CLOUD COMPUTING FOR LIBRARY SERVICES

Continuum of Abstraction  Locally owned and installed servers  Co-located servers  Co-located virtual servers  Web hosting  Server hosting services  Application Service Provider  Software-as-a-service  Platform-as-a-service

Cloud computing – basic understanding  Any arrangement where the library relies on some kind of remote hosting environment for major automation components  Includes:  Almost any vender-hosted offering

Cloud computing – formal definitions  Highly abstracted computing model  Utility model  Provisioned on demand  Scaled according to variable needs  Discrete virtual machines  Compute cycles on demand  Storage on demand  Elastic – consumption of resources can contract and expand according to demand

Hosting Services  Web hosting  Web site only  Standard support for PHP, Perl, and other dynamic page generation  Dedicated Server  Appropriate for applications that have not been tested and deployed in virtual environments  Virtual server  Requires software that supports virtualization

Advantages  Increasing opportunities to eliminate local servers and tech support  Most libraries cannot support the cost of systems and network administrators which command higher salaries than professional librarians  Eliminate hardware replacement, operating systems upgrades, etc.

Software-as-a-Service  Complete software application, customized for customer use  Eg: Salesforce.com

Platform-as-a-Platform as a Service  Virtualized computing environment for deployment of software  Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Storage-as-a-Service  Provisioned, on-demand storage  Bundled to, or separate from other cloud services

Private vs Public cloud  Public – multi-tenant provisioning  Locically isolated computing environment  Theoretical security / competitive concerns  Private – cloud architecture, institutionally owned/controlled  Leverages cost and scalability  Enforces physical segration

Examples of cloud offerings by library vendors

Application Service Provider  Expxtech Horizon in 2000  Sirsi Unicorn (sirsi.net) 2005  DRA Classic pilot ASP program in 2000  Auto-Graphics acquired Macess Library Systems in 2001 > AGent VERSO offered primarily as hosted service  Virtua ASP 2003  Polaris Hosted launched in 2005

Virtualization  SirsiDynix virtualization for Symphony implemented in March 2010  SirsiDynix virtualization for Horizon implemented in Dec 2009

Software-as-a-Service  Common marketing term  Often applied to ASP  Subscription-based vendor-hosted offerings

Serials Solutions  All offerings delivered as a service:  360 Search  360 Link  Summon

SirsiDynix  Strategic emphasis on SaaS  Technically more of a ASP model  Many local installs transitioning to SaaS

LibLime  LibLime Enterprise Koha deployed in Amazon EC2  LAMP stack implemented on Virtual Machine Image  Ability to meet larger site requirements through high-performance cloud-delivered platform.

OCLC  WorldCat Cataloging  WorldCat ILL  WorldCat Local  WebScale Management Services  Private cloud