Business Operations Through the Cloud Computing - Coursework Example

Introduction A company wishing to expand and have a competitive edge over other businesses operating in the same field needs to adopt cloud computing technology which guarantees innovation, better service delivery to customers and efficiency only if the necessary on-site IT infrastructure has been laid. It is widely acknowledged that IT operations and assets are evolving continuously and organizations are afraid of making loses from the disruptions caused by the existing the failures of the existing IT infrastructure. The internet, collaboration and mass media have opened channels for enabling organizations to expand and grow which were constrained by performance and geography constrictions (Natarajan, Dhinaharan & Nabendu, 2012). Business processes in a company are supported by applications which are managing information that the company holds as well as performing transactions. There is a platform or infrastructure that offers the storage for services, communications and processes. Cloud computing technologies will enable a company like SWI being an insurance company to create and use services on-demand as the traditional applications in the old desktops, infrastructure and platforms are replaced by cloud services. The organization must endorse a cost effective as well as energy efficient cloud computing technology that continually reduces environmental impact while interacting with the public. Cloud environment is dynamic and demands active involvement of the parties involved in the contract. Testing, monitoring and evaluation should be done periodically to ensure the new technology is working according to the industry specific standards. New laws governing cloud infrastructure, security threats as well as new requirements of compliance arise and demand for a prompt address (Srinivasan, 2014 p.23). PART A There are environmental considerations involved when implementing this new technology such as correct disposal of hardware, recycling, safe packaging disposal of materials and many others. The organization must endorse a cost effective as well as energy efficient cloud computing technology that continually reduces environmental impact while interacting with the public. The services of the organization should be delivered digitally and in a manner that takes care of the environment by reducing carbon footprint. Data processing centers emit carbon to the environment and hence significantly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. ICT lifecycle comprises procurement, operation and disposal and the emissions produced from the devices used in the cloud computing framework and other wastes need to be contained to preserve the climate from changing adversely. There are Australian acts and policies governing waste disposal and recycling in manner that takes care of the environmental impacts posed by the latter. National Waste Policy for instance offers the strategic national framework for managing waste and recovering resources up to 2020. National Environment Protection Measures (NEPMs) also advocates for the management of the environment with The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 offering a single national framework for reporting and disseminating companies’ information regarding the emissions of greenhouse gases. They cover the transportation of wastes for disposal as well as removal and destruction of data when the organization decides to shift to cloud computing platform. The old asset has got value and need not to be disposed off recklessly. Cloud computing technologies enable colocation and virtualization from the rationalization of the data centres since data is hosted and are strategies are all intended to achieve significant savings in efficiency and energy. Paper consumption is a threat to the environment and adopting cloud technology will reduce consumables as printing is minimized. Paper consumption will be reduced greatly through electronic archiving of documents. It also reduces space occupied benefiting the organization from the controlled access to the information stored in the data centres which offers a faster response to client’s request of the information. The organization boasts of a broad assets pool of end user devices and peripherals such as desktop PCs, printers, fax machines and copiers. Before shifting to cloud computing framework, the organization should carefully consider the whole-of-life environmental cost of devices before decision to replace them. It is a favorable option to extend the service life of the existing devices instead of purchasing other devices. The existing desktop PCs may be reconfigured despite the fact that new modern equipment could be more energy efficient compared to the old ones. Now the issue of cost comes in and demands a balanced assessment of the ultimate implications (Natarajan, Dhinaharan & Nabendu, 2012). The organization then ought to rationalize the existing devices and adopt optimization policies that will take care of the environment concerns. The device to staff ratio needs to be reduced to reduce the overall energy that is used to power the PCs as well as the energy that is emitted from the same. The organization need to adopt to multi-functional devices. The shift from the traditional network approach to the new technology reduces costs, improves service delivery as well as the ability to share data across the organization. It also releases many environmental savings as the equipment supporting duplicated circuits as well as surplus bandwidth are removed (Venkata, Malcolm & Greg, 2012). The disposal of the existing devices has to be in line with regulations. Reusing is considered by far the best environmental option. It may demand cleaning of any prior data in the devices and this requires expert companies which in turn add up other costs which will be definitely factored into end-of-life costs. If disposal is deemed necessary, then new mandatory policies and standards for disposal of the devices will transfer the environmental and social to the government. The organization should develop a comprehensive re-use and recycling policy and disposal procedure of the existing devices. It should source the necessary clearances from appropriate authority for recycling. The existing IT professionals in the organization need to promote greener environment when delivering their digital services by rationalizing data centres, colocation as well as virtualization all enabled by cloud computing technology. Hosting data will save the organization from financial losses as well as power consumption expenses which at the same time the environment from carbon emissions from the devices. The cloud computing technology to be adopted need to house software which put into sleep mode the PCs not in use. The professionals need