Paas - Making the Most of Clouds

October 2012 ascent Thought leadership from Atos white paper PaaS - Making the most of Clouds

Your business technologists. Powering progress Atos believes that a General Purpose PaaS would allow Cloud capabilities to be exploited to their full potential for applications. A General Purpose PaaS would be a comprehensive, open, flexible, and interoperable solution that simplifies the process of developing, deploying, integrating, and managing applications both in public and private Clouds.

This whitepaper introduces the concept of the General Purpose PaaS and describes the desired capabilities and building blocks that need to be established, and proposes an architecture for such a platform. It also offers an analysis of market trends and existing solutions, in order to establish a future vision and direction for PaaS, as well as outlining the business potential of such a solution.

© Atos, 2012, all rights reserved. The contents of this white paper is owned by Atos. You may not use or reproduce it in any type of media, unless you have been granted prior written consent thereto by a competent person authorized to represent Atos for such purpose.

2 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds PaaS - Making the most of Clouds

Contents

04 18 Introduction Business Opportunities An explanation of the need for PaaS and a definition of the A consideration of how PaaS could be used and by whom, concept. including the benefits it could bring.

05 19 Trends, market and technology Conclusion An overview of what PaaS providers need to consider in overview the near future. A look at the current PaaS market and forecasts for the future, including changes expected. PaaS user groups and current PaaS providers are also considered.

10 Building a General Purpose PaaS An outline of the innovative capabilities that a General Purpose PaaS should provide in order to exploit PaaS to its full potential, including a proposed PaaS architecture.

About the Authors About the Atos Scientific Community Edited by Ana M. Juan Ferrer, Head of Lab at Paul AlbadaJelgersma, Siemens Global Partnership The Atos Scientific Community is a network of Research and Innovation at Atos in Spain (ana. at Atos ([email protected]) some 100 top scientists, representing a mix of [email protected]), based on contributions from: Guy Lidbetter, Chief Technology Officer, Global all skills and backgrounds, and coming from Clara Tejero Royes, System Architect at Atos in Managed Services at Atos ([email protected]) all geographies where Atos operates. Publicly Spain ([email protected]) launched by Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO Thierry Caminel, Business Solution Manager at of Atos, the establishment of this community Philippe Reynaud, VP Portfolio Management at Atos in France ([email protected]) highlights the importance of innovation in the Atos in Spain ([email protected]) John Hall, Head of Portfolio & GKO at Atos in the dynamic IT services market and the need for a Paritosh Wechalekar, Sr. Technical Architect at Atos UK ([email protected]) proactive approach to identify and anticipate game in India ([email protected]) Michael Kollar, Chief Technology Officer at Atos in changing technologies. Jérôme Brun, Vice President Cloud Services at Atos the USA ([email protected]) in France ([email protected]) Francesco D’Andria, Project Manager at Research Jordan Janeczko, Cloud Strategist for the Global and Innovation at Atos in Spain and coordinator of Systems Integration at Atos International the Cloud4SOA project ([email protected]) ([email protected]) James Ahtes, Project Manager at Research and Purshottam Purswani , Prinicpal Architect at Atos in Innovation at Atos in Spain ([email protected]) India ([email protected])

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds Ascent / Making the most of Clouds 3 Introduction

Cloud computing first emerged in the form IaaS vendors are now pushing up the Cloud of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), boosted stack to offer added-value PaaS programming IaaS vendors are by the birth of Amazon Web Services (AWS). frameworks on top of their infrastructure, in AWS began offering IT infrastructure services order to overcome the threat of increasing now pushing up to businesses in the form of web services in infrastructure commoditization. SaaS vendors 2006. At the same time, Salesforce.com was are also offering platform tools to tailor their on- the Cloud stack to offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), based on demand portfolio with the intention of creating the idea of application service provision (ASP). customer loyalty and establishing a wider offer added-value Its offering included a customization layer, force. market for their offering. com. Soon, driven by the existence of force.com PaaS programming and the entrance of Google’s App Engine, the As in any market for an emerging technology, market erupted and it became clear that there there is a truly diverse array of capabilities being was a need for a middleware layer (Platform as offered by PaaS providers, from supported frameworks on top of a Service – PaaS) between IaaS and SaaS. PaaS programming tools (languages, frameworks, enables the simplified consumption of Cloud runtime environments, and databases) to their infrastructure. infrastructure and supports the viability of more various types of underlying infrastructure, even complex and configurable Cloud applications. within the capabilities available for each PaaS.

NIST1 defines Platform-as-a-Service as, “The capability provided to the consumer to deploy onto the Cloud infrastructure consumer- created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying Cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application- hosting environment.”

1 SP 800-145, “ A NIST definition of Cloud Computing”, http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf

4 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds Trends, market, and technology overview

Platform-as-a-Service Overview Cloud market PaaS Market… currently a Market in Figures The following graph shows the total market size €1 bil. business for Cloud (US $billions) Generally speaking, sizing the Cloud Market In ‘Cloud Computing Market Figures’ July 2011, 3 is not an easy task. New trends, opportunities, Pierre Audoin Consultants estimated the It seems that the current PaaS market is rather actors, and business models are appearing all worldwide PaaS business to be €1.202 mil. in small. Even in 2020 it is anticipated to be the time, leading to potentially unstable market 2011 and forecast a rise to €7.427 mil. by 2015 significantly smaller than the markets for SaaS segmentation and volatile forecasts. (annual growth between 50% and 100%). For and even dynamic application services and Europe, the same consulting firm estimates BPO. Nevertheless, Gartner2 estimates that The PaaS segment itself is still largely immature. PaaS revenue to have been €223 mil. in 2011 by 2015 competition between PaaS vendors It could be said that PaaS services delivered and predicts growth to €1.462 mil. in 2015. will produce new programming models, new directly to end customers is not a significant standards, and new software market leaders. 4 business in itself today, especially when Gartner anticipates that “the worldwide compared to IaaS or SaaS. However, PaaS is enterprise market for PaaS platforms will clearly a major enabler for upper-layer Cloud grow from $900 mil. spent in 2011 to $2.9 bil. business (SaaS, BPaaS); the second generation in 2016, representing a 26.6 percent CAGR of Cloud applications is increasingly based on (combines annual growth rate). Growth rates a PaaS in order to optimize the cost of software per PaaS sub-segment include: Application development and maintenance. Development (22%), Database Management Systems (48.5%), Business Intelligence Platforms (38.9%), and Application Infrastructure and 250 Middleware (26.5%). Application Infrastructure and Middleware is expected to be the largest revenue source in PaaS for the next four 200 years.” Gartner reports that this sub-segment generated $649 mil. in 2011 and projects it to grow to $2.1 bil. in 2016, generating a 26.5 percent CAGR. With 76 percent of the entire 150 2012 public Cloud estimated to be in the BPaaS (Business Process-as-a-Service) segment, it is clear that Gartner sees strong interest from enterprise clients to spend in this area. 100 It can therefore be said that while the standalone PaaS business will remain relatively 50 small within the overall Cloud market, the ratio of the PaaS value embedded in SaaS and BPaaS revenues is becoming significant.

