Chapter 2 Web Services Delivered from the Cloud

Communication-as-a-Service (CaaS)
CaaS is an outsourced enterprise communications solution. Providers of
this type of cloud-based solution (known as CaaS vendors) are responsible
for the management of hardware and software required for delivering
Voice over IP (VoIP) services, Instant Messaging (IM), and video
conferencing capabilities to their customers. CaaS vendors typically offer
guaranteed quality of service (QoS) under a service-level agreement (SLA).
Quality of Service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall
performance of a service or cloud computing service, particularly the
performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitatively measure
quality of service, several related aspects of the network service are often
considered, such as packet loss, bit rate, throughput, transmission delay,
availability, etc.
A service-level agreement (SLA) is a commitment between a service
provider and a client. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability,
responsibilities are agreed between the service provider and the service
user. (ISPs).
CaaS is designed on a utility-like pricing model that provides users with
comprehensive, flexible, and (usually) simple-to-understand service plans.
CaaS service offerings are often bundled and may include integrated access
to traditional voice (or VoIP) and data, advanced unified communications
functionality such as video calling, web collaboration, chat, real-time
presence and unified messaging, a handset, local and long-distance voice
services, voice mail, advanced calling features (such as caller ID, three-way
and conference calling, etc.) and advanced PBX functionality.
IP/PBX A private branch exchange (telephone switching system within an
enterprise) that switches calls between VoIP users on local lines while
allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines.
Customer premises equipment (CPE) is telephone or other service
provider equipment that is located on the customer's premises (physical
location) rather than on the provider's premises or in between.
CaaS requires little to no management oversight from customers. It
eliminates the business customer’s need for any capital investment in
infrastructure, and it eliminates expense for ongoing maintenance and
operations overhead for infrastructure.
WAN Failover works in conjunction with multiple ISPs to assure that you
maintain Internet connectivity if a loss of connectivity occurs on one of
your WAN connections. If one of your ISP links goes down, WAN Failover
will automatically route all traffic over the other WAN(s) until service is
restored.
Advantages of CaaS
 Hosted and Managed Solutions: CaaS delivers a complete
communications solution that is entirely managed by a single vendor.
Along with features such as VoIP and unified communications, the
integration of core PBX features with advanced functionality is
managed by one vendor, who is responsible for all of the integration
and delivery of services to users.
 Fully Integrated, Enterprise-Class Unified Communications:
Advanced unified communications features that are most often a part
of a standard CaaS deployment include:
1. Chat Multimedia conferencing
2. Microsoft Outlook integration Real-time presence
3. “Soft” phones (software-based telephones)
4. Video calling
5. Unified messaging and mobility
 No Capital Expenses Needed: When business outsource their unified
communications needs to a CaaS service provider, the provider
supplies a complete solution that fits the company’s exact needs.
Customers pay a fee (usually billed monthly) for what they use.
Customers are not required to purchase equipment, so there is no
capital outlay
 Flexible Capacity and Feature Set: When customers outsource
communications services to a CaaS provider, they pay for the features
they need when they need them. Such as Avaya, Cisco, Juniper,
Microsoft, Nortel and ShoreTel more economically than any
independent enterprise.
 No Risk of Obsolescence: Periodic upgrades or replacements of
hardware & software to keep platform technologically current.
 24/7 Fully Integrated: By managing LAN/WAN vendor ensures
consistent quality of service from user to network and backbone.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Delivery of pre-defined standardized computer infrastructure (typically
platform virtualization environment) specifically optimized for customer
applications such as Servers/Storage/Networking Hardware.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides access to fundamental resources such
as physical machines, virtual machines, virtual storage, etc. Apart from
these resources, the IaaS also offers: Virtual machine disk storage Virtual
local area network VLANs Load balancers IP addresses Software bundles
All of the above resources are made available to end user via server
virtualization. Moreover, these resources are accessed by the customers as
if they own them.
Benefits of IaaS
IaaS allows the cloud provider to freely locate the infrastructure over the
Internet in a cost-effective manner. Some of the key benefits of IaaS are
listed below:
1. Full control of the computing resources through administrative
access to VMs.
2. Flexible and efficient renting of computer hardware.
3. Portability, interoperability with legacy applications.
4. Preconfigured environment
5. Latest technology
6. Security (Sandbox)
7. Off-site resources maintained by third parties
8. Management of service demands (high vs low)
9. Lower Costs

Modern On-Demand Computing: On-demand computing is an

increasingly popular enterprise model in which computing resources are
made available to the user as needed.
Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing
environment, allowing clients to use a web-based interface to obtain and
manage services needed to launch one or more instances of a variety of
operating systems (OSs).
1. Its web service interface allows customers to obtain and configure
capacity with minimal effort.
 2. It provides users with complete control of their (leased) computing
resources and lets them run on a proven computing environment.
3. It reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances
to minutes, allowing customers to quickly scale capacity as their
computing demands dictate.
4. It changes the economics of computing by allowing clients to pay only
for capacity they actually use.
5. It provides developers the tools needed to build failure-resilient
applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.

