CLOUD-BASED IT MANAGEMENT IMPACTS

Qualitative Weaknesses and Strengths of Clouds

Nane Kratzke

ubeck University of Applied Sciences, M

onkhofer Weg 239, 23562 L

ubeck, Germany

Keywords:

Cloud, Business information system, Cost, Resource, Effectiveness, ITIL, COBIT, TOGAF.

Abstract:

Although cloud computing is in all mouth today it seems that there exist only little evidences in literature that

it is more economical effective than classical data center approaches. Due to a performed qualitative analysis

on COBIT, TOGAF and ITIL this paper postulates that cloud-based approaches are likely to provide more

beneﬁts than disproﬁts to IT management. Nevertheless one astonishing issue is the not often stressed ex ante

cost intransparency of cloud based approaches which is a major implicit problem for IT investment decisions.

This paper shows ﬁrst considerations how to overcome this issue.

1 INTRODUCTION

Providing IT-Services is a complex management as

well as technological problem. There exist a lot of

parameters on different management, design as well

as operation levels which have signiﬁcant inﬂuence

on the overall effort efﬁciency.

Cloud computing is one of the latest developments

within the business information systems domain and

describes a new delivery model for IT services based

on the Internet, and it typically involves the provi-

sion of dynamically scalable and often virtualized re-

sources.

Most of the the overall effort efﬁciency is deduced

by capacity efﬁciency in literature which is inten-

sively proclaimed as a key beneﬁt by cloud service

providers. The simple fact that only the used capac-

ity of a cloud-based service has to be paid inveigles

to postulate the overall effort effectiveness of cloud-

based approaches. Almost every analyzed publica-

tion was repeating this more or less unreﬂected, even

(Talukader et al., 2010). This paper does not denial

this postulation but advocates a more critical view.

The overall effort effectiveness of clouds should not

be reduced to their capacity efﬁciency.

Therefore possible qualitative cloud-based im-

pacts to IT-Management are reﬂected. Section 2

starts with a brief summary and quintessence of a

performed literature review. In section 3 the over-

all relevance of cloud-based approaches is measured

against well known industry best practice manage-

ment frameworks (COBIT, TOGAF and ITIL). And

section 3 will show that cloud-based approaches are

likely to provide more beneﬁts than disproﬁts to IT

management. Nevertheless there exist disproﬁts and

issues which have to be solved. One issue is the ex

ante cost intransparency of cloud based approaches

which is a major problem for IT investment decisions.

This paper presents in section 4.1 ﬁrst considerations

of a planned research program to overcome the issue

of ex ante cost intransparency of cloud based services

in order to make IT investment decisions for cloud

based approaches more reliable and trust worthy.

2 THE LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature review was performed

using the lit-

erature databases arxiv.org, citeseer.org as well as

springerlink.de and IEEE literature database in order

to cover representative open as well as classical sci-

ence publication channels.

All relevant publications could be grouped into the

following fundamental categories.

Publications covering primarily non functional

aspects of cloud computing. (Onwubiko, 2010) is

regarding special security issues coming along with

cloud computing and data storing. (Wood et al.,

2010) reﬂects the inherent data recovery capabilities

of cloud based approaches.

Publications covering technology cost aspects.

Last validating access to literature databases on

16.11.2010.

145

Kratzke N..

CLOUD-BASED IT MANAGEMENT IMPACTS - Qualitative Weaknesses and Strengths of Clouds.

DOI: 10.5220/0003380101450151

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER-2011), pages 145-151

ISBN: 978-989-8425-52-2

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Costs are interpreted as additional computation, data

transfer, scheduling, etc. efforts which are neces-

sary in cloud based approaches. So these publica-

tions concentrate mainly on technological improve-

ments of cloud infrastructures. These improvements

can be seen

in scheduling (de Assuncao et al., 2010),

scalability (Bonvin et al., 2010), as well as general

performance (measurements) (Yigibatsi et al., 2009)

Publications covering monetary cost aspects

from a customer point of view. These publications

deﬁne a controlled cloud-based setting in order to

generate representative costs mostly based on result-

ing fees of the cloud service provider. (Hazelhurst,

2008) did this for a bioinformatic application, (Ber-

riman et al., 2010) analyzed cloud computing in as-

tronomy, (Kossmann and Kraska, 2010) compared

cost per web interactions of different cloud service

providers. (Walker et al., 2010) present a mathemat-

ical decision model for or against cloud based ap-

proaches but limited to storage clouds.

Publications covering monetary cost aspects

from a cloud service provider point of view.

(Daoud et al., 2009) present a brief announcement of

a game theoretical model to calculate pricing services

of large data centers from a cloud service provider

viewpoint rather than from a cloud customer perspec-

tive. More detailled models are presented by (Li et al.,

2009) and (Woitaszek and Tufo, 2010).