0 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

3P Virtualization Tools Cloud-based Integration (CBI) Application Virtualization Tools Dynamic infrastructure services Middleware Virtualization Tools 3PaaS Infrastructure Virtualization Tools SaaS Dynamic BPO Services PaaS Dynamic Applications Services laaS

Source: Forrester Research Inc. “Sizing the Cloud” Report March 2011

2 Gartner, Predicts 2012: More PaaS Vendors and More PaaS Confusion, G00226255, November 2011. 3 PAC, Pierre Audoin Consultants, https://www.pac-online.com/pac/pac/live/pac_world/home/index.html;jsessionid=E9EDC029E52EFDCD1B9D52ACAD65918D 4 Forbes, Forecasting Public Cloud Adoption in the Enterprise, http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2012/07/02/forecasting-public-cloud-adoption-in-the-enterprise-2/, February 2012

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 5 Platform-as-a-Service Trends - Interface with legacy applications - Addressing di erent customer Expectations within the Platform-as-a-Service - automation segments market are that there will be significant changes - higher availability levels - o ering additional marketplace between now and 2014. Users, providers, - verticalization of features features and industry analysts are all still evaluating - ability to sell and market applications the current state of play and although they all see a need for improvement, the point at Enterprises with own which stability will be reached in the areas of PaaS beneiciaries interests ISVs feature set, architecture, and pricing models is development activities still a topic of debate. Despite this, there are a number of identifiable trends, driven primarily Figure 1: PaaS beneficiaries’ main interests by the needs of different user groups and the motivation for PaaS providers to address this market space. base of existing applications and PaaS must additional marketplace for integrating the be able to integrate easily into those existing different applications that are using their There are two primary user groups that benefit applications. In addition, development teams PaaS and in the case of force.com, with the from using Cloud at the PaaS level (compared must be able to start using PaaS easily. This application suite of salesforce.com. This opens to at an IaaS level): Enterprises with their own means it must be inexpensive and teams must up new channels for ISVs to sell their products. internal software development activities and be knowledgeable in their domains in order Depending on the cost of deploying to a new independent software vendors (ISVs) interested to start using the new PaaS environment. PaaS provider’s framework, ISVs may be willing in selling SaaS services on top of a hosted PaaS. Not only must PaaS frameworks fit current to develop on multiple platforms in order to development models, but where possible, take advantage of new sales possibilities. There Enterprises expect several benefits from PaaS, should offer additional features that address the is a similar phenomenon within the mobile primarily from standardizing around a specific specific market that the enterprise is operating device space where application developers platform. In many software development in. For example, in the financial services market produce the same app for Apple iOS devices, organizations (regardless of whether the a PaaS with increased feature sets for security, Android devices, and Windows Mobile programming is done in-house or by a third transactional processing, and data mining may devices. These types of PaaS users are more party) development projects make use of a be an absolute necessity. For enterprises in interested in having standardized interfaces and very heterogeneous toolset. This tends to pharmaceuticals, additional features covering decreasing migration costs as their aim is not increase the overall cost for development and compliance to GxP (a general term for Good to standardize their development around one deployment, and also reduces the flexibility Practice quality guidelines and regulations) and platform to decrease costs, but to find a cost- of team members who may need to work FDA (Food and Drug Administration) standards effective way to use as many different platforms on several different projects at once. Ideally, will be required. as possible to support a successful business enterprises should focus on one, or maybe two, case. different platforms to decrease costs (the use of Private PaaS vendors (i.e. companies who sell two platforms may help avoid lock-in) allowing software enabling a private PaaS environment Trends in the PaaS space will address these them to more easily transition to another for their customers) are already moving toward: users and scenarios. Public PaaS feature sets platform if they become unhappy with the will address ISVs’ needs by offering additional predominant platform. `Ìncreasing the ability to interface with legacy applications. marketplace features and focusing on the ability to sell and market applications. As usual in Enterprises will also want to increase the `Ìncreasing support for automated ‘land grabs’ of emerging and growing markets, speed that finished applications can be reliably deployment. where large players try establishing themselves deployed. Similar to their logic for deploying `Àdding features/methods for reaching higher early on as market leaders, PaaS hosts have IaaS, they may prefer to begin with a private availability levels. not invested substantial effort in standards, PaaS infrastructure which can then be extended Achieving market-tailored ‘verticalization’ of instead rely on establishing their platform into the public Cloud depending on the nature `` features. as the de facto industry standard in order to of the application and the company’s overall solidify their long-term position. It remains to be Cloud strategy. There is an important second user group; ISVs seen how quickly the market will address the who are interested in selling their products as desire for standardized interfaces that will allow In spite of the long-term desire to have the SaaS. ISVs are more interested in using a public SaaS application developers to quickly switch option to use a public Cloud provider, heavy PaaS provider because of the possibility to between public PaaS providers. integration features may still be required address multiple customer segments. Public for existing and legacy application sets. PaaS, for example force.com, often offers an Enterprises tend to have a large installed