also to investigate the carbon offset programs to offset ICT carbon emissions. The new technology implements desktop virtualization through the adoption of the ultra-small and thin clients on the desktop in turn reducing the rate of power consumption. The maintenance costs of the PCs is greatly reduced, security of data access is upgraded and the non-essential servers are switched off through the use of energy management software tools (Venkata, Malcolm & Greg, 2012). PART B There are various factors that need to be considered when evaluating the applications and the services that need to be adopted when shifting to the new technology. The infrastructure maturity as well as the services with respect to the customization level together with the in-house support need to be considered. The capability to integrate the new technology with the existing technology need to be considered too (Natarajan, Dhinaharan & Nabendu, 2012). The personnel that can effectively support the new technology as well as the new operating systems need to be available before the deployment. The company has an IT Manager, Server Operations Manager, Web Server Administrator, Email Server Administrator, Network Operations Manager, Network Operations Assistant, Helpdesk Manager, Helpdesk Assistant IT as well as a Web Developer. All these can effectively contain the new technology. The data management and security issues related to defining data sensitivity and how it is handled also need to be considered (Srinivasan, 2014 p.98). . Organizational factors such as resource planning, strategy and planning, financial value of the investment (ROI) and organizational change management need to be given due consideration. Security and privacy of the information and data being shared also need to be considered. Before deploying the new technology, the organization need to set strategies of mitigating the numerous security and data privacy challenges related to multi-tenant architectures, identity and access management (IAM), data loss and leakage, service availability (external threats to service, malicious insider), trans border information flow data privacy issues, security governance as well as resources issue that faced it before. The organization need also to focus on aspects of legal, governance, compliance and audit. This is meant to ensure that the cloud services offered are not contrary to preset laws and regulations (Venkata, Malcolm & Greg 2012). Before embarking on cloud services, the company should conduct a comprehensive industry-specific assessment of legal and compliance mandates. In order to minimize the effects of adverse events or disasters striking the company on its business processes, the company needs to adopt business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) planning. The company should conduct a prior diligent review of the cloud service provider before contracting to be sure whether their business requirements will be met. This entails considering the organizational factors above, existing IT infrastructure, legal, governance, compliance and audit aspects as well as security and privacy requirements. For a successful migration to cloud technologies, effective service management measures that relate to the levels of the services of the organization, liability agreements, contingency plans in case of failure as well as extended support need to be there. Other terms and conditions forming a part of the service contracts, incident, availability and capacity management together with scalability need to be available prior to adopting the new cloud technology (Srinivasan, 2014 p.129). . Part C The cloud technology offers a comprehensive means of providing the necessary infrastructure, rapidly and efficiently support uninterrupted services across the organization. The refreshment of the software, servers and desktops on a yearly basis increases costs. The company needs to adopt cloud computing technologies to shift from capex (capital expenditure) to OpeX (operational expenditure). SWI plans entail opening a new office in Broome WA, developing online helpdesk solution as well as a remote assistance facility that services localities, implementing Internet access as well as WIFI in all locations, automating deployment/upgrading of desktop environment, implementing sustainable/Green IT practises, upgrading existing desktop, networking and server environment and rationalizing the use of existing servers via the use of virtualization (decrease from 30 to approximately 7 servers). The existing IT staff will act as the interface between the business and the technology without concern of the underlying infrastructure. There will be a need to employ a database administrator though to coordinate the storage for data, services, communications and processes. Cloud computing technologies will enable the company like SWI being an insurance company to create and use services on-demand as the applications, infrastructure and platforms are replaced by cloud services (Aymerich, Fenu & Surcis, 2008, p. 113). The IT personnel like database and network administrator will be trained on setting up and configuration of the cloud network. The cloud service provider offers training manuals on how it provides services and how the infrastructure has to be laid. The training should take a month to ensure each staff is well informed on his/her roles. The staff to be trained is the available IT staff of the company on how to configure the servers and the entire network. A cloud provider trains the IT staff on state-of-the heart managed backup and firewalls, fully redundant hardware and services mirrored across the two offices, 24/7 real-time monitoring and all these ensure that data lose does not interrupt operations. The transactions on the data will be provided by the company (SWI) to the provider and is assumed to be correct and final and the provider can enter the offices of the company anytime to get clarifications on the data to be processed or getting things into order in case there are technical itches (Aymerich, Fenu & Surcis. 