Risk Assessment For MetaSoft Ltd In Their Planned Move To A Hybrid Cloud Strategy

Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud computing is one of the most important and widely used computing techniques used in the world toddy in different organizations. It is also known as hybrid cloud computing because it is a hybridization technique that is used to integrate public as well as private cloud architectures to give a common solution to all the data storage related as well as other concerns within an organization. When or more public cloud architectural networks are merged with the traditional in house server and storage systems, it results in the formation of a hybrid cloud infrastructure.  Hybridization in cloud computing is extremely important in today’s world due to the different risk factors associated with the traditional computing and data storage techniques. It eliminates different risks associated to data storage and other risks. IN other words, cloud computing is the future of organizations when every business related tasks can be remotely and will ease the working operations of all organizations.

This report will study the case of a company called MetaSoft Ltd, which is a software company headquartered in Australia and operates in New Zealand as well. The company is looking forward to incorporate a cloud architecture within the organization. The company is planning to close rather update the traditional working techniques and infrastructure in the Melbourne site. They are planning to replace the old infrastructure in Melbourne with a hybrid cloud infrastructure and most updated technologies like they presently have in their Sydney site. Through this, they are planning to increase flexibility within their working business operational tasks as well as effectively make it beneficial for the customers as well. The following report will highlight the different cloud infrastructures that can be implemented within the company and the different aspects such as its risk factors, advantage and disadvantages.

Firstly, the reader must be aware of what a hybrid cloud infrastructure means. A cloud computing architecture is nothing but the different network components and their sub components, which are essential for carrying out the computing tasks within an organization. These different components consists of working platforms, which are front end, example fat clients Fernando, (Loke & Rahayu, 2013). It also consist of mobile and portable devices as well as thin clients and back end-working platforms, for example servers and hard disk drives. The architecture of a cloud network also consists of the internet, over which data can be transmitted across different devices even across different geographical locations (Arora, Parashar & Transforming, 2013).

Cloud Computing Architecture

Fig 1: Working of a hybrid cloud network (Source: As used by author).

1. Microsoft Azure: Metasoft Ltd, which is a software company, wants to update the entire infrastructure in its Melbourne site and wants to get it replaced with all the latest technologies and cloud infrastructures that are presently present in its Sydney office. They want to incorporate cloud architecture in order to achieve higher rate of availability (HA) within the organization using cloud architectures such as Microsoft Azure, which is widely used and comes with a number of  advantages. It should be incorporated due to its low cost and the other corporate benefits that are corporate friendly. Microsoft has come up with this technique for deploying services and their applications, managing and testing the applications through a global network, which is widespread. Microsoft consists the data centers storing the data. It provides features such as software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) as well as infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Different programing languages from third party vendors are also supported in Azure (Copeland et al., 2015).

• It is extremely fast: The deployment speed is extremely fast, as well as its scope of scalability within operational tasks.
• Improved business agility: The developmentcycle is obtained much faster without a very expensive outlay; thereby giving Metasoft limited a much advantageous position.
• Excellent global reach: It can cater to the global needs of the organization since the company is also present in New Zealand. It has flexible guidelines to operate globally.

• Needs careful integration of application:The domains, which get mostly affected, are Third-party vendors, web services, External storage devices such as hard disk drives, SMTP servers as well as Payment gateway. These should be properly analyzed before Azure implementation. Data insecurity can also cause performance lags.
• Staff management:Effective cloud management techniques have to be well explained to the employees since both cloud and in home servers need to be properly managed. The application developers should have adequate knowledge about the complexities involved in the implementation Microsoft Azure.

Fig 2: Microsoft Azure working diagram (Source: As used by author)

Amazon web services lambda:  Amazon Web Services (AWS) lambda is owned and managed by the popular ecommerce giant, which is Amazon.com. It provides cloud storage facility of data as well as other cloud computing operational assistance to the different companies on a paid subscription basis, which in turn allows remote management of servers. Metasoft can use this platform because of its cheap costs and corporate friendly features. Metasoft ltd also wants to implement technologies such as AWS lambda since data security is of utmost concern for the organization, which can effectively be produced by this cloud platform. AWS Lambda is a kind of a computing platform, which does not make use of a server. Amazon manages it as a part of Amazon web services. This service runs in response to different events and it automatically manages different computing resources, which that code requires.

