What is Smart Cloud Bench?

I am so glad you asked – and indeed I wish I had one when I worked in a University IT operations group. In short, the Smart Cloud Bench is a cleverly thought-out way to measure, compare and report on the performance of cloud service infrastructure and providers, coupled with the ability to measure cost-performance in a meaningful way.

This puts control back in the hands of the IT manager and director, providing a uniform way to ensure that you get maximum value from service providers. After all, isn’t one of the key reasons we are told the cloud will be great is that we can switch providers if we aren’t getting what we need?

AARNet’s Enterprise Services group, in collaboration with the Smart Services CRC, has developed the Smart Cloud Bench. We have just undertaken a 3-month trial of the system, which has been used in real-world systems for this period. This trial has been extended for a further period to provide more data points for further analysis.

Our ongoing trial has covered a number of commercial and research-sector focussed providers, turned up some fascinating results. I encourage you to get in touch should you have an interest in leveraging the system to help with your own cloud computing endeavours.

Smart Cloud Bench is part of a broader development project for a Smart Cloud Broker platform.

For more information contact James.Sankar@aarnet.edu.au