3 ANALYZING IMPACTS

So no substantial cost estimation models were found

in literature (Truong and Dustdar, 2010). Do-

main speciﬁc cost calculation approaches (Hazel-

hurst, 2008) and (Berriman et al., 2010) as well as

a domain neutral effort calculation method like cost

effort per web interaction (Kossmann and Kraska,

2010) seem the most promising approaches for pro-

viding representative cost estimation data.

Therefore Business Cloud Computing is now an-

alyzed by well known industry best practice stan-

dards. (Krcmar, 2010) depicts in its core three In-

formation Management Domains: Overall Manage-

ment and Governance Functions, Enterprise Wide In-

formation System Design, Information Systems De-

velopment and Information Systems Operation (see

ﬁgure 1). This paper covers all mentioned IT man-

agement domains by three industry best practice stan-

dards (COBIT, TOGAF, ITIL).

It is likely that there exist more technological issues but

reﬂecting technological aspects was not in the core focus of

the literature review.

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ITIL)

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Figure 1: Reﬂected IT management standards and classiﬁ-

cation models.

By applying these models qualitative impacts of

business cloud computing are deduced. For each of

the mentioned models a process tree is used to de-

pict qualitative impacts. An qualitative impact may

be positive (effort reducing), negative (effort adding)

or neutral (effort invariant). Qualitative impacts are

depicted by a color code and are rated in the follow-

ing way

• Positive (green and marked (+)) if cloud comput-

ing may reduce efforts (compared to classical in-

formation system approaches).

• Negative (red and marked (-)) if cloud computing

introduces additional efforts (compared to classi-

cal information system approaches).

• Neutral (grey) if cloud computing has no effect

(compared to classical information system ap-

proaches)

3.1 Impact to COBIT (Governance)

The Control Objectives for Information and related

Technology (COBIT) provides a set of measures, in-

dicators, processes and best practices, to assist imple-

menting appropriate IT governance and control in a

company. COBIT deﬁnes a set of deliver and support,

acquire and implement, monitor and evaluate as well

as planning processes to operationalize IT-governance

in companies (see ﬁgure 2).

At this point of research the following effort re-

ducing effects are stated.

Within the deliver and support process it is

likely to reduce efforts for managing performance

and capacity, operations, continuous service as

well as managing physical environment because

these tasks are transferred to the cloud vendor

Due to page limitations this paper presents no detailed

(but in references existing) reasoning of the postulated qual-

itative impacts to the analyzed models.

This is mainly due to tasks which are necessary for

cloud-based or classical business information systems gov-

ernance, design, development or operation as well.

CLOSER 2011 - International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science

146

Figure 2: Qualitative Cloud Impact to the Cobit Process Tree.

(Talukader et al., 2010). Furthermore efforts are

likely reduced in deﬁnition of third party services

and identiﬁcation and allocation cost (done by cloud

vendor for billing). Regarding the acquire and

implementation process it is likely to reduce ef-

forts in identifying automated solutions, acquire

and maintain technology infrastructure and pro-

cure IT resourcesbecause these tasks have to be per-

formed by the cloud vendor (Talukader et al., 2010).

Regarding the planning processes it is likely to re-

duce efforts in managing IT investments (this has to

be done by the cloud vendor) as well as IT Human

resources (tendency to reduce the IT staff). Regard-

ing the monitor and evaluation processes it is likely

to reduce efforts in monitoring and evaluating IT

performance (this has to be done by the cloud ven-

dor).

At this point of research possible additional ef-

forts to the following COBIT processes are stated.

Within the deliver and support process it is

likely to create additional efforts due to a lot of se-

curity issues, (Onwubiko, 2010)) as well as due to a

more complex conﬁguration management of virtual

cloud assets which are not under direct control of the

cloud customer. Regarding the acquire and imple-

mentation process it is likely to create additional ef-

forts due to more complex (PaaS based) Application

development. Regarding the planning processes it is

likely to create additional efforts in assessing IT risks

, deﬁning IT processes and relationships as well as

managing projects (due to an additional actor - the

cloud vendor). Regarding the monitor and evalua-

tion processes it is likely to create additional efforts

ensuring compliance with external requirements (be-

cause a cloud provider and its internal processes have

to reﬂected, see (Onwubiko, 2010)).

3.2 Impact to TOGAF

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF)

is a framework for enterprise architecture manage-

ment which provides a comprehensive approach to the

design, planning, implementation, and governance of

an enterprise information architecture. TOGAF based

Enterprise Architectures are typically modeled at four

levels: Business, Information Systems (Application

and Data) as well as Technology. TOGAF Enterprise

Architectures should be devellopped using the Archi-

tecture Development Model Cycle shown in ﬁgure 3.

