Business Analysis : Cloud Services

This case gives us a fundamental understanding of the concept of cloud computing and presents the advantages and issues of this IT infrastructure. This case gives a clear vision of the company’s current situation. Three main questions to consider

Enterprises around the world would be wise to heed 50 Cent’s mantra ”Get Rich or Die Tryin’” when considering the implications of not “getting” to the public cloud. We at Cocolevio, an implementation partner of Mooor Insights & Strategy, estimate that over 50% of IT spend will be going to public cloud vendors such as Amazon Web Services or SaaS vendors like Salesforce.com Inc. by 2019. This means there is around a $140B opportunity in this space. The cost savings, reduction in capital spending, speed to market, flexibility and global access derived from public cloud mean those enterprises that effectively use the public cloud are better positioned to “Get Rich” than their competitors who have higher cost structures and less nimble IT platforms. This trend is only set to continue as the business case for moving to public cloud only becomes more compelling, with the traditional arguments against public cloud around security and lack of control diminishing. Vendor lock-in will continue to be a concern but we see many companies willing to sacrifice a bit of lock-in for the many, many benefits of public cloud.

The focus of cloud computing is providing with scalable and a cheap on-demand computing infrastructure with a good quality of service levels. The process of the cloud computing involves a set of network enabled services that can be accessed in a simple and general way. Cloud computing provides with a unique value proposition for any organization to outsource their information and communication technology infrastructure. Moreover, the concept itself provides with a value proposition for an organization as using the cloud saves on cost, resources, and staff, and business opportunities for the organization (Katzan). An extensive connectivity of

Cloud computing has set a trend in the information technology arena that has sparked the interest of all who utilize the internet on purpose and unsuspectingly. Initially, the primary purpose of cloud computing was to provide a centralized data bank that organizations could use for quick data access. Its use has been quickly adapted, however, beyond business use to become the first option for personal use. The advantages and disadvantages of implementing such a shift from business to personal are varied, yet, statistically, according to the CISCO Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2014-2019 White Paper, its public use is on the rise. The report notes that “by 2019, 56 percent of the cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers, up from 30 percent in 2014 and by 2019, 44 percent of the cloud workloads will be in private cloud data centers, down from 70 percent in 2014”. Though disadvantages with regard to data security is prominent, users have deemed that its implementation will still promote greater benefits than loss.

Cloud computing is an emerging model where users can gain access to their applications from anywhere through their connected devices. A simplified user interface makes the infrastructure supporting the applications transparent to users. The applications reside in massively-scalable data centers where compute resources can be dynamically provisioned and shared to achieve significant economies of scale. A strong service management platform results in near-zero incremental management costs when more IT resources are added to the cloud. The proliferation of smart mobile devices, high speed wireless connectivity, and rich browser-based Web 2.0 interfaces has made the network-based cloud computing model not only practical but

Cloud Services and Virtualization continue to grow in popularity but are they right for your business? These technologies can reduce overhead operation costs, improve utilization of resources and provide a level of flexibility to the organization’s Information Technology (IT) system. Understanding that these technologies do and their pros and cons is the foundation of choosing the right features for your business. Cloud services offer three types of services; Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to meet the software, infrastructure needs of a business and provides them on a lease type of payment plan. Virtualization has three types of server virtualization, Full virtualization, Para-Virtualization and OS level Virtualization. Similar to Cloud services Virtualization types have features which may suit one business over another. Comparing the features provided by these technologies to total ownership of the IT system is also crucial in selecting the best services for your company as there can be an array of combinations of services contracted and internally owned features. While the perks of these technologies can be beneficial for an organization they should be carefully researched and tailored to the business strategic goals for

Recent technological advancements have resulted in an increased number of Internet-enabled devices, such as tablets and smartphones that can connect to corporate systems.These systems may also be running anywhere, including a public software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud, a

The purpose of this report is to understand the advantages of Cloud Computing for the small and medium enterprise (SMEs) and to

Microsoft Office 2003 remains a viable suite for many home and small business users. However, our future-oriented company should ideally upgrade its systems to support the latest version of Microsoft Office: Office 365. Office 365 is a subscription-based service relying heavily on cloud computing. This allows us to share files easier amongst ourselves and with our clients. Because it is possible to run several copies of Microsoft Office on the same system, the transition from Office 2003 to Office 365 will be smooth. It is recommended that the company upgrade its systems to Office 365 because of the improved cloud capabilities, and so that our systems do not become outdated too soon.

