Arshad Sidd Iq I

Presentation by Dr.
Arshad Siddiqi
30 May 2013
Implementation Challenges
of Cloud Computing
by
Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Chief Executive Officer
ITIAC
International Technology Integrators

and Consultants
arshadsiddiqi@hotmail.com
Contact: 0308 222 9111, 0321 506 888
1
Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi
30 May 2013
INTRODUCING MY SELF
From the US I have the following education:

BSCS in Computer Sciences
MBA in Management Systems
PhD in Systems Sciences
I have over 40 years of hands on Information Communication and Technology

design, development, implementation and up-gradation experience.
Some Major Projects completed recently from scratch include:

At PMD: Establishment of MNP, DC, DRC as the CEO and Project Director
At NHA: RFID e-tag Toll Tax Project, DC and DRC as GM - ICT
At NLC: ERP, RFID e-tag Truck Tracking, DC and DRC as Director - ICT
At IBA: ERP, Cloud Computing , E3 Infrastructure, Wi-Fi, VPN, VC, Tier III DC,
DRC as Director ICT and Technical Member of IBA Executive Committee.
Presently as CEO of ITIAC, Technical Member of HEC Technical Procurement
Committee.
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30 May 2013
EMERGENCE OF CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud computing evolved greatly over the years. Since

the term came into existence in early 90s. Large
enterprises are increasingly finding cloud a likable
solution even within their stringent organizational
policies. And, for small enterprises it is possibly the only
option to save fund while putting innovative ideas into
action.
The idea of cloud has been such popularized that there
is a rush of implementing it amongst CIOs. This has led
to more complexities than solutions mostly due to the
haste without proper analysis of ones situations and
requirements beforehand. Following is a brief discussion
on the challenges faced by organizations during
implementing cloud computing.
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30 May 2013
ADVANTAGES OF CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud Computing has ensured the most needed shift from

licensed software based model to a freer, scalable,
virtualized environment that adjusts automatically to the
changing IT infrastructural needs of the users.
With Cloud Computing, there is:
No need to buy licenses for software, which often add to per capita
cost as number of users increase.
Enjoy scalability that expands automatically as visitors to your website
increase.
The cloud service provider offers support services to clients in
managing, maintaining and upgrading their cloud capacity
permitting you to lower the costs of maintaining in-house IT
department and hardware.
Transit your capital cost into operative cost and enjoy an equal
opportunistic environment as your competitors.
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30 May 2013
SOLUTIONS OFFERED
The leading cloud service provider specialized in offering

customized cloud solutions to clients with varied industrial
requirements, offering comprehensive Infrastructure-as-aService (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-asa-Service (PaaS) solutions, with the following services:
Smooth transition from conventional IT infrastructure to cloud

environment.
Comprehensive cloud services to meet growing organizational needs.
Viable cloud solutions to best meet the organizational requirements.
Private, public or hybrid cloud hosting solutions.
Most affordable pay-per-use model.
Worry-free business with prompt and smart approach towards
resolving issues.
Customized, enterprise-grade cloud application for better

business experience.
30 May 2013
IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES
1 . Selecting Cloud set-up
There are three types of clouds available private, public
and hybrid.
The secret of successful cloud implementation lies in
choosing the most appropriate cloud set-up.
Bigger companies feel safer with their vast data in private
cloud environment; small enterprises may benefit
economically by hosting their services in public cloud.
Some companies are also preferring the middle way i.e.
hybrid cloud as a balanced approach.
Availability of cloud services in forms of as-a-service (aaS)
namely infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software-as-aservice (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) has further
complicated the decision making process for the CIOs.
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30 May 2013
2. Meeting Governmental Security Requirements
Cloud vendors may not be familiar with security requirements
that are unique to government agencies, such as continuous
monitoring and maintaining an inventory of systems.
For example some government agencies like NADRA needs to
monitor their systems in real time, which the cloud service
providers may be unable to match.
Banks also need their systems in real time.
FDR might also want to have real time monitoring which
might be challenging in a cloud environment because the
agency might not have insight into the provider's
infrastructure and assets.
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30 May 2013
3. Facing the Objections
As a CIO, you are likely to face challenges in convincing the

management regarding the usefulness of transiting from your
on-the-premise set-up to cloud.
To propose your case more powerfully you therefore should
analyze your cloud requirements with precision.
Focus on the areas like:
cost cutting,
elasticity,
scalability,
expandability,
data security,
damage recovery
etc.
30 May 2013
4. Fear of the Unknown
Cloud Computing is usually an unknown concept to most of