At this point of research this paper states the po-

tential to reduce the following overall efforts in TO-

GAF.

By using cloud-based approaches it is likely to

reduce application design efforts by using SaaS or

PaaS

cloud-based services

due to the fact that the

cloud service providers have to provide precisely de-

ﬁned architecture building blocks which are there

chargeable assets. It is furthermore likely to reduce

technology architecture design efforts due to the

SaaS - Software as a Service, e.g. SAP BUSINESS BY-

DESIGN; PaaS - Platform as a Service, e.g. Google Apps.

See (Talukader et al., 2010), (Onwubiko, 2010) or

(Truong and Dustdar, 2010) for a deﬁnition of SaaS or PaaS.

CLOUD-BASED IT MANAGEMENT IMPACTS - Qualitative Weaknesses and Strengths of Clouds

147

Figure 3: Qualitative Cloud Impact to the TOGAF Process

Map.

fact that they are predeﬁned by IaaS

cloud service

providers. In the most of use cases it is easier to

chose a technology architecture than to design one.

Both above mentioned facts will likely produce new

opportunities and solutions for business informa-

tion systems and their corresponding information ar-

chitectures.

3.3 Impact to ITIL (Operations)

ITIL provides best practice processes to design and

operate IT-services for internal or external customers.

IT-Services are driven by a general business require-

ments supporting a service strategy. Figure 4 shows

all relevant ITIL processes according to (B

ottcher,

2008).

At this point of research this paper states the po-

tential to reduce efforts in ITIL.

By using cloud-based approaches it is likely to re-

duce service design efforts in capacity, availabil-

ity as well as continuity management, e.g (Wood

et al., 2010) or (Talukader et al., 2010) mainly due to

the inherent capabilities of clouds. It is furthermore

likely to reduce service operation efforts in event,

incident as well as problem management because a

lot of efforts have to be handled by the cloud service

providers.

At this point of research this paper states addi-

tional efforts in ITIL.

IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service, e.g. Amazon EC2

(see (Talukader et al., 2010), (Onwubiko, 2010) or (Truong

and Dustdar, 2010) for a deﬁnition of IaaS)

Figure 4: Qualitative Cloud Impact to the ITIL V3 Process

Tree.

By using cloud-based approaches it is likely to en-

hance service level management efforts which is due

to involving an additional service providing party , see

(Talukader et al., 2010). Additional efforts are also

likely to perform information security and compli-

ancy management (Onwubiko, 2010) because as-

pects like privacy, data ownership, conﬁdentiality,

data location, regulatory compliance, forensic evi-

dence, auditing and overall trust issues have to be con-

sidered. Furthermore additional efforts are likely to

perform a service asset and conﬁguration manage-

ment. A conﬁguration management has to handle and

control virtual cloud assets which are not under direct

control of the cloud-using service customer.

4 QUALITATIVE WEAKNESSES

AND STRENGTHS OF CLOUDS

Table 1 shows that the strengths of clouds lay in their

inherent structure (scalability, continuousity, avail-

ability, etc.) as well as necessary market requirements

(provide well deﬁned and therefore billable infras-

tructure or functional services) reducing efforts on the

cloud customer side

The weaknesses according to table 1 are mainly

Avoiding to provide such services on their own with

smaller economical scale effects.

CLOSER 2011 - International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science

148

Table 1: Overall weaknesses and strengths of cloud based

approaches.

derived by analyzing

IMM

COBIT

TOGAF

ITIL

Strengths

inherent scalability in capacity and performance x x

inherent continuousity and availability x x

ex post cost transparency x x x

provision of automated infrastructure services x x x x

provision of automated functional services x x x

physical infrastructure free (for customers) x x x

low level service free (for customers) x

higher order service enabling x x

Weaknesses

additional cloud SW development skills x

more complex conﬁguration management x x

more complex service and process management x x x

more complex security management x x x

more complex compliance management x

introduced by the fact that an additional player (the

cloud service provider) enters the game - so addi-

tional interaction business processes become neces-

sary which results in additional efforts. From this

paper point of view these additional service, process

and conﬁguration management efforts will be over-

compensated by the strengths of the cloud based ap-

proaches. Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 showed that more pro-

cesses have beneﬁts than disproﬁts.

But let us look closer to security and compli-

ance management aspects. This category of weakness

may come along with substantial ”showstoppers” for

a cloud based approach. Whenever a company has

to be compliant to regulatories which can not be full-

ﬁlled by cloud service level agreements (e.g. privacy

requirements, data ownership, conﬁdentiality, data lo-

cation, forensic evidence, auditing, etc.) cloud-based

approaches may be not feasible. But this is not due to

economical but higher order considerations.