2008, p.114). The company will install servers and the cabling will be laid before the cloud service provider intervenes. The existing staff members need to be computer literate and be understanding the concepts of cloud computing and networking as a whole. In case the company has some extra IT staff necessary to be hired, they must be willing to do so before the cloud service provider commences its operations. In case the production rate increases, the company should hire additional staff if required to operate/manage new systems e.g. hiring of additional staff to handle increased volume of transactions or hiring of website administrator to manage a new website (Aymerich, Fenu & Surcis, 2008, p.115). A variety of insurance based applications will be installed in the servers to offer a unified source of information about insurance services for businesses, homes, car insurance as well as professional indemnity right. These applications allow staff to provide insurance quotes and assess claims. The servers will store information about insurance quotes and assess claims and make them accessible from both the offices. The reports that the system will handle range from general broking, claims to premium funding. The servers and the desktops will have not to be refreshed on a yearly basis as the cloud service provider will be responsible for that (Aymerich, Fenu & Surcis, 2008, p.117). PART D Cloud environment is dynamic and demands active involvement of the parties involved in the contract. Testing, monitoring and evaluation should be done periodically to ensure the new technology is working according to the industry specific standards. This at the same time ensures that security measures and the necessary privacy is being adhered to as well as the outlined policies and processes are being followed. New laws governing cloud infrastructure, security threats as well as new requirements of compliance arise and demand for a prompt address. In order to maintain operations that are in line with the applicable laws, the involved parties need to keep abreast of the legal as well as other necessities. As new technologies and laws keep on emerging, so does the security measures (Srinivasan, 2014 p.264). The organization should adopt the two major mechanisms to automate monitoring and testing of the new cloud technology which are Cloud Trust Protocol and Cloud Audit. CYBEX can also be effective if the ITU-T works on an X.1500 Cloud Auditing specification. There might be a potential lack of control over the data in the cloud that a client might possess and hence this can lead to difficulty in collecting from the latter. It can also consume more time to collect as well as add extra costs higher than from the backside of the firewall of the client. A client in such circumstances may face difficulties in comparing the data he/she has collected and determining the completeness and accuracy of the same (Venkata, Malcolm & Greg, 2012). Access and Bandwidth The access to the data across the cloud computing model by the client is mostly determined by its SLA. This may put a restriction on the ability of the client to collect large volumes of data sets as well as doing the same task in a forensically sound manner or rather in a manner that reasonably preserves relevant metadata. The issue of access and bandwidth is considered early enough to ensure that a protocol is established to ease collection of data at a considerable cost. Functionality This framework has a relation to the one above but with an outstanding difference. Granting the clients the rights of accessing a full range of data set does not guarantee the provision of the best degree of functionality that best suits the tasks that they have been assigned to. The provider as well as the client need to analyze the information requests as well as the pertinent data structure for materiality, relevance, accessibility and proportionality. To account for the relationship established in the SLA of both the provider and the client, complications that may arise need to be addressed. The provider may consider including “Discovery by Design” in order to attract other clients and hence both the provider and the client need to include an agreement of cooperation with each other to address the requests of discovery that may arise against each other. Hardware It is generally difficult to image cloud data source bit-by-bit due to obvious security constraints that are imposed. The providers may not be willing to grant access to their hardware more specifically when the environment is multi-tenant, where a client might have access to the data of another client in the same setting. The clients of the cloud need to notify the opposing counsel or even the courts of the forensic limitations that may crop. Forensics is not commonly warranted in cloud technologies as it is considered a data hierarchy that is structured or even virtualization (Venkata, Malcolm & Greg, 2012). Conclusion This paper has closely discussed the environmental concerns that have to be considered when implementing the new technology by SWI such as correct disposal of hardware, recycling, safe packaging disposal of materials and many others. The new technology should be cost effective and continually reduces environmental impact while interacting with the public. The existing IT staff will act as the interface between the business and the technology without concern of the underlying infrastructure. Cloud computing is enabled by virtualization and the creation of virtualized servers is a way of inviting the concept of cloud computing. The number of PCs and devices is greatly reduced, releasing the environment and costs incurred as well. The cloud technology offers a comprehensive means of providing the necessary infrastructure, rapidly and efficiently support uninterrupted services across the organization. Since cloud environment is dynamic, it requires active involvement of the parties involved in the contract. Testing, monitoring and evaluation should be done periodically to ensure the new technology is working according to the industry specific standards. In order to maintain operations that are in line with the applicable laws, the involved parties need to keep abreast of the legal as well as other necessities since new technologies and laws keep on emerging, so does the security measures. The company should seek for a cloud provider who is experienced in networking and hosting for a strong Service Level Agreement. This will also provide assurances of good performance, lower operational costs and offer an added to the expansion policy.  Bibliography F.M. Aymerich, G. Fenu, and S. Surcis. 2008. An approach to a cloud computing network: Applications of Digital Information and Web Technologies, 2008. ICADIWT 2008., pages 113-118, August 2008. Loaiza. C. 2015. Analysis of Applications and Success Factors of Cloud Computing for Small- and Medium-sized Businesses. Hamburg: Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag) - Computers - 88 pages. Srinivasan, S. 2014. Security, Trust, and Regulatory Aspects of Cloud Computing in Business Environments. IGI Global - Computers - 325 pages. Isaca, Information Systems Audit and Control Association (2011). IT Control Objectives for Cloud Computing: Controls and Assurance in the Cloud. ISACA - Cloud computing - 192 pages. Natarajan .M., Dhinaharan .N., Nabendu .C. 2012. Advances in Computing and Information Technology. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media. Venkata. J., Malcolm. O., Greg. P. 2012. Cloud Computing: Automating the Virtualized Data Centre. Indianapolis: Cisco Press. Read More

