Cloud Service Provider and Cloud Service

Question: Objectives: This assessment item relates to the course learning outcomes 1 and 2 of the course profile. Enabling objectives, 1. Acquire fundamental knowledge on cloud computing; 2. Become familiar with cloud service providers and their services; 3. Learn to evaluate cloud services and their uses for an application. Answer: Introduction According to Chang (2014), with the increased dependency on mobile apps and storage, with security and portability in mind, cloud providers are needed more than before, especially for an organization to survive. More and more business opting for cloud recovery is to avoid data failure or corruption in case of an unforeseen event (Boutaba, Zhang and Zhani, 2013). Cloud backups are therefore can be downloaded easily when required. This case study discusses the different cloud service providers and their services, Rackspace chosen as the cloud service provider of choice and then it is compared with IBM Bluemix; their pricings are compared, justification given for the selected, opinion given on improving the service of Rackspace and conclusion drawn. 1. Cloud service provider and services As stated by Oliveira, Mendes and Bessani (2014), cloud providers currently providing cloud services are: Cloud Providers Cloud Service Model Google Cloud Files service CDN service DNS service NoSQL service SQL service Memcache service Rackspace Hosting Cloud Files service CDN service DNS service NoSQL service SQL service Dedicated servers Collocation eApps CDN service DNS service SQL service Memcache service Exoscale Cloud Files service DNS service SQL service Collocation Amazon Web Service Cloud Files service CDN service DNS service NoSQL service SQL service Memcache services Windows Azure Cloud Files service CDN service DNS service NoSQL service SQL service Memcache services 2. Description on Selected Cloud Service Provider (Rackspace) Out of all the listed cloud service providers, Rackspace Hosting has been chosen as the closest competing cloud provider for comparing with Bluemix. Reasons for this choice are: Figure 1: Rackspace pricing calculator (Source: Rackspace Hosting, 2016) Among all the competing cloud providers, Rackspace Hosting offers the maximum number of services including Cloud Files service, CDN service, DNS service, NoSQL service, SQL service, dedicated servers, and Collocation (Baset, 2012). It has a low base plan price of $0.032 per hour and a fixed monthly rate. Its support services are available 24/7 in forums, live chats, online resources and IPV6 support. It features auto-scaling, Database as a Service, Cloud Storage, Firewalls, Deploy Servers, System Monitoring, Load Balancing, File Storage, CDN or Content Delivery Network Block Storage (Rackspace Hosting, 2016). 3. Comparison and contrast of Rackspacess Cloud Service with IBM Bluemix Cloud Service Service Models For IBM Bluemix, the cloud service model is PaaS or Platform as a Service. Its deployment model includes Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Public Cloud(Ibm.com, 2016). The cloud service model Rackspace Hosting uses is IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service. Its deployment models are Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Private Cloud(Rackspace Hosting, 2016). Pricing Bluemix offers a 30-day free trial, and the services are free during the trial period. After the trial period is over, 0.5 GB of container memory and runtime will be offered free each month. Billing is done monthly detailing the charges. A credit card is needed for billing after 30 days, and extra will be levied if usage is beyond free allowances each month (Console.ng.bluemix.net, 2016). The minimum price for 30 days on all Cloud Servers is $50 per month. Additional pricing is also available based on bandwidth usage. Custom image storage starts at $0.10 per GB per month (Rackspace Hosting, 2016). Smart Application Development According to blog.rackspace.com (2014), Rackspace has put an emphasis on the IoT or Internet of Things in recent times. Rackspace solution noHold has support for Artificial Intelligence (AI) based expert systems (Stories.rackspace.com, 2016). IBM Bluemix provides cognitive computing and IBM Watson as specialized applications. IBM Watson has five parts which are Question Analysis, Feature Engineering, Natural Language Processing, Ontology Analysis and Machine Learning (High, 2012). While cognitive systems learn at the scale of data, business and taking action by reasoning with a goal (Saalbach, 2013). Platform Design, Navigation and Application Creation and Deployment IBM Bluemix Figure 2: Trial page registration (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) Step 1: Clicking on the Get Started Free will open up registration page to create a trial account Figure 3: Account Creation (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) One can log in with an IBM id, and if it is not there, then one can be created. Figure 4: Email confirmation of account creation (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) After the registration is finished, one needs to open the email from IBM Bluemix and click the Validate email address button. Figure 5: Logging into Bluemix: email screen (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) Figure 6: Logging into Bluemix: password screen (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) When the credentials are made, it needs to be entered in the two screens. Figure 7: Login successful (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) Figure 8: Organization creation screen (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) A box will pop up after logging in. The user needs to select a region from the drop-down and the name of an organization. Figure 9: Space name creation (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) The user will create a space name and will help in managing permissions and access to resources for development stages. Figure 10: Successful Organization and Space creation (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) Successful creation of Space. Figure 11: Home page of IBM Bluemix account (Source: Console.au-syd.bluemix.net, 2016) From this screen, one can click Create App button to create a cloud app and click on "Try the new Bluemix button will present with new features of the IBM Bluemix. Rackspace Figure 12: Account creation screen (Source: Rackspace Hosting, 2016) Figure 13: Account information in details screen (Source: Rackspace Hosting, 2016) Figure 14: Billing information screen (Source: Rackspace Hosting, 2016) 5. Justification for Better Cloud Service Provider among Two After carefully going through all the features, pricing, service and deployment process, and its overall viability and user friendliness, Rackspace Hosting has been chosen as the best cloud service provider. It is chosen because of its comprehensive pricing plan and support system. The only downside is even though it has a trial system, it needs the credit card for validation. For business and organization, that would not be a problem. Rackspace has already proved itself in the market, but Bluemix is already showing promise of being competitive. For volume usage, it can be quite costly in case of Rackspace, but the pricing plan varies with OS and deployment levels. If Bluemix proves itself by getting ahead of the competition by adding more special applications then, the organization must evaluate. Conclusion From the given study it has been found that cloud services are much more essential to surviving the businesses for today. Rackspace Hosting is chosen as the cloud service provider of choice after evaluating all features and overall infrastructure. 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