HYPOTHESIS AND RESEARCH DESIGN

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Keywords: Cloud computing, cloud storage, virtualization, containers, platform as a service (PaaS)

What is cloud computing and its potential benefits? Cloud computing is an all-encompassing term that covers many categories and segments, it is best described in simple terms, as a dynamic and on-demand provisioning of computing resources on the internet based on a pay-as-you-go model. Cloud computing enables users and organizations to self-serve and control the scale and complexity of the infrastructure they require for their respective use case and applications. The National Institute of Technology (NIST) further expands on the definition of cloud computing by outlining the essential characteristics, service and deployment models. (Mell & Grance, 2011). Generally, cloud computing is typically offered by vendors who operate large distributed data centers that are strategically located worldwide for the sake of redundancy and to reduce network latency a much more ideal computing environment. Due to the high rate of adoption and growth in the last decade, a thriving ecosystem has flourished that supports forward-thinking businesses and organizations all eager to leverage many of the benefits of cloud computing. Several of the well-known technology providers in Silicon Valley have collectively devoted several billion dollars in research and development towards cloud computing.

Consequently, cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon AWS, Heroku (acquired by Salesforce), Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft’s Azure have all doubled down their efforts in their cloud service strategies. Software titan Microsoft in particular who was the last of the big tech companies to roll out their cloud offering is pouring a lot of its resources in an attempt to carve out Amazon’s dominance in the market. Microsoft alone is reportedly spending approximately $10B a year to fuel the expansion of their commercial cloud services. In addition, Microsoft’s general manager George Taylor was quoted in 2015 noting that Azure is growing with more than 90,000 customers signing up each month, and their Azure Active Directory services having 475 million users (Lima, 2015). Google, on the other hand, has been constantly improving their own offerings by adding features that are attractive while providing competitive prices that rivals’ some of Amazon’s cloud services.

Today, countless businesses from many industries with varying sizes have all adopted the use of cloud computing, in addition to many of the bootstrapped startups in Silicon Valley that are constantly pushing the envelope in innovation while following a lean operating methodology. Despite all of the development that surrounds this thriving new industry, many organizations are still unclear how cloud computing can help their businesses. Some experts attribute this to the fact that the term “cloud computing” is quite in broad in both scope and definition. Similarly, this trend is almost akin to the term e-commerce which shares many characteristics with cloud computing as being a hard model to grasp. To help combat this, cloud providers like Amazon have dedicated resources that aims to educate potential and curious customers that may have interest in cloud computing via webcast, webinars, and comprehensive online documentation for all of their cloud services. Thus, eliminating one of the biggest roadblocks that many organizations regarding its adoption and Amazon turning curious into actual customers. A strategy that is clearly viable and delivered results for the company based on Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant report placing Amazon Web Services on top of other Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers with more computing capacity in use in compared to the next 14 largest companies combined. Additionally, Amazon also has the most diverse customer base and range of use cases that can range from a single web developer creating a small application to government agencies and billion-dollar organizations like Dropbox who offer personal Cloud Storage for the average consumer that is built on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure (Drago, et al., 2012).

There are many indications that the technology industry is pushing towards wider adoption of cloud computing, which is already changing the landscape and the way software applications and computing hardware are being developed. However, cloud computing can have its own downsides and associated risks though current data suggest that cloud service providers have a strong record of maintaining a strong hold on their services from a security and availability standpoint. Many of the risks in cloud computing that led to data leaks and breaches are often caused by organizations with a laissez-faire attitude on security with poorly or misconfigured cloud deployments.

Cloud computing can be a nebulous term even from seasoned IT professionals, particularly those who are in leadership and senior management positions in the IT sector. Thus, causing many organizations to struggle and grasp this new and emerging technology and develop preconceptions on cloud computing. Moreover, vendors and solution integrators also often do a poor job of introducing the concept to decisions makers which often ultimately ends in a sales team overselling a cloud-based product or solution to an organization. Cloud computing adoption is rapidly growing every year (Gantz & Miller, 2016), which consequently causes cloud providers releasing more services that aim to replace traditional systems in organizations. This then translates into added complexity to the already ambiguous reputation of cloud computing, which dissuades organization who are on the fence on their adoption. The purpose of this study is to gather, compile and analyze current data regarding cloud computing to identify potential use cases, risks, and viability of cloud computing to organizations and how it can impact the future of computing.

