Cloud Solution Guide. The Challenges and Benefits of Web Content Management in the Cloud.

Cloud Solution Guide

While many Web Content Management (WCM) vendors are happy to say that their software is “cloud-ready,” this often means little more than the fact that their software is certified to operate within a limited number of third-party Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments. Typically, organizations find themselves being offered solutions that appear to provide comprehensive enterprise cloud capability, but turn out to be little more than an option for basic deployment on a commercial cloud infrastructure service. The organization’s IT staff is then left to take care of all the details, including installing operating system images, maintaining and monitoring applications, applying patches and upgrades, and more. While the applications are technically “running in the cloud,” they are not equipped to take advantage of the true benefits of running in the cloud.

In this document, CoreMedia sets out some the benefits that businesses can achieve by adopting a rigorous and comprehensive approach to cloud computing, identifies the key challenges facing organizations looking to deploy WCM in the cloud, and outlines how CoreMedia is addressing these challenges.

The Challenges and Benefits of Web Content Management in the Cloud

CLARIFYING CLOUD CONCEPTS

When discussing cloud computing it’s essential to understand exactly which type of cloud one is referring to. There’s a world of diff erence between consumer cloud solutions, where consumers increasingly store digital content and access services, and more complex enter-prise cloud environments where virtualized infrastructure, applications and services are delivered over the Internet.

At the consumer level, cloud service providers have been busy shifting the focus from physical client devices to network-based services that can be delivered across them. At the enterprise level, however, the concept of “cloud computing” has a somewhat diff erent set of requirements and implications.

Vendors often talk about cloud computing as if it were a single generic concept. The reality is more complicated. All cloud solutions are built on a virtualized infrastructure made up of a range of diff erent compute, storage and networking components that provide an alternative to on-premise IT infrastructure and can help organizations

utilize their computing resources more eff ectively. But, before we can discuss the implications of enterprise cloud solutions, it’s necessary to distinguish

between the various service levels off erings that currently exist — and frequently coexist — within a single cloud deployment.

At the basic level are Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

solutions that provide access to a hosted array of physical, or more often, virtualized machines that are capable of scaling up on demand to meet unpredictable

performance requirements. IaaS solutions provide a wide range of resources in addition to computing

power. They can also support remote storage, networking, database and

Content Delivery Network (CDN) services. These types of systems off er considerable fl exibility and effi ciency, but often provide limited visibility and control over these hosted, virtualized resources.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud off erings, which typically sit on top of an IaaS implementation, off er access to a set of higher level services that includes creation, deployment, confi guration, and maintenance of software running in a cloud infrastruc-ture. PaaS solutions automate and simplify a wide range of activities including application design and development, versioning, database integration, security, scalability, storage, state management, and more. All of this happens in the background so that the customer does not have to worry about it. As with IaaS, PaaS systems are designed to scale automatically to match increases in demand.

lVirtual Machines lRemote Storage lDatabase Support lCDN Services

_PaaS

Platform-as-a-Service lCreation lDeployment lConfi guration lMaintenance

SaaS

Software-as-a-Service lFully Hosted

lOn-demand llSoftwareData

IaaS

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Finally, hosted software applications that operate entirely — and exclusively — in the cloud are referred to as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. SaaS software is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers and offers an alternative to applications installed and managed on local servers. SaaS offerings can provide a range of benefits for smaller companies including: 1) cost savings, 2) shorter time-to-market for new features, and 3) increased efficiencies. However, SaaS providers don’t typically provide enterprise customers with the ability to extend, customize, or fully monitor the performance of their solutions.

Understanding the distinctions between various levels of cloud service can make all the difference when selecting a software platform to run in a hosted cloud environment. There are a number of other factors that must be considered, including seamless support for hybrid cloud implementations that combine on-premise and hosted infrastructures, as well as the importance of cloud-centric software design. Organizations must also be aware of the financial, operational and performance considerations that combine to ensure successful cloud solutions. When measured against these criteria, the majority of WCM vendors fall flat.

Cloud Benefits and Enterprise Cloud Requirements

Most organizations turn to the cloud so that they can take advantage of an on-demand, virtualized cloud infrastructure to extend or even replace their own on-premise infrastructure.

Typical cloud benefits include the ability to:

J

J Maximize utilization of computing resources, while reducing risk exposure from having insufficient resources available for unexpected traffic peaks1

J

J Offload some of the costs and effort of IT operations to external resources

J

J Increase options and flexibility for operational teams with limited staff and resources

J

J Eliminate the need to run a data center at reduced capacity for 50 weeks out of the year in order to support the two weeks a year that an organization needs to run at peak levels

J

J React with more agility and flexibility when launching new online capabilities or extending existing functionality.

