choose cloud services providers that specialize in data integration and that can meet your technical and regulatory requirements. You can test the waters for a relatively low cost and with low barriers to entry by moving one or more of your data integration projects to the cloud while leaving the rest on-premise. Establishing new integration processes in the cloud or moving customer-facing B2B (business-to-business) processes to the cloud is much easier than moving more complex back-office integration processes, unless the vendor that you are working with already has experience and success working with the systems that you need integrated. In many cases, the model for solving integration challenges is understood and can be applied to your scenario. The key to deciding what to move hinges on a slew of technical and business concerns, including simplification needed in processing, the cost of data translation, connectivity, performance, scalability, and security, all of which must be fully vetted with cloud services providers.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 2: Recognizing the Business Value of CSB

11

Data translation and transformation woes

Moving data around whether its on-premise or in the cloud is technically easy. Data translation/transformation is the tricky part and, therefore, can be expensive. Many companies scrap their plans to move data integration processes to the cloud simply because of the data translation/transformation cost. If the cloud provider doesnt use the same tools that you use, it can mean paying your provider to reproduce data translation/transformation events either as part of a professional services engagement, or as part of your subscription cost. To overcome the data translation/transformation challenge, you can adopt a hybrid approach: existing data translation stays on-premise, while all of your new or modified processes get implemented in the cloud. Alternatively, you can find a provider that can manage your data transformation/translation at a lower cost. Fortunately, the data integration industry is evolving, and some data integration cloud services providers are already using a new generation of intelligent mapping tools that significantly speed up the task of moving on-premise data translation processes into the cloud which lowers the cost of data translation. If youre trying to decide whether to license a new tool for onpremise data integration or to outsource to the cloud, you can hedge your bet by identifying vendors that do both. These companies license their data integration tools for on-premise use, and use those same tools to handle data integration in the cloud as part of their service offering. This strategy gives you the flexibility to implement a more modern data integration solution on-premise now, while removing the technical and cost barriers of moving to the cloud in the future.

Connectivity concerns
One of the biggest worries people have about cloud computing is losing their connection to the cloud. A cloud provider is judged on availability. For that reason, the cloud provider builds its IT infrastructure for high availability and disaster recovery to ensure that service wont be interrupted. Loss of
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

12

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

connectivity within the cloud is actually very rare and companies are often surprised to see that their own history of downtime is worse than that of cloud providers.

System scalability
Besides being able to add hardware resources easily to handle expanding data volumes a hallmark benefit of cloud computing the ability to scale bandwidth is also an important consideration when moving business processes to the cloud. With internal IT infrastructures, systems are typically housed in close proximity to one another on a local network segment, which can be optimized to improve performance. The downside of this design is that it creates bottlenecks that eventually inhibit growth, simply because the systems are so tightly coupled that they become too rigid. Decoupling these tightly integrated systems so that some of the data integration processes are performed in the cloud while others remain on-premise provides an opportunity for you to re-architect, or at least re-think, your systems design. Moving to the cloud forces a good technical design that allows businesses to avoid creating the performance fixes of the past that limit internal scalability while building a much more flexible and scalable architecture. Interoperability and scalability are key benefits of partnering with a cloud services broker customers can start small and expand to new cloud-based projects as their business processes improve and are refined.

Performance planning
The only real issue between on-premise and cloud computing performance that might be a concern to some organizations is latency. Cloud computing can never achieve the same low latency as servers on the same LAN segment, but the difference will be negligible if the bandwidth is adequate. If you anticipate the potential for minor latency differences being an issue and for most companies its not, then make sure that your specific requirements are addressed when your data integration solution is being re-architected for the cloud.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 2: Recognizing the Business Value of CSB

13

Security sensitivities
Data security is another concern for organizations that are considering moving data integration processes to the cloud. Its important to find out what provisions the cloud provider has for security including protecting sensitive data in transit to and from the cloud, securely storing data at rest, destroying sensitive data at the end of its lifecycle, and managing identity and access controls. This becomes particularly important for companies that must comply with numerous industry data security standards, government regulations, and privacy laws. For example, if youre planning to store or process credit card data in the cloud, make sure that the cloud services provider is Payment Card Industrys Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant or can provide you with the audit information you will need for your auditors. Similarly, if youre moving certain healthcare-related Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to the cloud, youll need to comply with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the U.S. Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) requirements. If your organization collects data globally, it is also going to be important to ask where the cloud provider will keep the data to ensure compliance with data protection laws within those jurisdictions.

