EA Repository As A Service?

[Rich Anderson]

Hey, 

I was watching this video...
http://www.sparxsystems.com/resources/webinar/partners/cloud-server/amazon/Presentation.htm
... and reading through the documentation on the website (with some dread) and wondering if anyone has set up an "as a service" capability for EA repositories.   All I want is to just be able to sign up for the service and just connect my EA securely to it rather than going through all this configuration in AWS.  Has anyone done that? If not, why not?  Seems like a good idea to me.   Please let me know! 

[PeterHeintz]

Hi Rich,
it seems to me you assume, that someone host a service what you can use to store your repositories.

This is not the case. It is not someone, it is you to have to do that.

The cloud server service is a little application you install on any kind of server (physical, virtual) on your equipment or on equipment e.g. provided by Amazon.

So to get it running you need to get from somewhere a DB server and a server to install the EA cloud service.
Once done, the EA cloud service (program) communicates to the DB over ODBC and your EA client communicates to the EA cloud service via http rather than directly to the DB over ODBC.

[Geert Bellekens]

But it might indeed be a good idea to set up something like that and sell it as a service.

There must be a business case to support that.
If only there were 9 days in a week... So many ideas, so little time...

Geert

[PeterHeintz]

Yes, such a business case might work.
You can double your time by add 7 nights!

Anyhow it will not work if you do it as single person.

[Geert Bellekens]

Yes, such a business case might work.
You can double your time by add 7 nights!

I'm already trying that, but as I  experienced I need to stop working for at least 6 hours every night or  nothing at all gets done anymore.

Anyhow it will not work if you do it as single person.

If I would offer it then it would be as an offer of my company (Bellekens) which is starting to get a bit of reputation by now.
If the workload would get too big then I could always delegate the work to other consultants, or consider hiring someone to do the work for me..

Hmm, things to ponder about over the weekend 

Geert

[PeterHeintz]

Well, the very valuable stuff you provide as open source is ok to be used in enterprises.

But a service like that, has the risk that you might give up you EA guru existence and start following e.g. an Indian guru which give you the ultimate epiphany.

And 24/7 is also an issue.
 

[qwerty]

If I were decide for a company to outsource such a service, my decision would be "No". Data in a repos are most sensitive and placing them "somewhere" seems like taking a unneeded risk. Though I know quite some deciders which don't care :-/

q.

[Rich Anderson]

Thanks for all your thoughtful replies.  It seems very do-able to me, particularly on AWS, which is a fully encrypted and very secure environment when set up properly.  (I used to be responsible for IT security in a bank, and I'll tell you that AWS is miles ahead of most banks).    I would have no hesitation in putting a commercially sensitive EA repository on AWS as many organizations are putting much more sensitive data than that on AWS.  If you had such a service that would auto-provision a new EA instance, it seems to me that it could run more hands-off than hands-on.   

I wish I had the time...

[Uffe]

I've been thinking about this as well. But my background is in defence (although I'm in banking these days), and whenever I contemplate setting up a service like this I always come up against the security issue.

If you (the service provider) can't guarantee the security, which you certainly can't if you're using a third-party hosting service, you need to get the lawyers in to draw up contracts that limit your liability, which is where I tend to lose interest. Plus I've no idea how many customers might be interested. You wouldn't really get much from such a service that you couldn't set up for yourself with a few hours' work.

But from a technical perspective it is certainly doable. And I've been looking for an excuse to get out of full-time on-site consulting.

Hmm...........


/Uffe

[Geert Bellekens]

Maybe we should form a consortium with a group of VAR's
As a group we would have less issues supporting the services and the group would be more trustworthy to users then just a single consultant.
In terms of security I think there are technical solutions that allow for a fully secured solution as suggested by Rich

If we can get companies such as LieberLieber, Dunstan Thomas, eaDocX, Integrate It (Ramsay Millar) and the others on board this idea might just be able to fly...

Shall I send an email to the usual suspects referencing this thread?

Geert

[Uffe]

Well, I'm not actually a VAR... But please do. This sounds like a thing.

/Uffe

[Geert Bellekens]

Well, I'm not actually a VAR... But please do. This sounds like a thing.

/Uffe

You're at least a VA if you ask me.
I'll make sure to include you in the email.

Geert

[Glassboy]

If you do create Cloud Sparx as a Service, then you have scope to allow a second tranche of cooperation in building shareable models. 

[Geert Bellekens]

I've sent out following mail to everyone I could think of that does anything with EA as a consultant or reseller.
Please do not hesitate to forward it to anyone you think might be interested:

Hi Everyone,

While chatting on the sparx forum on this topic actually stumbled upon an idea that might have some future if supported by a consortium of trustworthy companies

So here's the deal, can we as a group offer a service as described there, a repository stored on a secure cloud location accessible by EA clients using the connect to cloud feature.

We could even go further and offer the EA client + repository as a service as well. I've seen this work quite well with a Remote Apps solution. The advantage of this approach over the "Repository as a Service" is that you can host the Remote Apps server close to the
database server, making it blazing fast, even over slow WAN connections, a problem the cloud solution would still have.

I can image multiple hosting scenario's that might actually sell. Similar to things like website hosting:

- Shared Repository hosting: We host the Repository on a shared database server and provide cloud access to it.
- Private Repository hosting: We host the Repository on a dedicated machine and provide cloud access to it.
- Shared EA SAAS: We provide a Remote Apps solution with a repository on a MySQL or SQL Server database on shared servers.
- Private EA SAAS: same thing as Shared EA SAAS, but then on dedicated machines.

Seems that among the lot of us we have enough knowledge on how to set this up so that it works, and that we are also with enough to provide (paying) support

I haven't really thought about payment options, but we could do something like an initial setup fee and then a monthly subscription fee depending on the number of users?
The private solutions would of course be a lot more expensive then the shared solutions, but I think companies are willing to pay good money to give all those worries about databases, EA upgrades, acces rights and all of that to someone else.

So what are your thoughts about an idea like this?

I've also included Tom O'Reilly in cc in order to a) maybe get his support for an initiative like this, but b) so he can tell us if Sparx is going to come up with a service like that in the near future, killing any chance of success of this venture.

PS. I tried to include the whole (active) EA community of VARS and EA consultants. If I forgot someone you think of please forward this mail to anyone who you think might be interested in joining this initiative

Geert

[PeterHeintz]

Glassboy’s comment:

If you do create Cloud Sparx as a Service, then you have scope to allow a second tranche of cooperation in building shareable models. 

is something interesting as well!

I develop lots of model content to be shared by other projects.

And at least what information the model represents, for sure could be usefull for other organizations as well.

As a very simple example, I have a considerable library of SysML ValueTypes Quantities and Units rather than just the SI base stuff.