Embracing cloud technologies - 12 Feb 2023

Embracing cloud technologies - practical examples and analysis

In this article, we shall explore the world of cloud computing and how it has changed corporate activities. We will highlight our own experience using cloud technology and the creative ways we have applied it to foster business expansion and improve operations.

We give some strong reasons as to why moving to the cloud can be challenging and risky, but also demonstrate many positive sides to cloud based hosting.

We will show how leveraging cloud technology has allowed us to push the boundaries of what is possible, from using Azure and Google Cloud to develop a data testing platform and create audio files from text to using Microsoft Cognitive Services and ChatGPT.

We will examine the technical specifics of these solutions and discuss our experience using cloud computing, including the difficulties we encountered and the lessons we took away from it.

Our mission is to spread awareness about cloud computing and to show how beneficial it can be for companies of all sizes. Get ready for an exciting tour through the cloud technology world and all of its opportunities.

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We at Info Rhino think that adopting a continual learning mindset is essential to staying on top of technological advancements. We want to develop a platform for learning and information sharing by gathering specialists from diverse technology fields. CI/CD, digital transformation, DevOps, SRE, software, data, digital security, cloud computing, AI, ML, IoT, microservices, and other topics will all be covered in our events and activities.

Our goal is to create a community where senior engineers can connect, pick up new skills, and keep up with the most recent business developments that may affect technology in the future. We are devoted to providing unbiased information, training, and education to support people and organisations in their success by being technology agnostic.

The top three leading cloud providers - comparison

• Google Cloud Platform
• Microsoft Azure
• Amazon Web Services (GCP)

AWS has the broadest geographic reach globally, followed by Azure and GCP. Compared to other cloud providers, AWS has a presence in the most regions and availability zones, while Azure and GCP have rapidly increased their reach in recent years.

Cost: To assist consumers in estimating their expenditures, all three companies provide various price options and pricing calculators. However, because each provider offers a varied range of services and pricing models, comparing costs can be difficult. AWS generally costs more for comparable services as Azure and GCP, but it also provides more services and customisation choices.

Performance can vary significantly between geographies and availability zones, however all three providers offer great performance and minimal latency. While GCP has marginally better performance in some areas, such as big data processing and machine learning, AWS and Azure have more consistent performance across geographies and availability zones.

Integration and interoperability: While GCP has made progress in recent years to catch up, AWS and Azure offer a broader ecosystem of partners and third-party interfaces. AWS and Azure tend to be more adept at providing API compatibility with a wide range of tools and services than the other two providers.

Security is a top priority for all three providers, and they each offer a variety of security and compliance certifications, including ISO 27001 and SOC 1/2/3. However, because of their longer histories and bigger customer bases, AWS and Azure tend to be stronger in this area.

Managed Services: Both AWS and Azure provide a broad range of managed services, including databases, analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Although GCP has recently made large investments in this field and now provides a competitive range of managed services, it still lags behind AWS and Azure in terms of its portfolio and level of development.

User Experience: All three providers have easy-to-use web-based interfaces, although given to their longer histories and bigger client bases, AWS and Azure tend to excel in this regard. Although GCP has made large investments in recent years to enhance the user experience, it still lags behind AWS and Azure in terms of polish and maturity.

In conclusion, each of the three providers has strengths and disadvantages, but all three provide high levels of performance, security, and managed services. Your unique needs, including those related to price, performance, and interaction with already-existing products and services, will determine which supplier is best for you.

DevOps

The goal of DevOps is to unite development and operations teams in order to increase the efficiency and standard of software delivery through a set of techniques and a culture. Shortening the development lifecycle while ensuring continuous supply and deployment of high-quality, dependable software is the aim of DevOps.

DevOps includes a variety of procedures, instruments, and approaches, such as:

• Automating the software development process to make sure that code changes are continuously integrated, tested, and delivered to production is known as continuous integration and continuous deployment, or CI/CD.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) refers to the use of code rather than human setup to manage and deliver infrastructure.
• Monitoring and logging: Monitoring ongoing application and system performance and health, as well as gathering and analysing log data to identify problems and boost reliability.
• A large application can be divided into smaller, independent services that can be created, tested, and deployed separately using microservices.
• Containerization is the process of putting software into units that can be delivered and used reliably in many environments.
• Collaboration and communication: Promoting a culture of shared accountability for the delivery of software while fostering collaboration and communication between the development and operations teams.
• Faster and more dependable software delivery, enhanced collaboration and communication between the development and operations teams, and increased agility in meeting shifting business needs are all advantages of DevOps.

