Cloud Computing: Analysis & Recommendations for Regional Gardens Ltd

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of cloud computing solutions for Regional Gardens Ltd, a company with various gardening enterprises. It evaluates the suitability of different cloud models, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), considering the company's existing infrastructure and future needs. The report discusses the benefits and drawbacks of each model, focusing on factors like cost-effectiveness, security, scalability, and ease of implementation. It also explores different approaches to office automation, recommending an ad hoc approach for its simplicity and speed. The analysis leads to a recommendation of PaaS for Regional Gardens, highlighting its advantages in leveraging the existing data center and providing a customizable cloud service. The report also addresses potential problems associated with PaaS, such as security concerns and performance issues, and suggests mitigation strategies. The overall goal is to provide Regional Gardens with a clear roadmap for migrating to the cloud and improving its IT infrastructure.

Running head: CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud Computing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

CLOUD COMPUTING
Table of Contents
Answer 1..............................................................................................................................2
Answer 2............................................................................................................................13
2.1. Ad hoc Approach....................................................................................................14
2.2. Structured Approach..............................................................................................14
2.3. Chosen approach....................................................................................................15
Answer 3............................................................................................................................15
3.1. Differences between IaaS and PaaS.......................................................................15
Answer 4............................................................................................................................17
4.1. Differences among IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.....................................................................17
4.2. Recommended Cloud Model for Regional Gardens...............................................18
4.3. Problems associated with the recommended Model............................................19
References.........................................................................................................................21
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Answer 1
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Slide Note: This slide provides the outline of the topics that will be covered in the presentation
Slide Note: Cloud computing refers to the method of developing information technology
services. The services are provided and retrieved over internet. This on demand delivery of the
services will be very beneficial for Regional Gardens as it will automate all the business process
running within the organization.
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Slide Note: The main advantage of cloud computing is that it enables a medium sized company
like Regional Garden to compute their different business processes with limited resources. It
allows a particular company to drive down the costs of IT resources and avoid large expenditure
on hardware updates Therefore, cloud provides a cost effective solution for the business.
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Slide Note: Regional Garden is a medium sized enterprise and will be highly benefited by cloud
computing. Regional Gardens runs a number of gardening enterprise and therefore, it is
necessary for the organization to integrate and automate their business process in a single
place. Cloud will help the organization in achieving the same.
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Slide Note: The three major cloud architectures include IaaS, or infrastructure as a service, PaaS
or platform as a service and SaaS or software as a service. The infrastructure as a service and
platform as a service provides more control to the client in comparison to Software as a Service,
which is mainly controlled by the service provider.
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Slide Note: Infrastructure as a service can be defined as a type of cloud computing that
generally requires virtualized computing resources over internet. It is one of the main
categories of cloud computing. It provides the users with instant computing resources that are
managed over internet.
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Slide Note: Platform as a service provides a platform for deploying the cloud services in the
business. It enables the clients in deploying customizable cloud services in their business. It
provides the clients with the power of controlling and customizing the services as requirement.
In short, it provides a platform for deploying the customizable cloud services.
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Slide Note: Software as service or SaaS is a cloud computing service where a third party
provider hosts different application over internet and it can be accessed by the clients. Since
the third party provider is responsible for managing and controlling the services, it has major
security issues associated with it.
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Slide Note: Platform as a Service is chosen for Regional Gardens as the organization already has
a data center that can be put to use. Platform as a service cloud will enable the organization in
developing a customizable cloud service for the business. It offers a number of other benefits as
well, which includes flexibility and easy deployment.
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Slide Note: Platform as a service is Chosen for Regional Gardens as it offers a number of
advantages. Scalability and flexibility are major advantages offered by PaaS. Apart from this
PaaS can be easily deployed in the business and provides a potentially more cost effective
solution to the client in comparison to IaaS.
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Slide Note: The presentation concludes with the suggestion of platform as a service for Regional
gardens as by implementing paaS, the organuzation will be able to make use of its existing
infrastructure and the present data center.
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Answer 2
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In their upgrade program, the first undertaking of Regional Garden is to provide their
staffs with the different office automation services. The office automation services to be
deployed should provide the staffs with the access of different office automation services such
as email, word processing and capabilities of online file storage (Rittinghouse & Ransome,
2016). The two approaches of office automation that is recommended for Regional Gardens
include Ad hoc approach and structured approach. The different approaches of office
automation are elaborated in the following section.
2.1. Ad hoc Approach
Ad hoc approach is a recommended approach of providing office automation in cloud. It
is an event specific approach and is highly personalized and task specific approach.