Expert help
While many moving parts are associated with transitioning your data integration processes to the cloud, the weight of having to figure out how to assemble those parts to make them hum along doesnt have to rest solely with you. The right cloud services provider will have both the data integration solutions and the expertise to work through technical issues and to help you come up with the best solution. Because theyve lived through numerous conversions with a multitude of different organizations and across many vertical markets, and have already solved many process and technical complexities, experienced data integration cloud services providers are in the unique position of understanding the nuances of moving on-premise legacy systems to the cloud.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

14

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

Practicality wins out

Most businesses implementing a cloud strategy will find that it makes perfect sense to migrate data integration processes to the cloud slowly and incrementally. This approach will allow your organization to become familiar with the cloud, gain trust in it, and start seeing the return on investment (ROI) more quickly than if you had moved everything at once. Working with a vendor that can address your changing needs as the technical landscape evolves is also important. For example, if a system that was originally integrated as an on-premise solution is now available as a SaaS/cloud-based solution, a cloud services broker can help you migrate to the cloud while keeping your existing integration points intact. For many businesses, a hybrid approach in which some data integration processes take place in one or many clouds, and others remain inside the firewall is a practical solution.

Data-as-a-Service
The cloud is transforming the structure of the enterprise and how competitive advantage is achieved. The enterprise of the future is agile, adaptive, flexible, and collaborative. The opportunity is at the edge of the enterprise to foster innovation, increased efficiency, faster time-to-market, and value creation (see Figure 2-1).

Service-Based Economy

Enterprise Agility

Service-Value Networks Inter-enterprise Business processes

The Cloud

Evolved B2B "Integration" Governance Frameworks

Figure 2-1: The cloud transforms the enterprise.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 2: Recognizing the Business Value of CSB

15

Cloud computing offers an incremental level of enterprise agility by enabling rapid introduction of new business applications by hosting them in a cloud computing platform (at lower cost). Cloud computing is about loose coupling between hardware and applications delivered as services, and thus requires a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to be successful. A SOA is a strategic framework of technology that enables integrated systems, inside and outside of an enterprise, to expose and access services that may be further abstracted to process layers and composite applications. Flexibility within a business is defined by its ability to react to known circumstances and given parameters. One of the most immediately recognizable benefits of cloud services is the ability to add new infrastructure and capacity quickly and relatively inexpensively when needed. This flexibility allows the business to quickly respond to changing market drivers. Going beyond flexibility, business agility is the ability to adapt to the unknown and unanticipated. The cloud provides interoperability and agility for businesses to stay relevant and compete in a rapidly changing business environment that can often be volatile and unpredictable. Cloud services brokers handle everything that happens behind the scenes to connect the enterprise to its various cloud services. This allows the enterprise to focus on the business and on how to gain competitive advantage by leveraging cloud services. Read the case study on Mohawk Fine Papers to see how a cloud services broker can transform an enterprise.

Case Study: Mohawk Fine Papers

Mohawk Fine Papers (w w w . mohawkpaper.com), the largest premium paper manufacturer in North America, successfully implemented a SOA and integration services backbone that combines application-to-application (A2A), B2B, and cloud-to-cloud services using Liaisons cloud services brokerage integration-in-the-cloud solution. Liaisons SOA-based cloud services brokerage backbone provides interoperability between Mohawks internal and external applications, services, and data, and extends this capability to Mohawks
(continued)

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Leader Line Weight = .5pt

16

Arrowhead = no pref Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

(continued)

300 customers and 100 suppliers, partners, and external service providers. Using a single connection to all parties like banks, third-party logistics (3PL), and SaaS providers like Amazon.com, Authorize.net,

StrikeIron, and SugarCRM, the cloud services broker simplified Mohawks B2B and e-commerce strategies and sped up its adoption of cloud computing (see the following figure).

manufacturer.com web site manufacturers customer manufacturers customer stock check

ORDERS ORDERS ORDERS

manufacturering partners
850

MANUFACTURER

EDI MFTaaS API WS

LIAISON
CATALOG CURRENCY CONVERSIONS FINANCIAL

940

logistics partners

850, 855 810, 856

third party e-commerce vendor

CRM system
orders & contacts

third party e-commerce vendor

address veri cation

payment gateway

The cloud services brokers unified information architecture enables interoperability with Mohawks business partners and supports seamless integration of on-premises business services with cloud-based business services. Mohawks IT staff consisting of only six employees can now focus on the formation of business models and businessprocess innovation rather than the technical complexities of managing multiple back-office cloud services, allowing Mohawk an 80-year old family-owned business to compete and win against newer startups.