6 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds Private PaaS vendors will address other issues Cloud Foundry based on the needs of their end users. They Cloud Foundry, a VMware-led project, is the will focus on improving the robustness of world’s first ‘open’ PaaS offering. It provides a the runtime/productive environment and platform for building, deploying, and running on decreasing development costs for new Cloud apps using Spring for Java developers applications. Similar to the classic middleware and other JVM languages/frameworks, market, feature set expansion will emerge in including Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, Groovy, Grails, areas of orchestration and business process and Scala. Cloud Foundry is an application automation (in this case, Cloud orchestration). platform which includes a self-service application execution engine; an automation Evaluation of PaaS engine for application deployment and lifecycle management; a scriptable command line Providers interface (CLI) for integration with development Below is an analysis of the main features of tools to ease development and deployment existing Cloud offerings with a comparative processes; an open architecture for quick analysis made among them. development framework integration; an application services interface; and a Cloud AWS Elastic Beanstalk provider interface. One of the core tenets of Elastic Beanstalk, currently in Beta version, is Cloud Foundry is that it is free from underlying built on top of existing AWS’ services. It targets infrastructure. This gives users the option to Java developers using the Apache Tomcat use their existing infrastructure (desktop, data software stack and enables the direct upload center and private Clouds) whilst still leveraging of a J2EE application. AWS Elastic Beanstalk all the benefits of PaaS. allows the user to control the core elements of underlying infrastructure. Flexibility is Google AppEngine offered for the selection of the appropriate Google App Engine is a PaaS offered by Google. Amazon EC2 instance type and the selection Its main value proposition is that developers of database options. The integration of AWS can quickly build small applications locally (on Elastic Beanstalk with the AWS Auto scaling developer machines) and deploy them to the service provides the interesting capability of Cloud in the same environment that powers automatically scaling applications up or down, Google applications. It offers fast development enabling automatic handling of peaks in the and deployment and simple administration. application’s workload and traffic. Supported languages are currently Java, Python, and Go with an appropriate Software CloudBees Development Kit available for each. This CloudBees allows the building, testing, and platform provides an execution environment deployment of Java web applications in the where applications run on a virtualized Cloud. It consists of DEV@Cloud, a framework technology foundation that scales automatically that not only enables the deployment of an on demand. Google AppEngine is often application in the Cloud like a traditional PaaS, criticized for not providing transparency to the but also continuous integration of a project in user to allow control of the infrastructure it uses. the Cloud, and RUN@Cloud that offers support Developers do not have direct control over for the deployment and administration of Java resource allocation because the underlying applications in the Cloud. RUN@Cloud also system and hardware resources are masked by offers traditional application server functionality, the AppEngine layer depending on the degree providing load balancing, scalability, and high to which they rely on direct access to Google availability for web apps. CloudBees includes data persistence. an Ecosystem of tools from partner companies, some of which are provided free of charge.

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 7 Microsoft Windows Azure Comparative Analysis Current diversities The Windows Azure Platform is a PaaS for There are clear differences with the PaaS applications built using the .NET framework. offerings, in terms of supported programming among PaaS result The platform consists of various on-demand tools (languages, frameworks, runtime services hosted in Microsoft data centers and environments and databases), underlying in portability and commoditized through three product brands: infrastructure (private/public IaaS Clouds), and ``Windows Azure: an operating system even the application administration toolsets providing scalable compute and storage available for each. interoperability facilities. issues. ``SQL Azure: a Cloud-based, scale-out version With regards to programming tools, providers of SQL Server. often follow the strategy of supporting as many languages and frameworks as possible in order ``Windows Azure AppFabric: a collection of to attract multiple programmer communities. services supporting applications both in the Not surprisingly, Java EE is widely adopted for Cloud and on premise. web application development, it is currently supported by Google AppEngine, CloudBees, The Windows Azure Platform provides an API Cloud Foundry, and VMforce from Salesforce. (application programming interface) built on com, amongst others. The management of the REST, HTTP, and XML that allows developers to underlying infrastructure is also diverse. Cloud interact with the services provided by Windows Foundry and CloudBees, for example, can Azure. It also provides a client-side, managed use private or public IaaS and even support a class library which encapsulates the functions degree of federation, or Cloud bursting, among for interacting with services, and it integrates providers. Some PaaS offerings are bound to with Microsoft Visual Studio allowing it to be specific IaaS offerings, i.e. AWS for AWS Elastic used as the IDE (integrated development Beanstalk or Engine Yard, while others like environment) to develop and publish Azure- OpenShift support interoperability among hosted applications. IaaS providers. In some cases, developers need to manage a directly generated, virtual Simple applications that just use web pages, infrastructure, in other cases, such as with web services, and SQL Azure Database can Google App Engine, this process is completely be moved between on-premise data centers transparent. to the Azure Services Platform with minor configuration changes. However, applications There is one common characteristic; PaaS users that take advantage of other Azure Services and are currently bound to the specific platform Cloud-specific features of Windows Azure, like they use, making portability of software (and Blobs, Tables, Queues, and Worker roles, require data) created on top of these platforms difficult rewriting specifically for the target platform. in some cases.

8 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds The following table provides a comparison of the platforms studied:

PaaS Diversity/Type AWS Elastic Beanstalk CloudBees Cloud Foundry Google AppEngine Microsoft Azure

Programming Languages Java Java, Grails, JRuby, Java, Ruby, Node.js, Scala Phyton, Java, GO C#, Java, PHP, Ruby Coldfusion, Scala

Runtime Environment Apache Tomcat JVM based Jetty Windows Azure

Supported Frameworks - Spring Spring, Rails, Sinatra, Djiango .NET Groovy, Scala

Database and Data Amazon RDS, Amazon MySQL MySQL, Redis and SDK SQL Azure Types SimpleDB, Microsoft SQL MongoDB Server, Oracle

Development Tools AWS Toolkit for Eclipse IDE,SVN Cloud Foundry integration Web, API SDK Extension for Eclipse and STS

PaaS Controlling Web CLI, API Web CLI, API Web, API Google Apps Support Web

Tools and Plugins New Relic Sauce Labs Ondemand, JFrog, SonarSource, New relic, Cloudant

Infrastructure Portability - Amazon, OpenStack, Free from the underlying vSphere infrastructure, can be used for private Cloud and AWS

Payment Model PaaS not charged, Combination of Under establishment PaaS not charged. Basic Access control and payment on pay per subscription + pay per use hosting with limitations, Service bus per use of underlying AWS based on services usage free of charge. Additional transaction, resources used (EC2, S3) services under pay-per- use + subscription model

Current PaaS offerings also fit into at least one of the following classifications5-6:

Classification Description Examples

SaaS with extensions Customize and extend the capabilities of a SaaS Force.com application.

