Accenture the Eureka Moment

7/31/2019 Accenture the Eureka Moment

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An Accenture Point of View

The Eureka Moment How the agile data center brings agility and growth


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Beating a path tohigh performanceWe believe the orientation towardsinfrastructure and operations as servicesthat has taken place in recent times willcontinue to drive technology trends overthe next five years, with technologicalelements such as Service-orientedArchitecture, Software-as-a-Service(SaaS), commoditization and cloudcomputing. To ease the transition to theseenvironments, agile IT structures help toorganize IT activities and infrastructureso that they can more rapidly meetthe growing need to scale up or down

according to market circumstances. At thesame time, agile IT enables IT operationsto shift from a fixed to a variable costmodel. As such, and in a climate of prudence with progress, agile IT can helpto position IT leaders as key contributorsto corporate success and growth.

Beyond consolidation and standardization,continued progress towards service-oriented database architectures andcapabilities requires automation andself-service provisioning. In our view,to demystify the notion of cloud-basedcomputing with respect to service-oriented database architectures andcapabilities, an organization will aimtowards implementation of architectureswhich support the Database Platform asa Service model. This model promises tomove much of the operational burdenof provisioning, configuration, scaling,and access control from the databaseadministrators (DBAs) to an automatedsolution, offering lower overall costs tousers and allowing consumers to focustheir time and energy on higher priorityinitiatives. To make a legitimate claimto operating the Database Platform as aService model, progress must be madetowards tightly mating IT governancewith specific enabling technologiessuch as virtualization. As Figure 1shows, a holistic view to shared servicesmust be embraced through businessservice and IT governance beyondthe traditional IT Infrastructure.

Figure 1: The Agile IT Infrastructure Architecture

Flexible and Agile IT Service Orchestration & Provisioning

CoreEnterprise

PrivateCloud

PublicCloud

Business Service& IT Governance

Business Process

BSM - Service Integration

Applications

IT InfrastructureServer, Storage, Database, Network, Facilities

Communications

End User Devices

Security


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A key enabling technology in the core enterprise isthe Oracle Database deployed using Real ApplicationClusters (RAC) on the Oracle Exadata DatabaseMachine. Oracle Exadata is hardware and softwareengineered and optimized for data warehousing,transaction processing (OLTP), and mixed workloads.

Enterprises should consider Oracle Exadata if they areseeking to employ business intelligence, analytics ordata warehouse implementations. Or they may wishto reduce non-discretionary expenditures throughdatabase consolidation, reduced power costs andreduced floor space. Oracle Exadata can improveDBA productivity with Oracle Database 11g R2 whileintroducing extreme performance for data warehouses,OLTP applications and mixed data workloads.

Why Oracle ExadataDatabase Machine?


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Eureka! The agile data center

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For companies that are serious aboutcloud computing, the eureka momenthas finally arrived. A cloud-enabledinfrastructure includes capabilitiesspecifically demanded by cloud computingsuch as support for elastic, on-demandallocation and deallocation of sharedresources (including elastic horizontalscaling), multi-tenant provisioning andself-service administration.

Organizations can exploit the collisionof technologies and ideas, such as theInformation Technology InfrastructureLibrary (ITIL), to take advantage of cloud computing and develop betterbusiness outcomes. As part of our long-term teaming with Oracle, Accenturehas seen the potential of the OracleExadata Database Machine in enabling atransformational strategy and roadmapto deliver an agile data center solution.Oracle Exadata fits into a cloud strategywhich demands high-performing serviceofferings and now, having announcedits 1,000th installation 2, is recognized asbeing widely accepted. Public and privatecloud solutions have their benefits andchallenges. Early public cloud effortsinclude Amazon RDS and Microsoft SQLAzure, which are promising in terms of

establishing the market need for such a

service, but which do not address threeimportant challenges: efficient multi-tenancy, elastic scalability, and databaseprivacy. Accenture argues that thesethree challenges must be overcomebefore outsourcing database softwareand management can be heralded as arecommended solution and a privatecloud solution is the best way forward.

IT organizations can develop capabilitieswhich move them towards agile ITsolutions such as the agile data center bycombining IT governance processes andenabling technologies to better meet theneeds of the business. With the emphasison an overall infrastructure strategy thatmakes progress towards a service-basedmodel, a Database Platform as a Servicesolution should be considered.

2http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/422468


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Businesses need to strive for high performance to remain profitableand continue to drive new opportunities into the marketplace.

What constitutes high performance?

Adaptive, executable strategies in achanging environment.

Creating competitive advantage bycontinual innovation.

Optimizing the organization to meet thestrategy and opportunities.

Maximizing productivity of a mission-critical workforce.

Driving a well-defined and executablesustainability agenda.

What does high performance mean for IT?

The need to continually optimizeoperational costs.

Demonstrating value back tothe businessspeed to market,service availability.

An infrastructure that can scale up anddown against business demandmovingto a flexible and agile environment.

Moving to a variable cost model ratherthan a static model.

Introducing an agenda for greening theIT enterprise.

