Complex Service Management in a Hybrid Cloud

This architectural feasibility study focuses on transforming a complex service management application to take advantage of the economies of scale and convenience afforded by cloud computing. We study a financial analytics application and system and enumerate the following characteristics: (a) highly compute intensive, (b) memory intensive, (c) storage i/o intensive, (d) collaborative, (e) interactive with low latency (propagation of changes must take place at speeds comparable to those of the spreadsheets that the application replaces in order to satisfy user responsiveness requirements) and (f) involves sensitive data for which it must maintain a high level of data security. We see two major challenges to operating such an application from the cloud: (1) achieving low latency interaction and (2) protecting sensitive data. In this paper we will explore alternative potential solutions to each of these challenges. To have any significant economic advantage, we must transform the architecture from heavy client and light server to light client and heavy server, running directly into challenge (1). It appears likely that any solution will involve a hybrid cloud, at least part of which provides high levels of data security (with consequent lowering of the economic advantage) in order to meet challenge (2). In our industrial research context, we are inclined to tackle one challenge at a time and to develop our new system in two phases, the first phase producing a new client server architecture that allows for multiple types of light clients, the second phase moving the server side into a hybrid cloud, from which multiple applications of the same type could be offered as web services to multiple clients.