Key Assignment Outline

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The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals provides technology to every part of the State’s Judicial System. This includes, but is not limited to, Circuit Court, Family Court, Magistrate Court, and Probation Services. Since there are fifty-five (55) counties there are a minimum of fifty-five local area networks (LANs) that interact to form the wide area network (WAN). The central location being the Supreme Court’s headquarters located in Charleston, West Virginia.

There are dual Storage Area Networks (SANs) located offsite for redundancy and disaster recovery purposes. Each county has a local server to house documentation. There is a MS Exchange Server for email and the use of Public Folders for docket calendars. The offices utilize Skype for Business for chat/instant messaging. The servers are all built with MS Windows and thus utilize Active Directory for domain accounts and services.

The Court is looking into moving the everyday functionality of the offices to cloud-based services. They want to know how much can be saved over all to help reduce costs as far as server hardware, maintenance, and software. The Court wants to unify its lower courts for better coverage and assistance to the public.

Cloud-based productivity suites offer a variety to of benefits. There are: cost savings, collaboration, productivity improvement, security, and mobility. Most of these benefits are based on what is needed for the individual work environment. (Keyser, 2016). The following will be a comparison of Microsoft Office 365 (O365) and Google Apps for Government (G Suite).

Based on the two comparatives, Microsoft Office 365 would be the best for overall security for imperative documentation as well as provide the best overall user experience. The cost and time of the overall conversion can be great, but in the long run it would save more. The initial costs will be in the migration. Since the court has over 2500 MS Exchange Mailboxes it would take a lot of time and effort to convert. It would have to be spread out via county by county. Since Circuit Judges can sometimes work in multiple counties, the conversions may even need to be complete on a circuit basis which can be up to four counties at one time. Additional contracted support may need to be hired to assist in the conversion process. Also, the current hardware in place would need to be maintained until the entire conversion process has been completed.

Before the conversion can take place, policies and procedures must be revised. It would be essential to have them updated beforehand so that the conversion process would not have to be revisited multiple times to meet any new policies and legal procedures. This may include updating user agreements as well. Plus any Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), National Crime Information Center (NCIC), and other regulations must be reviewed to put the proper authentication requirements in place ahead of time. Also, any shared data will need to be reviewed to see if anything needs to be moved around and adjusted to meet the new environment. Since the Court recently performed a reorganization of divisions, the need to review current Organizational Units and their access rights as well as data needs should be reviewed and updated accordingly.

Not including migration expenses and other items that may arise, the O365 will be $35/month/user. Thus, it would cost approximately $87,500 per year to maintain. The reduction of on-site servers alone will save at least this much. In the case of the Court, I would recommend a hybrid environment. Utilizing some of the servers and information that is already onsite mixed with perhaps the authentication and O365 documents being held in the Cloud via Azure.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a provider that will be maintaining every aspect of an application. The table in figure 3 (below) shows differences between the types of cloud environments - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS):

SaaS has a lot of benefits to provide an organization. The service provider can centralize all aspects of the application and provide back the management to those that need it. Thus, freeing up technicians to focus on other issues and/or provide a small business with technology benefits that they may not be able to afford otherwise. Cloud services are all web-based so the organization only needs to have an Internet connection.

As far as SaaS, there are a lot of available providers. For this, we are going to focus on two rather largely known providers: Microsoft Office 365 and Google G-Suite. In the first section, Figure 1 gives a comparison of benefits and capabilities. Both offer a number of ways for staff to collaborate and share information as well as converse with Chat. Microsoft utilizes Skype for Business for chat and G-Suite utilizes Hangout. They both have variants of web-mail. Microsoft has Outlook and G-Suite has Gmail. Both have document locations that will allow multiple users to work on document simultaneously as well as provide authentication for users.

Identity as a Service (IDaaS) can be a hard sell for some companies/organizations. In order for this to be possible, the company/organization must be willing to trust the service provider’s security and reliability measures.

Microsoft utilizes one of its own products: Azure Active Directory (AD). This allows a user to have one login for multiple cloud applications. It allows a user to have the same experience if he/she is using a web-based/mobile app or a desktop application. Azure AD supports thousands of pre-integrated SaaS apps for single sign-on: O365, Adobe Connect, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Citrix, Zoho Docs, ZipRecruiter Employers (for Human Resources), Trello (Project Management), and even SAP Cloud Platform. (For a complete listing see: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/category/azure-active-directory-apps). (Microsoft, 2018).

Google’s G-Suite utilizes Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 and OpenID Connection (OIDC) Identity Provider for secure single sign-on (SSO) connectivit. This can be utilized with a wide variety of SaaS applications that Google provides as well as mobile management controls with password strength and lock screen requirements. It allows the use Biometrics as well. (Gupta, n.d.).