Purpose-built PaaS A framework that simplifies the development of a Microsoft Windows Azure specific class of applications.

PaaS tied to an Provides general capabilities, but supports only one CloudBees, OpenShift application paradigm programming model or development/deployment Google AppEngine environment.

PaaS tied to an IaaS May provide general capabilities, but can be used only Cloud Foundry Cloud in the context of a determined IaaS Cloud; either a AWS Elastic Beanstalk single public Cloud or a single type of private Cloud infrastructure.

5 Cloud4SOA project, D1.1 Requirements Analysis, http://www.cloud4soa.eu/sites/default/files/Cloud4SOA%20D1.1%20Requirements%20Analysis.pdf 6 Forrester Blog, Platform-As-A-Service, Chapter 2, http://blogs.forrester.com/john_r_rymer/10-05-11-platform_as_a_service_chapter_2

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 9 Building a PaaS: General Purpose Paas

A General Purpose PaaS is described as: A general A comprehensive, open, flexible, and interoperable solution that simplifies the process of developing, deploying, integrating, and managing applications both in public and private purpose Paas is Clouds. comprehensive, AWS Elastic Beanstalk Force.com open, flexible, and PaaS tied to SaaS with interoperable. laaS Clouds extensions General Cloud Foundry Purpose

Google App OpenShift PaaS Engine PaaS tied to Purpose- application built PaaS paradigm

Microsoft Windows Azure CloudBees

Figure 2: PaaS Evolution

Below follows an elaboration of the innovative ``Multi-tenancy is a key factor in making capabilities that this next-generation General the most of a PaaS Cloud environment. By Purpose PaaS should provide in order to exploit supporting multi-tenancy, a platform can PaaS to its full potential. These include: more easily achieve economies of scale, a `Ìncreased ability to interface with legacy reduction in cost per user, and the ability to applications. share continuous improvements across a wider community. However, it also demands Increased support for automated `` additional requirements for isolation into deployment. its architectural design to ensure that the `Àdded features/methods for reaching higher execution of an application does not have availability levels. any impact on others with regards to security, `Ìnteroperability at all levels. performance, availability, and administration. ``Market-tailored ‘verticalization’ of features, ``Cloud Reach represents the elasticity factor, i.e. adaptation of the platform to tailor it for commonly the capability to scale, not only in specific uses. the traditional sense of more infrastructure capacity, but also: Capabilities are categorized by PaaS core ––The capability to support multiple elements, presenting both current state of platforms. practice and further developments required. ––The possibility to extend the execution of Finally, a potential architecture addressing the processes across Clouds and to connect challenges presented is described. environments8. General Purpose Paas Core Elements ``Service delivery includes service management, monitoring and provisioning, Phil Wainewright’s7 model that defines and pay-as-you-go pricing, and billing capabilities. groups the four core elements of Cloud from a ``Functional scope represents the traditional provider’s perspective is used to describe the software platform capabilities present in any core element of a General Purpose PaaS: development platform (not Cloud-specific).

7 Redefining Software Platforms - How PaaS changes the game for ISVs, http://ippblog.intuit.com/blog/2009/10/redefining-software-platforms---how-paas-changes-the-game-for-isvs.html, http://developer.intuit.comuploadedFiles/Developer/MyIDN/Technical_Resources/QBPD/Redefining%20software%20platforms%20Sep09.pdf 8 “Cloud Orchestration, a real business need” by Wechalekar, Juan Ferrer & Albada Jelgersma, March 2011.

10 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds A Deeper Look: Desired Capabilities Features and desired capabilities for each of - Isolation - Self-service the core elements of the General Purpose - Security - Transparency PaaS are described below. It should be noted - compliance - Elasticity that although some of the PaaSs that exist - Interoperability & portability today offer partial coverage of the capabilities - Placement optimization described, there isn’t any that offers the full functionality. Multitenancy Cloud Reach Multi-tenancy ``Execution isolation: - Programming model & architectures - SLA Management - Integration - Monitoring and Auditing

In the context of Cloud computing, multi- platform of Bandwidth - Data Management - Prizing Models tenancy is a Cloud’s ability to share computing resources that are being used by different concurrent users. Isolation is the capability of perceiving a shared environment as Functional Scope Service Delivery Capabilities dedicated and safe. Complete isolation among applications executed in PaaS environments can be achieved using different strategies9: Breadth of infrastructure ––Virtual Multi-tenancy: This approach simply relies on the isolation provided by resource Figure 3: The two dimensions of Clouds (adapted from13) virtualization (VMs) and hypervisors in the infrastructure management layer. Although of physical resources and the migration ––Security issues associated with a brokerage it is by far the most common approach of user instances to new physical and federation based multi-Cloud model. to isolation, research demonstrates some resources. This approach also relies on a ––Inability to perform thorough audits and degree of performance interferences high degree of trust among PaaS users 10-11 evaluations of the Cloud environments. in virtualized environments ; the and PaaS providers, since PaaS users do Absence of security standards and coexistence of several VMs in the same not implicitly have the means to verify –– certification. physical resource leads to influences complete isolation of their respective user among VMs that can affect performance. environments. ––Regulatory compliance with data privacy Current virtual infrastructure managers do and mobility of data across multiple legal ``Security at multiple levels: not take these influences into account for boundaries. VM scheduling, nor do Cloud providers for While Cloud computing offers a paradigm- ––Confidentiality and integrity of data hosted billing12 shifting technological solution for . New approaches to minimizing in the Cloud. interference and performance accounting computational resources and software, would be required to achieve complete concerns about data privacy and ––Availability and resilience of the services isolation by this means. confidentiality, as well as the underlying and the associated need for infrastructure security and resilience of resources delivered protection along with the security of the Organic Multi-tenancy: This approach –– in the PaaS and IaaS environments, are various technology layers of the Cloud is based on isolation being achieved at certainly considered obstacles to the uptake model. different PaaS component levels, such of Cloud-based delivery models. The main as application servers, DBMS (database ``This topic is already addressed in detail concerns relating to security issues are: management system), etc. Logical isolation in a dedicated Atos Scientific community 14 is useful for PaaS environments that do ––Inherent loss of control over enterprise data. whitepaper . not rely on a specific IaaS infrastructure, ––Inability to enforce security policies due to but requires more management work the de-perimeterization of the enterprise than virtual isolation for the assignment boundary.