The major advantages of ad hoc approach is that it is easy to deploy and can be
executed inside or outside the organization with less complexity. Implementation of this
approach does not require documentation. However, there are certain disadvantages of the
approach as well. The major disadvantage of this approach is that, its functionality is highly
dependent on the tester.
2.2. Structured Approach
This is another approach for office automation, where office automation is enforced
mainly by planning and analysis of the system requirements associated with the organization.
One of the major advantages of structures approach of office automation is that, it
provides a user friendly solution it implemented by analyzing the different requirements of the
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organization. However, this process requires a lot of time for implementation and if an error is
identified, the entire process fails.
2.3. Chosen approach
Analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches, it is recommended
for Regional gardens to choose an ad hoc approach for implementation of the office
automation system. One of the major reasons behind choosing this approach is that it can be
implemented very easily and very fast.
Answer 3
3.1. Differences between IaaS and PaaS
Regional Gardens is planning to move its web infrastructure to public cloud but is
unsure whether it can be migrated to IaaS or PaaS. In order to analyze which option would be
better, it is required to understand the differences between IaaS and PaaS. The differences
between IaaS and PaaS are as follows (Dinh et al., 2013)-
Infrastructure as a Service
It is a process of computation of the infrastructure
that involves servers, network and provides a
platform of virtualized environment and operating
system.
IaaS services are used mainly when the
infrastructure space is unavailable. It gives a
complete control over the resources of the
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organization.
Provides flexibility and scalability in the services
offered.
Platform as a Service or PaaS
Platform as a Service or PaaS provides a platform
for hosting and deploying different cloud
applications.
It provides access to the multiple concurrent users
It is easy to deploy as there is no requirement of
high technical knowledge for deploying cloud
applications in PaaS.
The above table represents the major differences between Infrastructure as a service and
Platform as a service. However, there are certain issues associated with both the approaches,
which are discussed below (Fernando et al., 2013)-
Infrastructure as a Service
1. It is the most expensive cloud solution and takes some time for implementation.
2. The data back up and the updates are responsibility of the client.
Platform as a Service
1. Data stored over PaaS has certain security issues associated with it (Hashizume rt al., 2013).
2. The client may not have a control over the platform.
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However, since the Regional Gardens is planning to move its web infrastructure in public
cloud, it is recommended for the organization to make use of PaaS as the organization does not
need a new infrastructure. However, IaaS would have been a more secure option.
Answer 4
Regional Gardens is further considering whether to use PaaS or SaaS for providing
services to its employees. In order to analyze which service will be better to consider,
characteristics of all the three approaches (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) is analyzed in order to
recommend an appropriate option.
4.1. Differences among IaaS, PaaS and SaaS
The major differences among infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and
software as a service are represented in the following table-
Features Infrastructure as a
Service
Platform as a Service Software as a Service
Definition This cloud computing
approach provides an
infrastructure of
virtualized cloud
computing resources
that are hosted over
interned.
This cloud computing
approach provides a
platform and tools for
deploying and
developing cloud
application
This approach of cloud
computing enables the
users use the cloud
services that are
provided by a third
party cloud vendor
(Kavis, 2014).
Characteristics It is the most secure PaaS is a cost effective SaaS provides a cost
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cloud approach and
offer high flexibility and
scalability in its
implementation.
However, it is
comparably more
difficult to implement
and manage as the
clients are responsible
for managing the new
updates and related
back up (Manvi &
Shyam, 2014).
cloud solution that
provides a platform to
the client for deploying
the cloud. It provides an
improvised support for
integration of the
services.
However, there is less
control of data and high
security risk associated
with PaaS (Pahl, 2015)
effective solution of
using different cloud
services.
However, the client has
no control of the data
or the software as a
whole.
4.2. Recommended Cloud Model for Regional Gardens
After analyzing the different functionalities and characteristics of the two approaches, it
is recommended for Regional Gardens to use platform as a service or PaaS for providing
different cloud services to its employees. With the existing infrastructure, there is a need of a
proper platform for Regional gardens to deploy the different cloud services.
Platform as a service is not typically a replacement of the entire IT architecture. It
provides key services for deploying and hosting different cloud applications. Platform as a
service is generally designed for rapid development and management of the different
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application and business operation of the organization in cloud. Furthermore, it provides a
simplified service to the client and therefore, it can be easily implemented in Regional Gardens.
All the employees of Regional Gardens have Microsoft Office 2010 suite of office
automation that is installed in their respective desktops. Since the organization is planning to
move its SharePoint 2010 instance to cloud, it is beneficial to choose platform as a service for
implementation of cloud in Regional Gardens.
4.3. Problems associated with the recommended Model
Although it is appropriate for Regional Gardens to choose platform as a service for
implementation of cloud, there are certain issues associated with the choice of this approach.
The major problems associated with PaaS are as follows-
1. There is a major security issues associated with Platform as a service. Furthermore,
the client generally has a less control over the data (Almorsy, Grundy & Müller, 2016).
2. Although it provides the much needed flexibility in deployment of the services, there
are major issues associated with disaster recovery and posses a higher downtime for technical
difficulties.
3. There are certain performance concerns associated with PaaS including the lack of
control on the underlying architecture.
However, the problems associated with the security of cloud computing can be
mitigated by ensuring proper access control and authorization.
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Therefore, it is recommended for the organization to use PaaS approach of cloud
implementation. There are a number of benefits that is offered by PaaS, that includes reduced
cost, increase in scalability and reduced cost of underlying infrastructure that is associated with
the other cloud approach that is IaaS.
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References
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