Cloud Computing Essays - Cloud Computing, Computing,

Cloud Computing Student Name: Institutional Affiliation: Course: Date: Question 1 Organizations are increasingly contemplating adopting cloud computing to save on expenses as well as improve efficiency. Nevertheless, despite the fact that there are numerous benefits of cloud computing, information technology departments must realize that they do not have maximum control of cloud resources thus should consider a few things first. First, IT departments should consider the security of private information. Several regulations exist that disallow keeping of private information on the either SaaS , PaaS or IaaS . The prospect of private data being uploaded on the cloud should be a basis of concern. The other item is the implications of such services to the organization, such that it should be aligned with organizations business goals which can be measured or articulated. In tandem with any business decision adoption of either SaaS , IaaS , PaaS needs to be in line with organizational objectives. While information technology departments facing pressure to adopt cloud computing services, keen and independent analysis of any vital considerations shall lead to business based informed decisions. The last item is maintenance costs such that IT departments should not just look at initial migration costs as in the end maintenance costs might prove too expensive thus inconveniencing the organization. Question 2 Migrating to either of cloud services creates some savings and alters thinking with regard to costs and offers benefits on the aspect of scalability. IaaS , PaaS and Saas provides a range of savings derived from aspects that the organization does not have to do like constructing new data centers as well as innovating using the ability that you can turn on or off as needed. These cloud services bring about new variables of cost which are not ideally part of the conventional total cost of ownership calculations. In the cloud, resources of computing are offered as utilities such as electricity as some other entity invest in constructing the resource and charges you only for what you use . Within dedicated server hosting for instance, all computing assets must be bought directly . In cloud computing therefore, an organization purchases less infrastructure that are only necessary for its operations while the other services are provided by the cloud servi ce provider reducing ownership costs. In the cloud there is no wastage of resources where some are under-utilized since you only pay for what you utilize giving a return on investment ( Skilton , 2010) . Furthermore, there is also an improved service quality on the cloud as opposed to normal server environments . Question 3 S oftware as a service architectural diagram Platform as a service architectural diagram Infrastructure as a service architectural diagram Question 4 In most cases cloud service providers have their own administration and support personnel, hence if an organization adopts such a strategy it implies that some support staff shall have to lose their jobs or be transferred to other areas ( Gupta, 2013) . Since much of the support task shall be delegated to the service provider it will essentially mean that the demand for support personnel staff will be low. Question 5 The management should be aware of issues of privacy and security, with regard to what data to migrate to the cloud and what rights they would have on such data once posted to the cloud, in some cases data might be so confidential that uploading to the cloud in itself alone would be a compromise to its security. There is also the consideration of compliance with regard to how such migration would affect the organizations existing regulations and finally, the management should be aware of the long term and short term costs as opposed to just rushing to a solution which would later prove unsustainable for the organization. Question 6 There several security issues with regard to such a strategy the biggest of them all being data breaches, cloud environments have now become a high target for cyber-criminals and hackers due to the amount of information held on the clouds ( Tripathi , 2011) . There is also the risk of data leakage whereby data might get into wrongs hands during transfer, audits or processing and finally, manipulation of customer