Domino in the Cloud

May 2010

The evolution of the computing infrastructure paradigm that began with the transition from mainframe to client-server in the 1980s continues today with the growing adoption of cloud computing as the preferred model for delivering business applications.

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing whereby everything from computing power to infrastructure, applications and business processes to personal collaboration can be delivered as a service on demand. Ranging from hosted web solutions, such as salesforce.com, through to virtualised processing environments, the attraction of cloud computing is the scalability that allows the user to “switch on” both processing capacity and storage as required, changing the economics of computing from capital investment to a subscription based on actual consumption.

One Certus Solutions client to recognise the advantage of this approach is Melbourne-based Programmed Group - a provider of staffing, maintenance and project services. The Certus Enterprise Collaboration Services team has delivered a web-based HR application for Programmed Group built on the IBM Lotus Domino platform and deployed in the cloud.

With a workforce of over 11,000 employees, Programmed Group identified the need to improve collaboration and automate HR processes. Certus was engaged to deliver an application to be used by around 1000 users, spread across multiple departments and geographies, that would facilitate:

• Consistent conduct of annual performance reviews

• Centralised management of position descriptions

• Career planning activities

• Recording and monitoring of individual KPIs

• Access across the workforce to a Learning Library.

The application was expected to experience high demand from most of the users in April/May and again in October/November, coinciding with the six monthly and annual performance reviews. Outside of those times, usage would be much lighter, mainly limited to the HR department. The challenge therefore was to find a way of deploying the application so that it was easily accessible by all users, and also scalable to cater for peaks and troughs in usage.

The solution is Certus' first Domino application to be deployed in Amazon's cloud. It’s called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2 for short. Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier.

Amazon EC2's web service interface allows users to easily obtain and configure capacity, providing complete control of computing resources. The application reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, introducing quickly scalable capacity, both up and down, as computing requirements change.
By utilising Amazon EC2, Programmed Group can now adjust the capacity of both compute and storage resources as required, and there are no hefty up-front costs. The company can also administer the environment from any web browser, giving a new level of flexibility and functionality.

Through this approach, Certus has been able to leverage the strengths and rapid application development environment of the IBM Lotus Domino platform to deliver an enterprise collaboration solution in an otherwise Microsoft-based environment.