1 _{Typical datacenters operate at only 10-20% utilization, and it is not uncommon for large Web publishers to reserve as much as two thirds of their data}

These benefits are not a given, however. It’s not enough for vendors to say that their WCM offering can run in a cloud environment — there are significant cost and performance issues that first need to be considered. Running an enterprise WCM in the cloud is not something that should, or can, be done casually. If done improperly, a cloud implementation can end up causing more problems than it solves.

The following items are just a few of the challenges that must be addressed by any successful cloud implementation:

Cost: Although cloud is often positioned as a cheaper alternative to traditional on-premise deployments, cloud services can sometimes end up costing far more than an equivalent on-premise solution — particularly when then project involves large enterprise implementa-tions with low utilization rates. Similarly, when a solution involves running a consistent load on cloud servers for a long period of time, the costs over time can easily exceed the costs of the on-premise alternative.

Speed and agility: It is more important than ever for Web publishers to respond quickly to changes in the market. Effective cloud deployments can be activated faster than traditional IT environments. Building a dedicated on-premise data center is an expensive and time consuming task. It involves allocating budget for CAPEX, ordering servers, reserving rack space, ensuring power and cooling are in place, then mounting and setting up servers into the racks. The actual installation may take weeks, but the entire process can take months. A cloud infrastructure can be allocated and set up in a matter of minutes.

Deployment flexibility: Very few organizations are able — or even willing — to take on the costs and potential risk of moving their entire infrastructure to the cloud. Adopting a hybrid cloud approach can help them to leverage their current IT investments while still taking advantage of cloud flexibility.

Access to back-end software systems: As organizations place more of their services online, there’s a growing requirement for WCM systems to leverage data in their mission critical backend systems. Examples include user profiles and purchase histories in CRM systems, as well as product data and pricing in ERP systems. This data can be leveraged to deliver increasingly relevant, real time customer experiences online.

Bandwidth and latency: Successful cloud deployments require the right levels of bandwidth, and should be designed with sufficient latency to support data requests, the routing of requests to servers, the compiling of responses on the servicer, transmission to the client device and rendering the result on the client. However, simply increasing bandwidth will not guarantee that problems with latency will disappear. There are physical constraints on performance that no amount of additional bandwidth will solve — includ-ing distance, the underlyinclud-ing network infrastructure, server processinclud-ing power, data access speeds, and much more. An effective enterprise cloud implementation must take all of these factors into account.

24/7 resilience: With a global audience and the competition just one click away, website downtime due to maintenance, overload or other failures have to be avoided by all means. Security and privacy: Ensuring security of cloud-based Web applications is clearly a critical concern for all companies. In addition, some organizations also need to adhere to local privacy requirements.

Transparency: Organizations that rely on software that operates in a remote cloud environment often have far less visibility into how their software is being monitored and maintained than they would like.

CoreMedia believes that the ability to install and operate software in a hosted, virtualized infrastructure should be only the first stage — a minimum requirement for a true enterprise cloud solution. A truly enterprise-ready cloud implementation must address all the

challenges above and more.

Advantages of CoreMedia’s True Enterprise

Cloud Approach

CoreMedia’s flexible, component-based architecture is ideally suited to a distributed approach to software deployment, and the company ensures the scalability of its Web Content Management solutions by adding multiple replication servers and attached delivery nodes that can be installed in any location and linked together.

To maintain these strengths CoreMedia has invested significantly in its Cloud capabilities, incorporating technologies such as enhanced virtualization, scalable NoSQL storage, and deployment automation technology. The company’s WCM solutions are cloud-proven, with major enterprise customers already successfully deploying and operating CoreMedia in a variety of cloud environments.

CoreMedia offers enterprise-level performance, scalability, and stability for managing growing amounts of both editorial and user contributed content in any deployment environment (virtualized or traditional) — including on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments.

CoreMedia’s approach to the cloud provides enterprise customers with the tools they need to overcome the challenges of the cloud and meet the highest levels of performance and control.

The following are some of the key advantages of CoreMedia’s cloud approach.

Scalability and high availability

CoreMedia is a global leader in providing scalable, reliable Web content management solutions for complex online environments. The CoreMedia CMS is a proven scalable system. When traffi c explodes, the system size scales linearly and performs fl awlessly. By separating content from layout, assembly, and delivery, you don’t need to incur downtime to add new services.

CoreMedia also follows best practices used by some of the most heavily visited sites on the Internet. CoreMedia’s Elastic Social software leverages a unique NoSQL data store to support vast amounts of write and access traffi c — all on commodity hardware. Each component is loosely coupled with the others, allowing it to scale horizontally based on load requirements.

CoreMedia applies the same enterprise performance, visibility, and control that customers expect from their on-premise solutions to its cloud deployments, with customers also benefi ting from increased fl exibility, performance and cost savings.