9 Steve Bobrowski. 2011. Optimal Multitenant Designs for Cloud Apps. In Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD ‘11). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, USA, 654- 659. DOI=10.1109/CLOUD.2011.98 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CLOUD.2011.98. 10 Younggyun Koh; Knauerhase, R.; Brett, P.; Bowman, M.; Zhihua Wen; Pu, C.; , “An Analysis of Performance Interference Effects in Virtual Environments,” Performance Analysis of Systems & Software, 2007. ISPASS 2007. IEEE International Symposium on , vol., no., pp.200-209, 25-27 April 2007. 11 Xing Pu; Ling Liu; Yiduo Mei; Sivathanu, S.; Younggyun Koh; Pu, C.; , “Understanding Performance Interference of I/O Workload in Virtualized Cloud Environments,” Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on , vol., no., pp.51-58, 5-10 July 2010. 12 Ibid. 13 Redefining Software Platforms - How PaaS changes the game for ISVs, http://ippblog.intuit.com/blog/2009/10/redefining-software-platforms---how-paas-changes-the-game-for-isvs.html, http://developer.intuit.com/up loadedFiles/Developer/MyIDN/Technical_Resources/QBPD/Redefining%20software%20platforms%20Sep09.pdf 14 Jordan Janeczko, Scientific Community Whitepaper, Risk Analysis Framework for Cloud environments.

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 11 ``Compliance: ``Transparency (independence) and full infrastructure. However, on demand elasticity Public and hybrid Cloud scenarios are control of the underlying infrastructure: on network pipes and connecting elements characterized by a constant flow of data ––With regards to management of the is necessary in order to take an overall which usually cannot be specifically underlying infrastructure, PaaS offerings approach to Cloud scalability. allocated to a particular geographical will require transparency, which can ``Interoperability and Portability: location. This results in uncertainty with be achieved through the complete A significant barrier to Cloud computing regards to various data protection legislation, automation and self-service management adoption is interoperability and portability which may transcend national borders of the underlying infrastructure, while across providers and products. In the and therefore complicate compliance allowing visibility and control over scope of PaaS, there are two approaches to with global Data Protection legislation. application execution, for advanced users. interoperability: Enterprises or individuals using PaaS to ``Application Elasticity: ––Interoperability and portability of develop applications that handle confidential Elasticity is an essential core feature of PaaS applications among PaaS environments: and private data need to safeguard its application execution. Elasticity dictates the the ability to migrate applications across privacy. Therefore, from a legal point of ability of the underlying infrastructure to PaaS offerings. Current issues can be view, providing mechanisms to enable adapt to an application’s demand, ideally summarized as: data protection and privacy in Cloud considering both functional and non- environments should be a fundamental yyLack of common/standardized Cloud functional requirements (i.e. number of PaaS APIs. requirement of the General Purpose PaaS. To concurrent users, application response times, ensure the ongoing integrity of this privacy, and number of open DB connections, etc.). yyToo much diversity in frameworks, it is also important to contribute to and Strictly speaking, elasticity is an indication languages, toolsets, and SDKs (proprietary). align with standards and policies created of the ability to seamlessly increase and yyDifferent levels of services (different by industry organizations, commercial decrease resources, while scalability is a types of PaaS solutions). enterprises, and governments. measure of the ability to increase capacity yyHeterogeneous data types and storing through the addition of resources, although methods. commonly they are used as synonyms. Two Cloud Reach – Non-interoperable accounting, billing, types of scalability are usually considered: – ``Self-service: metering, and advertising services. horizontal and vertical. Horizontal scalability This requires the complete automation refers to the number of instances to be ––Interoperability and portability of of provisioning, configuration, and satisfied (e.g. changing volume of requests). applications among PaaS execution administration of resources in order to bridge Vertical scalability refers to the size of the environments (IaaS): Allowing a PaaS the gap between the development of an instances and is thus linked to the number deployment to interact using the same API application and its operation. Firstly, it has of resources needed to achieve the required and the same application with several IaaS to include offer capabilities to deploy and configuration. For true Cloud elasticity, both Clouds. More details on this approach are promote application source code, software, vertical and horizontal elasticity are called for, provided in the Placement Optimization and artifacts along the whole application supported by rapid up- and down-scaling. section below. lifecycle (considering different environments, such as development, testing, and production The network is often neglected despite the ``Placement Optimization: Best venue environments). Secondly, it has to offer fact that the Cloud’s essential characteristics execution selection: capabilities for the automated deployment for all of its service models are its availability This provides important benefits as the user and configuration of application binaries over the network. Network performance is not locked into a single IaaS provider, and application infrastructure components, significantly influences a user’s perception but can decide the best choice for the such as OS, Application containers, DBMS, of applications and services in the Cloud; deployment of each service among the Load Balancers, etc. Finally, virtual service broadband, latency, and throughput all different IaaS Cloud offers. The selection can provision based on hypervisor-specific VM impact services’ performance. Network be optimized based on the type of service instantiation from templates delivered in a management has significant influence on to be deployed and different application hypervisor agnostic way has to be provided scalability. High-performance application execution requirements, such as the level for multi-Cloud deployments (considering execution in PaaS environments requires of trust in the IaaS provider, or based on multiple IaaS providers). As a result of the of the holistic management of all resources previous application execution experiences, current lack of interoperability among VM involved (network, storage, and compute). including eco-efficiency, risk, cost, security formats, multi-Cloud deployments (using Common approaches to controlling levels offered, legal constraints, and quality multiple IaaS providers) require virtual image scalability on Cloud infrastructures rely on of service parameters (e.g. availability, transformation processes. VM replication and/or ignoring underlying performance, operation, etc.).

