Project Implementation and Project Testing

Running head: PROJECT DESIGN

PROJECT DESIGN 2

Section 1: Project Design

Jamie Vaughan

Southern New Hampshire University

21 May 2018

Problem Statement

The main problem was the poor security and other functional requirements that were being witnessed with a lot of information technology products in the market. The project aims to implement a cloud solution that takes into accounts most of the shortcomings that were identified in other products. The cloud solution will need to be not only proficient on a technical level but also capable of fulfilling the business requirements set out for it. The cloud solution is also expected to expand the reach of the network as the current one is restricted by being limited in that scope. The complete solution should ensure that the full benefits of using the technology are realized. (Rountree, & Castrillo, 2013).

Application of Knowledge on Stakeholder Needs

The stakeholders involved in the project will have an important part to play in the success of the final solution. Everyone that is invested with project are considered a stakeholder, that will invest their time and energy to build and make the project stronger and more reliable. Their views and suggestions will be of importance to the eventual outcome and they will be incorporated where necessary. One of the main needs of the owners was the provision of adequate security functions. With the importance of data that they held, it was necessary that the security tools that were put in place were capable of providing the requisite protection against common and are threats as well. The owner was insistent on an early warning system that alerted them to an ongoing attack on the system. Such a tool would provide an opportunity to directly steer the response to an attack and ensure that the damage is contained as much as possible. Also as part of this, a backup system was provided that was in tune with the owner's requirement. It involved using different data centers located far away from each other as to not be affected by the same potential disaster. The cloud was configured to provide multiple failover options that ensured business continuity even in the case of a potential disaster. (Rountree, & Castrillo, 2013).

The cloud solution needed to be capable of serving users who were spread far each other. Where the old solution mostly served the users located at a single office premise, the cloud solution needed to expand its reach. With expanding the reach of the cloud, they need to make the security stronger and more reliable. The security needs to start with an antivirus program that will protect all the users and multiple firewalls to protect the network. Among the solution was making the service accessible to a wide variety of internet connections including WANs, LANs, wireless, mobile and more. The solution was also designed to access of a variety of devices including smartphone, tablets and the expected laptops and desktop PCs. The purpose of this was to make the cloud solution available to a bigger variety of users. (Rountree, & Castrillo, 2013).

Overview of the Design

The design process included the requirements stage which covered the needs of the three level to be developed in the cloud solution. These are the lowest level which included the ‘Compute' and the ‘Manage' resources. Here would be the CPU, disk, memory as well as virtual machines management and software provisioning. With the components of the CPU and virtual machines, it will be able to compute the necessary data. The next level would be the environments responsible for the development and deployment of applications with the final level being the applications. Agile development framework will be applied in the process to ensure high quality and accountability of the process. As far as the development process has reached, the model has been functioning largely as it was intended to, with the main issues being in determining the eventual scale of the system. It is an aspect that should be tested once all the components are completed and integration is done. (Rountree, & Castrillo, 2013).

The main challenges of the process were largely the need to keep testing the security resilience of the components. The success of each iteration in the process requires that adequate security testing is done of the components. It has been a stage that has taken a lot of time as the various tests are conducted. However, the upside of it is that it should significantly lessen the need for testing in future. Another challenge was the changing requirements by the owner which while not extensive, still meant that some of the iterations might have had to be redone so as to capture these requirements. It meant that the project timelines needed to be adjusted accordingly and the absorption of the resultant cost overruns (Kerzner, 2013).

References

Kerzner, H. R. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Rountree, D., & Castrillo, I. (2013). The basics of cloud computing: Understanding the fundamentals of cloud computing in theory and practice. Burlington: Elsevier Science.