Strategic Cloud Computing Implementation: Recommendations for BDG

This report analyzes the potential of cloud computing for BDG, a blood donation organization. It investigates how organizations evaluate the benefits and challenges of cloud adoption, including financial parameters and pilot project approaches. The report argues that cloud computing can address BDG's current issues, such as high infrastructure costs, scalability limitations, data availability concerns, and CRM integration challenges. It then details the cybersecurity risks associated with cloud migration, including compliance issues, data misuse, and data portability concerns, and offers recommendations to mitigate these risks. Finally, the report suggests appropriate service solutions, such as IAAS and SAAS, and recommends suitable cloud computing vendors like AWS and Microsoft Azure, to Dr. White, guiding BDG towards a strategic cloud implementation for its IT infrastructure and operations.

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
Student’s name
Name of the Institute

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
Contents
1 Introduction.........................................................................................................................................3
2 Investigate how organizations evaluate the benefits and challenges of Cloud adoption. Include
specific examples from the literature...........................................................................................................3
3 Is cloud computing a solution to the issues raised? Why or why not?.................................................5
4 Explain the cybersecurity risks of moving to the Cloud for BDG. What would you recommend to
deal with these risks?...................................................................................................................................7
5 Recommend to Dr White an appropriate service solution for adopting Cloud and suggest suitable
Cloud Computing Vendors..........................................................................................................................9
6 Conclusion/Recommendations..........................................................................................................10
Bibliography..............................................................................................................................................11

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
1 Introduction
Cloud computing is a buzzword in the market of disruption where new technologies and
new models of delivering technologies are emerging. Cloud is another new way of delivering
computer services that refers to on-demand, self-service access to software on Internet
infrastructure that permits users to access anything on the cloud from anywhere. There are
numerous benefits offered by adoption of cloud computing but at the same time there are
numerous challenges. It’s more than a decade that cloud service model has been introduced but
still it is not adopted widely (Avram, 2014). The purpose of this report is to discuss about how
the organizations can evaluate the benefits and challenges of cloud computing and decide for
themselves. It will also talk about how adopting cloud solutions will help the BDG with respect
to the issues faced by it currently followed by cloud risks and finally recommending appropriate
CSPs (Cloud service providers) to them. It is expected that this report would help to overcome
the dilemmas around the use of cloud computing.
2 Investigate how organizations evaluate the benefits and challenges of Cloud adoption.
Include specific examples from the literature.
No doubt, cloud adoption is the flavor of today but it comes with the benefits and challenges
and as a result of which, it becomes highly difficulty for the organization to assess its feasibility
to know whether the benefits of cloud computing outweighs its challenges (Passerini, Slawinski,
Villa, & Sunderam, 2014). There are challenges like data security, compliance issues, privacy
issues, data theft issues, building integrations between IAAS and SAAS if software does not
provide infrastructural services, cost of data migration. The benefits are attractive pricing, high
availability of servers, scalability and elasticity, high rerun on investment.

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
 One approach is to evaluate the benefits and challenges of Cloud adoptions is to conduct
a pilot project because even the organization estimates all sorts of costs; pilot will
actually give the confidence (Mamaghani, 2014). As part of pilot, first part is to identify
the challenges with current systems, then to evaluate the various CSPs in terms of their
capability, consider data migration activities cost and build a pilot project with smaller
data. 1 pilot project will give the BDG entire set of new activities and task introduced by
the Cloud adoption and retired activities after cloud adoption like no efforts for
maintaining Database employees and so on (Son, Lee, & Chang, 2014). BDG can then
compare the cost and the benefits and continue the project if it finds more benefits as
compared to challenges.
 Another approach is that organization should refers case studies from the similar industry
and world leaders that are using cloud systems to evaluate their return on investment
(Al-Ghifaili, & Al-Mashari, 2014). This approach is similar to the approach of
benchmarking in which the organizations learn from the system and processes of other
organizations in the industry.
 Also, as per the research, Clouds computing models are highly economical as compared
to the traditional on premise application because of the attractive pricing models offered
by the Cloud Service providers (CSPs). For example, there are models like on-demand
service, pay per use, metered by use and there is no upfront cost (Garg, Versteeg, &
Buyya, 2013). All this add up to better rerun on investment (ROI).Below is the more
detailed analysis:
Financial parameter Cloud models On-premise

