Question

VideoDev Ltd is a video and production development company which works for clients across Australia and New Zealand. The company is considering moving some of its computer infrastructure into the Cloud. The VideoDev Board is contemplating this move as a way to increase the company’s flexibility and responsiveness, as well as to achieve some savings on the cost of maintaining their ICT infrastructure.

VideoDev has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 100 video production, engineering and support staff that work on different projects for clients in Australia and New Zealand. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them.

VideoDev have a number of application servers in their Sydney and Melbourne datacentres that provide video processing capabilities for their staff. These servers are quite heavily customised and run reasonably heavy workloads while doing video processing. There is often a considerable queue of jobs waiting to be processed, which causes backlogs in getting jobs completed on time. The Board hopes that a move to a cloud based operation may help to relieve these backlogs.   

Another of VideoDev’s initial projects is to provide all their staff with a Standard Desktop Operating Environment (SDOE) on their desktop. This would include providing a standard desktop to any device that their staff may be using, as well as access to office automation, such as email, word processing, spreadsheet capabilities, as well as online storage for their files. The Board want the SDOE to be available on any device that their staff use, whether they are in the office, at home, or deployed at a customer’s office in the field.

VideoDev is considering the use of either Amazon WorkSpaces (https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/) or Windows Virtual Desktop (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/services/virtual-desktop/) as a replacement for their existing desktop environment.

1. Explain the Cloud Computing to the Board:
a. What are the main cloud computing concepts that the Board should understand before committing to move to the Cloud? (10 marks) and,
b. Why you think that a move to the Cloud could be good for VideoDev (10 marks)

Answer 1

1. Cloud computing to the board: Cloud computing actually delivers different types of services over internet.From software and analytics to source and data storage and networking all are delivered via cloud.Storing information on an email server is much different from keeping that data on a desktop hard drive. For business,cloud computing means productivity as well as promotion.

a. Cloud computing concepts: Cloud computing has different types of concepts:

1. Comparing the cloud to the traditional hosted services- Here users can access physical servers. Storage in hosted services provided via on-board disk, disk array etc. It can also provided via Storage area network(SAN). Here backup is also needed.

2. Cloud computing's infrastructure is shared: Here with one technology many clients can do their work on a same platform. This thing is seen in an organization. Where the concept of cloud is used daily.

3. Services are accessed on demand in units that vary: Units can be capacity, users or many thing that can be able to access the services.

4. Services are able to be changed in size or scale: There are no limits of growth of each service. Because from user's point of view services are flexible no need of limitations.

5. Pricing model: Pricing model is very consumption. Instead of paying a fixed cost you have to pay variable cost for per unit consumption(users). This can be varied by the period such as hour to month.

6. Service can be accessed from anywhere: If you think two or more people want to do something on cloud they can do this via cloud platform simultaneously. And they can accessed it from anywhere.

b. move to the Cloud could be good

Move to the cloud could be good because data redundancy or repeated data is reduced by cloud computing. We can improve level of efficiency increased productivity by moving to cloud.

In past many company invested large amount of capital to install and develop the software to run smooth. But after cloud computing itself enables the organization to access the software over internet so cost is not needed.And cloud computing also used to store and short data.

With cloud an organization can do it's work form any location at any time. in this above passage VideoDev is sharing the service between Australia and New Zealand. Via cloud it could be more easy.

With cloud we have another profit that is flexibility.

When

VideoDev is sharing their product or here mentioned videos within many countries then cloud is good for VideoDev.