Cloud Essentials/Business Principles

Business Principles

Objectives and Skills

Objectives and skills for the business principles portion of CompTIA Cloud Essentials+ certification include:

• Given a scenario, use appropriate cloud assessments.
  • Current and future requirements
  • Baseline
  • Feasibility study
  • Gap analysis
    • Business
    • Technical
  • Reporting
    • Compute
    • Network
    • Storage
  • Benchmarks
  • Documentation and diagrams
  • Key stakeholders
  • Point of contact
• Summarize the financial aspects of engaging a cloud provider.
  • Capital expenditures
  • Operating expenditures
  • Variable vs. fixed cost
  • Licensing models
    • BYOL
    • Subscription
  • Contracts
  • Billing
  • Request for information
  • Human capital
    • Training
    • Professional development
• Identify the important business aspects of vendor relations in cloud adoptions.
  • Professional services
    • Time to market
    • Skill availability
    • Support
    • Managed services
  • Statement of work (SOW)
  • Service level agreement (SLA)
  • Training
  • Evaluations
    • Pilot
    • Proof of value
    • Proof of concept
    • Success criteria
  • Open-source vs. proprietary
• Identify the benefits or solutions of utilizing cloud services.
  • Identity access management
    • Single sign-on
    • Multifactor authentication
    • Federation
  • Cloud-native applications
    • Microservices
    • Containerization
  • Data analytics
    • Machine learning
    • Artificial intelligence
    • Big Data
  • Digital marketing
    • Email campaigns
    • Social media
  • Autonomous environments
  • IoT
  • Blockchain
  • Subscription services
  • Collaboration
  • VDI
  • Self-service
• Compare and contrast cloud migration approaches.
  • Rip and replace
  • Lift and shift
  • Hybrid
  • Phased

Readings

1. Wikipedia: Business process management

Multimedia

1. YouTube: What is Cloud Native?

Activities

1. Assess your current school or work environment's current and future requirements regarding cloud computing. What business and/or technical gaps can you identify? Who are the key stakeholders involved in making cloud decisions?
2. Identify or estimate current IT capital expenditures and research potential savings from switching to a cloud platform.
3. If your current school or work environment has already moved resources to the cloud, ask about the transition process. How was the cloud piloted? What migration approach(es) was/were used?
4. What cloud services is your organization currently using? What additional services should they consider using in the future?

Lesson Summary

Assessment

Assessing current and future requirements includes the following:

• A baseline is an agreed description of the attributes of a product or system, at a point in time, which serves as a basis for defining requirements.
• A feasibility study is an assessment of the practicality of a proposed project or system based on its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats present in the natural environment, the resources required to carry through, and ultimately the prospects for success.
• Gap analysis involves the comparison of actual performance with potential or desired performance. Considerations include:
  • Business
  • Technical
• Assessment reporting aspects include:
  • Compute
  • Network
  • Storage
• Benchmarks assess the relative performance of an object, normally by running a number of standard tests and trials against it.
• Documentation and diagrams are used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance and use.
• Key stakeholders are individuals, groups, or organizations, who may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project..
• A point of contact (POC) or single point of contact (SPOC) is a person or a department serving as the coordinator or focal point of information concerning an activity or program.

Costs

• Capital expenditures
• Operating expenditures
• Variable vs. fixed cost
• Licensing models
  • BYOL (Bring Your Own License)
  • Subscription
• Contracts
• Billing
• RFI (Request for Information)
• Human capital
  • Training
  • Professional development

Vendor Relations

• Professional services
  • Time to market
  • Skill availability
  • Support
  • Managed services
• SOW (Statement of Work)
• SLA (Service Level Agreement)
• Training
• Evaluations
  • Pilot
  • PoV (Proof of Value)
  • PoC (Proof of Concept)
  • Success criteria
• Open-source vs. proprietary

Services

• Identity Access Management (IAM) is a framework of policies and technologies for ensuring that the right users (in an enterprise) have the appropriate access to technology resources.
  • SSO (Single Sign-on) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID and password to any of several related, yet independent, software systems.
  • MFA (Multi-factor Authentication) is an electronic authentication method in which a device user is granted access to a website or application only after successfully presenting two or more pieces of evidence (or factors) to an authentication mechanism: knowledge (something only the user knows), possession (something only the user has), and inherence (something only the user is).
  • Federation describes the inter-operation of two distinct, formally disconnected, telecommunications networks that may have different internal structures.
• Cloud-native applications are designed to build and run at scale in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds.
  • Microservices arrange an application as a collection of loosely coupled services. In a microservices architecture, services are fine-grained and the protocols are lightweight.
  • Containerization is an operating system paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances which may look like real computers from the point of view of programs running in them.
• Data analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data.
  • Machine Learning (ML) is the study of computer algorithms that improve automatically through experience and by the use of data.
  • AI (Artificial Intelligence) is the study of "intelligent agents": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals.
  • Big Data is a field that treats ways to analyze, systematically extract information from, or otherwise deal with data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing application software.
• Digital marketing utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.
  • Email campaigns send a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email.
  • Social media are interactive technologies that allow the creation or sharing/exchange of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.
• Autonomous environments use robots to performs behaviors or tasks without human intervention.
• IoT (Internet of Things) is the network of physical objects that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the Internet.
• A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked together using cryptography and represent a ledger of transaction data.
• Subscription services are a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product.
• Collaboration (collaborative software or groupware) is application software designed to help people working on a common task interact to attain their goals.
• VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is a software technology that separates the desktop environment and associated application software from the physical client device that is used to access it.
• Self-service allows consumers to unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.

Migration

• Lift and shift involves hosting an application in the cloud by replacing current infrastructure components with cloud equivalent components.
• Improve and move involves a modernization effort to repurpose an existing solution for the cloud.
• Rip and replace involves a complete re-design of the application from scratch using only cloud-native components.
• Hybrid migration is a composition of a public cloud and a private environment, such as a private cloud or on-premises resources, that remain distinct entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models.
• Phased migration is a strategy of implementing in a phased way, so that different parts of the migration are implemented in different subsequent time slots.

Key Terms

CFO (Chief Financial Officer)

The officer of a company that has primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financial reporting.

CIO (Chief Information Officer)

The most senior executive in an enterprise who works with information technology and computer systems.

CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)

The senior-level executive within an organization responsible for establishing and maintaining the enterprise vision, strategy, and program to ensure information assets and technologies are adequately protected.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

A process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.

CTO (Chief Technology Officer)

An executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupation is focused on the scientific and technological issues within an organization.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

The integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology.

EULA (End-user License Agreement)

A legal contract entered into between a software developer or vendor and the user of the software, often where the software has been purchased by the user from an intermediary such as a retailer.

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)

An open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network.

PII (Personally Identifiable Information)

Any information related to an identifiable person.

P2V (Physical to Virtual)

The process of migrating a physical server's operating system (OS), applications, and data from that physical server to a virtual-machine guest hosted on a virtualized platform.

QoS (Quality of Service)

The description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network.

RFP (Request for Proposal)

A document that solicits proposal, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a commodity, service, or valuable asset, to potential suppliers to submit business proposals.

ROI (Return on Investment)

A ratio between net income (over a period) and investment (costs resulting from an investment of some resources at a point in time).

TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)

A financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service.

V2P (Virtual to Physical)

The process of migrating a virtual-machine guest to a physical server.

V2V (Virtual to Virtual)

The process of migrating a virtual-machine guest to another virtual server.

See Also

• Francesco Lerro: Cloud migration strategies

References

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