By shifting responsibility for cloud services integration to its cloud services broker, Mohawk has increased business agility in terms of both the range of integration capabilities and the speed and cost of execution. Mohawk reports that it has improved time to deployment from months to weeks, achieved an overall reduction of integration project cost by as much as 30 percent, and reduced risk through version control and governance.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 3

Getting Started with CSB

In This Chapter
Tying together your applications and cloud providers Knowing whats important from a cloud services broker Looking ahead with cloud services brokerage

s businesses move their critical applications and data to the cloud or begin to leverage aspects of the cloud, it is important that they plan their cloud strategy carefully. Assessing and selecting the right cloud services broker is an important first step to help ensure success in the cloud. This chapter takes a look at what can be outsourced to the cloud, what to consider when partnering with a cloud services broker, and what the future holds for cloud services brokerage.

Managing Multiple Back-end Systems in the Cloud

Outsourcing your enterprises back-end processes to the cloud makes a lot of sense for all the same reasons outsourcing anything to the cloud does reasons that include scalability, leveraging specialized expertise, and cost savings but when these systems need to work together, it can also increase the complexity of cloud computing. When applications reside on-premise, translation maps are written by internal IT staff to enable those applications to communicate with each other and share data for the business to operate. When these applications move into the cloud, the integration and data management challenges remain the

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

18

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

same; theyre just happening in a different place. However, a new problem also emerges: managing the connections to multiple cloud services providers. No single way exists for an enterprise to communicate with all its cloud services. Each cloud services provider uses its own method for connection, creating a complex management problem that can be counterproductive to cloud outsourcing. For example, if you want to integrate with Amazon.com, you have to learn its Web service architecture and methodology, which is defined in thousands of pages of documentation. If you then want to connect to SalesForce.com or any other service, you have to learn their interfaces too all of which takes a considerable amount of time and effort. The lack of a uniform or standardized connection is a real bottleneck to working with multiple cloud services providers. The solution to this bottleneck is establishing a common business process sometimes referred to as a facade which enables organizations to interact with all of the different cloud services providers and tie them together intelligibly. This facade allows an organizations applications to integrate with one another and share data just as they did on-premise, and to be more easily managed.

The Role of the CSB

Cloud services brokers provide organizations with a single point of entry into multiple clouds. They eliminate the complexity of managing the data integration requirements of interconnected systems and multiple connections by interfacing with other clouds on behalf of their customers. Cloud services brokers who are data management and integration experts are ideally suited to handle the increasing complexity of managing multiple cloud services providers. They take care of data management and integration requirements to ensure that the services interoperate with one another, so that your organization doesnt have to. They provide a singular facade service, giving organizations a single set of coherent uniform services that map to various cloud services providers.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 3: Getting Started with CSB

19

For example, if a company wants to generate an e-mail notification when an order is shipped, the cloud services broker knows how to make a call out from the ERP (enterprise resource planning) system to the rate shopping application in the cloud, and insert the shipping cost into the notice in real time. Beyond providing a single way of managing multiple disparate cloud services providers, cloud services brokers also provide common visibility. A good analogy is online bill paying. You log on separately to your bank, credit card providers, and service companies (such as your utility companies) to pay bills and manage account balances. In each case, you have a separate connection with a unique user name and password combination, and different interfaces to learn. This is not unlike an organization that uses multiple cloud services providers, but the bill-paying example is much more simplistic. A cloud services broker solves this problem by providing a framework that manages all of the connections and provides a common visibility layer to all of the cloud services an organization uses. Cloud services brokers also take care of all security and certificate requirements in the cloud, on behalf of your organization.

