Lack Of Senior Management Involvement

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02 Nov 2017

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A work breakdown structure is a project management tool which organizes the project deliverables in hierarchical structure. According to the IPMA (International Project Management Association) definition, the work breakdown structure is document containing a hierarchical breakdown of the project goal into individual deliverables and further into individual products and sub-products to the level of individual work packages to be delivered in the course of project implementation. It defines 100% of the overall scope of the project. Subsequent levels list increasingly detailed definitions of project products.

Because some methodologies describe this term as hierarchical breakdown of activities or tasks, sub-tasks, phases, as recommended by RNDr. Zdenko Stanicek in this Thesis and in the next release of the IPMA standard the term Scope Breakdown structure will be used.

"The scope represents the total content included in the project. The project should deliver all that is described within its scope. The Scope definition is expressed in scope breakdown structure (tree structure) where each node of this tree represents a deliverable or sub-deliverable on a particular level." [citation Stanicek] Each deliverable or sub-deliverable that is part of the SBS should be absolutely clear without any reference how it should be delivered. "The definition of Manage Scope encompasses the state which has to be achieved by the project without any reference to a possible way how it can be achieved. What is more the scope includes the totality of the goals and deliverables of the project. The scope is refined as the project develops. The continuous refinement of the Scope definition is visualized through documents that define those deliverables and sub-deliverables in step-by-step improved manner, i.e. with growing detail and precision, as the knowledge of the solved problem progresses." [citation Stanicek]

Because a deliverable is any product of a project, it is not concerned with the tasks and activities that lead to its completion. "The Scope embraces the totality of the goals and deliverables of the project, defines the boundaries, i.e., what is included in the project and, moreover, what is not included in the project." [citation Stanicek]

Although almost identical and very often confused in terms of terminology it is of crucial importance to properly understand WBS and Scope In order to avoid further confusion and misleading it is suggested to use SBS instead of WBS. Therefore the SBS terminology will be applied

This section describes the Scope Breakdown Structure (SBS) of a project for migration of databases to cloud based solution. In Figure 4 the SBS is presented to the first level. As I will describe the deliverables in more detail the lower levels will be presented.

SBS_1_Level

Figure Scope Breakdown Structure

SBS Deliverables, Challenges and Risks

In this section, the SBS project deliverables will be described. The first and second level deliverables will be in focus of this section as well as the potential challenges that could emerge during the execution of each of them.

Management and support provided

Management&Support

This deliverable should provide the project preparation and all the intial planing. The steps taken here will help us to indentify the primary focus areas: scope, objectives, plan and definition of project team. The project charter and the project strategy are defined here.

Some of the challenges and risks that might be presented are:

Not clearly defined project goals or lack on agreement on the project goals,

Lack of senior management involvement,

Not defined effective project management methodology.

Planning completed

Technical Planing

The point of this deliverable is to provide preliminary cloud assessment. Evaluate the offerings from the different cloud providers on the market, get clear understanding of the separation of the responsibilities between cloud provider and the client, agree on it and define a responsible team. Also the legacy application should be evaluated at this point to get the overall picture, early enough if the cloud based solution should be considered for these applications.

The cloud computing represents a shared responsibility between the provider and the client. The demarcation line that separates the responsibilities between the client and the provider varies according to the area and according to the delivery model that is being evaluated. Sometimes this demarcation line is referred to as "trust boundary", it illustrates that for those areas that fall under cloud provider responsibility the client must trust the execution and implementation by the provider.

Most of the cloud provider’s service agreements limit the provider’s responsibility, typically to a refund fees, whether the application will fail in availability causing financial loss to the client or failure to comply with some of the important compliance requirements, these agreements shift the primary risk responsibility to the client. Having this in mind it is from outmost importance to clearly understand where this trust boundary lays. The Table 1, presented below can help in better understanding the trust boundary and provide some guidance regarding the security responsibilities of the various delivery models. The zigzag line indicates where the trust boundary lies for each delivery model.

Creating a comparison table from the available solutions can be also useful and helpful. In Apendix section there is presented an example of a table, Table 2, with comparison based on the common considerations of some of the currently available RDBMs as a service on the market.