To prevent IT from being seen as aninhibitor rather than enabler to businessinnovation, certain technologies areessential to create an IT infrastructurewhich directly supports the high-performance business rationale.First, service-oriented infrastructurearchitectures offer new opportunitiesfor organizations to improve operationalefficiency and agility at a lower pricepoint. Second, organizations areexploring virtualization and automationtechnologies such as cloud computingand Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)as part of a business strategy to

improve functionality, reduce costsand enhance operational effectiveness.And finally, agile infrastructures enableorganizations to quickly respondto new marketplace opportunities,achieve operational efficiencies,improve employee and workplaceperformance, and reinvigorate growth.

With the right IT infrastructure,executives can expect to:

Better serve the consumer: byintroducing provisionining, processing,storage, networks, and other

fundamental computing resourceswhere the consumer is able to deployand run arbitrary software, whichcan include operating systems andapplications. The consumer does notmanage or control the underlyingcloud infrastructure but has controlover operating systems, storage, anddeployed applications.

Develop better strategies andprocesses: by employing an automateddecommissioning and redeployment

strategy and processes. Publish standard rates for defined

classes of services by producing aService Catalog to provide a centralsource of information on the IT servicesdelivered by the service providerorganization. This helps enable all areasof the business to view an accurate,consistent picture of the IT services,their details and their status.

Vary consumer infrastructureabstraction: by moving consumers from

consuming products to services. Move to central delivery of services:

except where latency or legal issuesdictate otherwise.

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A roadmapto databasecloud As we have mentioned, the agile

data center approach is supported byconcepts such as Database Platformas a Service. For organizations to runDatabase Platform as a Service with anysignificant degree of legitimacy, theiroperations must meet certain criteria,such as elasticity.

Features and benefits resulting fromdatabase cloud include:

Self-service paradigm for databasedeployment and management.

Pre-packaged, pre-configureddatabase configurations.

One-click provisioning and deploymentof databases.

On-demand scalability of underlying platform.

Metering and chargeback forIT accountability.

Extreme agility for developers, withenterprise control for IT.

The challenge for Oracle Exadata isthat it does not alone entirely meetthe criteria for being elastic; forexample, once a node is added to aRAC configuration it will not likely beremoved once current capacity demandsare met.

By bringing together business andIT service management to the coreenterprise where enabling technologiessuch as RAC and Oracle Exadata aredeployed, these technologies canbe integrated into cloud servicesthat enable a flexible and agile ITinfrastructure. The roadmap to DatabasePlatform as a Service solution includesfive stages (see Figure 2):

IT silos: understand what is outthere, developing the databaseapplication portfolio.

Standardize technology:decide on common databasetechnology platforms.

Consolidate platforms: migratedatabase applications to thestandardized and consolidateddatabase platforms.

Shared services: develop the databaseservice catalog.

Cloud computing: Database Platformas a Service.

Figure 2: The Five-Stage Roadmap to Database Cloud

Shared Services

Agility

dbPaaS Customers

ConsolidatedPlatform

Efficiencyand Performance

ConsolidationCustomers

Standarized

Technology

SimplicityIT Silos

ArchitecturalComplexity

Cloud Computing

BusinessModularity

Cloud Customers

HeterogeneousDB Environments

Standardizeon Oracle

Oracle DBon Oracle Exadata

Oracle DBService Catalog

Oracle dbPaaS


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In our experience, when undertakingthe initial phase of any transformation

journey, the focus should be on the coreenterprise to take key steps towardsenabling cloud infrastructures. Anagile IT program requires a series of

decisions to be made to drive true valuerealization. The paradigm for Platformas a Service (PaaS) is an architecturethat is engineered to run as a scalable,elastic service that is available on acloud infrastructure. These architecturesare made available as shared servicesand offer some degree of self-service.When Database Platform as a Serviceis provided in a shared, multi-tenantenvironment, with automatic and elasticscaling, it can be used for simple orcomplex transactions (Figure 3).

So what is the best way to introduceDatabase Platform as a Service? Wesuggest beginning with tiered databaseservices, ranging from commodityvirtualized databases to standaloneplatforms to platforms such as Oracle

Exadata Database Machine. Each tierhas its own characteristics (see Figure4) and at these specific tiers, variouscombinations of servers, software,database service offerings, and disasterrecovery approaches can be leveraged.In this way, organizations can gain thesupport of a cloud-based model thatbrings service offerings which meet theirdatabase platform needs.

Having the right technologyconfigurations to support this tiered

approach is also essential (see Figure 5).

Making it happen

Figure 3: The Database Platform as a Service Paradigm

Augmentation

(Elastic Scaling)

Shared Services

Development and Test

Resource Sharing(Consolidation)

Data Cloud

Computer App Servers DBLoad

Balancer

Computer App Server

Storage APIFileRetrieval

Computer

App Servers

DatabaseLoad

Balancer

Iaas CloudTraditionalDC/Hosting

Provider

Source/Provisioning

Server

Developer

Data Cloud

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Figure 5: Technology Configurations to Support a Tiered Approach.