12 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds A user may even want to launch a cross-site ––Trust: Trust is a multifaceted aspect related application that will be deployed in different to areas such as risk and security, and is providers at the same time. This can be strongly influenced by perception and beneficial for the distribution of the different previous experience. In essence, trust is a components of a given application among subjective measure and to cope with this different Cloud providers, for example, to subjectivity it can be assessed by using improve fault tolerance in case of Cloud reputation mechanisms based on how well service disruption, to implement application promised levels of service are achieved. load balancing features among different ––Risk: Risk corresponds to the probability sites, to enable the possibility of expanding of the occurrence of hazardous events the application capacity from one Cloud to that would have a negative impact on another, to implement proximity policies service provision under the agreed service regarding the location of service consumers, levels. Identifying, assessing, treating, or for any other reason (to lower costs and monitoring risk is imperative for the or improve security, for better ecological proactive operation of IaaS. performance, or enhanced performance or Environmental concerns reflected in security, etc.). Two of the main technological –– upcoming legislation have increased challenges of this approach are the creation awareness of the ecological (Eco) footprint and management of cross-site private of the ICT industry. Level of ecological networks and LANs using simple, standard awareness can now be a determining procedures to interconnect different factor between competing IaaS providers. service components, and the creation and Furthermore, rising electricity prices management of virtual storage systems may guide the execution of services to across site boundaries to store service data. locations in which requested services can be provided in a more efficient way. It is Service Delivery therefore desirable to specify and enforce ``Service Level Agreement (SLA) power consumption limits for application Management: execution in SLAs, to decide where SLA Management is a key aspect of providing applications are to be executed based on a commercially-viable PaaS offering. There electricity prices, and to monitor and assess are two sides to SLA management. The first is ecological factors in executing applications. the SLA between the PaaS provider and the ––Cost limits are necessary to balance the PaaS user. The second is the SLA between previous three parameters and to take the PaaS provider and different Infrastructure a pragmatic approach to controlling (IaaS) providers it may use for application application execution. execution. It should be noted that the latter ``Application execution monitoring and strongly influences the SLA that the PaaS auditing provider can offer and is therefore taken as This refers to the capacity of PaaS users to the focus for this section. assess and validate SLAs and the real QoS In order to assure proper Quality of provided during application execution, as Service (QoS) for application execution, well as to gain insights about PaaS and IaaS SLAs that describe application execution providers’ internal procedures. Aspects such requirements between the PaaS provider as regulatory and security controls (incident and IaaS providers have to be established. inventory, handling and corrective actions, QoS support is a relevant capability that is disaster recovery plans, business continuity, essential in many use cases where specific etc.) and data location traceability are crucial requirements have to be met through for users to overcome the loss of control application execution. Basic QoS metrics inherent to the use of a Cloud platform. like response time, throughput, etc. must be ``Consideration of multiple pricing models guaranteed so as to ensure that the quality guarantees of the user are met, at the very For both providers and users flexibility in least. Other parameters have been widely pricing models is essential. Potential pricing investigated, such us: models consider price per VM, per hour, per hour of CPU time, per user per month, etc.

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 13 Functional scope ``Application Data Management Capabilities Most PaaS providers already offer data ``Programming models and application management services with limited scalability architectures for MySQL, PostgresSQL, CouchDB, and other The essential characteristics of Cloud open-source data management solutions infrastructures are inherent support for that are easy to integrate with the platform’s elastic, scalable, and resource-friendly backend. Scalability and functionality application execution. However, these are even more limited for users. Other characteristics are not independent of approaches rely on integrating the PaaS application architecture and platform; offering with Data-as-a-Service offerings, such application has to support the full exploitation as AWS S3, SimpleDB, or Microsoft Azure. For of the Cloud’s benefits and characteristics. any approach, given the already identified The main objective of a General Purpose data security and compliance criticality in PaaS is to allow users to develop applications PaaS, required capabilities are: in a seamless way with regards to the Configuration: The ability to build, package, underlying infrastructure. In addition, the –– deploy, install, configure, and verify data General Purpose PaaS has to consider: sources. ––Automatic extraction of parallelism Resource logging and monitoring: Event and scalability to get Business Process –– capture, propagation, analysis and Objectives for the provided service. reporting, and escalation. ––Support for orchestration among newly Scheduled maintenance downtime: The developed software and existing services –– capacity to add new data and ability to (executing in the same or a different remove old data. infrastructure). ––Usage reporting management: ––Seamless migration of existing applications Dashboards, billing/chargebacks, long-term to Cloud execution environments. trending and performance throughput, and ––Complete independency from the response-time. execution environment. ––Security data multi-tenancy: Degrees ––Transparent provision of metering and of isolation, identity management, billing tools, so that developed software authentication, authorization, and auditing. (services) can be easily exploited in SaaS Provisioning and de-provisioning: Flexible models. –– scale-out and scale-in, and locality- ``Integration awareness of data. Integration refers to the ability to integrate ––Online retention data migration: Tiering, with legacy software and on-premise assets information lifecycle management ,and (i.e. licensed software), as well as with third- CAR (Compliance/Archival/Retrieval) party Cloud services (Cloud Orchestration). As part of considering the development ––Backup and recovery replication: of new services, PaaS providers have to Snapshots enable the adaptation and combination of ––Integrity tampering legacy and licensed software in addition to the composition of applications within larger contexts, including existing in-house applications and other third-party provided Cloud services. By using a General Purpose PaaS, applications will be able to execute licensed software in hybrid-Cloud scenarios by means of distributed license validation mechanisms, as well as integrating with existing services, enabling enterprise software to exploit the potential of a Cloud ecosystem.