Table Trust boundary in cloud security

IaaS

PaaS

SaaS

Application

Responsibility

User

User

Provider

Action

Apply the best practices and certification

Apply the best practices and certification

Evaluation and certification

OS/Middleware

Responsibility

User

Provider

Provider

Action

Apply the best practices and certification

Evaluation and certification

Evaluation and certification

Infra-Structure

Responsibility

Provider

Provider

Provider

Action

Evaluation and certification

Evaluation and certification

Evaluation and certification

Potential challenges and risks are:

Provide accurate cost analysis - Weighing the cost considerations of owning and operating data center against going to a cloud provider and choosing the one that meets your requirements requires careful and detailed analysis. Businesses have to take multiple options in consideration in order to get a valid comparison between the alternatives. Most of the cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft have already published whitepapers that can help in the process of gathering data for the appropriate comparison. Also they have implemented cost calculators that can help with the analysis of the decision makers.

Failure to involve company security advisors early in the process during the cloud security assessment – Some organizations require specific IT security policies and compliance and it is very important to include the company’s security advisors in the cloud assessment process to help you with the decision. First the information needs to be classified. The organization data has to be evaluated, its value has to be understood, and what are the risks if the data is compromised. Key challenges and risks here are:

Identification and correct classification of the data,

Where the data currently resides,

Is there are any obligation to store the data in specific jurisdiction – For example Microsoft Azure, Amazon and Google allow the users to designate in which region the data is stored.

Clarify the options to retrieve the all the data from the cloud provider and the option to move it to a different provider. This also covers interoperabilty (being able to communicate and work with multiple cloud service providers) and poratbilty (to be able to move the system to a different cloud provider, not to be dependent on one cloud service provider). It must be taken in consideration that some of the cloud database offerings like for example Google Cloud SQL are only accessible through their platform Google AppEngine.

Data security can be a big issue but if it is properly understood analyzed and classified, with the proper understanding of the risks and threats it can help to identify which databases can be moved in the cloud and which one should be kept in house.

Technical architecture assessment – Application dependency tree can help to identify which applications are suitable to be moved into the cloud. The main considerations here should be:

Will the cloud provide the entire infrastructure that we require?

Is it possible to reuse the management and configuration tools that we have?

Will it allow us to cancel the support contracts for software, network and hardware?

Creating a dependency tree based on detailed examination of the construction of the enterprise applications will help to classify applications based on their dependences. This dependency tree should highlights all the different parts of the applications and identify their upward and downstream dependencies to other applications. This diagram should be an accurate snapshot of the enterprise application assets. In order to identify good candidates for the cloud we should look for applications with under-utilized assets; applications that have an immediate business need to scale and are running out of capacity; applications that have architectural flexibility; applications that utilize traditional tape drives to backup data. Avoid applications that require specialized hardware to function (for example, mainframe or specialized encryption hardware). Another important point during this activity is to evaluate the possibility of migrating licensed products. For example Amazon is offering the possibility to "Bring your own license". If the organization has purchased the license in the traditional way or already has a purchased license it can be applied to the products that are available as pre-configured Amazon Machine Image. [42]

Similarly Microsoft is offering Azure VM with included license for the operating system and also VMs with included license for SQL server.

Not dedicating a team. Expecting that the IT staff will be able to do their BAU job while moving to the cloud. A dedicated team should be created that will focus on the challenges that will come, overcome them and succeed.

Inability to move or link legacy applications – Focus on the applications that provide the maximum benefit for the minimum cost/risk. Assess legacy application compatibility and how much re-work is needed for their migration. Prioritize which applications to migrate to the cloud and in which order.

Understanding the SLA - Small business owners usually do not have much experience with these types of agreements and by failing to review them fully, might open up big problems for the future. Business impact in the SLA must be carefully considered and analyzed. Close attention should be paid to the availability guarantees and penalty clauses:

Does the availability fit in with organization business model?

What do you need to do to receive the credits when the hosting provider failed to achieve the guaranteed service levels?

Are they automatically processes, or do you need to ask for them in writing?

Usually the cloud providers have one SLA for all users and do not provide customization of the SLA.

All of the above mentioned considerations must be evaluated carefully before moving to a cloud based solutions in order to mitigate the risk and be confident to choose the right cloud services that will support and insure growth of the business.

Proof of concept created

Proof of Concept

Once the cloud assessment is compete and the possible candidates are identified it is time to test the cloud solution with a small proof of concept. The main goal here is to learn the chosen cloud provider/solution and to test the assumptions regarding sustainability for migration to the cloud are feasible and accurate.