DevOps is a constant effort to enhance the software development process through automation, collaboration, and a focus on providing value to consumers. It is not a one-time initiative or a particular product.

CALMS in DevOps

The abbreviation CALMS is used to identify the main DevOps tenets. It represents:

• Culture: The DevOps culture emphasises cooperation and communication between the development and operations teams in order to accomplish common objectives.
• Automation: Automating the creation, testing, and deployment of applications helps to ensure repeatability and reliability while lowering the risk of human mistake.
• Lean: DevOps uses a lean methodology that stresses efficiency maximisation, waste minimization, and continuous improvement.
• Measurement: DevOps employs metrics and measurements to gather information about the effectiveness and performance of the environment, spot potential problem areas, and monitor development.
• Sharing: DevOps promotes collaboration and continuous development by encouraging the sharing of knowledge, tools, and processes between teams.

Can the cloud help with automation by reducing complexity?

Automation in the context of DevOps refers to the use of tools and procedures to speed up the creation, testing, and distribution of applications. Automation is a crucial component of the DevOps methodology because it enables organisations to produce results that are quicker, more dependable, and more consistent.

Another crucial DevOps principle is the idea of repetition leading to mastery. Organizations can find and fix inefficiencies and raise the general standard of their environment by repeating tasks and procedures. Organizations can find chances for growth and gain a thorough grasp of their surroundings with the aid of this method.

Additionally essential components of DevOps, repeatability and reliability are intimately related to automation. Organizations may reduce the risk of human error and guarantee that the environment is always operating at its best by automating operations and processes to make them repeatable and dependable. This can lower the risk of outage or performance degradation and help organisations enhance the pace and consistency of their deployments.

The "A" in DevOps CALMS stands for automation, which is crucial to helping enterprises reap the rewards of DevOps. Organizations may achieve repeatability, dependability, and consistency by automating operations and processes, which enables them to produce results more quickly, more effectively, and more efficiently.

Azure DevOps

Microsoft's Azure DevOps is a collection of services that offers a complete package for the creation and distribution of software. Teams can plan, build, test, and distribute software in a more dependable and efficient way thanks to Azure DevOps.

These services are part of Azure DevOps:

• Teams may plan, keep track of, and discuss their work with Azure Boards, a project management tool.
• Azure Repos: A source code version control solution that supports Team Foundation Version Control and Git (TFVC).
• Azure Pipelines: A CI/CD platform that enables teams to automate the development, testing, and deployment of apps.
• Azure Test Plans: A testing solution that supports continuous testing throughout the development process and can manage both manual and automated testing.
• A package management solution called Azure Artifacts makes it simple for team members to share packages and components.

Each of these services can be used independently or combined to offer a full DevOps solution. Azure DevOps is appropriate for teams of every size, from tiny startups to enormous corporations, as it is made to be adaptable and scalable.

Along with the core Azure DevOps services, a variety of supplemental services and extensions are also offered, including connection with well-known programmes like JIRA, GitHub, and Visual Studio.

Improved teamwork and communication, more rapid and dependable product delivery, and greater visibility and control over the software development process are all advantages of utilising Azure DevOps. Building, testing, and deploying applications in the cloud is made simple by the integration of Azure DevOps with other Azure services including Azure virtual machines, containers, and databases.

Atlassian cloud and on-premise tools for DevOps

Atlassian provides a range of tools for teamwork and software development. In order to facilitate continuous delivery and increase the effectiveness and dependability of software distribution, many of these tools are frequently utilised in DevOps methods.

The following are some of the most well-liked Atlassian tools for DevOps:

JIRA: A tool for planning, monitoring, and managing projects and issues that is helpful to teams. Agile project management frequently makes use of JIRA, which can be connected with other tools to provide continuous delivery.

Bitbucket: A solution for managing Git repositories that assists teams in maintaining and controlling their source code. Continuous integration, code review, and collaboration are frequently carried out using Bitbucket.

Bamboo: A CI/CD solution that enables teams to automate the creation, testing, and distribution of applications To offer a full DevOps solution, Bamboo interfaces with other Atlassian technologies like JIRA and Bitbucket.

Confluence: A platform for collaboration and documentation that promotes knowledge sharing among teams. Software development documentation and diagrams can be stored on Confluence, facilitating team collaboration and increasing productivity.