Overall, both SaaS and IDaaS are advantageous. The Court is leaning on Microsoft for a number of reasons. There is already a working Active Directory environment in place which will make the migration simpler and cost effective. Since Microsoft is already through the Court’s working environment, it will be less of a strain on end users for the conversion because it will be just like using the current Microsoft Office only on the web.

The conversion itself will take time but not as much if moving to the G-Suite. There are a number of risks involved in the migration. The tech staff that is meant to provide the conversion will need to be trained on the new applications being used so they can way the best options for the migration. Once this has been completed, the migration will span over a few months. The Court has offices that are open all day every day (24/7) so if downtime is needed it will need to be planned accordingly. There are only so many windows available per week.

The migration of the data to the Cloud will need to be complete by location (in this case, by county). Until the process has been perfected, each server will be migrated one at a time and only one per week. This will allow for any data failures to be caught as well as any authentication issues to be noted and kept track of. It will allow for the IT Service Desk staff to prepare for anywhere from one call to one hundred calls about any issue(s).

Microsoft offers a comprehensive set of global standards and requirements. A full list of compliance offerings can be viewed: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/trustcenter/compliance/complianceofferings. There is a cloud control framework to align with multiple regulatory standards. (Microsoft, n.d.). The Court has decided to go with a migration team from Microsoft to work with the onsite staff to assist with the migration as well. This will help head off any data security issues as well as compliance. (Microsoft, n.d.).

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Platform as a Service entails a third-party vendor hosting the hardware and software that the company uses via a web-based tool. This keeps the user from having to purchase the equipment/software itself as well as maintain all upgrades and updates. Basically the user will be able to focus on what he/she needs to develop. (Woodford, 2018).

There are a number of PaaS providers to choose from. The Court is going to focus on three main reputable competitors: Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Beanstalk, Microsoft Azure, and Google App Engine. The next section will break down the pros and cons.

As far as budgeting, all three (AWS, Microsoft, and Google) companies offer a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) plan or blocks. As you can see from Figure 7, Google will even offer payments based on minute-by-minute usage. However, Microsoft Azure will charge more for using the PAYG approach. Amazon simply lets the customer decide what is needed and only charges for that. All companies allow for increases based on usage and design needs. (Lyle, 2015).

The Court is already leaning towards the O365 environment due to its familiarity and known reliability. Also, the Court already has an in-place Microsoft Windows environment so utilizing the Microsoft Azure PaaS would be the quickest and easiest conversion. Plus, the technical training side would be less due to the working knowledge of the current technical staff. Even though the Microsoft environment may cost more, what is needed is based on the usability and ease of migration for the current environment.

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Camp, A. (February 19, 2018). Elastic Beanstalk: Advantages and Drawbacks. Retrieved on September 4, 2018, from: https://medium.com/@acamp/elastic-beanstalk-advantages-and-drawbacks-be814615af01.

CIO, (April, 2018). G Suite vs. Office 365 comparison – Which one is right for you? Retrieved on August 22, 2018, from: https://www.cio.com/article/3268074/internet/g-suite-vs-office-365-comparison-which-one-is-right-for-you.html.

Gupta, S. (n.d.). Google Identity Services for Work. Retrieved on August 29, 2018, from: https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/gsuite-expands-identity-services.html.

Lyle, T., (June 29, 2015). The Four Major Cloud Players: Pros and Cons. Retrieved on September 5, 2018, from: https://www.techopedia.com/2/31280/trends/the-four-major-cloud-players-pros-and-cons.

Keyser, R. (September 27, 2016). Benefits of Microsoft Office 365 & Google Apps for Government. Retrieved on August 21, 2018, from: http://www.viewpointcloud.com/blog/government-technology/governments-move-to-cloud-based-productivity-suites/.

Microsoft, (n.d.). Microsoft cloud services compliance risk and assessment. Retrieved on August 29, 2018, from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/trustcenter/guidance/risk-assessment.

Microsoft, (n.d.). Microsoft Azure Active Directory. Retrieved on August 29, 2018, from: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/category/azure-active-directory-apps.

Microsoft, (2018). Microsoft Azure Active Directory: Seamless, secure identity and access management. Retrieved on August 29, 2018, from: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/active-directory/.

Watts, S. (September 22, 2017). SaaS vs PaaS vs IaaS: What’s the Difference and How to Choose. Retrieved on August 24, 2018, from: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/saas-vs-paas-vs-iaas-whats-the-difference-and-how-to-choose/.

Woodford, C., (May 19, 2018). Cloud Computing. Retrieved on August 17, 2018, from: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/cloud-computing-introduction.html.