At a minimum you should get familiar with the APIs, Tools, SDKs, plugins that cloud provider is offering. It is a good idea at this time to deploy some small application as a test and in the process get really involved in the cloud. This can be easily achieved as most of the cloud providers offer some limited free account or free trial period.

The proof of concept should represent the real application in small; it should test its critical functionalities in the cloud environment. You should start with a small database and users should not be afraid to "play around" with the offered possibilities, for example lunching and terminating instances, etc. In order to gather all the the necessary benchmarks stress testing of the cloud system should be included here too.

During this building of proof of concept there is a lot that can be learn about the capabilities and applicability of the chosen cloud solution and it can quickly broaden the set of the applications that can be migrated.

The proof of concept should raise the awareness of the power of the cloud within the organization and it can help to set expectation, validate the technology and perform the necessary benchmarks. It provides the hands-on experience with the new cloud environment and will give more inside what challenges you might face and need to overcome in order to move ahead with the migration.

Possible challenges and risks might be:

Unclear and misunderstood requirements,

Lack of effective methodology to build the correct proof of concept – failure to build appropriate proof of concept test that is missing some of the key functionalities or/and is using data that is too simple and doesn’t correspond with the real-time production data might be one of the biggest risk for the project.

Poor estimation and failure to perform all the needed activities,

Not documenting the lessons learned – capturing the lessons learned in a form of whitepaper or a presentation and sharing it within the company is one of the most important deliverables of this activity.

Data migration completed

Data Migration

First and most important the different available storage options should be carefully evaluated. There several points that have to be considered to make sure the solution will meet the need for easily scaling the applications. Cost, query ability, relational SQL, size of the objects, update frequency, read vs write, consistency (strictly consistent vs eventual), all this point have to be taken in consideration and right tradeoffs have to be made.

Creating table from the available storage options with examples for what can be used can be very beneficial. An example of such table, Table3, is presented in the Appendix section.

At this point it should be decided how the data will be migrated, whether it will be migrated to the cloud native solution (for example for MySQL implementation can be migrated to Amazon RDS or Google SQL, MS SQL can be migrated to SQL Azure etc.) or the migration will be done to a VM preloaded with the desired product (Oracle, MS SQL, DB2 etc.). In a case where cloud native solution is chosen there might be need to develop new DB architecture specific for that cloud solution. (For example migrating to database.com will require complete re-engineering of the database).

In case of migration of large amount of data (multiple terabytes) options such as Import/Export service that some cloud providers provide should be considered. For example Amazon with AWS Import/Export Service, offers the ability to load the data on USB 2.0 or eSATA storage devices and ship them via a carrier to AWS. AWS then uploads the data into the designated buckets in Amazon S3.[41]

Another point that it is very important at this time is to set the backups and retention period for the already migrated data and also consider the possibility to move backups that are done on tape to cloud based storage.

Data migration challenges and risks include:

Failure to identify the right storage option

Failure to implement good migration strategy - usually underestimated and overlooked is the time that is needed to move an exsisting workload to the cloud. Tipcaly overlooked is the bandwith cost of moving large amount of data to the cloud provider. The time thaken to transfer the data and the business process involved in the migration.

Cloud tested and leveraged

Cloud Tested

After the data migration is complete and the data is successfully set and working in the cloud, tests are run and confirmed that everything is working, it is necessary to invest some time and resources in determining how to draw additional benefits from the cloud. The following questions can be asked:

What needs to be changed in order to leverage and implement the scalability and elasticity that the cloud is offering?

What processes can be automated for easier management and maintenance?

What steps should be taken to secure the organization in the event of failure?

Even though the data is migrated to the cloud you still have the responsibility for securing the data. Security best practices should be always implemented.

Password should be changed on regular bases; Users should have restricted access to the resources; Users and groups with different access privileges should be created; It is advisable to encrypt the data no meter if it is at-rest (AES) or during transfer (SSL)

Whit moving into the cloud arena there is also need to revise the software development lifecycle and upgrade process that is already in place. Having the possibility to request the infrastructure minutes before it is needed and the scriptable environment the software deployment process can be fully automated. The development, testing, staging and production environments can be managed by creating re-usable configuration tools and lunching specific VMs for each environment on demand. The upgrade process can be also automated and simplified, with the cloud under our hands there is no need to upgrade the software version on the old machines, instead new pre-configured instances can be lunched and old ones can be thrown away. This also gives the opportunity for a quick rollback, minimizing the downtime, in case of upgrade problems.

