Assignment 2-Case Study -Week 2

1. CASE STUDY : SHOULD BUSINESSES MOVE TO THE CLOUD
MEMBERS OF GROUP 13:
HAJI ZULKIFFLEE B. HJ. SOFEE - P13D136P
HAJI NASSERUDDIN B. HJ. ABDUL JABAR - P13D142P
CHONG MIN FATT - P13D154P

2. INTRODUCTION
Cloud computing is a model of computing in which
computer processing, storage, software, and other
services are provided as a pool of virtualized resources
over a network, primarily the Internet. These clouds of
computing resources can be accessed on an as-needed
basis from any connected device and location. The term
"Cloud Computing" has appeared on the radar screen of
information systems/information technology and
business professionals over the last few years. The term
"Cloud" refers to the Internet and "Computing" refers to
the use of technology.

3. In 2009 the US National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory
developed a considered and well-written definition
distilled from a number of perspectives. Cloud
computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-
demand network access to a shared pool of configurable
computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage,
applications, and services) that can be rapidly
provisioned and released with minimal management
effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model
promotes availability and is composed of five essential
characteristics. The essential characteristic are on
demand self services, ubiquitous network access,
location independent resource pooling, rapid elasticity
and measured services. Cloud computing consists of
three different types of services.

4. The types are infrastructure as a service, platform as a
service and software as a service. Deployment models are
private cloud, community cloud, public cloud and hybrid
cloud. The emerging cloud abstracts infrastructure
complexities of servers, applications, data, and heterogeneous
platforms.

5. QUESTION 1 : WHAT BUSINESS BENEFITS DO
CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES PROVIDE? WHAT
PROBLEMS DO THEY SOLVE?
Cloud computing has become a standard method of
software operation for many businesses. It offers many
significant advantages, such as a potential cost savings,
ease of sharing data and applications, quickly find the
desired information, automatic backups, reduced support
and maintenance costs and improve the efficiencies.
ANSWER:

6. In the case they give us an example which uses
cloud computing at the marketplace that is Amazon.
Amazon they use the Web services division (AWS) to
get flexible computing power and data storage. This
cloud application helps Amazon get a large amount of
computing resources. According to the customer
provided information, the AWS can help Amazon
separate, allocate and arrange these resources. The
AWS also can help Amazon’s computing resources. On
the one hand, Cloud computing has brought a lot of
convenience for Amazon, making them save costs and
increase profits.

7. Moreover, cloud computing let Amazon spend more time
on other work which had more value. Because of that using
cloud computing can store large amounts of data and
information, many companies are using cloud computing.
Cloud computing helps us build a large database, and can
help us to quickly find the desired information. This improves
the work efficiency. “Big Data analytical techniques are
being used to deliver more detailed data and deliver it
quicker”(Top 10 business reasons to move to the cloud).
Another example for using the cloud is that it can help the
company save cost, like the Outback company who used
the cloud “to avoid taxing in-house system unnecessarily”.

8. In the case, the Zynga Company uses cloud
computing to automatic backup data and transmits
data. “Storing information in the cloud gives you almost
unlimited storage capacity” (Cloud Computing - Is it
Really All That Beneficial?). Cloud computing also can
reduce support and maintenance costs by storing large
amount of data and information as backup to improve
the efficiencies.
When a new game is in the test phase and the company
is not sure how many customers, they use the Amazon
cloud. “Then once game traffic stabilizes and reaches a
steady number, they would move the game on to their
private zcloud”.

9. This cloud transfer can help the Zynga Company solve
the space storage problems, and only pay for the resources
it ends up using. Using the cloud to transfer one game’s
large data is easier than using other old applications. In the
case, the InterContinental company use the cloud to provide
customers with more convenient services. According to use
the cloud, the InterContinental company lets their customers
receive data faster if the data is located on a server that is
physically close to them. With the development of society,
more and more multinational companies are using the cloud,
not only because of cost savings, but because people
worldwide can access the cloud, provided they have an
Internet connection.