Fig 3: AWS lambda architecture (Source: As used by the company)

Advantages of using AWS lambda:

• Security: AWS lambda data centers have a very tight 24/7 guard system and a very effective disaster management system in case of any natural disasters as well as system failures. It also makes use of a very strict Identity & Access Management (IAM)as well as a cloud audit Trail feature to monitor what information has been accessed by which employee and at what time (Hendrickson et al., 2016).
• Flexibility:Amazon machine images (AMIs) are used for self-managing and automatically scaling which can closely align with the particular needs of Metasoft limited. This is done by the systems by effective management of the traffic in the networks. Clones are circulated across different geographic locations in very less time, thereby saving time by preventing the same tasks to be performed repeatedly.

AWS lambda disadvantages:

• AWS lambda path of data flow and information in a data center is sometimes difficult for the companies to follow and understand because of its complexities.
• National Products Inc (NPI) has recently declared that the billing structure is extremely complicated for the client organization to follow where AWS lambda is incorporated.
• In addition, AWS servers have a bad image of outage, which happened in the recent past.

Containers and cloud computing: Containers are applications that offer a packaging mechanism, which is very logical in nature, in which the different features are easily abstracted from the working environment where they run. This decoupling feature allows the applications to be easily deployed in a consistent fashion, even if the target environment is a personal data center, a public cloud, or even the personal computer of the developer. This technique of Containerization differentiates the concerns in a systematic way. Logic and dependencies of the application are the main factors, which the developer focuses on, while Information technology operations teams focus management as well as deployment without bothering configurations specific to the applications (Villamizar et al., 2017).

Advantages of Containerization: 

• They provide a runtime environment, which is very consistent:they give the developers the provision to create environments that are predictable as well as isolated from any other applications. They also include dependencies of software’s that are application specific, example, specific programming language versions and their run times from different software libraries. From the perspective of the developer’s, these are all consistent irrespective of their area of deployment.
• They can be run anywhere:The containers can be virtually run on windows, Mac as well as linux operating systems in the public cloud as well as the own systems of the developers.

Issues Associated with Containerization:

• Consistent gap in training:  It is a very complex technique and needs proper education of the employees in order to work with them.
• No scalability with applications and unpredictable performance:It consists of gateways as well as container systems that are distributed– therefore comes with performance issues as well as scalability challenges.

There are different risks that are associated to the implementation of Microsoft Azure, AWS lamb da as well as Containerization, which can be explained below in the following tabular format:

Risks factors	Description	Mitigation techniques
Microsoft Azure: 1. Companies lose control over their accounts and data 2. Integration as well as development costs increase to a large extent Containerization 1. Complex design in the implementation of containerization 2. Unpredictable performance	When a company uses Microsoft Azure, Microsoft reserves all rights to have a considerable amount of control over all the data as well as the accounts of the client company just to ensure data security in an optimum level. This is clearly stated in the initial agreement that Microsoft oft signs with the client company. There is also an issue of increased cost factors due to metadata integration in Microsoft Azure implementation in the companies (Dutta, Peng & Choudhary, 2013). The complex design of the containers and their integration with cloud computing can cause performance issues as well as data insecurity. Once implemented, the outcome is not predictable provided there is lack of knowledge and training within the employees.	– ‘Single sign on (SSO)’ feature can be used within the companies – TrueSight’s costing management software for Cloud computing can be used. – Adequate training must be provided to the employees of Metasoft limited about the work ing terminologies of containerization
Amazon Web services: 1. “Shared Security Responsibility” which results in data insecurity. 2. All compliance regulations are not followed by Amazon 3. Risk of inadequate training to the employees of Metasoft limited due to the complexities of AWS lambda (Almorsy, Grundy & Müller, 2016).	The model, which is incorporated by Amazon in terms of its data security, states an equal responsibility of the client company as well in securing the data. Therefore, it is a shared responsibility of Microsoft as well as Metasoft limited which being a software company itself to secure the data stored on AWS lambda cloud servers. This is a risk for the companies. Amazon also carries a bad image in terms of not being able to comply with all the GDPR ethical guidelines, which are set by the government (Hashizume et al., 2017).             There was a recent news of a major AWS cloud outage all across the world, which resulted in huge employee as well as customer unrest, wherein many end users also had to suffer. This happened mainly because the employees were not efficient and trained enough to handle the situation on an urgent basis due to their lack of knowledge about the complexities of AWS servers. AWS lambda tools such as AWS cli, implementation of Python boto in desktop as a service technique (DaaS) is an extremely complex feature of AWS lambda to be understood by the professionals. This should be considered by Metasoft limited before implementing AWS.	– An easy to use integration technique should be used in the integration of AWS lambda. – An advanced feature called “audit trail items” Should be incorporated within Metasoft ltd in  order to ensure optimum data security – It should also be ensured by Metasoft limited that Amazon complies with the GDPR guidelines to avoid any ethical questions itself (Brender & Markv, 2013).

