Project 1: Overview of Cloud Technology Step 1: Describe Cloud Computing

Your supervisor, Sophia, BallotOnline’s director of information technology, has tasked you with creating a presentation that will convince the executives that using cloud-based computing to accommodate BallotOnline’s future growth rather than trying to expand the current infrastructure will help the company do business faster and at lower cost while conserving IT resources.

An important part of your presentation to the BallotOnline executives is to help the executive leadership understand  cloud service models and  cloud deployment models. It will also need to cover the two basic components of cloud infrastructure:  cloud compute and  cloud storage.

Project 1: Overview of Cloud Technology Step 2: Research Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Now that you have defined important terms and summarized the basic capabilities of the cloud, it is time to explore the  advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing.

Currently, BallotOnline is running at full capacity and needs to expand its IT infrastructure to accommodate its growing needs. Instead of expanding current on-premise IT infrastructure by building or acquiring a new data center, Sophia has suggested that the cloud may be more efficient and cost-effective than adding more traditional physical data center space.

This information that you research will be useful in your final presentation in the last step.

When you have completed the research, move to the next step, where you will consider

Project 1: Overview of Cloud Technology Step 3: Analyze Economic Implications

Now that you have weighed the benefits and drawbacks of cloud computing, it’s time to take a close look at the economic implications of a move to the cloud. All organizations (for-profit, nonprofit, or government) have finite budgets. Management must allocate these financial assets appropriately so that the leaders can make sound business decisions and meet the objectives of the organization.

Information technology  (IT) is a key strategic function to help support the objectives of an organization. Businesses first used information systems to replace paper-based methods of helping management perform these functions, and that use continues today. Managers must be able to understand different IT models to make the best financial investment decisions for the organization.

The financial requirements for the cloud computing model are different than the financial requirements for an on-premise model. Cloud computing shifts budgets to a pure operating expense model, whereas the traditional on-premise computing model requires both  capital and operating expense allocations .

Several free calculators to help estimate the cost of cloud services exist on the web, including the  AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator  and  Azure TCO Calculator . Alternatively, you may find other calculators to estimate your cloud cost. Most cloud providers have their own cloud cost estimator tools. If the calculator that you selected does not show on-premise data, then you can recalculate using one of the other calculators that do provide this data.

For your economic analysis, enter the information from  BallotOnline’s IT Budget and Infrastructure Summary  into your chosen calculator to estimate TCO for the current physical IT infrastructure configuration. Then estimate TCO for a comparable configuration in the cloud to estimate the potential cost savings.

Write the summary of the economic implications, showing the savings and how you arrived at them, and submit it after reviewing the instructions below.

In the next step, you will define the business requirements for the organization as part of the cloud computing analysis.

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