SMART AIM Library

Cloud Migration for ISVs

SMART AIM Library

The SMART AIM Library is a scalable software library that empowers customers to achieve more on Microsoft Azure. This document introduces the base reference architecture and template library for SMART AIM.

Cloud service providers, such as Microsoft Azure, support the manual configuration of their cloud services. When the services are configured and deployed, the result is commonly referred to as ‘the cloud infrastructure’. Modern cloud service providers also support the creation of the services using scripts. This is referred to as Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Manually configuring the infrastructure for a cloud environment is time consuming and prone to errors. Infrastructure as Code is the configuration of cloud environments using scripts. Using an IaC approach reduces errors and costs and increases predictability. Our team of software developers have the experience and expertise to configure and deploy your cloud environment using our IaC skills and our SMART AIM Library.

Spanish Point have designed , developed and tested Microsoft Azure ARM (Azure Resource Manager) templates written in JSON and Azure DevOps Yaml pipeline.

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SMART AIM Library Features

Reusable ARM Templates

Reusable ARM Templates

IaC within Azure is achieved using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates. These define the objects to be created, their types, names and properties in a JSON file which can be understood by the ARM API. The templates support the definition of customer specific environmental configuration data so that it is easily changed, easily verified and easily tested.

Support inclusion in DevOps Pipelines

Support inclusion in DevOps Pipelines

The SMART AIM library components are designed and developed such that they can be included in DevOps pipelines. As library components are themselves designed to allow for parameterisation, such that they can specify the particular customer’s Azure environment, ensuring this parameterisation is effective within the pipelines is essential.

Full Version Control

Full Version Control

Using Azure Repo for version control is now common and best practice for software development projects. Using Version Control for the SMART AIM Library allows us to track changes we make to the library components over time.

As we create and modify the IaC library, the version control system will take a snapshot of the code. The version control system will save that snapshot permanently so we can recall it later if we identify an issue in an Azure environment. The objective is to be able to tie a particular cloud Azure environment back to the code components and version used to create the environment.

Access to the SMART AIM Library

The SMART AIM Library can be continuously used to scale and manage Customer Production Environments and it forms the ingredients of customer DevOps Environments. It consists of over 100 different Azure resource provisioning templates and associated automation scripts for the most common customer scenarios (e.g. Powershell, .Net scripts and Templates).

Access to the SMART AIM Library is retained by the customer and it is regularly updated with new functionality by Spanish Point Development teams when new custom code is developed on projects. The new custom code is created as reusable automated scripts that are then added to the SMART AIM Library and made available to all licensed customers.

For access, please fill in the contact form and the Spanish Point team will be in contact to explain how you can gain access to the components.