The scope of this reach is not all-inclusive, it is limited to small to mid-sized organizations, government agencies, academia and non-profit organizations.

The findings of this study will outline the significant benefits of the new paradigm that is cloud computing, and how it will play an important role in shaping the future of not only the commercial technology applications but also science and technology. The increasing demand for economical and scalable computing resources to power the billions of mobile devices today and in the next coming decade Internet of Thing (IoT) and smart devices and their sensors will effectively need cloud computing. Thus, organizations that educate themselves and apply best practices for a cloud strategy will be equipped to ride the cloud computing wave and fully leverage this emerging technology. This study will present the coming technologies on the horizon and highlight critical areas that are not often explored such as artificial intelligence and machine learning as they relate to cloud computing. In addition, the IT professions that will be at risk from the further automation that is brought by computing revolution and the new opportunities that will be available.

In an effort to further clarify cloud computing, the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at the non-regulatory National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) agency published a special publication in 2011 titled the The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing: Recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology that was aimed towards decision makers and stakeholders looking to adopt cloud computing. The publication declined the cloud model being composed of five key characteristics, two service models Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) all with varying ranges in complexity and capability with IaaS being the most complex and is typically offered by tech leaders such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. NIST also defined four cloud deployment models private, community, public and hybrid (Mell & Grance, 2011).

· Elastic computing: The ability to dynamically scale computer processing, memory, and storage resources to meet changing demands without worrying about capacity planning and engineering for peak usage.

· Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): A virtualized computer environment delivered as a service over the Internet by a provider. Infrastructure can include servers, network equipment, and software. Also called hardware as a service (HaaS).

· Platform as a service (PaaS): A computing platform (operating system and other services) delivered as a service over the Internet by a provider. An example is an application development environment that you can subscribe to and use immediately.

· Software as a service (SaaS): An application delivered over the Internet by a provider. Also called a hosted application. The application doesn’t have to be purchased, installed, or run on users’ computers. SaaS providers were previously referred to as ASPs (application service providers).

· Hybrid cloud: A cloud that combines public and private clouds, bound together by technology that allows data and applications to be shared between them. A hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility to scale up and down and more deployment options.

· Cloud provider: A company that provides a cloud-based platform, infrastructure, application, or storage services to other organizations and/or individuals, usually for a fee.

Drawbacks

Downtime and service disruptions are arguably the major disadvantages of cloud computing. Not a single cloud provider is can claim or is immune to service outages, though many offer service level agreements (SLA) guaranteeing 99~99.5% uptime. Since a vast majority of cloud computing systems are all internet based they are inherently all susceptible to this problem. However, a properly planned and executed cloud deployment can mitigate or even prevent such outages, ++

Gaining a better understanding of current cloud computing can be achieved by reviewing best practices, real-world case studies, actual risks, and post-mortem analysis of previous instances that affected organizations who have adopted cloud solutions but fell short of execution. This section will explore the history of cloud computing, it’s simplified definition, economics, the democratization of IT and important case studies that can shed a better light to organizations who still have reservations towards cloud computing.

The general idea behind cloud computing dates back to the 1960’s when John McCarthy stated that “Computation may someday be organized as a public utility”. He was an American scientist who worked in the field of logic and also developed the LISP programming language++. The term is most likely derived from network diagrams that represented the internet as clouds in early textbooks. The actual concept was taken from the telecom industry who operated point-to-point data circuits which eventually shifted to virtual private networks (VPN) in the 1990’s. By optimizing resource utilization by using the load balancing model, telecom operators were able to operate efficiently and a reduced cost.

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· Service Availability

· Security

· Sub-Contractors

· Identity Management

· Specialized Skills

· Encryption

· Compliance

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This study aims to answer the following fundamental questions regarding cloud computing and how it may impact the future of computing:

RQ1: What are the current and potential future risks that can be associated with cloud computing?

RQ2: What is the average savings and return on investment organizations may gain from adopting this new paradigm?

RQ3: What are the comment misconceptions regarding cloud computing?

RQ4: How will the innovations in cloud computing disrupt the current IT landscape and what are the potential global impacts?

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