It is highly advisable to create Business Continuity Plan as a part of this deliverable. The business continuity plan should include:

Data replication strategy for the databases

Data backup and retention policy

Using VMs with latest patches implemented

Disaster recovery plan in the cloud

Disaster recovery plan to fail back to in-house or corporate center

Smaller organizations usually do not have disaster recovery plan in place because it prohibitively costly to maintain separate hardware or datacenter for disaster recovery. With the use of virtualization and data snapshots the cloud makes the disaster recovery plan implementation noticeably less expensive and much simpler. The process of launching cloud resources on which the entire cloud environment can be brought up within couple of minutes can be fully automated.

Potential challenges and risk here can be:

Discovering that substantial amount of refactoring and decomposing of the application needs to be done to make it more scalable

Lack of understanding of the cloud

Failure to realize the importance of creating business continuity plan.

Documentation created

Documentation

In order to achieve efficient planning, operation and reporting every solution require reliable and understandable documentation. The goal is to create central documentation for the implemented cloud solution. One of the main challenges is to preserve the knowledge gathered during the project and to keep it up to date. The information stored in the documentation is needed in the operation and continuous improvement and optimization of your application. The documentation can include on-line help, user guides, whitepapers, quick reference guides.

The usual challenges and risks during this activity are:

Failure to understand the importance of clear and complete documentation

Lack of user commitment and willingness to write documentation

Training provided

Training Provided

Training involves imparting knowledge of the implemented solution to the users before the system goes into live operation. This activity entails defining business processes for the respective roles and defining business scenarios to suit these processes. These scenarios enable the users to understand the system functionality better. Also training should be provided for the application and database administrators. They will need to learn the tools and the automation possibilities that specific cloud providers offer. As it was mentioned earlier the cloud changes a lot of things from a point of view of management and maintenance of the system. In order to completely exploit all the possibilities that the cloud promises the IT support stuff should be properly educated.

Potential challenges and risk can be:

Ineffective communication

Lack of user commitment

Lack of understanding of the cloud and its benefits

Failure to provide proper training for the decision makers – Decision makers must be able to understand the cloud and the functional and management changes that it brings in order to buy-in into the solution.

Resistance to change

Conflicts between departments

Operation switched over/cutover to the cloud

Cutover

This means going live from the in-house solution to the new cloud based one. With this the cloud database and application became operational in live environment. This includes final migration of the live data from the old system to the new cloud based system.

Typical challenges and risks that might be presented:

Underestimating time that is needed to move an exsisting workload to the cloud

The time thaken to transfer the data and the business process involved in the migration resulting in prolonged downtime

Lack of testing with the whole production data transferred in the cloud

Lack of business redines

Failure of timelly education of the IT support stuff

Monitoring set and optimization complete

Monitoring1

Monitoring2

Proper optimization of the cloud based solution can have immediate visible improvement in increasing the cost savings. Having the pay for what you use model in place you should always strive to optimize the system in whatever way possible. A small optimization can result in huge amount of savings in the next month bills.[42] To achieve this you should:

Understand you usage patterns – With the cloud ability to create automated elastic environment and good understanding of the usage patterns you can easily scale down your infrastructure during inactive time periods and reduce costs. For example with proper monitoring and log inspections you can easily identify under-utilized instances and eliminate them or scale them down to a smaller and cheaper VM instance instead.

Improve efficiency and reduce waste during deployment – As all cloud providers charge based on the traffic, compressing the data before transmitting could result in significant cost savings.

Evaluate if you have all the cloud aware system administration tools required for management and maintenance of the database and application

Implement advance monitoring – Proper monitoring gives the must have visibility for the business critical applications and services. It is important to keep in mind that the end-user response time of the databases and applications in the cloud does not depend only on the cloud infrastructure. Various factors such as internet connectivity, browsers, third party services, just to name a few, can have significant impact. By measuring and monitoring the performance of your cloud applications can help you identify any performance issues and diagnose the root causes so appropriate actions can be taken.

What other cloud based services you can use to reduce the cost?

What need to be done to optimize database and application to be more elastic? – Most of the databases and applications developed in the past were not built for the cloud. In order to have highly scalable application some parts will need re-engineering to be optimized for the cloud environment. Some questions that you should ask:

Can you deploy the application to a VM in the cloud?

