Cloud Computing And Agile Development Approach For SoftArc Engineering Ltd

Introduction to Cloud Computing

 

Reference Slide 

The cloud computing can be stated as the method of utilising the network constructed with remote servers. These servers are being hosted on the internet in order to store, process and manage data. The cloud-based system allows the users to stay connected with it through the open internet connection (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).

SoftArc Engineering Ltd is a civil engineering enterprise. The organisation is currently traversing its traditional operations to the cloud. The report holds the various aspects of the cloud system as well as its models that will be the best fit for the organisation’s operations.

Two kinds of approaches can consider while considering system development, traditional and agile. The traditional approach of system development is consisting of sequential phases like system requirement, planning, implementing, testing and development. In the traditional approach, next phase only starts when the previous steps compete. The approach does not allow any requirement to be added into the system (Turk, France&Rumpe, 2014).

The project manager to adjust the system properties with the newly identified requirements uses the agile approach. This approach can also be described as the iterative and incremental method (Turk, France& Rumpe, 2014). This approach is very flexible and best for the big projects.

Factor	Traditional	Agile
Benefit	1. Best for short term projects that have no complexity 2. Cost efficient (Spundak, 2014) 3. Easy to understand	1. Best for the complex and big projects 2. Handles new requirements 3. Allows changing the system as per the review of the users during development phase
Issue	1. Need to involve with the user and gather all the required information at the beginning of the project	1. The development requires huge amount of capital (Cooper, 2016)

The cloud system of SoftArc Engineering Ltd will be a complex one. The project manager needs to have all the relevant data in hand before initiation which is a very complex task. It is because the many users of the system are field workers and not available. Therefore, the best option in the circumstance will be agile development approach (Papadopoulos, 2015). 

Difference	Locally hosted infrastructure	IaaS Open Cloud
Definition	The locally hosted infrastructure is the collection of hardware and software that are installed in the premise of an organisation physically for serving the purpose of the organisation only.	IaaS open cloud infrastructure is the collection of hardware and software that are installed in the system of the cloud vendor for offering virtualized computing resources over the internet for all the consumers (Theocharis et al., 2015).
Connectivity	The organisation devices must have a closed connection with the core system.	The system can be connected to the cloud provider server through an open internet connection.
Safety	As the communication medium is closed, the safety of the system is much higher (Serrador & Pinto, 2015). The cyber criminals have to present at the location physically from where they are initializing the breach. It makes very hard for the hackers to get into the system.	The cloud system interacts with the consumer system through the open internet that is very easy to hack. The cyber attacks can be initiated into the servers very easily. The hackers can also get unauthorised access to the system database and steal sensitive data.
Strength of Connection	As the devices will be connected to the core system through the wired medium, the connection between those will be very strong.	Regarding cloud commuting, the connection between the devices and cloud system will be established through the open internet (Papadopoulos, 2015). Therefore, the strength of communication will depend on the interconnection deeply.
Data Servers	In the traditional data system, three x86 based servers were needed to have in three data centers.	In the IaaS infrastructure, the only one data server will be able to fulfil the requirements.
Connectivity Type	SoftArc Engineering used wireless area network for connecting three data centers (Theocharis et al., 2015).	The IaaS infrastructure will allow the three data centers to stay connected at the same time to the core system without having any headache of separately connecting each datacenter.
Support for The Web	The traditional infrastructure of SoftArc Engineering does not provide the all the support needed to run web pages and services.	The IaaS will allow the organisation to support the web pages and services in such a way that effective data collection from the services can be conducted very efficiently.

Software as a Service	Platform as a Service	Infrastructure as a Service
It is also known as cloud application services	It is also known as cloud platform services	It is also known as cloud infrastructure services
It is the largest cloud market	Cloud market is medium	Cloud market is low
It delivers the third party managed applications through the web	It delivers a platform to the developers on which they can customise or develop applications (Almorsy, Grundy& Muller, 2016)	It delivers a self-service model to access, track and manage remote data center infrastructure
Google Apps, Concur, Citrix GoToMeeting, Salesforce, Workday,Cisco WebEx are the examples of SaaS	Apprenda is the example of PaaS	Amazon Web Services (AWS), Joyent, Microsoft Azure, Cisco Metapod, Google Compute Engine (GCE) are the examples of IaaS
Replacement of traditional on-device software is the common use case of SaaS (Hashizume et al., 2013)	Increases developer productivity and utilisation rates while also decreasing an application’s time-to-market is the common use-case for PaaS	Extends current data centre infrastructure for temporary workloads is the common use-case for IaaS
The Software as a Service application reduces the software cost of ownership by eliminating the requirement for software licensing cost	The organisation can scale the resources as per the requirement in the Platform as a Service.	API is used for offering cloud servers of the IaaS cloud service. For having the power of automatic deployment of servers, storage, processing power and networking, SoftArc Engineering Ltd can use IaaS (Modi et al., 2013).

The cloud computing can be viewed as layers of services that are one on the other. IaaS, PaaS and SaaS are the three basic layers of the cloud-computing stack. The IaaS are at the base, then PaaS on it and then SaaS. These three layers are connected with each other. Now it is possible to install the SharePoint 2013 in the PaaS and SaaS layer. The developers of SoftArc Engineering Ltd can build their software to suit organisations requirements in the platform as a service model (Jaber & Zolkipli, 2013). As the SharePoint 2013 is a completely virtualized application, the major benefit of PaaS approach, cost reduction is not a major fact in this case. However, flexibility is a real concern for SoftArc Engineering Ltd as the application will provide service to the two hundred and fifty users. The best cloud model for SharePoint regarding the requirements of SoftArc Engineering Ltd is PaaS (Lonnberg, 2014).

