Cloud Development & Scaling


We know that the cloud is not the answer to every problem; nor is it a fit for every customer. The cloud implementations we have delivered generally fit under one or both of the following headings:
  • Implementations that need massive compute, storage or bandwidth scale.
    These solutions maintain a consistently large footprint and need to leverage cloud services to reduce costs. In some cases, without the cloud, these types of applications may be cost-prohibitive to operate.
  • Implementations that need elastic compute, storage and/or bandwidth capacity.
    These solutions benefit shrink and grow with demand. For instance, as more users log into an application during the day, additional compute instances are brought online. As utilization wanes throughout the day, these compute instances are taken offline. This elastic scaling capability allows customers to get the benefits of massive scale, with the reduced costs of only paying for what is needed.

The cloud technologies we leverage include:
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS provides a wide array of services. Below are some of the most popular services that we have implemented:

  • Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows for virtual server instances to be created from machine templates. These virtual server instances can run a wide array of operating systems, including Linux, Windows Server and Solaris to name a few. EC2 works with other AWS services including Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing.
  • Simple Storage Service (S3) is a service for storing binary assets in the cloud.
  • SimpleDB provides non-relational data storage service where objects are simply stored and retrieved.
  • DynamoDB provides a massive, predictable and scalable NoSQL database service.
  • CloudFront is a Content Delivery Network (CDN). CloudFront distributes your files, videos and live-streams around the Internet at “edge locations.” This means that your content loads faster for you customers.
  • Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s “Artificial artificial intelligence”. This service allows programmers to create units of work that can only be completed by humans. Mechanical Turk opens new doors for process automation and cost control.

Microsoft Azure
Azure is Microsoft’s answer to the cloud. Azure’s feature-set tends to lag behind Amazon’s, but Microsoft’s support and tools (including telephone support) for Azure are second to none. Following are the most popular Azure services we have implemented:

  • Compute instances represent “virtual machines” that perform a specific job (or role). A single compute instance can be configured to do multiple jobs (multiple roles) to reduce compute instance costs. However, as applications receive more demand, it is ideal to have each compute instance responsible for a single role.
  • SQL Azure is essentially Microsoft SQL Server in the cloud. With just a few clicks, a secure database server can be created. Microsoft’s SQL Management Studio can connect to a SQL Azure instance to manage databases. SQL Azure also provides a web-based front-end for performing SQL Management tasks.
  • Blob Storage is Microsoft Azure’s service for storing binary data in the cloud. This can be anything from images and video to downloadable content or Lucene indexes.
  • Table Storage is Azure’s NoSQL database service. It provides for massive scalability with very fast performance.

Getting Started
If you would like to discuss your cloud options, please contact us.

Getting Started
If you would like to discuss your cloud options, please contact us.

Portfolio

Check out this small sampling of related projects our team members have worked on.