Enterprise big data-as-a-service

Abstract

A services platform acts as an intermediary between an existing enterprise analytic environment, and one or more underlying cloud service providers. The platform provides enterprise “big data-as-a-service,” by which an enterprise can seamlessly and easily provision new capacity for processing its analytic workload, and migrate data sources (e.g., data warehouse marts, enterprise data warehouses, analytic sandboxes, and the like) to the cloud for processing. The platform provides end-to-end enterprise class manageability of enterprise data assets, from data collection, aggregation, movement, staging and processing, all while providing service levels, security, access and governance. The platform integrates directly but seamlessly into the enterprise analytic stack, and existing analytics applications work as normal. The lifecycle of data analytics from movement to warehousing, however, is provided by the platform. The platform provides a way for the enterprise to translate its workloads into clusters of compute resources that meet its service level requirements.

1 . Apparatus to provision an enterprise data analytics application, comprising:
 one or more hardware processors;   computer memory holding computer program instructions executing in the one or more hardware processors, the computer program instructions configured to:
 receive from a user a data set defining a workload to be processed in a set of cloud compute resources, the data set comprising a volume of data, a service level requirement, and a workload engine type, wherein the volume of data identified in the data set is described by one of a set of high-level workload sizing categories; 
 receive one or more resource bundling options, wherein a resource bundling option is associated with a given public or private cloud and comprises availability information in the given public or private cloud of cloud compute resources that are one of: compute, memory, disk and network; and 
 in response to receiving the data set, provide instructions to instantiate a data cloud comprising a subset of the cloud compute resources, the subset being determined based at least in part on the high-level workload sizing category selected, the service level requirement, and the one or more resource bundling options, the data cloud including a workload engine as specified by the workload engine type, and wherein implementation details regarding instantiation of the subset of the cloud compute resources are not exposed to the user. 
   
     
     
         2 . The apparatus as described in  claim 1  wherein the subset of cloud compute resources is instantiated to provide a given service level at a given cost. 
     
     
         3 . The apparatus as described in  claim 1  wherein the computer program instructions are further configured to move data from one or more data sources into the workload engine. 
     
     
         4 . The apparatus as described in  claim 3  wherein the computer program instructions are further configured to perform a transformation on the data, wherein the transformation is one of: compression and encryption. 
     
     
         5 . The apparatus as described in  claim 3  wherein the data is moved as a one-time operation, by streaming, or on a scheduled basis. 
     
     
         6 . The apparatus as described in  claim 1  wherein the instructions are provided to a cloud service provider. 
     
     
         7 . The apparatus as described in  claim 3  wherein the one or more data sources comprises one of: files, databases, and data streams. 
     
     
         8 . The apparatus as described in  claim 1  wherein the workload engine is a database. 
     
     
         9 . The apparatus as described in  claim 1  wherein the computer program instructions are further configured to direct adjustment to the cloud compute resources as a workload is processed in the data cloud. 
     
     
         10 . The apparatus as described in  claim 9  wherein the cloud compute resources are adjusted to ensure compliance with the service level requirement specified in the data set. 
     
     
         11 . The apparatus as described in  claim 1  wherein the data cloud is a private data cloud associated only with the enterprise. 
     
     
         12 . The apparatus as described in  claim 1  wherein the high-level workload sizing categories are small, medium and large. 
     
     
         13 . A software-as-a-service apparatus operative in association with a computing cloud infrastructure having a set of cloud compute resources, comprising:
 one or more hardware processors;   computer memory holding computer program code executed by the one or more hardware processors to provision a data cloud with the cloud computing infrastructure, the computer program code configured to:
 receive from a user a data set defining a workload to be processed in a set of cloud compute resources, the data set comprising a volume of data, a service level requirement, and a workload engine type, wherein the volume of data is described by one of a set of high-level workload sizing categories; 
 receive one or more resource bundling options, wherein a resource bundling option is associated with a given public or private cloud and comprises availability information in the given public or private cloud of cloud compute resources that are one of: compute, memory, disk and network; and 
 responsive to receiving the data set, provide instructions to instantiate the data cloud comprising a subset of the cloud compute resources, the subset determined based at least in part on the high-level workload sizing category selected, the service level requirement, and the one or more resource bundling options, the data cloud including a workload engine as specified by the workload engine type, wherein implementation details regarding instantiation of the subset of the cloud compute resources are not exposed to the enterprise user. 
   
     
     
         14 . The software-as-a-service apparatus as described in  claim 13  wherein the subset of cloud compute resources is instantiated to provide a given service level at a given cost. 
     
     
         15 . The software-as-a-service apparatus as described in  claim 13  wherein the computer program code is further configured to direct adjustment to the cloud compute resources as a workload is processed in the data cloud. 
     
     
         16 . The software-as-a-service apparatus as described in  claim 15  wherein the cloud compute resources are adjusted to ensure compliance with the service level requirement specified in the data set. 
     
     
         17 . The software-as-a-service apparatus as described in  claim 13  wherein the service level requirement is specified with respect to a given time limit and at a particular cost. 
     
     
         18 . The software-as-a-service apparatus as described in  claim 13  wherein the instructions also configure a workload translator in association with the subset of the cloud compute resources. 
     
     
         19 . The software-as-a-service apparatus as described in  claim 13  wherein the instructions also configured one or more data movers for moving into the workload engine data from one or more data sources. 
     
     
         20 . The software-as-a-service apparatus as described in  claim 13  wherein the workload engine is configured to perform data analytics.