Providing two different approaches to office automation to the civil engineering staffs at SoftArc Engineering and evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of each approach
There are various approaches to office automation which could be utilised by a business establishment according to the needs and requirements of their business. These include Ad-hoc automation, structured automation, pilot automation and prototype automation. Out of these available options, the ad-hoc approach and prototype approach has been described below.
The ad-hoc approach to automation is event specific and it enables an organisation to make their automation highly personalised and task specific. This enables an organisation to incorporate the necessary changes in their business automation and data processing method, which enables them to streamline their business operations in the market resulting in more organisational productivity. This would enable the organisation to effectively adapt to the changes taking place in the external market and this would enable them to tackle the market competition with their business rivals in an effective manner (Brodie & Mylopoulos, 2012).
The ad-hoc automation approach would enable SoftArc Engineering to upgrade and improve their IT infrastructure and this would enable them to address their business needs in an effective manner. The ad-hoc automation approach will play a very important role in increasing the organisational efficiency and throughput and this will enable the organisation to ensure their growth and success in the market. It will enable SoftArc Engineering to reduce their operational expenses in the market by enabling them to reduce their workforce and eliminating the need of manual work. This would help the organisation to enhance their profits and revenues from their business operations in the market (Tapscott, 2012).
The main disadvantage of ad-hoc automation is that it is an expensive process which invariably reduces the agility of a business over time. With rapid changes taking place in the world of technology, the ad-hoc automation has become has become ineffective in addressing the growing business needs of the organisation (Koß et al., 2012).
The prototype approach to automation will play a vital role in streamlining the business functionalities of SoftArc Engineering in an effective manner. In the prototype automation, an organisation first builds a test prototype and passes that prototype system through a lot of quality and performance test. This enables them to analyse the efficacy of their protype in addressing their organisational needs and requirements. By incorporating the prototype automation, the organisation will be able to identify their needs and issues which are bringing down their organisational productivity and this would play a vital role in helping the organisation to enhance their business productivity in the market (Tsichritzis, 2012).
The prototype approach to automation will enable SoftArc Engineering to incorporate a more scalable system within their business which could be upgraded from time to time according to the changing demands of the business. This automation technique would play a vital role in helping the business establishment to continuously test the efficiency of the automation systems which are being utilised in their business and this would enable them to ensure optimum business productivity within their organisation. The organisation will be able to utilise technology to improve their business outcomes in the market and this will enable them to ensure their growth and success for the long haul (Brodie & Mylopoulos, 2012).
The main issue associated with prototype approach is that is an extremely time consuming process which takes a lot of effort and financial funding from the organisation and this process cannot be implemented without undertaking proper testing for evaluating their efficiency. This can create a lot of delay in the timely implementation of the prototype automation system.
From the business context of SoftArc Engineering, the prototype automation systems would be the most appropriate. It would help the organisation to realise their long term business goals and objectives in the market. It will enable the organisation to effectively address their business needs and requirements and this will enable the organisation to generate more profits and revenues from their business (Al-Fares et al., 2008).
Explaining the differences between locally hosted infrastructure and infrastructure provided in a public Cloud
In a locally hosted infrastructure, the local server which facilitates in the digital signage is hosted on the organisational LAN. This helps in ensuring that only authorised individuals from within the organisation can access the network. The administrator privileges will be limited to certain individuals within the organisation who have been assigned the responsibility of controlling and managing the network. This is considered to be the conventional method of setting up a digital signage network. The main advantage of local hosting is that, the network can be made more secure and rigid by ensuring a strong firewall within an organisation (Buyya et al., 2008). This would go a long way in ensuring the privacy of the data and information which are being utilised within an organisation by preventing the unauthorised access to data. The main disadvantage of local hosting is that it is a costly business proposition as there are lot of expenses incurred by an organisation in ensuring a thorough maintenance of the IT infrastructure and systems which are being utilised within a locally hosted network. There are additional expenses which are incurred in building the network and setting up the servers within the network. There are issues associated with network which might require frequent troubleshooting. The third party anti-virus software is unable to monitor the bugs and threats which are encountered by the network (Al-Fares et al. 2008).
In cloud hosting, the server application is hosted externally on a third party network infrastructure which could be located anywhere in the world. This process is also known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The location of the server becomes irrelevant in this case because the network hosting takes place through Digital Signage Software as a Service. In a cloud hosting environment, computer resources are shared by multiple clients in order to store and process information for future use. Apart from this, additional services are also provided by the cloud platforms to their users. The Cloud services play a very important in bringing down the cost associated with the planning and implementation of network infrastructure and this enables the business establishments to maximize their profits and revenues by minimising their business expenses in the market (Armbrust et al., 2010). The cloud hosted infrastructure invariably requires very little infrastructure on the part of the clients/users. The users only need to connect to an existing network which has internet connectivity and they are ready to utilise the cloud as the web server has been already setup and functioning in the cloud.
