The REIMS Infrastructure
Among the main advantages of using Cloud Computing are on demand scalability, fast deployment, infrastructure set-up costs, pay as you use operational costs, plus the fact that infrastructure maintenance and upgrades are provided by the Cloud Service Provider. The unique Matrix architecture and service orientation of REIMS are particularly suitable for Cloud installation, enabling the customer to maximise the benefits of this new and dynamic technology.
Cloud Computing is a natural environment for REIMS as the REIMS Virtual Business Networking Architecture supports virtualisation as well as local and remote distributed deployment.
The REIMS Integration products have been developed to run as premise-based, managed service or Cloud Computing environments and they offer secure integration, access and remote monitoring. A REIMS configuration will provide the flexibility and scalability needed to run efficiently in the Cloud, or across the Cloud facilities of more than one Cloud Service Provider. The most common and easy to use facilities currently available from the various Cloud Service Providers such as Amazon are based on virtualised Linux servers often using the MySQL database and Apache Web Servers and REIMS runs in this type of environment as a standard option.
The base level Cloud-based security, data confidentiality protection and user access control are handled by the Cloud Service Provider but REIMS complements these features through the appropriate REIMS modules such as CATS (Combined Audit Trail & Security) Server that provides detailed reporting and auditing functions that facilitate full internal transparency but external security of all transactions and allows detailed systems monitoring through browser-based, remote access.
A key Cloud deployment issue related to resource allocation and the cost of infrastructure is whether an application is single-tenanted or multi-tenanted. Through the REIMS VBN Architecture, REIMS can be deployed on a single Cloud-based server or multiple servers for one customer. Alternatively multiple REIMS environments for multiple customers can be implemented on one server to achieve a multi-tenanted solution, so there is no restriction.
