Considerations for Cloud-Hosted Content Delivery

November 8, 2011

Proprietary and Confidential

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516 W. Main St, Mason, Ohio 45040 www.Afidence.com

513.679.1802 Jim.Buxsel@Afidence.com

Jim Buxsel

CONSIDERATIONS FOR CLOUD-HOSTED CONTENT DELIVERY

Considerations for Cloud-Hosted Content Delivery

Introduction As many organizations explore cloud computing to improve their IT service offerings, content delivery applications can become logical candidates for consideration due to their potential ability to mitigate a complex set of problems. Common challenges include globally-dispersed networks, a large mobile user base, a myriad of supported technologies and bandwidth constraints. All of which can be obstacles to ensuring organizational content is delivered reliably and efficiently to end users. Consideration #1: Content Requirements The way a particular cloud-based system will be used, what types of content will be deployed and how much data will be stored may all be tied to ongoing service and usage costs. These are important factors as they can cause pricing and term structures to vary widely. Some content delivery vendors adopt the philosophy of an agnostic solution with the simple notion of pushing 1s and 0s. In essence, content is staged and delivered regardless of type or format published. Other providers may tailor their service for specific applications, such as endpoint delivery of video or distribution of security patches. Still others may blend the two approaches by supporting an array of content types but in fact, their core competency lies within a particular area. So in the early stage of evaluation it becomes critical to articulate what specific types of content are to be deployed within your organization and realistically align this with the overall supportability and pricing of solutions being considered. This exercise also includes determining the typical file sizes and delivery speed requirements of your application along with defining content retention rates. When evaluating delivery speed requirements, applications such as streaming video will typically require the delivery of large amounts of data that may put a strain on Internet egress points in a cloud model and will not be nearly as tolerant to latency as other services. When defining content retention rates, understanding how content is systematically maintained with a particular solution will help determine the level of administration that will be required to ensure storage levels and associated costs are maintained at efficiency. Consideration #2: Administration Minimizing network impact and extending reach while leveraging existing systems is a key attraction of the cloud content delivery model. Many services will send content as normal HTTP traffic which readily accommodates both internally and externally-connected clients. Some solutions may integrate with existing services through the use of APIs, which offers additional suitability for the enterprise customer. To further enhance efficiency, some vendors have even integrated managed client-based peer-to-peer sharing (the management aspect being the key distinguishing factor from consumer-based applications). This approach is actually more efficient for the corporate WAN as the number of peer systems increase since most of the content delivery traffic becomes LAN-based. Consideration #3: Security and Data Privacy Regulations around health and finance information as well as European Union data privacy considerations may restrict where information can be physically hosted and limit access to that information. It is also important to understand any data that is compiled at the client level and subsequently published back to the cloud service. In essence, certain businesses or applications may require the continued use of internally-hosted solutions as a means to comply with governance requirements.
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CONSIDERATIONS FOR CLOUD-HOSTED CONTENT DELIVERY

By nature, content delivery applications are powerful tools, so assessing both vendor posture and the application itself becomes critical to minimizing exposure from security vulnerabilities. For instance, a solidly built application offered from a provider with somewhat loose data center policies opens a potential hole in your organizations infrastructure that perhaps did not exist when all top tier content servers were hosted internally. Thus, taking a holistic approach to a security review of the cloud delivery solution will help ensure the data is secure throughout the duration of the content life cycle. Summary Depending on the size and complexity of an enterprise environment, internally-hosted content delivery applications can be labor-intensive and carry an array of architectural baggage. Cloud-based solutions can help reduce the administrative overhead and increase overall performance for the business-critical need of endpoint content delivery. Applications are available for the enterprise computing environment and becoming increasingly mature but migration of these services can be more appropriate for some than others depending on intended usage and governance policies.

2010-2011 Afidence, Inc. Proprietary & Confidential All Rights Reserved No Reproduction or Redistribution Without Written Permission -2-