Trello: A platform for managing projects visually that aids in task organisation and prioritisation for teams. Trello can be used to manage a single task, a whole project, or the complete software development cycle.

These tools can be used separately or in tandem, and they include a variety of integrations and add-ons that make it simple to tailor them to particular DevOps requirements. Teams may enhance collaboration, boost visibility into their work, and expedite the software development process by using Atlassian products, which results in quicker and more dependable software delivery.

Example of solutions implemented in the cloud by Info Rhino

Performance Load Testing and Integration Testing

Here is a brief summary of a few of the important Azure capabilities that were utilised to create a platform for testing data:

• A managed relational database service called Azure SQL Database offers web applications a high-performance, scalable database.
• Unstructured data, including pictures and videos, may be stored in the cloud using Azure Blob Storage, which is both extremely scalable and safe.
• Building, deploying, and managing workflow-based applications and integrations are all made possible with Azure Logic Apps, a cloud-based service.
• A method for setting up, executing, and managing Docker containers on the cloud is Azure Docker Containers.

In order to provide a platform for testing data, our team has extensive expertise with these Azure functionalities. The platform was used to record calls made by. Net web applications to the Azure SQL database and to save the resulting data in Azure Blob Storage. The workflow was managed by the logic apps, and the data was kept in Docker containers so it could be replayed for load testing against the database and integration testing in between sprint releases. The platform was created using async C# to parallelize calls and increase its scalability and efficiency.

The team was able to increase the efficiency and dependability of software delivery since Azure offered a complete and scalable solution for the data testing platform.

Sample c# code from ChatGPT to save a query command to Azure Blob Container Storage

using System;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage.Blob;

namespace DataTestingPlatform
{
    class Program
    {
        static async Task Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Connection string for Azure SQL database
            string sqlConnectionString = "YOUR_SQL_CONNECTION_STRING";
            // Connection string for Azure Blob Storage
            string blobStorageConnectionString = "YOUR_BLOB_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING";

            // Save data to Azure SQL database
            using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(sqlConnectionString))
            {
                connection.Open();
                SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand("INSERT INTO [dbo].[WebApplicationData] ([Request], [Response]) VALUES (@Request, @Response)", connection);
                command.Parameters.AddWithValue("@Request", "sample request data");
                command.Parameters.AddWithValue("@Response", "sample response data");
                await command.ExecuteNonQueryAsync();
            }

            // Save data to Azure Blob Storage
            CloudStorageAccount storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(blobStorageConnectionString);
            CloudBlobClient blobClient = storageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient();
            CloudBlobContainer container = blobClient.GetContainerReference("webapplicationdata");
            await container.CreateIfNotExistsAsync();
            CloudBlockBlob blockBlob = container.GetBlockBlobReference("data.txt");
            await blockBlob.UploadTextAsync("sample data");
        }
    }
}

Audio, mp3 content text AI from voice generator application in C#

Our group created a console programme that can process text input and output audio files. The audio in videos can be included with this function, offering a simple and convenient method of consuming media. The programme was first created using Google Cloud, but due to more affordable licence prices, Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services was eventually chosen.

The programme turns the text into high-quality audio using speech synthesis and natural language processing tools from Azure Cognitive Services. It is possible to generate audio that matches the tone and style of the original text by customising the audio files to include various voices and speech patterns.

Our team was able to produce high-quality audio at a reasonable cost by utilising Azure Cognitive Services, which harnesses the power of cutting-edge AI technology. This approach has shown to be a useful tool for producing interesting and easily accessible material, and it highlights the adaptability and strength of cloud computing systems like Microsoft Azure.

We can generate content for videos for YouTube, Vimeo, and Rumble relatively easily.

Sample ChatGPT C# code to retrieve audio from text - not our code.

using System;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using System.Text;

namespace TextToSpeech
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string text = "Hello, this is an example of generating speech from text using Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services.";
            string subscriptionKey = "YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_KEY";
            string region = "YOUR_REGION";
            string host = $"https://{region}.tts.speech.microsoft.com/";
            string requestUri = $"cognitiveservices/v1";

            string accessToken;
            using (var client = new HttpClient())
            {
                client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", subscriptionKey);
                string tokenHost = $"{host}/sts/v1.0/issueToken";
                var result = client.PostAsync(tokenHost, new StringContent(string.Empty)).Result;
                accessToken = result.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
            }