As a consultants of Lambton College in Toronto, we made some researches on Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is a cloud computing company which serves customer resource management products, training and consulting services. However, we are looking to move from using Excel to tracking student data to a Customer Resource Management. Where we are looking for Salesforce.com to compare it with its competitors. We will also provide some insights, comparisons with competitors, merits and demerits of Salesforce.com. We would like to investigate how it is really important to our college. How it is making difference with Excel on service basis analysis. We will also provide stats and graphs for Salesforce and their competitors. We

Microsoft, an industry leader with their Office suite of software products for over two decades, now offers much of the same functionality through the Internet with Office 365. Whereas their products would previously cost over a hundred dollars per user up front, Microsoft offers Office 365 for as little as $5 per user per month. Some of the features that it includes are business-class email, web conferencing, a public website, file sharing, shared calendars, and web versions of the most popular components of Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) ("Compare Office," n.d.). The company also offers, for a small amount more, the ability to get access to its desktop-based applications as well. This makes it an attractive option for those companies that may still be transitioning to the cloud, or for those who still rely on a particular part of the Office suite (Access, Publisher, etc.).

All of these features come together to provide an online solution to meet the demands of today 's organizations. By minimizing maintenance, reducing cost, and adding mobility and flexibility, Microsoft aims to offer a next generation solution that will reap all the benefits of the cloud.

One of the main benefits of cloud computing is that the company’s resources are used in other different ways and reduce the overall costs. It eliminates the need for a physical hardware computer and replace it with an online storage or a software delivered over the internet. For instance, government agencies are shifting its government IT infrastructure into the cloud and launch mobile and e-services for citizens and businesses. As an example of cloud applications in some countries: In China a company named Wang Fu Jing has deployed cloud services to share supply chain information and implement B2B e-commerce with suppliers (Kshetri, N. ,2011). Another example is in South Korea: IBM’s cloud computing centre provides architecture, skills and pilot projects for banking, telecommunications, and IT hosting services (Kshetri, N. ,2011). An Indian bank named ICICI’s uses Zoho’s applications to develop services such as personalised insurance for diabetes (Kshetri, N. ,2011). Cloud computing offers many services to companies and government agencies; applications, operating systems and data are secured in the cloud environment rather than on a physical computer that is exposed to the risk of lost, stolen or hardware failure. Compared to client-based computing, cloud-based software is easier to install, maintain and upgrade. Furthermore, mobile applications based on cloud computing are becoming increasingly popular. Ericsson estimates that there

Customers of cloud computing have shown their concerns about the incompatibility of switching their data from one cloud provider to another while cloud provider are ready to offer all their available services and resources to the cloud customers [3]. Particularly, the offered services are different for each a cloud provider where it comes up the problem of heterogeneity of services. Each provider develops its own services, solutions, and even some of them create a new APIs for their services. Consequently, the cloud customers have being limited to one specific cloud’s provider service format. According to [4], there are two consequences of this issue as (1) it gives the cloud provider the full power of controlling the market; (2) it may impact the consumer choices for a product. However, this issue may limit cloud computing environment growth by restricting the cloud services choices since the data will be kept locked-in in cloud computing bubble.

However, with the growing flexibility and greater opportunities for efficiency, there’s also risks that are associated with this change. Studies have shown that with the growing mobile workforce, security concerns have also increased because we’re now allowing additional access into the network, and must protect those endpoints. One way to mitigate the security risk is to create a policy for mobile devices so end users are aware of what is allowed, and what is prohibited. Many businesses have found that “the best way to address a growing mobile workforce and the deluge of mobile devices is to adopt cloud computing. When employees access company data via the cloud, they avoid storing anything directing on their mobile devices, thus decreasing the risk of that data being compromised. The cloud also adds a layer of security through the data center.” (PivotPoint) Another risk that is faced with the growing mobile workforce, is whether the current in-house technology can handle all of these devices. IT will be faced with ensuring that connections are smooth and efficient, and most importantly secure.