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
Balance sheet There is no entry in balance
sheet because all payments are
transactional.
Hardware is asset
Income statement Capture expenses part Depreciation asset part
Upfront risk No upfront payment and
benefits are matched as per
cost structure
Upfront financial risk with
unclear return
Expenditure Operational expenses only Operational and capital
expense
Cash Flow More cash flow friendly Zero
3 Is cloud computing a solution to the issues raised? Why or why not?
Yes, Cloud computing is definitely a solution for the issues that are faced by the BDG.
Currently, BDG is majorly having 4 issues with their existing systems and below are the reasons
why cloud computing is perfect solution for these issues at BDG:
 Currently, BDG is having ERP systems which mean that it is having hardware, servers,
networks, storage installed on its premise. First of all, there is high cost of maintaining
infrastructure for the IT systems and ERP systems also needs to be upgraded to deal with
larger number of transactions which will further increase the cost for BDG. Using Cloud

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
computing, BDG need not to maintain the complete hardware and infrastructure at their
own premises but they can use them from the various vendors and pay them based on the
usage. This means that scaling up and down will become quite easy for the company
(Kovatsch, Lanter, & Shelby, 2014). Also, For bringing down the cost of hardware,
networks and servers, BDG can use Infrastructure as a service (IAAS) and for bringing
down the software maintenance and upgrade costs, it can also go for Software as a
service (SAA) where the service providers will take care of all the upgrades and the users
can access the application using the browser without need of installing anything in their
system.
 Another issue is that BDG is planning to add 10 more branches which will further
increase the technology infrastructure costs. With the adoption of cloud computing,
adding or decommissioning any branches will be quite easy (Manvi, & Shyam, 2014) and
also does not incur much expense. It is because you do not need to pay upfront for buying
the complete infrastructure for the new branches, you just need to increase the number of
subscriptions of the cloud for the users at new sites. Thus, there will be huge cost savings
as the cloud payment structure s quite flexible and organization can pay based on as you
go model.
 3rd issue faced by BDG is related to the timely availability of donor’s data and location
tracking and communication. This issue mostly occurs because of the downtime of the
ERP system. Cloud companies stores data at multiple places and also maintain backups in
multiple servers and thus able to afford 99.99% time of availability because when 1
instance or primary server is down for maintenance, then the other or secondary servers

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
are available to serve the users (August, Niculescu, & Shin, 2014). Thus, cloud systems
will improve the availability of data and provide timely access to donor’s data.
 Also, as current CRM systems are not integrated with social platforms, it makes difficult
for the BDG to inspire young donors to donate blood. Today, both the cloud computing
systems and social media platforms have become a buzz word in the society and both are
views as a standalone technology but the reality is different. The sales and marketing
team may be able to generate the leads from the social media but they also need to access
the enterprise data to generate and provide appropriate quotes and lead time to the leads.
Thus, Collaborated and integrated view will really add value for the organization. There
are cloud products like SAP’s sales on demand and Chatter by salesforce vendor that
integrate the enterprise data be it on premise or on cloud with the social media platforms
(Tang, 2016). If BDG is able to integrate its CRM systems with the social media
platforms, it becomes quite easy for an organization to recruit young people for donating
blood.
4 Explain the cybersecurity risks of moving to the Cloud for BDG. What would you
recommend to deal with these risks?
Compliance risks: The main risk is that the BDG does not know the location where its data is
stored when it is stored in clouds. It is because different CSPs (Cloud service providers) prefer to
stores the data in different ways like data center or disk farm which may or may not be in your
country. Also, even if the primary server/cloud is located in your country, there is possibility that
its backup server is located in some other country. For example, Singapore is located at strategic
location such that it is mostly safe from environment calamities and as a result of this many