the top level decision makers. They are usually scared of
letting any of the organizational information out or their
offices and stored somewhere in the cloud; they are used to
having the information in front of their eyes, closed to their
easy access and secured in heavy vaults in the most secure
area of their office premises.
By using the Cloud Computing they feel that all their control
over the data is taken away from them and given to someone
else, whom neither they know and where is the information
stored and processed. This fear of the unknown must very
amicably be dealt with and eliminated form their minds!
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30 May 2013
5. Overcoming Cultural Barriers
Organizational culture may act as an obstacle to

implementing cloud solutions.
For example, the Finance Director would never want the
company Financial Data to be stored somewhere else where
he/she does not have the total control and absolutely
controlled access.
This in their minds puts the organization the risk of leaks of
the sensitive information or the organization on a more riskaverse footing, which makes it more reluctant to migrate to a
cloud solution.
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30 May 2013
6. Receiving Guidance
While implementing cloud you need to adhere to both the

governmental and internal regulations.
The existing governmental policies may prove flawed and
insufficient since cloud governance is still taking shape while
internal policies may prove too stringent and inflexible.
Hence, you may need external and professional help in
implementing cloud set-up properly.
Choose a cloud computing consulting service which is aware
of the terms and conditions regarding cloud implementation
and data security across borders.
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30 May 2013
7. Acquiring Knowledge and Expertise
Organizations may not have the necessary tools or resources,

such as expertise among staff, to implement cloud solutions.
Delivering cloud services without direct knowledge of the
technologies would be difficult and futile.
Similarly, teaching the staff an entirely new set of processes
and tools such as monitoring performance in a cloud
environment has been a challenge, to say the least.
Requiring an organization to move to cloud-based solutions
before guidance on how to implement it is ludicrous, it is
asking for disaster!
In addition, the Financial Officials would be totally lost and
would never be able to handle their finances of the balance
sheet.
In fact, no department would be able to function accurately.
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30 May 2013
8. Procuring Services on a Consumption (on-demand)
Basis
Because of the on-demand, scalable nature of cloud

services, it can be difficult to define specific quantities and
costs.
These uncertainties make contracting and budgeting difficult
because of the fluctuating costs associated with scalable and
incremental cloud service procurements.
For example, it is difficult to budget for a service that could
consume several months of budget in a few days of heavy
use.
Thus a deep study of the business must be conducted by an
expert or the consultant to make sure what would be the
consistent demand, or will it fluctuate with seasons or events.
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30 May 2013
9. Dealing with vendors
One of the major issues with cloud computing is, its

dependency on the service provider.
For uninterrupted and fast services you need to choose a
vendor with proper infrastructural and technical expertise.
You need a vendor who can meet the security standards set
both by the government agencies and your internal policies.
Read their service-level agreement (SLA) carefully to learn
more about whats in offering, compensations in case of
outage, lock-in clauses etc.
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30 May 2013
10. Mitigating the threats and Security Risks
Organization may not have a mechanism for certifying that

vendors meet standards for security risks and have enough
built in procedures and mechanism to mitigate the threats.
Else, they must, once again contact an external agency to
access the risk factors and develop the procedures and
practices to alleviate any and all risks.
One must be careful that there are two types of threats:
Internal, with in the organization

External from the competitors of professional hackers.
Threat and Security Risks must be taken very seriously from

the day one and any lapse must be examined thoroughly and
culprits must be pin pointed and punished adequately.
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30 May 2013
11. Certifying and Accrediting Vendors
An organization may not have a mechanism for certifying that

vendors meet standards for security;
Most organizations do not as Cloud Computing is a very new
concept. Thus the organization must have an ICT Consultant
to evaluate the vendors against the worldwide criteria and
certify the vendor properly for the following areas:
Has not been held for any malpractice before

Has been in business for a considerable time without any breach of
contracts or theft or data
Has no malice intentions against he organization to start with
Has impeccable reputation
Has been in business for some considerable time
Has a number of satisfied clients already.
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30 May 2013
12. Data security
Often the major concern associated with cloud computing is data

security and manageability.
It becomes a more serious issue while you involve multiple
vendors.
Since you would be running your companys assets and data from a
third-party interface ensuring data security and privacy are of
utmost importance.
Hence, while engaging a cloud service provider always inquire
about their cloud based security policies upfront.
Youd also need to ensure that they have effective data backup
plans to salvage data if a disaster strikes.
However, cloud computing companies usually employ strict data
security policies to prevent hacking and invest heavily on improved
software and hardware.
Moreover, some of the issues regarding data security can be
mitigated by employing a hybrid cloud environment, by keeping the
crucial data in house.
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30 May 2013
13. Safeguarding Data Security
The data security and privacy. is what the Potential