Nevertheless there exist even an ex ante cost trans-

parency weakness as it is stated for example by

(Truong and Dustdar, 2010). This very important

weakness is even little reﬂected in literature so far. To

answer the question whether a cloud-based approach

is more cost efﬁcient than a classical data center cen-

tric approach it hast to answered the question how

costs are created each month before the application

enters operation (Walker et al., 2010). This is very

difﬁcult to answer ex ante. Literature review (see sec-

tion 2) revealed no appropriate cost estimation models

for this task

This ﬁnding is astonishing because it is often

postulated that cloud services are increasing cost

transparency (Talukader et al., 2010). This paper

Except (Walker et al., 2010) but limited to storage

clouds and self rated as a ”ﬁrst stepping stone”, p. 49.

agrees that cloud services will increase ex post cost

transparency mainly due to the underlying billing pro-

cess of cloud service providers. But it seems very

hard to estimate cloud costs ex ante. Nevertheless this

is needed for IT investment decisions. Without being

able to calculate cloud service costs ex ante it is very

hard to decide for a cloud-service based or a classical

data center centric approach.

4.1 A Resulting Research Program

As it was stated in section 4 cloud services provide ex-

cellent ex post cost transparency. It was furthermore

stated that there exist barley cost estimation models

for ex ante cost calculation and transparency. This pa-

per presents an approach to use the strength of ex post

cost transparency of cloud services to compensate the

weak of ex ante cost estimation.

The core idea is a very simple one. Whenever run-

ning a cloud-service based system it is easy to gather

the costs ex post. Your cloud service provider will de-

liver a bill with the used cloud service assets. When-

ever you plan another cloud service based system of

comparable complexity and usage parameters you can

look to your costs of your already running cloud ser-

vice based system. It is likely that your ex post costs

of the existing system will have the same characteris-

tics of your planned system of comparable complexity

and usage parameters.

This very simple idea has one evident problem. It

will provide only good cost estimations for compa-

rable systems with comparable usage characteristics

which is not a very realistic assumption. But what to

do when decisions have to be made for non compara-

ble systems? We have to make our model a little bit

more complex.

Cloud&based&system&space&

operated systems with ex post costs

planned system

cost estimations

Figure 5: Cloud based system space.

One possibility is to inter- or extrapolate costs from

nearest neighbors (see ﬁgure 6). Nevertheless we

have to describe cost driving parameters in a way that

they can be inter- or extrapolated to your planned sys-

tem and we have to deduce parameters which are ap-

Which are cloud vendor independent.

CLOUD-BASED IT MANAGEMENT IMPACTS - Qualitative Weaknesses and Strengths of Clouds

149

propriate to describe the dimensions of a system space

(which are most likely much more than two - so ﬁgure

6 shows an extreme simpliﬁcation of the to be encoun-

tered problem). A substantial cost calculation model

should have the capability to select the most compa-

rable systems out of a given system space in order to

inter- or extrapolate the most appropriate cost driving

parameters for a cloud based application.

Opera&on)of)an)exis&ng)

Cloud)based)IT6System)

Planning)a)comparable)

Cloud)based)IT6System)

Ex)

Post)

Costs)

Ex)

Ante)

Costs)

Cost)calcula&on)

model)

Opera&on)of)an)exis&ng)

Cloud)based)IT6System)

Ex)

Post)

Costs)

Opera&on)of)an)exis&ng)

Cloud)based)IT6System)

Ex)

Post)

Costs)

Selection of the

most comparable

operated system

Figure 6: Using most adequate ex post cost data for estimat-

ing ex ante estimations

Within our ongoing research we want to develop, vali-

date and optimize categories suitable for ﬁnding near-

est neighbours necessary to develop cost estimation

models. Our long term vision is to populate our in

ﬁgure 6 presented cloud-based system space with rep-

resentative cloud-based systems. For these systems ex

post cost shall be collected and provided continuously

through a public accessible database.

4.2 Conclusions and Outlook

For IT management investment decisions an ex ante

rather than an ex post cost transparency

is needed.

But ex ante cost estimation models do not exist so

far and have to be established and cross checked.

This is the vision for our ongoing research. We pre-

sented a model in its early research stages by using the

strengths of cloud services (ex post cost transparency)

to provide the missing ex ante cost transparency in or-

der to improve IT management decision for or against

cloud based realizations. We plan to do this by pro-

viding and delivering domain speciﬁc and representa-

tive applications in order to measure real world efforts

and costs and provide them in domain independent

indicators like cost per web interaction. The indica-

tors as well as subsequent cost estimation models for

cloud based approaches shall cover all relevant cost

driving aspects of cloud services from a cloud cus-

tomer perspective. Indicators and ex ante cost estima-

tion models are planned to be made completely avail-

Which is a often mentioned strength of cloud services.

able to academic as well business public via an open

access database.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Amazon Web Services for supporting our

research with a research grant.

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