Before migrating their web infrastructure systems to an IaaS service provider, there are many issues and factors which needs to be considered by SoftArc Engineering. Without evaluating these issues and factors, the organisation will be not able to ensure a successful migration of their systems to the IaaS service provider. The organisation needs to undertake their system design criteria which will enable them to develop a cloud system which is robust, scalable, secure, efficient and easy-to-use. The organisation needs to indentify which services will be provided over the cloud platform and what kind of bottlenecks will be encountered which providing those services on the online cloud platform (Zhang et al., 2010). This will enable them to select an optimum network bandwidth which will help in ensuring an effective network resource utilisation. The implementation of inter-machine communication protocol is another issue which needs to be planned before migrating to the cloud platform. This is an extremely important issue of working in a distributed environment as the cloud platform is implemented based on PC cluster. The different aspects of the client server model of distributed computing would have to be taken into consideration so that the organisation is able to facilitate a computer program to cause a subroutine which could be executed on a different computer which exist within the PC cluster. This will play a very important role in reducing the work of the programmer as they will not need to code the details regarding this remote interaction (Koß et al., 2012).
Understanding the major differences between the models IaaS, PaaS and SaaS
Cloud computing can be categorised into three types – IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. The main differences between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS have been discussed below:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – In this service, an organisation is able to access the necessary network infrastructure through the online platform which enables them to ensure the smooth continuity of their business operations in the market. The IaaS is used to provide network, virtual servers, storage and other software to the business establishments which enable them to replace or enhance the efficiency of their existing data centres.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) – In this service, an organisation is able to access virtual servers wherein they can develop new business applications or run their existing ones without having to worry about the effective management and maintenance of the local OS and server hardware (Mell & Grance, 2011).
Software as a Service (SaaS) – This is the most popular and commonly used type of cloud computing which provides all the traditional computer applications on the online platform by utilising the web browsers.
Recommending the model that would be most appropriate for this service and explaining the reason behind our choice
The IaaS is the most appropriate type of cloud computing which would satisfy the growing business needs of SoftArc Engineering in an effective manner. This would play a very important role in helping the organisation to reduce the cost of their business operations in the market. This will enable the organisation to enhance their IT infrastructure at the fraction of the cost which is associated with infrastructure enhancement of local hosting and this will enable them to streamline their business operations in the market. SoftArc Engineering will be able to optimise their business productivity in the market and this would enable them to tackle the market competition with their business rivals in an effective manner (Buyya et al., 009).
Discussing the most likely problems that SoftArc Engineering will have to encounter with the model that has been recommended for them
The major problem which SoftArc Engineering would face while migrating their services to the cloud platform would be security issues. The organisation would invariably give up their control on the network and this could compromise the security of the data and information which are being shared on their network. Implementing clouding computing would invariably enhance the risk associated with unauthorised access and use of data which might threaten the business operations of the organisation in the market. Another problem which will be faced by the organisation, is the lack of properly trained and experienced staffs who are able to effectively utilise the cloud computing platform for performing their daily activities (Al-Fares et al., 2008).
Advising Soft Arc Engineering regarding how to deal with these issues
The organisation needs to provide a robust security mechanism which enables them to ensure the security of their sensitive organisational data and information. They need to ensure that they have a strong and robust anti-virus software which will enable them to monitor the different threats which they are receiving in their network and this will play a very important role in helping them to eliminate these network threats in an effective manner. The organisation needs to recruit and induct qualified and skilled professionals who have a better understanding and knowledge regarding cloud computing and this would play a very essential role in helping the organisation to ensure the smooth functioning of their business operations in the market. Furthermore, the organisation needs to utilise the services of IT experts in order to provide quality training to their existing employees so as to familiarise them with the cloud platform. This will play a vital role in making the employees more comfortable while working with cloud technologies and this will enable them to optimise their business productivity in the market (Chowdhury & Boutaba, 2009).
References
Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST definition of cloud computing.
Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, R., Konwinski, A., … & Zaharia, M. (2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4), 50-58.
Buyya, R., Yeo, C. S., Venugopal, S., Broberg, J., & Brandic, I. (2009). Cloud computing and emerging IT platforms: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering computing as the 5th utility. Future Generation computer systems, 25(6), 599-616.
Zhang, Q., Cheng, L., & Boutaba, R. (2010). Cloud computing: state-of-the-art and research challenges. Journal of internet services and applications, 1(1), 7-18.
Buyya, R., Yeo, C. S., & Venugopal, S. (2008, September). Market-oriented cloud computing: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering it services as computing utilities. In High Performance Computing and Communications, 2008. HPCC’08. 10th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 5-13). Ieee.
Tsichritzis, D. (Ed.). (2012). Office automation: concepts and tools. Springer Science & Business Media.
Tapscott, D. (2012). Office automation: A user-driven method. Springer.
Brodie, M. L., & Mylopoulos, J. (Eds.). (2012). On knowledge base management systems: integrating artificial intelligence and database technologies. Springer Science & Business Media.
Koß, D., Bytschkow, D., Gupta, P. K., Schätz, B., Sellmayr, F., & Bauereiß, S. (2012, June). Establishing a smart grid node architecture and demonstrator in an office environment using the soa approach. In Software Engineering for the Smart Grid (SE4SG), 2012 International Workshop on (pp. 8-14). IEEE.
Al-Fares, M., Loukissas, A., & Vahdat, A. (2008, August). A scalable, commodity data center network architecture. In ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 63-74). ACM.
Chowdhury, N. M. K., & Boutaba, R. (2009). Network virtualization: state of the art and research challenges. IEEE Communications magazine, 47(7).
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