            using (var client = new HttpClient())
            {
                string uri = $"{host}/{requestUri}/GenerateSpeech";
                var byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes($"{{\"text\":\"{text}\",\"voice\":{{\"language\":\"en-US\",\"gender\":\"Female\",\"name\":\"Microsoft Server Speech Text to Speech Voice (en-US, JessaRUS)\"}},\"format\":\"audio/wav\",\"options\":{{\"Audio-Quality\":\"High\"}}}}");
                using (var content = new ByteArrayContent(byteArray))
                {
                    content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json");
                    client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Authorization", $"Bearer {accessToken}");
                    client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("User-Agent", "TextToSpeechClient");
                    var result = client.PostAsync(uri, content).Result;
                    var audio = result.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync().Result;
                    Console.WriteLine($"Generated speech has been written to file speech.wav");
                    System.IO.File.WriteAllBytes("speech.wav", audio);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

AI based children's stories and content

Our CEO used ChatGPT and Dall-E to use artificial intelligence to create entertaining stories for his son. OpenAI's ChatGPT is a sophisticated language model that can produce text that resembles human speech in response to commands. In this instance, our CEO used ChatGPT to create stories for his son that were entertaining and instructive.

Our CEO used Dall-E, a cutting-edge AI technology that can produce stunning graphics from textual descriptions, to illustrate the narrative. Our CEO was able to create unique pictures that brought the story to life by receiving a description of the locations and characters.

Using ChatGPT and Dall-E together provided a potent and innovative way to come up with stories for kids that are both entertaining and educative.

Very much a fun activity, but we may look to monetise this in the future.

You can see the video here - https://youtu.be/lKUg7IO_15s

Drawbacks to cloud based hosting of your services and applications

Software engineers are not infrastructure experts - balance is needed

When using cloud hosting, enterprises frequently encounter the difficulty of maintaining the cloud-based infrastructure. This is due to the fact that cloud-based systems, unlike on-premise systems, require continual maintenance, monitoring, and updates to guarantee they continue to perform at their peak and satisfy the organization's evolving demands.

It is difficult to say if developers should devote as much time to infrastructure activities because it depends on the specific organization's aims and conditions. On the one hand, delegating some infrastructure duties to developers helps ensure that the company has a better understanding of the cloud environment and can spot problems and find solutions more rapidly. On the other side, if developers are diverted from creating new features and enhancing the core applications by spending too much time on infrastructure activities, these efforts may suffer. Additionally, developers might not be as knowledgeable about infrastructure as specialised infrastructure specialists.

Organizations must evaluate the trade-offs and choose the optimal strategy for their unique requirements. Others choose a hybrid strategy, where developers do some infrastructure duties and an infrastructure team handles more complicated ones. Some organisations decide to have a specialised infrastructure team in charge of administering the cloud environment.

On the other side, if developers are diverted from creating new features and enhancing the core applications by spending too much time on infrastructure activities, these efforts may suffer. Additionally, developers might not be as knowledgeable about infrastructure as specialised infrastructure specialists.

Ultimately, it's critical for businesses to strike the proper balance between keeping the cloud-based architecture operational and allowing developers to concentrate on what they do best: creating new apps and enhancing those that already exist.

Cloud Services are not as mature as on-premise solutions

Many of the cloud services provided by providers are not as developed as their on-premise counterparts, which presents another difficulty for cloud-based design. This is due to the fact that cloud technology is still in its infancy and is constantly developing, with new services and features being introduced all the time.

As a result, unlike on-premise systems, which have been tried and tested over many years, cloud services may not be as dependable, secure, or feature-rich. Organizations that depend heavily on their technological infrastructure and demand a high degree of stability and dependability may find this to be a cause for concern.

Additionally, businesses may discover that their selected supplier does not offer the cloud services they need, or that the services are too expensive, forcing them to explore for alternatives. This might lead to a lack of uniformity inside the company, which would make managing and keeping an eye on the cloud environment more challenging.

Finally, businesses may discover that the documentation for the cloud services they need is either incomplete or wrong. This could make it harder for businesses to successfully adopt, configure, and manage cloud services, which would result in higher prices and longer implementation times.

Volatile features - changing functionality, decommissioning, and preview features

The ability of a business to budget and prepare for the future may be significantly impacted if cloud providers discontinue services or alter their pricing policies.

These elements may make it challenging for businesses to completely adopt cloud technology and have faith that it will satisfy their demands in the long run. Before committing, it's critical for businesses to carefully assess the maturity and dependability of cloud services and to prepare how they will handle any potential dangers or restrictions.

The performance and stability of the cloud environment may suffer as a result of a lack of robustness and dependability.