Can you run multiple instances of the application on multiple VMs?

Can you divide the application into components and run them on separate VM instances? For example, big complex web application can me divided by layers, Web, App and DB and you can have separate VM instance for each layer.

Decompose your relational database – most traditional enterprise applications use relational database system. The traditional relational database systems are hard to scale and much time is wasted migrating to a bigger box with more computing power. Database administrators often start with a DB schema based on the instructions from developers. [42] Developers and database architects may fail to communicate with each other on what type of data is being served, which makes it extremely difficult to scale that relational database. During the movement to the cloud it gives an opportunity to analyze the current RDBMS and make it more scalable as a part of the migration. Some techniques that might be used are:

Moving large blob object and media files to cloud storage and store just a pointer in the existing database

Move associate metadata or catalogs to a NOSQL key-value stores such as DynamoDB, SimpleDB or document oriented databases such as CouchDB or MongoDB. In the appendix section there is more detailed explanation of their data model and comparison that can be useful while considering which one can be used.

Keep only absolutely needed relational data (joins) in the relational database.

Move all the relational data to a cloud-native relational database system such as Amazon RDS, Salesforge Database.com, and Microsoft’s SQL Azure that will provide the flexibility to be able to scale the database with a single API call only when needed.

Create multiple read replicas to offload the read load

Main challenge and risk at this point will be changing the mindset for all the future development to be cloud friendly. There are a lot of available whitepapers highlighting the best practices that will allow not just creating highly scalable applications for the cloud but also provide help and advice how to create more secure and elastic application.

Will cloud computing reduce the budget?

A small business which decides to own and manage its own IT equipment sometimes fails to recognize that over time, these equipment and their components will begin to deteriorate thus causing the system to crash or experience latency. This may pose a bigger problem if the company has remote users and satellite offices. Without much thought, an entrepreneur will surely put in more money by upgrading its equipment and adding extra redundancy. Additional IT support personnel may be hired. The cycle will truly become vicious as new equipment will depreciate and break down after a couple of years.

In general, IT eats up a huge part of the company’s budget not only because of the costly equipment but its maintenance and upgrade costs as well. Upgrades, security threats, and unexpected system crashes often cost a lot of money. With cloud computing, all these IT capital investments and expenses are borne by the third-party supplier. The business owner will just have to budget for the system’s monthly subscription fees per user. There is also no need to invest on IT in anticipation of a future demand because cloud computing can be deployed on demand when needed. An entrepreneur can settle for a cloud computing service for better forecasting of an IT budget

Cloud computing simplifies budgeting. The business owner need not worry about merging projects or complex expansion because he only needs to pay for the resources his company uses. Also, when users are reduced, the accompanying cloud computing costs are reduced also. The traditional IT process of procurement, installation, management, protection, and support of an on-premise system can be a vicious cycle and contradicts the company’s goal of reducing recurring expenses. Cloud computing services and resources are used only when needed which greatly reduce recurrent

expenditures and leverage the company in adapting to frequently evolving conditions of the market.

With cloud computing, a business owner can better manage uncertainties. He exposes his company to greater risks if he invests a lot of money on IT. Because of growing demand, a lot of businesses overinvest in Information Technology which eventually increases expenses and uncertainties of IT management and maintenance. Cloud computing vendors reduce the company’s reliance on on- premise IT systems thereby assuming the uncertainties and costs of IT support, security, backups, and hardware. The business owner, therefore, has no more liability in procurement, management, and upgrade of IT equipment. Growth opportunities can then be pursued without having to bear the uncertainties of important capital outlays.

One usually overlooked benefit from the small entrepreneurs is the fact that cloud computing

also reduces energy costs because the company has less IT equipment to maintain. IT servers require specific temperatures to run perfectly. When a business owner decides to use cloud computing services, energy bills are reduced because expensive IT equipment are moved to a safe, monitored, and disaster-proof IT center.

When on-site IT problems arise, it is but expected that employee productivity is affected. Because of this, stress levels are elevated. When using cloud services, employees can do their work anywhere and anytime they wish. They can work from home by accessing the software through internet connection, this also improves the morale. Travel time and costs are significantly reduced. Each employee who is given access to the software can even ask the cloud computing supplier’s team for support with regards to the problems which may arise while he is using the system. Management can even monitor remotely each employee’s activity through the management consoles provided by the supplier.



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