Some of the data security measures that can be incorporated within Metasoft limited can be described below as:

• Strong passwords should be used in all devices: This is one of the most important steps that should be incorporated within the company. Strong passwords are characterized by usage of number and alpha bets that should typically be 8-12 characters long and making use of special characters and a mixture of upper and lower cases of alphabets.
• Setting up a strong firewall: Again, this very important step can be taken by Metasoft limited in order to secure the data and the devices that are used by the employees for business operations. A firewall can be defined as a computer application that blocks harmful websites from opening up on the computer and other mobile devices that are used within an organization. Network address translation (NAT) is a networking technique often used by the system administrators within the organization, which does the work of a firewall. Pfsense and Fortigate are some of the most popular and widely used enterprise firewall and antivirus protection systems used in the companies today (Ali, Khan & Vasilakos, 2015).
• Regular application updates to be timely installed in the servers and computers:Applications especially the security applications keep updating as and when  any new update package are released by the company and it should be ensures by the  system administrators that these updates are properly installed on the systems of the employees. If an outdated application is used in the cloud systems, it causes performance lags as well as data insecurity and other issues. Regular security patches and operating system updates should be made mandatory within the organization so that all employees do that as a routine task and it should be ensured from the administrators end.
• Diligent back up and monitoring: Regular data backup should be ensured within the organization to ensure that in any case of a natural disaster or a system failure data loss can be prevented. Cycles of data backup should be scheduled such as a complete data backup on a weekly basis and an incremental backup procedure per night. There should also be a dedicated team that will calculate and analyze the different risks associated to the data and other aspects of the organization.
• Employee education: All the employees should get adequate training on the working of the different hybrid cloud architectures within the organization. Without proper education, the designing will be a major issue because of the complexities of the architectures.  In order to prevent issues during system failures and natural disasters, employees should be enough prompt to make decisions in such emergencies, for which their proper knowledge about the cloud infrastructures being used in the company, is necessary.

Business Continuity Plan can be defined as  the regulatory papers and documents that contains the organisational plans that the organization has decided to implement in case of any natural disaster or system failures . On execution of the plan, the organization seeks to continue its normal business operations and ensure at the same time that the customers are unaffected and their normal business operation with the customers continue. Metasoft Ltd has come up with its own business continuity plan through which it expects to shift its working infrastructure to a cloud architectural network. This section will highlight the migration technique to be incorporated and the systematized back up plan of the data in order to prevent data loss within the organization. It will also consider a proper service level agreement with the third party organizations linked to Metasoft private limited, in order to keep them informed about an y data loss due to an y system failure or natural disasters. Making use of a cloud infrastructure can ensure optimum data security within the organization. It also helps the organization to come up with more flexible data backup scheduling cycles (Mill & Park, 2014).

Amazon web services lambda

In the process of integrating business continuity plan with a cloud architecture, application of virtualization can play a vital role. Virtualization is a technique by the virtue of which the usage of al l physical hardware de vices is eliminated and computers are virtualised across a cloud network. However, there are certain disadvantages of using virtualization in cloud computing since the virtual computers cannot be managed and used in a way the physical computers can be managed, resulting I n data loss  an d insecurity an d also performance issues at  times (Ahmed & Hossain, 2014).

Cloud architecture implementation within Metasoft Limited will definitely reduce the costs  associated with the physical hardware’s, however more human support and human workforce need to be recruited in order to efficiently  monitor and manage the cloud systems and also the BCP operations including data backup and other operations within the company.

This is one of the most important tools for the manager of any department t within the organization. On its implementation within Metasoft Ltd, the company will look forward to making its own security patches so that in the e vent of any natural disasters as well as system failures, the company will be able to recover any lost data (Wallace & Webber, 2017). This technique will be applicable for all departments across the organization for critical as well as not so important processes. This technique of data storage is also a very low cost process so the different companies in today’s world are easily implementing it. As a whole, its implementation benefits the company largely (Pearson, 2013).

Fig 4: Workflow of the business continuity plan (Source: As used by the author).

Data backup is again a very important aspect of the business continuity plan in which, the company plans and takes a backup all the data stored in virtual computers in the cloud storage, into in-house physical hardware computers. This manual method of ensuring that all the data is well protected and backed up in physical devices ensures that the organization is in no trouble in cases of extreme emergence such as natural disasters as well as system failures and the data is retained. It is therefore extremely important that the company have a proper data backup plan in case of an emergency (Menzel et al., 2013).