Cloud Computing Model for SoftArc Engineering Ltd

The primary issues with selecting PaaS for SharePoint 2013 is that it will not allow SoftArc Engineering Ltd to experience the off the shelf SharePoint applications. This can only be achieved through the SaaS cloud services. SoftArc Engineering Ltd has customised their SharePoint 2013 as per the instance extensively to suit SoftArc its requires (Jaber & Zolkipli, 2013). In addition to that,the customization also compiles Project Central, the Project Management tool of SoftArc Engineering Ltdas a separate application from within SharePoint.

Tieto is an organisation that has been able to solve the issue regarding off the shelf application in PaaS platform along with many other issues. At the point when the organisation think about that as some huge venture SharePoint usage contain a huge number of archives and might be incorporated with any number of backend frameworks, clearly these organisations require an approach to decrease their administration trouble (Tikkanen, 2016). This is the reason Tieto has now banded together with AvePoint to acquaint administration robotization with our SharePoint PaaS advertising. The new arrangement is custom-made to the necessities of our private cloud clients in the Nordic locale and joins a heap of self-administration highlights with robotization to make successful administration basic (Lonnberg, 2014). 

While it is not indistinguishable to the off-the-shelf adaptation of AvePoint’s DocAve Governance Automation, it incorporates a great part of the usefulness that makes that arrangement so appealing (Lonnberg, 2014). Clients can arrangement, oversee and adjust locales and authorizations by means of administration demands that can be affirmed either physically or naturally as per strategy; approach infractions are consequently remedied; and new destinations and site accumulations consequently have the right examining, marking, reinforcement, chronicling, stockpiling and consents strategies connected upon creation.

Conclusion:

From the above study, it can be concluded that the cloud-computing model has the potentiality of making the infrastructure of SoftArc Engineering Ltd capable of running on the web. Through the use of the IaaS model, the organisation can transform its traditional in-house infrastructure into cloud infrastructure. As the cloud is capable of providing virtual servers through the IaaS models, SoftArc Engineering Ltd will not need to have three different servers. This will significantly reduce the cost of the server maintenance. The use of the cloud models will reduce the cost of the operations as the cloud service providers will provide the hardware and software required for supporting the cloud system. Traditional and Agile approach for development has its unique benefits. As the agile has is more flexible, it will be foolish to think that traditional approach has lost its significance. Still, the traditional system development approach is used by the organisation more than agile. The base reason for this is the complexity of the approach. It is not possible for all the organisations to support the project with resources that uses an agile approach. The SharePoint 2013 in the SoftArc Engineering Ltd has been customised for meeting the requirement of it. If only the customization feature were considered, then the SaaS was the best model to choose, but in SaaS, the flexibility of PaaS can never be achieved. However, customised SharePoint 2013 has been achieved PaaS model.

Traditional and Agile Development Approach

Agile Development: It is very crucial for SoftArc Engineering Ltd and the cloud system to be agile in order to fulfil the first requirement of the agile approach. In order to make the best of this development approach, the organisation must not be fixed on the requirements. It is essential that the project team must be ready for the development. If the project starts, then there is no option of stopping unless SoftArc Engineering Ltd can allow the project to be failed.

Security in IaaS: The cloud providers should make use of the secure channels for establishing the communication between the cloud providers and cloud consumers. These channels must be utilising authorization, integrity, authentication and accountability. The consumer accounts must be protected by offering strong mutual authentication mechanism. The resource that is shared by the provider must not cooperate with any other resources not owned by the same consumer.The Provider may offer a system to permit Customers to oversee access to the Resources that they claim in this manner permitting different Customers or Cloud Consumers to get to their substance and administrations.

References:

Almorsy, M., Grundy, J., & Muller, I. (2016). An analysis of the cloud computing security problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.

Cooper, R. G. (2016). Agile–Stage-Gate Hybrids: The Next Stage for Product Development Blending Agile and Stage-Gate methods can provide flexibility, speed, and improved communication in new-product development. Research-Technology Management, 59(1), 21-29

Hashizume, K., Rosado, D. G., Fernández-Medina, E., & Fernandez, E. B. (2013). An analysis of security issues for cloud computing. Journal of Internet Services and Applications, 4(1), 5.

Jaber, A. N., & Zolkipli, M. F. B. (2013). Use of cryptography in cloud computing. In Control System, Computing and Engineering (ICCSCE), 2013 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 179-184). IEEE.

Lonnberg, N. (2014). Improving social collaboration possibilities by implementing a Social App for SharePoint 2013.

Modi, C., Patel, D., Borisaniya, B., Patel, A., & Rajarajan, M. (2013). A survey on security issues and solutions at different layers of Cloud computing. The Journal of Supercomputing, 63(2), 561-592.

Papadopoulos, G. (2015). Moving from Traditional to Agile Software Development Methodologies Also on Large, Distributed Projects. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 175, 455-463.

Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2016). Cloud computing: implementation, management, and security. CRC press.

Serrador, P., & Pinto, J. K. (2015). Does Agile work?—A quantitative analysis of agile project success. International Journal of Project Management, 33(5), 1040-1051.

Spundak, M. (2014). Mixed agile/traditional project management methodology–reality or illusion?. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 119, 939-948.

Theocharis, G., Kuhrmann, M., Münch, J., & Diebold, P. (2015). Is water-scrum-fall reality? on the use of agile and traditional development practices. In International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (pp. 149-166). Springer International Publishing.

Tikkanen, L. (2016). Extranet SharePoint Onlinella: Case: Qumio Oy.

Turk, D., France, R., & Rumpe, B. (2014). Assumptions underlying agile software development processes. arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6610.