14 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds Architectural view

Application Application Developer Administration

Application Application Development & Administration Application Composition Tools and Management artefacts

Programming Model & IDE Life-cycle Manager

Service Composition Runtime Monitoring PaaS A

Data Management console Interoperability Engine PaaS B

Service Management Tools Real Time Infrastucture Provisioning Tools Service Integration Tools PaaS

Elasticity Engine Con iguration Manager Cloud Orchestrator Fault Tolerance Engine Interoperability Cloud Message Broker SLA Negotiation SLA Enforcement Engine

Monitoring Placement Optimization

TRUST RISK ECO COST

Virtual Machines

Infrastucture Management A Infrastucture Infrastucture IaaS Storage License Management Management VM Manager Manager Manager B C

aPaaS iPaaS

Figure 4: Proposed PaaS Architecture

Figure 4 shows the proposed solution for Horizontal layers perform the differentiation ``iPaaS: “The platform for intermediation and the General Purpose PaaS. The proposed suggested by Gartner in its reports15-16-17. In these, integration of the application services hosted architecture is split into both vertical and PaaS components are differentiated by: and point-managed by aPaaS”. horizontal layers. Vertical layers represent ``aPaaS (Cloud-enabled Application Platform differentiation between IaaS, infrastructure – CEAP): “The platform for hosting and management components, and pure PaaS managing individual application services and components, which rely on IaaS components. data.”

15 Gartner, PaaS Road Map, A continent Emerging, G00209751, January 2011 16 Gartner, Reference Model for Integration PaaS, G00213749, June 2011 17 Gartner, The Role of CSB in Cloud services Value chain, G00218960, October 2011

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 15 Some of the components described are not with regards to the parameters included completely new developments at Atos. The in the SLA, as well as overall execution General Purpose available related and applicable software parameters, such as eco-efficiency, cost, components for Scientific Community Proof-of- and risk of breaching the SLA should be PaaS should provide Concepts (PoCs) or Research and Innovation provided, in addition to console access to are described below. The architecture is built on the virtual infrastructure in use at any given the tools required the following building blocks: moment for an application. With regards to data management, visibility on data sources’ to completely Application Development and Composition physical location and resource logging and Tools: An Integrated Development Environment monitoring should be provided. Provisioning automate the process (IDE) enables a programmer to develop code and de-provisioning of data sources and in widely-used programming languages, such back-up and recovery procedures should also as Java. Indications for the programmer about be allowed. of acquiring virtual how to parallelize application execution parts should be given by annotations to the source. ``Interoperability Engine: For a given infrastructure for a The same means could be used to indicate application, based on programing language, execution requirements for an application (i.e. data management schema, etc., alternative given application. access to private data). An IDE also has to allow PaaS environments for specific applications for the composition of applications developed should be provided. Once the user has using existing services in the same or external selected their desired alternative PaaS platforms, by dynamically creating clients and the necessary conversion should be stubs. The data management console has implemented to migrate the application to provide tools to define data formats and between the two platforms. schemas, as well as to define mechanisms to import and export data for testing purposes. Real-time infrastructure Provisioning: A Generated source code has to be stored General Purpose PaaS should provide the tools in shared versioning code systems where required to completely automate the process visibility and access is provided per user or per of acquiring virtual infrastructure for a given organization using the PaaS. application. Based on the SLA parameters determined, the PaaS should be able to Application Administration and automatically negotiate the execution of the Management: This building block provides the application on the infrastructure of one or more following tools: providers. Once the placement decision has taken place, the required virtual infrastructure ``Service lifecycle manager: A management should be generated using image templates, console that enables an application configuration, and contextualization tools. This administrator to control application execution makes the use of the interoperability engine taking into consideration different versions for twofold: conversion of API calls depending on different environments (development, testing, the API exposed by the selected infrastructure and production). Control over execution has manager; once the application is in execution, to include basic pre-configuration operations, VM formats must be converted if the VM has such as configuration of the application’s to be migrated to a different infrastructure software pre-requisites, definition of SLA provider that relies on a different hypervisor parameters for application execution, technology than the original. definition of elasticity rules and set-up of the application’s data sources. Once the Infrastructure Management Toolset (to application has been configured, it has to include VM managers, data managers and allow the deployment, starting, resumption, network managers already included within stopping and un-deployment of the any IaaS infrastructure): The License Manager application in a given environment. component must be used in cases of licensed ``Runtime monitoring: Visibility over users’ software execution and the PaaS acts as an applications during execution on a given authorizing entity on behalf on the host domain infrastructure, including on-line information license server.

16 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds Service Management Tools: Service OPTIMIS Research and Innovation project management tools control the execution of an [www.optimis-project.eu]: OPTIMIS aims OPTIMIS, Cloud4SOA, application over one or multiple infrastructure to enable a dependable Cloud Service providers. These tools ensure that the agreed Ecosystem for the delivery of ecologically and SmartLM research SLA is enforced and if not, takes the decision economically sustainable IT services. about the migration of the application VMs ``OPTIMIS addresses the scenario of 2013+ projects and Scientific to a different infrastructure provider. They where most companies use private and also use monitoring information to detect public Clouds in combination (hybrid Clouds). Community Cloud virtual infrastructure failures and apply defined OPTIMIS considers full-service lifecycle elasticity rules to scale the virtual infrastructure `` optimization from construction, to Proof-of-Concepts are assigned to application execution up and down. deployment and operation both in private and public Clouds. Service Integration Tools: Single building blocks, baseline technologies like iPaaS, include components to enable ``Optimization is performed based on trust, across-Cloud application execution, such as for risk, eco-efficiency and cost. for Atos General federated ESB (Cloud orchestration) and Cloud message broker. SmartLM Research and innovation project Purpose PaaS. [www.smartlm.eu]: SMARTLM provides a generic and flexible licensing virtualization Baseline Technologies technology for new service-oriented business Below are details of Atos’ related work for this models across organizational boundaries. whitepaper that was used as a baseline for the development of the General Purpose PaaS:

Service Composition and Cloud Orchestration: Scientific Community PoC: Demonstration of service orchestration among multiple Clouds.