Metasoft private limited is a software company, which is looking forward to move its infrastructure to a cloud architecture. It has planned to update all its working Infrastructure in the Melbourne site, which still uses older techniques and get them replaced with all the latest technologies, which are presently there in its Sydney office. They want to be shifted to the usage of a micro service model such as containers in cloud computing, Microsoft Azure or Amazon web services lambda technologies. The cloud model should be capable of performing remote server administration, as well as servers systems and a service level agreement (SLA) management. Two of the most popular technologies namely: platform as a service (PaaS) and information as a service (IaaS) will be used in the organization.

Advantages of using AWS lambda

Fig 5: Hybrid Cloud Microsoft Azure administration (Source: As used by the author).

Remotely administering the servers makes use of application programing interface that makes use of a service portal to manage and work on the servers as well as the hosts (computers, laptops) from different geographical locations by making use of the cloud computing techniques (Rong, Nguyen & Jaatun, 2013).

Resource management ensures the below mentioned points:  

• Load balancing
• Execution of the server commands(Pahl, Xiong & Walshe, 2013).
• Service level agreement execution (Wang et al., 2013).
• Hybrid corporate friendly environment (Chang et al., 2015).

This ensures that the different companies tied up with Metasoft private limited will be immediately notified about the data backup and other important information in case of any natural disaster or system failures.

Fig 6: Hybrid cloud features (Source: As used by author).

Operation(Checklist)	Description	Aim of the operation
Administration of the remote servers.	There remote server administration techniques are implemented in order to  monitor the activities that take place in the data centers and it is achieved by adding the tasks an d the responsibilities using specialized tools that are available in the cloud computing architectures.	They are used to monitor and maintain the business operation al tasks in the cloud data centers (Considine et al., 2013)
Management of the resources(Moon et al., 2013)	The different resources that are provided to the end users of the cloud services like the companies are easily accessible by the users. The data stored on cloud systems are only accessible by the users after a user authentication process based on the “single sign on” features available in the organization. These data are carefully managed and collected to be used by the users and often it gets extremely difficult for the cloud service providers like Microsoft or Amazon to manage such hug e number of data bases in such a limited period of time and also make them available e to the users at all point s of time. Based on the availability of time, they take necessary decisions.	The cloud service provider for the end users/companies manages the data and other resources (Sahebjamnia, Torabi & Mansouri, 2015).
Service level agreement management	It ensures a clear transparency between the organization and the other third party organizations that are associated to it and all the policies are clearly understood by both parties. The data are stored in a secure format under the agreement	All cloud users sign it (Dongmei & Yanling, 2014).

This is the Dalbhanjan and Morad’s Checklist, and it ensures a smooth implementation of all the important t asks to be taken in to consideration before the implementation of the cloud infrastructure within the company. The checklist is designed especially for the incorporation of IaaS and PaaS within the cloud architecture (Hashizume et al., 2013)

Migration Plan

Each organization needs a proper plan for cloud integration. Metasoft private limited will be using desktop as a service in which a third part company for the remote management of computers, will provide virtual desktops (Snedaker, 2013). This section will highlight the systematic processes of incorporating AWS lambda in the workspace.

Fig 7: AWS lambda migration working (Source: As used by the author).

Metasoft limited must first install the AWS lambda workspace in all the computers and servers within the organization in order to configure the same. Microsoft active directory should be used since a separate directory for the  data storage is required for its implementation. Additionally, a template should be set up so that AWS lambda can monitor the data and its security on behalf of Metasoft limited (Zhang et al., 2014). A strong portfolio name and a storage space should be assigned to the AWS lambda functions. Finally, the product details should be incorporated in the AWS names to b used in Desktop as a service (DaaS) (Ward, 2016).

Metasoft limited should also seek an IAM permission from Amazon in order to implement the Amazon web service Lambda operations (Akiyama et al., 2014).

A login should be created for al l the users on the servicenow portal for user authentication.

Fig 8: Service now validator of AWS lambda (Source: As used by the  author).

There are different issues that are associated to the migration to a cloud infrastructure. One of the biggest challenge is the amount of time required and it causes the important business tasks to be halted. Data security is again an important concern since the data becomes much more vulnerable to virus attacks (Barker et al., 2013). It also involves an increased cost and capital investment for the companies (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).

AWS lambda disadvantages

Conclusion:

From the above report, it can be concluded that although cloud infrastructure has multiple benefits on its implementation within Metasoft limited, the different risk factors have to be taken into consideration before its implementation. Risks associated to data insecurity and privacy reach have to be eliminated and mitigation techniques to be incorporated within the company, such as introducing audit trails to keep a track of which employee accessed what information at what point of time from which system. If Metasoft limited is successful in maintaining proper mitigation techniques at the time of cloud migration, it will be able to come up with a much smoother process of business operation s and improved data security as well as other advantages.

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