Support for a wide range of complex cloud scenarios

The company’s Web Content Management solution has been successfully deployed across a range of cloud deployment options, including:

J

J Cloud for peak delivery requirements

J

J Hybrid Cloud deployment

J

J Everything in the Cloud deployment

Peak Delivery

J J Manage predictable peaks J J Support for micro-sites J J Customers with hosted CMS J J Short distance between host and cloud

Hybrid

J J Extend customers data centers J J Manage unpredictable peaks J J Reduce distance to consumers J J Flexible extension of resources

Everything

in the Cloud

J J Consistent cloud infrastructure J

J Simple test and demo setup J

Organizations such as Bild, Telefónica Germany (O2) and MLP are using CoreMedia’s cloud deployment approach for peak delivery support. Internet Broadcasting, Nation Media and T-Online run on hybrid cloud deployments; and Singapore Press Holdings deploys its entire Web infrastructure in the cloud. All these customers have experiences with complex, high-traffic Web properties. MLP hosts a customer self-service website for more than 700,000 customers. Bild is one of the most popular online publishers in Germany — serving approximately 2.6 billion page impressions per month.

Automated deployment

CoreMedia provides tools for automated and optimizing the deployment of its software in a variety of cloud environments. This enables faster cloud setup and improved control of cloud components. As organizations evolve from static websites to fully contextualized Web experience, all our services can be deployed as Web Applications inside an external application server — enabling faster setup of services and close integration with cloud-based PaaS providers.

High performance

CoreMedia supports some of the world’s highest traffic sites, so its capabilities are tested and proven on a daily basis. Additionally, CoreMedia has numerous customers who run its software in extremely low bandwidth and high latency environments. As a result, most of CoreMedia’s major software components — including the Studio UI and all Web applications included with the CoreMedia Blueprint — are constantly tested and optimized for low latency and low bandwidth consumption. In addition, all major backend components including Content Servers and the Content Application Engine (CAE) have been heavily optimized for high latency environment in recent years.

Customization

CoreMedia’s software components are fully customizable, whether they’re deployed in a cloud or on-premise deployment. Furthermore, CoreMedia’s public APIs provide a clear migration path to future versions of the product for all customers.

PaaS integration

Most “cloud” WCM solutions only operate at the most basic IaaS level. A true enterprise-ready WCM solution must also support a range of PaaS off erings, with the PaaS vendor providing access to higher level operations and a more complete solution stack, as well as maintaining and monitoring the software. For CoreMedia, this means that users need only upload their Web application to their PaaS provider to ensure they have enough capacity to address any peak delivery scenarios

CDN Integration

CoreMedia’s approach to Web caching is designed to balance the speed and fl exibility of our own sophisticated multi-tier caching infrastructure with the reduced costs and improved throughput of a CDN. CoreMedia addresses this need with an integration framework called the CoreMedia CDN Cache Connector. The CDN Cache Connector helps companies get the best of both worlds by automatically routing requests for highly dynamic or frequently updated content to our own caching servers, while allowing the CDN to take care of less time-sensitive content. CoreMedia works with its customers to determine the optimal CDN confi guration for their project and deploys a custom implementation that combines excellent support for static, cacheable requests on the origin for high-volume pages with multi-level, event-driven caching for more dynamic content.

CoreMedia Cache Connector

CDN Edge Server

Deliver static and dynamic content

CDN Cache

Stores static content for low-latency delivery

CoreMedia

Content Application Engine (CAE)

J

J Manage static content

J

J Generate dynamic content on demand

J

J Adjust balance of content flows

CONTENT

Dynamic Static

Scale into the cloud with CoreMedia

Before choosing a WCM vendor for any enterprise software deployment in the cloud, it’s necessary to make sure that the software provider can “walk the walk” not just “talk the talk” when it comes to the complexities of the cloud.

CoreMedia allows enterprises to deploy Web Content Management to the cloud while maintaining security, integrity, visibility, scalability and control. CoreMedia moves beyond the limited “cloud-ready” capabilities of other WCM platforms to put the best of cloud technology to work — making it significantly easier for organizations to deploy elements of their implementations to the cloud.

When faced with situations such as unpredictable or unusually high Web traffic demand, the need to expand into new markets, or the requirement to bring Web offerings forward more quickly, organizations can turn to CoreMedia regardless of the WCM cloud deployment they require — whether it’s on-premise, cloud, or hybrid.

About CoreMedia

CoreMedia is a leading provider of Web Content Management (WCM) software to organizations demanding engaging, context-driven online experiences for their customers regardless of channel or touchpoint. The company’s WCM suite offers unique business value by seamlessly integrating digital and social media assets, increasing editorial productivity and accelerating time to market in complex environments. As a result, businesses can more effectively execute their online strategies to engage users, build customer loyalty and ultimately drive greater revenue and profitability.

Established in 1996, CoreMedia is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, with offices in San Francisco, London, and Singapore. CoreMedia’s clients include global brands, such as the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Bertelsmann, BILD, CLAAS, Continental, EPCOS, Deutsche Telekom, Internet Broadcasting, JD Group, Tchibo, Telefónica Germany and ZDF.

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Tel + 1 .415 .371 .0400

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