All CSBs Are Not Created Equal

While most cloud services brokers are typically well versed in taking care of business-to-business (B2B) data translation between trading partners in the cloud, application-to-application (A2A) and other types of integration in the cloud are far more complex. Only highly skilled and experienced cloud services brokers who are data integration, translation, and management experts can handle data translation for the most complex A2A projects, freeing internal IT staff to focus on more strategic issues. A top-level cloud services broker can provide a wide range of services, including Connectivity to various cloud services providers through one point of entry with a uniform interface to all services B2B and A2A data integration, translation, and management between interdependent back-office services

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

20

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

A trading partner management (TPM) relationship, including data requirements, delivery requirements, messaging and communication, and formatting Management of the relationship between the organization and its various cloud services providers

The Future of CSB

As organizations outsource more back-office business processes to the cloud, demand for cloud services brokers will continue to rise. Gartner predicts that by 2016, 50 percent of new integration outsourcing projects (compared with 10 percent in 2010) will be delivered by cloud services brokers rather than integration service providers. The challenges of managing multiple cloud services providers and diverse connection requirements, and getting a diverse set of solutions such as CRM (customer relationship management), B2B, EAI (enterprise application integration), finance, and more to work together and share data, can be daunting to internal IT staff who are used to managing these solutions in-house. Cloud services brokers can help future-proof an organizations business processes by readily scaling resources to help companies adapt to change. Cloud services brokers can also customize their services to meet your unique requirements. Integration and data management via cloud computing is a key enabler of business intelligence (BI), providing relevant information from any source across traditional organizational boundaries. But in order for information to be useful it must be timely, reliable, and readily available. Cloud services brokers can help ensure that information from numerous and increasingly disparate cloud providers is understood, cleansed, and able to reach the key decision makers in an organization. The unique data integration, management, security, and compliance complexities created by outsourcing to multiple cloud providers is best solved by a cloud services broker experienced in all aspects of data integration, data management, service-oriented architectures (SOAs), data security, and governance. Such entities can manage all of an organizations external cloud connections while enriching the data integration process with validation.
These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Chapter 4

Ten (Okay, Five) Security Questions to Ask Your CSB

In This Chapter
Getting the right answers from your cloud services broker

efore partnering with any cloud services provider or broker, you should ask key questions to ensure that your data will be appropriately safeguarded. What is the cloud providers security architecture and policy? It is important for you to understand exactly how your applications and data will be safeguarded and the policies that a cloud services provider follows to maintain the security of your data. A cloud services broker can help you delve into the details of the various security architectures that different service providers will present and help you ensure that your security needs are properly addressed. How comprehensive is the service-level agreement (SLA) between you and the cloud provider? A service-level agreement covers the minimum acceptable standards you can expect from your service provider and what consideration you will receive in the event that these standards are not met. You need to ensure that your SLA has teeth a 30-minute credit toward your next months service doesnt necessarily compensate your business adequately for a 30-minute outage to your e-commerce infrastructure that costs your business thousands of dollars.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

22

Cloud Services Brokerage For Dummies, Liaison Edition

Not only is it important to negotiate SLAs that meet your business requirements but you also need to actively manage your SLAs. Here too, a cloud services broker can help you negotiate and manage SLAs among your various cloud service providers. Does the cloud provider understand your data preservation and protection needs? Although all companies require some level of data preservation and protection, not all data needs to be equally preserved and protected. A cloud services provider that attempts to treat all of its customers data equally will inevitably fail to protect your most sensitive data adequately. It is important for you and your providers to truly understand the value and sensitivity of your data and your business requirements for preserving, maintaining, and accessing that data. Where does your data physically live? Do you have the cloud providers assurance that it will remain private? Will your data be stored on a shared disk system? If so, how will the cloud services provider maintain the confidentiality and integrity of your data? Is data portability part of the service provided by the cloud vendor? Although we arent talking about one of Steven Coveys seven habits of highly effective people here, you should, nonetheless, begin with the end in mind. At some point, it will be necessary to move your data. Whether due to outgrowing your current service provider, or a new strategic direction, or an SLA failure, or because you (hopefully not) or your cloud services provider ceases to be a going concern, you need to know how your data move will be handled when that time comes.

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.