10. Using the cloud computing, the two major disadvantages are
security and reliability. In this case study, Amazon's cloud service
has shown significant outages in 2011 and 2012, causing
serious consequences. There are many large sites are using
Amazon's cloud computing, so Amazon's cloud computing
failure will not only affect Amazon, but also spread to many
other companies and have a great impact on them. It also
because the user loses control over the software application and
becomes dependent on the provider to maintain, update and
manage it. If something goes wrong, the user does not have
direct access to the software and must depend on the provider
to fix the problem. If the provider is unresponsive or unable to fix
the problem quickly, the user can experience significant issues.
According to the Paris International Group of a report, after
investigation they found that each year there are about ten hours
or more the server fails.
QUESTION 2 : What are the disadvantages of cloud
computing?

11. . Another important issue is security. By using a cloud
system, your company’s sensitive data and information will
be stored on third-party servers, and you will probably
have very limited knowledge or control regarding this
information. If the provider has inadequate security or
encryption systems or procedures, or if a breach of these
systems or procedures occurs for any reason, your
company’s private and confidential data may become
compromised. This could have devastating effects, and
could cause legal problems for your company if third party
confidential information (for example, customer
information) is compromised.

12. Capacity planning is defined as the process of
predicting when a computer hardware system becomes
saturated to ensure that adequate computing resources
are available for work of different priorities and that the
firm has enough computing power for its current and
future needs. Indeed, Amazon must plan its future needs
to be capable of providing sufficient computing power for
both AWS and Amazon retail services, a lack of which will
result in the a fore mentioned rejection by subscribers.
QUESTION 3 : How do the concepts of capacity planning,
scalability, and TCO apply to this case? Apply these concepts
both to Amazon and to subscribers of its services.

13. Related to capacity planning is scalability, which is
defined as the ability of a computer, product, or system
to expand to serve a large number of users without
breaking down. Scalability is a ability of a system,
network or process to handle a growing amount of work
in capable manner or its ability to be enlarged to
accommodate that growth. Scalability relates to both
Amazon and AWS subscribers. Amazon must be able to
provide its customers with services that are scalable, as
it claims to do on its website: “Take advantage of our
massive compute capacity and storage to build whatever
kinds of applications your business demands, no matter
how fast it grows or how big it gets”.

14. Total Cost Ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended
to help buyer and owners determine the direct and indirect
cost of a product or system.
Amazon must provide hardware capacity planning and
scalability. With the development of information technology,
Amazon will have more and more customers. Not just
Amazon, but Amazon's customer requires a large database
to store a variety of data and information. This will help the
company grow. Amazon must bear the total TCO of its
services, while Amazon is also needed to maintain the
profitability of the company. However, the services'
subscribers benefit from not having to worry about these
issues.

15. As information technology and social development, there
have been more and more companies need cloud services.
First, the information Internet companies need to use cloud
services, such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, Blogspot,
Ebay, etc. Because the cloud computing can store large
information, and share the information. Second, large
multinational corporations, one of the advantages about the
cloud computing is that people from around the world can
get a faster connection
QUESTION 4 : What kinds of businesses are most likely to benefit
from using cloud Computing? Why?

16. Cloud services can help employees of multinational
corporations to establish good communication channels
and share the company's resources. This saves the cost
of the work to help multinational companies, improve
work efficiency. Meanwhile, cloud computing is not
perfect, it is sometimes also appear outage. Therefore, it
is recommended to use cloud computing company
“would be a major risk consider using another computing
service as a backup.” Enterprise-class business cloud
services can be hugely beneficial, even for quite small
businesses.

17. The use of cloud computing utility has increased
significantly in recent years and it appears to be a natural
evolution of the data centre to execute computing and
storage in a more scalable way. With such a significant
increase, the market is growing quickly and more companies
are providing new services with better features, including
isolated services.
With greater flexibility, lower infrastructure cost, and
lower operations overhead, there’s a lot to love about a
move to a cloud architecture and with private and hybrid
cloud options offering all the control and transparency an
organization could want, there’s no reason to fear cloud
computing anymore. We predict cloud computing will grow,
so developers should take it into ac-count.
Conclusion

18. Regardless of whether a cloud provider sells
services at a low level of abstraction like EC2 or
a higher level like AppEngine, we believe
computing, storage, and networking must all
focus on horizontal scalability of virtualized
resources rather than on single node
performance.

19. THANK YOU