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
organizations and bank prefer to have 1 copy of their data back up in that country. But this issue
with this data storage in different countries is that there are many government laws that prohibit
the data of any organization from going out of the country. In Switzerland, all banks and
financial firms have to keep data within the borders of the company and thus they prefer to have
their in House servers to comply with the policy (Paquette, Jaeger, & Wilson, 2010).
Data Misuse by Vendor: Another important issue is of privacy. Cloud service providers will
access to private data like customers, their profiles which can be used for marketing purpose and
that too when Google provider also have products like Google AdWords and Google AdSense
and their main business is to show customize advertisements to each person based on their
profile (Shayan, Azarnik, Chuprat, Karamizadeh, & Alizadeh, 2014). Amazon can also use data
for organizing its E-commerce strategy.
Data portability and removal risks: Once the data is put into the cloud, it will be difficult to
remove it. Even it is deleted, recycle bin is maintained in the cloud and no one knows if there is
anything called data shredder that will permanently remove the data from the cloud (Peng, Dutta,
& Choudhary, 2013). Otherwise, when the contract ends, cloud vendor still have access to
private data.
Other Security issues: Clouds are much more vulnerable to confidentiality attacks by intruders
as compared to when the data is hosted within the organization and protected by its firewall.
Other issues are Identity Access Management, Business continuity, operational integrity, data
protection, disaster recovery and so on (Kim, Kim, Lee, & Lee, 2009).
Recommendations for dealing with risks: The ways various providers like Google stores the
data and maintain its copies and backups across huge interconnected mesh of datacenters that it

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
becomes impossible to know the location of data and thus puts organization on higher of risk of
non-compliance. The recommendation to overcome this issue is that CSPs should be more
transparent about where they are starting the data and clear clause in the contract that any
financial penalty or any other due to non-compliance will be the responsibility of the Cloud
service providers and not BDG (Bhardwaj, Jain, & Jain, 2010). BDG can also ask from CSPs
about how they will ensure that the BDG’s data is not used for marketing purposes and if
anything found suspicious or wrong, there will be penalty (Wei, & Blake, 2010). Also, BDG
must ask the CSPs about what is its strategy about all these security issues like Business
continuity, data protection and add relevant clauses in the contract.
5 Recommend to Dr White an appropriate service solution for adopting Cloud and
suggest suitable Cloud Computing Vendors
There are numerous vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon Web services (AWS), IBM
that offers cloud services however there is difference in services. AWS and Microsoft Azure
focuses mainly on IAAS services i.e. storage, servers capabilities (Dilon, Wu, & Chang, 2010).
Now, if the BDG wants to run its applications on the cloud, it needs to have SAAS. Now, if the
current ERP BDG is using is having cloud capability, it can use that ERP at AWS. But the
biggest risk in such cases is that AWS and Microsoft are incomplete clouds in a sense that they
offer mainly storage services while BDG wants to run its applications also so if the go for 2
vendors one for SAAS and other for IAAS, there can be integration and compatibility issues that
can delay the project and increase the costs (Luo, Jin, Song, & Dong, 2011). Oracle is one of the
cloud vendor that has a complete stack and also has Oracle Fusion ERP. It is recommended that

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
BDG should select Oracle that have complete suite of clouds i.e. IAAS, PAAS and SAAS and
there is no need to build integrations (Subashini, & Kavitha, 2011).
Salesforce.com is a huge hit in the market because it does not push customers to move their
existing systems like Oracle, SAP to cloud but instead it is a complete system in itself providing
SAAS and IAAS services. Oracle and Salesforce are recommended vendors but salesforce.com
only provides CRM capability. Thus, it is recommended that BDG should use both Oracle and
Salesforce.com systems. Amazon and Microsoft Azure are more suitable for those organizations
that are looking to build their own In-house custom application. It is recommended that the
organization should select the vendor after a thorough discussion with internal and external
stakeholders. It would ensure that the effort and time is not wasted to manage the change within
the organization.
6 Conclusion/Recommendations
Like any other technology or delivery model, Cloud computing also has its pros and cons.
On one side, it provides lot of benefits but there are also various risks associated with it.
However, as far as issues at BDG are concerned, clouds computing will be a best choice. This is
the age of cloud computing and cloud yet has to reach its full potential. Business leaders like
Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon, and IBM already have invested heavily and still working to
make its implementation more risk free and compliant to laws. Also, IAAS provides storage and
suitable for organizations who are looking to develop their own custom application. BDG
already has ERP systems and if it goes for IAAS and storage for other party, there can be issues
like integration and so on. Thus, Oracle vendor which has complete house stack is
recommended.

ANALYZING IS SYSTEMS AT BDG
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