Amazon SimpleDB is another web-based service, designed for running

queries on structured data stored with the Amazon Simple Storage Service
(Amazon S3) in real time. This service works in conjunction with the
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to provide users the
capability to store, process, and query data sets within the cloud
environment.
Mosso (Rackspace) Mosso, a direct competitor of Amazon’s EC2 service, is
a web application hosting service and cloud platform provider that bills on
a utility computing basis.
Monitoring-as-a-Service (MaaS)
A framework that facilitates the deployment of monitoring functionalities
for various other services and applications within the cloud. Protecting
Enterprise/Government from cyber threats. Confidentiality, integrity,
availability of IT resources. 24/7 vigilance vs time & resource constraints.
Online State Monitoring: Continuously tracks certain states of
applications, networks & systems.
Scalability: Scalability is the capability of a system, network, or process to
handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged to
accommodate that growth.
Security Operations Center (SOC)

A security operations center (SOC) is a centralized unit that deals with

security issues on an organizational and technical level. A SOC within a
building or facility is a central location from where staff supervises the site,
using data processing technology.
Total Cost of Ownership: Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial
estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and
indirect costs of a product or system.
Server Log: A server log is a log file (or several files) automatically created
and maintained by a server consisting of a list of activities it performed.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
Cloud computing has evolved to include platforms for building and running
custom web-based applications, a concept known as Platform-as-aService.
PaaS is an outgrowth of the SaaS application delivery model. The PaaS
model makes all of the facilities required to support the complete life cycle
of building and delivering web applications and services entirely available
from the Internet, all with no software downloads or installation for
developers, IT managers, or end users.
Platform-as-a-Service offers the runtime environment for applications. It
also offers development and deployment tools required to develop
applications. PaaS has a feature of point and-click tools that enables non-
developers to create web applications. App Engine of Google and Force.com
are examples of PaaS offering vendors. Developer may log on to these
websites and use the built-in API to create web-based application
The Traditional On-Premises Model
The traditional approach of building and running on-premises applications
has always been complex, expensive, and risky. Building your own solution
has never offered any guarantee of success. Each application was designed
to meet specific business requirements. Each solution required a specific
set of hardware, an operating system.
The New Cloud Model
PaaS offers a faster, more cost-effective model for application development
and delivery. PaaS provides all the infrastructure needed to run
applications over the Internet. Such is the case with companies such as
Amazon.com, eBay, Google, iTunes, and YouTube. The new cloud model has
made it possible to deliver such new capabilities to new markets via the
web browsers. PaaS is based on a metering or subscription model, so users
pay only for what they use. PaaS offerings include workflow facilities for
application design, application development, testing, deployment, and
hosting, as well as application services such as virtual offices, team
collaboration, database integration, security, scalability, storage,
persistence, state management, dashboard instrumentation, etc.
Key Characteristics of PaaS
Chief characteristics of PaaS include services to develop, test, deploy, host,
and manage applications to support the application development life cycle.
1. Multi-tenant Architecture
2. The term "software multitenancy" refers to a software architecture in
which a single instance of software runs on a server and serves
multiple tenants.
3. A tenant is a group of users who share a common access with
specific privileges to the software instance.
4. With a multitenant architecture, a software application is designed to
provide every tenant a dedicated share of the instance - including
its data, configuration, user management, tenant individual
functionality and non-functional properties.
5. Simple Object Access Protocol SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
is a messaging protocol that allows programs that run on different
operating systems (such as Windows and Linux) to communicate
using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and its Extensible Markup
Language (XML).

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
The traditional model of software distribution, in which software is
purchased for and installed on personal computers, is sometimes referred
to as Software-as-a-Product. Software-as-a-Service is a software
distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service
provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the
Internet.
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

A service-oriented architecture is essentially a collection of services. These

services communicate with each other. The communication can involve
either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services
coordinating some activity. (A service is a function that is well-defined, self-
contained, and does not depend on the context or state of other services.)
Software-as–a-Service SaaS model allows to provide software application
as a service to the end users. It refers to a software that is deployed on a
host service and is accessible via Internet. There are several SaaS
applications listed below:
1. Billing and invoicing system
2. Customer Relationship Management CRM
3. applications Help desk applications
4. Human Resource HR solutions
Some of the SaaS applications are not customizable such as Microsoft
Office Suite. But SaaS provides us Application Programming Interface API,
which allows the developer to develop a customized application.
Characteristics
1. SaaS makes the software available over the Internet.
2. The software applications are maintained by the vendor.
3. The license to the software may be subscription based or usage
based. And it is billed on recurring basis.
4. SaaS applications are cost-effective since they do not require any
maintenance at end user side.
5. They are available on demand.
6. They can be scaled up or down on demand.
7. They are automatically upgraded and updated.
8. SaaS offers shared data model. Therefore, multiple users can share
single instance of infrastructure. It is not required to hard code the
functionality for individual users.
9. All users run the same version of the software.

Complexities in Software-as-a-Product
1. Installation
2. Management
3. Support
4. Licensing
5. High Initial Cost
6. No prior knowledge

SaaS Architecture Attributes

1. Ease of Configuration
2. Multitenant Efficiency
3. Scalability

SaaS Architecture
Level 1 (Ad hoc/Custom)
 No Maturity
 Single user, single instance
Level 2 (Configurability)
 Configuration Metadata, detailed configuration
 Separate instances of the same application
 Ease in maintenance (Update common code base
Level 3 (Multitenant Efficiency)
 Single instance for all users
 Efficient use of server resources
 Limited use
Level 4 (Scalable)
 Multitier architecture supporting load balancing across servers
 System capacity dynamically scaled up or down

Benefits of SaaS
 Streamlined administration
 Automated update and patch management services
 Data Compatibility
 Enterprise-wide Collaboration
 Global Accessibility