SERVERS SOFTWARE SERVICE DISASTER RECOVERY

Commodity platform Virtualized RDBMSHypervisor

On-SitePublicCloud

On-site Backup and Recovery

Standalone platform Multi-nodePhysical

High AvailabilityRDBMSClusterware

On-Site On-site Backup and RecoveryOff-site Standby

Oracle Exadata Database Machine Multi-nodePhysical

High AvailabilityRDBMSClusterware

On-Site On & Off-site Backup andRecoveryLocal and Remote Standby

Figure 4: Tiered Characteristics for Database Platform as a Service

SOLUTION PATTERN CHARACTERISTICS

Commodity platform Use virtual serversDatabase may be installed with other applicationsStandard memory installedTier 1 and 2 storageNo redundancy

On-site disaster recovery capability via backup and recoveryLowest performing

Standalone platform Multi-TenancyMemory installed based on mid-range useTier 1 storage for most environmentsClustered database platform / High Availability ArchitectureOn-site disaster recovery capability via backup and recoveryBetter performing

Oracle Exadata Database Machine Dedicated physical serversMaximum memory installedTier 1 storage (e.g. Oracle Exadata) for production environmentsClustered database platform / Maximum Availability ArchitectureOffsite disaster recovery capability with replicationHighest performing


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With a 20-year relationship with OracleCorporation, we have experiencedelivering solutions that are enablers forDatabase Platform as a Service models. Akey technology enabler provided by Oracleis Enterprise Manager 12c that featuresa cloud management layer providingservices for metering, chargeback,capacity planning, policy management,

self service provisioning, configurationmanagement and monitoring. ApplicationProgramming Interfaces (APIs) providedby these services are often integratedwith external Configuration ManagementDatabase (CMDB) and billing systems.

Cloud models can be deployed andmanaged with a range of physical systemtypes. The expectation is that withcorrectly executed models for multi-tenancy and the right service tier criteria,applications will be distributed across the

deployed infrastructure and control andoptimization of elasticity can be achieved.While management policies can restrictself-service deployments to lower-end pools of commodity servers usingvirtual assemblies, resource monitoringand metering can provide predictivecapabilities for application promotion tophysical regions which provide increasingenterprise value.

The various zones containing server poolscan host a range of database server

types that meet needs ranging fromcommodity virtual machines on sharedresource pools, to multi-tenant RealApplication Cluster (RAC) environmentswith lower availability and performancerequirements, to Oracle Exadata DatabaseMachines to service the highest levels of performance and availability.

With the monitoring and capacityplanning available in the IT servicemanagement layer, databases canbe identified for promotion to more

dedicated server pools based on businessrequirements and/or real performancemetrics as monitored by the businessand IT service layer. Quality of ServiceManagement dashboards display clusterperformance and the state of ServiceLevel Agreements (SLAs) and any resourcere-allocation recommendations should aworkload not be meeting its objective.

Checklist for changeTo enable Database Platform as aService or Cloud-based model usingOracle Enterprise Manager 12c,executives should:

Plan and set up the cloud infrastructure

Discover and baseline resources. Devise a consolidation strategy.

Consolidate resources.

Set up cloud.

Integrate a service catalogue

Build service templates and test them.

Package the applications.

Deploy them from a catalog.

Operate, maintain and chargeback to

the business

Monitor from end user, applicationowner and administration perspectives.

Operate, maintain and patch cloudinfrastructure.

Meter and optionally chargeback.

A eureka eraAnyone whose career has been kickstarted in the last thirty years cannotfail to be amazed by how technologyhas changed our professional andpersonal lives. But perhaps timing iseverything and now organizationsmust be prepared to take advantageof the latest eureka moment.

Going forward, enterprises will expect tohave an end-to-end view of operationalperformance. In a highly competitivelandscape, organizations that chooseinnovative thinking and the latesttechnology has to offer will attainthat eureka moment.


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ContactIf you would like to know more about howthe agile data center can transform yourinfrastructure and help your organizationachieve high performance, contact:

Patrick SullivanT: +1 312 693 3411

E: [email protected]. Mark A. GoldT: +1 703 947 3639E: [email protected]

Visit: www.accenture.com/oracle

About AccentureAccenture is a global managementconsulting, technology services andoutsourcing company, with more than

244,000 people serving clients in morethan 120 countries. Combining unparalleledexperience, comprehensive capabilitiesacross all industries and business functions,and extensive research on the worldsmost successful companies, Accenturecollaborates with clients to help thembecome high-performance businesses andgovernments. The company generatednet revenues of US$25.5 billion forthe fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011. Itshome page is www.accenture.com.

About OracleOracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) engineers hardwareand software to work together in the cloudand in your data center. With more than380,000 customersincluding 100 of theFortune 100in more than 145 countriesaround the globe, Oracle is the only vendorable to offer a complete technology

stack in which every layer is engineeredto work together as a single system.Oracles industry-leading on-premisesand cloud-based solutions give customerscomplete deployment flexibility andunmatched benefits including unbreakablesecurity, high availability, scalability,energy efficiency, powerful performance,and low total cost of ownership. Formore information, visit oracle.com.

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Accenture the Eureka Moment