adopters of Cloud Computing are most concerned about the
security of data outside the corporate firewall.
A related issue has to do with offshore data housing, which
can pose problems of legislative compliance when data
crosses borders.
In the short term, most companies can avoid these issues by
using domestic cloud facilities.
As it now there are a large number of Pakistani Vendors
offering the Cloud Computing Services which are hosting
there data storage and processing services within Pakistan.
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30 May 2013
14. Brand Hacking
The cloud carries some new risks, notably, as has been

observed; People hack brands or hack applications
regardless of what the infrastructure is underneath.
Because a cloud provider hosts multiple clients, each can be
affected by actions taken against any one of them.
As in distributed denial-of-service attacks - server requests
that inundate a provider from widely distributed computers.
This is what happened, for example, in the wake of the
WikiLeaks activities: when attacks came into the provider
hosting WikiLeaks, all other clients were affected as well.
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30 May 2013
15. Mitigation of Risks
However, some of these risks are mitigated to a degree by

new security applications such as encrypted file systems and
data-loss prevention software.
Cloud providers also have the ability to invest in more
sophisticated security hardware and software, such as using
analytics to examine unusual behavior across vast numbers
of virtual servers. Beyond this, a providers scale enables
effective responses to large-scale server attacks through high
levels of redundancy.
Concerned enterprises can also mitigate risk by employing
hybrid cloudsa situation in which most servers are in the
cloud, but key data is hosted internallyand by improving
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data governance.
30 May 2013
16. Disaster Recovery
A cloud provider must have a resilient infrastructure to deal
with server breakdown and outage.
A proper data backup policy should have been in place to
deal with it.
Quite naturally most cloud computing service providers prefer
to set up their servers at politically and economically stable
locations to avoid data loss issues due to unrests.
They must also have adequate means of backing up all data
at least two separate locations. In idea situation they should
have a hot backup site and a cold backup site.
The organization should also keep a backup copy in their
custody.
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30 May 2013
17. Data Portability
Even when you are in cloud you would still like to have control
over your data and hence, ensuring data portability is
essential.
Often clients complain about being locked in with service
providers and not being able to switch freely.
Issues regarding data portability can seriously jeopardize your
smooth transition to cloud.
Thus the clients must have an agreement of data portability
with the provider and must have an updated copy of the data
to be able to switch service provider, should there be such a
need.
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30 May 2013
18. Ensuring Data Portability and Interoperability
To preserve their ability to change vendors in the future,
organizations may attempt to avoid platforms or technologies
that "lock" customers into a particular product.
For example, it is challenging to separate from a vendor, in
part due to a lack of visibility into the vendor's infrastructure
and data storage schema.
Thus these nuances must be taken care of in the contract to
avoid future heart burn.
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30 May 2013
19. Transition from On-Premises set-up to the Virtual
One
Another issue can be with making the transition from on

premise set up to the virtual one.
Issues you may also face regarding moving virtual machines,
data migration and network configuration.
Planning ahead can help avoiding most of these problems
with cloud configuration.
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30 May 2013
20. Popularization of Cloud Computing:
The idea of cloud has been such popularized that there is a

rush of implementing virtualization amongst CIOs.
This has led to more complexities than solutions.
The issues with cloud implementation are mostly due to the
haste without proper analysis of ones situations and
requirements beforehand.
25
30 May 2013
21. Managing the Cloud
Although many dramatic predictions are being made about

the impact of cloud computing;
Among them, the claim that traditional IT departments will
become obsoleteresearch supports the conclusion that
cloud impacts are likely to be more gradual and less linear.
Nevertheless, the cloud does carry with it significant
disruption to business as usual, leading to two particular
management challenges, discussed next:
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30 May 2013
21.a. First Challenge
Once introduced into the enterprise, cloud services can be

easily updated or changed by business users without the
direct involvement of the IT Department.
And it is in the providers interests to develop functionality
that expands usage and spreads it across the organization.
So maintaining overall, strategic control of services can be
difficult.
This independence of the business when it comes to IT
services, also means that IT must work harder to gain the
ongoing attention of the customer and to extend its strategic
role.
.
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30 May 2013
21.b. Second Challenge
Second, organizations are still slow in developing

management capabilities and principles for operating with
cloud services.
Such strategies should focus on the multiple contracts
needed for a cloud ecosystem.
Effective supervision of usage, SLAs, performance,
robustness and business dependency is vital.
Monitoring the external providers services must be done, but
internal cloud monitoring should also be introduced.
Support provided by cloud providers can be variable, and
organizations should develop their own support services,
either internally or with third parties.
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30 May 2013
22.Dealing with Lock-ins
Exit strategies and lock-in risks are key concerns for