Additionally, rather than being optimised for performance or security, cloud-based services are frequently intended for simplicity of use and quick deployment. Because of this, it may be challenging for businesses to set up their cloud environment to match their unique needs and to make sure that it complies with industry standards while also being secure. In conclusion, enterprises looking to implement a cloud-based architecture may face a substantial barrier due to the immaturity of some cloud-based services compared to on-premise alternatives. To ensure the long-term success of their cloud environment, organisations must carefully consider their alternatives and make plans for how they will handle these issues.

Positives of cloud hosting

Lower staff and hardware costs

The fact that cloud hosting makes deployments simpler and requires less maintenance of the infrastructure is one of its main advantages. With cloud hosting, businesses are relieved of the responsibility of acquiring, installing, and managing physical hardware. This frees up time and resources that may be used to create and enhance services and apps.

Additionally, without the need to buy and set up new gear, cloud hosting enables businesses to scale their resources up or down as necessary. Because they only pay for the resources they actually use, this flexibility enables enterprises to adapt swiftly to changes in demand while also saving money.

Access to a variety of tools and services that can assist businesses in managing and optimising their infrastructure more efficiently is another benefit of cloud hosting. This comprises products and services like monitoring, logging, and analytics, which can give important information about how an environment performs and aid businesses in finding and fixing problems more rapidly.

In conclusion, enterprises looking to implement a cloud-based architecture will greatly benefit from the decreased complexity and infrastructure maintenance requirements of cloud hosting. Cloud hosting enables enterprises to concentrate on offering the greatest user experience by freeing up time and resources, giving access to a variety of tools and services.

Scalability

Another significant advantage of cloud hosting is scalability. Without having to buy and set up new hardware, businesses can rapidly and inexpensively scale their resources up or down as needed with cloud hosting. This makes it possible for businesses to adapt to shifts in demand and guarantee that their environment is constantly functioning at its best.

For instance, if a company suddenly sees a spike in website traffic, they may easily scale their resources to meet the demand without having to worry about hardware limitations or performance deterioration. By doing this, businesses can prevent downtime and guarantee a great user experience. Furthermore, cloud hosting gives businesses a versatile and economical approach to increase their resources. Organizations don't have to spend money on new gear; they may only pay for the resources they really utilise. By doing this, businesses can save money and lessen the chance of environment over- or under-provisioning.

In conclusion, scalability is a crucial advantage of cloud hosting that enables businesses to quickly adapt to demand fluctuations, prevent downtime, and save money. Cloud hosting may assist enterprises in meeting user expectations and ensuring the success of their cloud environment by giving them a flexible and affordable solution to scale their resources.

How we are intending to scale a cryptocurrency platform using the cloud for our own solution

It is crucial that the infrastructure can deliver the dependability and performance that we require while designing our enterprise architecture. We must keep in mind that by being realistic about our SLAs and the Business Continuity Planning we require, we can often cut costs. In addition, website hosting companies may enable us to post robust websites at a fair price without incurring the long-term costs associated with cloud-based web hosting. Without a doubt, we shouldn't just begin by considering adopting the cloud. In our particular situation, we're trying to ease into the cloud since we need better performance and dependability.

The numerous technologies that will be applied within our crypto currency platform have been a topic of discussion. The analytical processor, a computation engine made specifically to handle time series data, is one such piece of technology. In addition to working with time series data, the platform's application also enables data to be retrieved, processed, and projected into new data sets that can then be retrieved back into reporting apps for dashboards and APIs. In order to retrieve information from APIs that provide cryptocurrency and other data, we also run additional programmes. In the near future, we can execute this on a desktop computer, a virtual machine, or an on-premises Windows Server.

For reliability and scalability reasons We have two options: transfer our operations to the cloud to run in a container instance or a virtual machine at different sites where we run processes from on-premises deploying to a website or cloud.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article

Thank you for taking the time to read our article on technology in the cloud and how we have embraced it. We hope you have gained a better understanding of the benefits of cloud hosting and some of the innovative uses we have implemented using the cloud.

In summary, cloud hosting offers organizations a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective way to manage their infrastructure and applications. By simplifying deployments, reducing infrastructure maintenance, and providing access to a wide range of tools and services, cloud hosting can help organizations focus on delivering the best possible user experience. Whether you are looking to improve the performance of your environment, respond to changes in demand, or save money, cloud hosting is a powerful tool that can help you achieve your goals.

Written with StackEdit.