Cloud Message Broker: Scientific Community PoC: The Cloud message broker (CMB) offers a shared Cloud-based message queuing framework (Cloud-message queuing), enabling messaging between various entities that wish to communicate with each other seamlessly and reliably using standard vendor neutral protocols.

Cloud4SOA Research and Innovation project [www.Cloud4soa.eu]: Cloud4SOA aims to enhance Cloud-based application development, deployment, and migration by semantically interconnecting heterogeneous PaaS offerings to facilitate their interoperability. ``The Cloud4SOA challenge is to open up the Cloud market to small-medium European PaaS providers and strengthen their market position, and to treat the vendor-lock in problem. ``The solution is to investigate and develop new technologies and standards for platform virtualization, thereby enabling their interoperability.

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 17 Business Opportunities

In some cases, this could bring the provision ``Finally, through inheritance of the underlying New scenarios of a vertical PaaS ‘dangerously’ close to ERP Cloud aspects, PaaS will force the business The impact of Cloud Computing on a system vendors’ offerings which can be tailored strategy to become service-driven. commercial or not-for-profit organization’s to an organization by applying configurable strategy is expected to be significant, but is still variables or industry templates. Based on these viewpoints, PaaS enables an IT an area of much debate and experimentation. services company to provide both a generic There are companies that have already been platform and a very specialized environment for using Cloud as the primary means of doing PaaS Benefits developers, for general purpose development business, but it is still too early to predict Even without consideration of future business and for specialist developers alike. whether or not these models are sustainable scenarios, it is clear that utilizing PaaS brings (although they seem to be very profitable). immediate business benefits and opportunities It also allows an IT services company to for development communities: provide a flexible IT infrastructure layer, and The business benefits and strategic viability ``Convergence of frameworks, and makes possible the concept of all applications may be reasonably clear when considering an improvement of user management and of having a common messaging infrastructure, infrastructure Cloud or a software Cloud, but not framework deployment. allowing for reduced overhead, and uniform so clear if looking at Platform-as-a-Service. Firstly, ``Facilitation of collaborative work between communication, reporting, provisioning and it is unclear what the platform’s contribution billing. is to the business strategy and secondly, the teams. platform architecture’s impact on the business ``Possibility to develop and test Cloud-ready model is not well defined. Because the platform applications. resides in the middle layer, it bridges the gap `Ìmmediate provisioning of environments for between functionality and the underlying a new project. technology; it is linked to the technology and at `Ìmmediate decommissioning of no longer the same time defines the available functionality needed environments. of the application running on top of it that the user experiences. `Ìmproved management of licenses. ``No more fixed assets for computing and By means of a General Purpose PaaS, an storage. application running in the Cloud is expected to inherit all the aspects that make it ‘Cloud’; on- In addition, applications built on mature demand and self-service, accessible through the platforms will accelerate business strategy Internet, pooled resources, elastic capacity, and change to accommodate a more flexible and most of all a usage-based billing method. sustainable application landscape. Atos believes that most core internal processes have ‘good- For Platform-as-a-Service, it is not enough to enough’ IT and automation capability. Calling on provide these capabilities to the end user of mature PaaS will enable organizations to focus the application, these capabilities must also be on strategic issues, because: given to the application developer. `Ìt offers a response to the increasing speed of business and the necessity to be ‘first- This places PaaS users into two categories: to-market’. A capable PaaS platform will software developers and software consumers. potentially allow a significant shortening of This opens up business opportunities for the the time-to-market for applications. provision of PaaS to companies in need of a Cloud platform to develop generic business ``The nature of PaaS enables it to bridge applications, as well as the direct provision technology and user functionality with of PaaS to end users to build specialized all kinds of built-in capabilities for billing, applications to be used only within one orchestration of workflow, auditability, and company for a single specialized task. compliance reporting. That facilitates a focus on better and more flexible interfaces for This discloses PaaS as a toolbox that allows ‘end users, specifically when coupled with mobile users’ to carry out quick-and-dirty programming, devices. assuming that the platform is rich enough to ``The same PaaS capabilities will allow for provide most required components. In this a built-in connection between real-time way, PaaS could even fit a specific vertical business data and the business intelligence market as it could be enriched with the generic that can be derived from historic data and components for that market already preloaded. other data mining technologies.

18 Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds Conclusion

Although standalone PaaS business is relatively The framework proposed in this whitepaper small within the current overall Cloud market, it for a General Purpose PaaS aims to overcome is clear that it constitutes a clear opportunity for current PaaS limitations. IT service providers within the relatively short term. PaaS users have current and emerging This is completely in line with the need sets which must be addressed by PaaS in announcement made by Atos, EMC, and the near future in order to enable applications VMware of a new strategic alliance that to exploit the full potential of Cloud: will offer packaged software, and platform `Ìncreased ability to interface with legacy and infrastructure Cloud services to global applications. enterprise organizations. Together, with the creation of Canopy, we will provide a wide range Increased support for automated `` of Cloud solutions and services designed to deployment. speed up delivery to help customers quickly `Àdded features/methods for reaching higher take advantage of the benefits of Cloud availability levels. computing. `Ìnteroperability at all levels. ``Market-tailored ‘verticalization’ of features; adaptation of the platform to tailor it for specific uses.

Ascent / PaaS - Making the most of Clouds 19 About Atos Atos is an international information technology services company with annual 2010 pro forma revenues of EUR 8.6 billion and 74,000 employees in 42 countries at the end of September 2011. Serving a global client base, it delivers hi-tech transactional services, consulting and technology services, systems integration and managed services. With its deep technology expertise and industry knowledge, it works with clients across the following market sectors: Manufacturing, Retail, Services; Public, Health & Transport; Financial Services; Telecoms, Media & Technology; Energy & Utilities.

Atos is focused on business technology that powers progress and helps organizations to create their firm of the future. It is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic Games and is quoted on the Paris Eurolist Market. Atos operates under the brands Atos, Atos Consulting and Technology Services, Atos Worldline and Atos Worldgrid.