companies looking to exploit cloud computing.
There is always a switching cost for any company receiving
external services.
However, cloud providers have a significant additional
incentive to attempt to exploit lock-in.
If computing were to become a very liquid commodity, and if
switching to a lower-cost provider were too easy, margins
would rapidly become razor thin.
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30 May 2013
22. Dealing with Lock-ins (continued)
When contracting for a cloud service, executives should be

aware of two forms of lock-in.
The first form, technology lock-in, concerns the cost of moving
a business service from one cloud platform to another. Once
a company is on a particular platform, it is often more costeffective to purchase additional services compatible with
existing onesthus increasing lock-in.
A second form, institutional lock-in, occurs when technologies
become embedded within organizational routines and users
work practices. Particularly for users of software-as-a-service,
such institutionalism can have a serious impact on the ability
to switch cloud providers--which increases the severity of
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lock-in.
30 May 2013
22. Dealing with Lock-ins (continued)
Providers are likely to focus on increasing lock-ins as

competition reduces margins.
Competitors, however, will focus on reducing switching costs
for dominant players.
Specialist services and service integrators can help meet
these challenges.
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30 May 2013
23. Resolving the Tension
The potential tensions between enterprise executives, who

express the desire for command and control over business
services, and IT executives, who must adopt new modes of
operation when it comes to leveraging the power of the cloud.
Other tensions exist as well: for example, if cloud suppliers
are looking to commoditize their services, how will clients
achieve the customized services they desire to support
business agility and differentiation?
These tensions are not insoluble, but they do suggest that
providers and clients alike must consciously address a suite
of cloud challenges in the planning, contracting and
management of services.
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30 May 2013
24. Conclusion
Thus in conclusion;
Is cloud computing the savior of business?

Is it a threat to data security?
Is my data safe in the cloud domain?
Does it signal the demise of the corporate IT function entirely?
These are some of the questions executives ask about the

use of remote servers in the cloud, which enables
organizations to access on-demand computing capacity,
software and business functionality.
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30 May 2013
24. Conclusion (continued)
Cloud computing is still a young phenomenon, and it is

suffering through the growing pains typical of its age.
Its also subject to many overblown claims in the
marketplace, from ardent supporters and detractors alike.
Although the upside of cloud computing is considerable,
numerous challenges lie aheadamong them, like:
safeguarding data security and privacy,
defining the contractual relationship with providers,
dealing with lock-in and exit strategies,
and managing the cloud services.as a whole.
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30 May 2013
25. At the end of the presentation:
I wish to thank the organizers of CIO Summit and Expo for

organizing this wonderful event, with such an august
gathering.
I want to thank CIO for inviting me to be one of the speakers.
I specifically want to thank the audience for their interest and
patience.
For queries, please contact at: arshadsiddiqi@hotmail.com
Pakistan Zindabad!
35

Arshad Sidd Iq I

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Presentation by Dr.

Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

International Technology Integrators

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

From the US I have the following education:

I have over 40 years of hands on Information Communication and Technology

Some Major Projects completed recently from scratch include:

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

EMERGENCE OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing evolved greatly over the years. Since

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

ADVANTAGES OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud Computing has ensured the most needed shift from

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

The leading cloud service provider specialized in offering

Smooth transition from conventional IT infrastructure to cloud

Customized, enterprise-grade cloud application for better

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

As a CIO, you are likely to face challenges in convincing the

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Cloud Computing is usually an unknown concept to most of

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Organizational culture may act as an obstacle to

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

While implementing cloud you need to adhere to both the

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Organizations may not have the necessary tools or resources,

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Because of the on-demand, scalable nature of cloud

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

One of the major issues with cloud computing is, its

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Organization may not have a mechanism for certifying that

Internal, with in the organization

Threat and Security Risks must be taken very seriously from

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

An organization may not have a mechanism for certifying that

Has not been held for any malpractice before

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Often the major concern associated with cloud computing is data

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

The data security and privacy. is what the Potential

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

The cloud carries some new risks, notably, as has been

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

However, some of these risks are mitigated to a degree by

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Another issue can be with making the transition from on

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

The idea of cloud has been such popularized that there is a

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Although many dramatic predictions are being made about

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Once introduced into the enterprise, cloud services can be

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Second, organizations are still slow in developing

Presentation by Dr. Arshad Siddiqi

Exit strategies and lock-in risks are key concerns for