Cloud Provider Evaluation

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

- Please cite your work in your responses

- Please use APA (7th edition) formatting 

- All questions and each part of the question should be answered in detail (Go into depth)

- Response to questions must demonstrate understanding and application of concepts covered in class, 

- Use in-text citations and at LEAST 2 resources per discussion from the school materials that I provided to support all answers. 

- No grammatical errors; Complete sentences are used. Proper formatting is used. Citations are used according to APA

- The use of course materials to support ideas is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

- Lastly, Responses MUST be organized (Should be logical and easy to follow)

Cloud Provider Evaluation

Step 2: Research Cloud Trends, Best Practices, and Migration Issues

The cloud computing revolution is redefining ways that companies of all sizes use information technology. The cloud landscape shifts rapidly, and current trends reflect this rapid pace of change. You likely got an idea about this in the last step when you conducted research on cloud architecture. Now, continue gathering information for your final report by assessing:

· issues outside the company, such as emerging issues in the industry, regulatory changes, and general  trends in cloud computing  to gain an understanding of how these issues may influence BallotOnline's decisions;

· best practices for cloud implementation  and assess whether BallotOnline can benefit from these;

· cloud migration strategies  for the application and data, since BallotOnline is moving an existing web application to the cloud, making sure that the application is configured properly for the system architecture of your cloud deployment; and

· IT change management  techniques that could help BallotOnline make this transition.

In the Discussion: Cloud Trends and Migration Issues forum, answer in depth and discuss the following questions:

1.   Which trends in the cloud computing industry do you consider the most important?

2.   What kind of future developments in the cloud industry would benefit companies like BallotOnline the most?

3.   Considering that BallotOnline would migrate the existing application to the cloud, what elements should its migration strategy embrace?

Step 3: Research Typical Architectures of Cloud Deployments

In the previous step, you considered best practices and trends in the cloud industry. Next, you will have to look at the kinds of architectures needed for cloud.

Because most elements of cloud deployments are implemented in a virtualized environment controlled by software, the degree of freedom in defining your deployment of  cloud reference models  is unprecedented. You can define the number of virtual servers required and the configuration, and even change them dynamically as needed. You can also define your virtual local area networks (LANs) and subnets, and place servers in them to implement network security requirements.

The basic cloud deployment components are cloud consumer, cloud provider, and cloud carrier, with cloud brokers and auditor as possible additions.

Typical cloud architectures  of cloud deployments vary from single server (suitable for proof-of-concept engagements) and multiserver architectures with various servers carrying different software components and occupying different security zones, to geographically dispersed deployments to achieve high availability, resilience, and speed of delivery. There are several  issues to consider when selecting a server architecture , including cost, scalability, performance, and use of management.

For this step, research the typical architectures of cloud deployments and begin to consider what might be a good fit for BallotOnline.

Discuss your findings and thoughts with your colleagues in the Discussion: Cloud Architectures forum.

Describe your findings about typical cloud deployment architectures. In particular, provide answers to these questions:

1.   Which features of these architectures would be difficult to implement in traditional, noncloud IT deployments?

2.   Which architectural elements would be important for the BallotOnline deployment?

3.   Which architectural elements are less important for BallotOnline?

Step 4: Propose Cloud Architecture for BallotOnline Deployment

Now that you have looked into cloud architectures, in this step, you will propose the cloud deployment architecture for BallotOnline, applying the knowledge of typical architectural elements of cloud deployment from the project's initial step. You will also consider trends and migration issues from a previous step. Your recommendation should consider the company's business requirements.

Recall that the company has an existing web application that it wants to move to the cloud, and also that the company wants to expand its business to other parts of the world. In earlier projects, you learned about and analyzed the IT business requirements for BallotOnline. Among them were demands for  application and data security , data encryption, and separation for deployments overseas. Also, the application should handle load peaks during election times in different regions.

Specific technical requirements state that BallotOnline is a web application, written using the popular open-source LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) software suite and the  PHP application .

· Describe your proposed architecture by submitting a report with a drawing of the architecture (hand-drawn or computer-created) diagram and explaining its elements.