National Environment Protection Measures (NEPMs) also advocates for the management of the environment with The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 offering a single national framework for reporting and disseminating companies’ information regarding the emissions of greenhouse gases. They cover the transportation of wastes for disposal as well as removal and destruction of data when the organization decides to shift to cloud computing platform. The old asset has got value and need not to be disposed off recklessly.

Cloud computing technologies enable colocation and virtualization from the rationalization of the data centres since data is hosted and are strategies are all intended to achieve significant savings in efficiency and energy. Paper consumption is a threat to the environment and adopting cloud technology will reduce consumables as printing is minimized. Paper consumption will be reduced greatly through electronic archiving of documents. It also reduces space occupied benefiting the organization from the controlled access to the information stored in the data centres which offers a faster response to client’s request of the information.

The organization boasts of a broad assets pool of end user devices and peripherals such as desktop PCs, printers, fax machines and copiers. Before shifting to cloud computing framework, the organization should carefully consider the whole-of-life environmental cost of devices before decision to replace them. It is a favorable option to extend the service life of the existing devices instead of purchasing other devices. The existing desktop PCs may be reconfigured despite the fact that new modern equipment could be more energy efficient compared to the old ones.

Now the issue of cost comes in and demands a balanced assessment of the ultimate implications (Natarajan, Dhinaharan & Nabendu, 2012). The organization then ought to rationalize the existing devices and adopt optimization policies that will take care of the environment concerns. The device to staff ratio needs to be reduced to reduce the overall energy that is used to power the PCs as well as the energy that is emitted from the same. The organization need to adopt to multi-functional devices.

The shift from the traditional network approach to the new technology reduces costs, improves service delivery as well as the ability to share data across the organization. It also releases many environmental savings as the equipment supporting duplicated circuits as well as surplus bandwidth are removed (Venkata, Malcolm & Greg, 2012). The disposal of the existing devices has to be in line with regulations. Reusing is considered by far the best environmental option. It may demand cleaning of any prior data in the devices and this requires expert companies which in turn add up other costs which will be definitely factored into end-of-life costs.

If disposal is deemed necessary, then new mandatory policies and standards for disposal of the devices will transfer the environmental and social to the government. The organization should develop a comprehensive re-use and recycling policy and disposal procedure of the existing devices. It should source the necessary clearances from appropriate authority for recycling. The existing IT professionals in the organization need to promote greener environment when delivering their digital services by rationalizing data centres, colocation as well as virtualization all enabled by cloud computing technology.

Hosting data will save the organization from financial losses as well as power consumption expenses which at the same time the environment from carbon emissions from the devices. The cloud computing technology to be adopted need to house software which put into sleep mode the PCs not in use. The professionals need also to investigate the carbon offset programs to offset ICT carbon emissions. The new technology implements desktop virtualization through the adoption of the ultra-small and thin clients on the desktop in turn reducing the rate of power consumption.

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