Assessment - Concepts and Models

Task -

Webb's Stores is a successful regional retailer that operates stores in Australia and also in New Zealand. Webb's sell a range of food stuffs as well as some speciality items. The company has two main data centres, one located in Sydney and the other in Melbourne. It also has a number of regional data centres located in Wagga, Bathurst, Port Macquarie, Brisbane and Auckland in New Zealand.

Webb's Stores has engaged you as a consultant to advise them on the use of Cloud Computing in their daily operations. They have some 600 sales staff that work in their stores and 200 staff that work in their two main warehouses in Sydney and Melbourne. Webb's have been facing increasing issues with application and operational complexity and the management of their data. They have been advised that a move to using a Cloud based infrastructure would be an advantage to them.

Webb's has recently taken over a group of small independent grocery retailers in regional Victoria. They need to integrate this new retailer into their operations as soon as possible.

The Board of Directors of Webb's has decided that they will use this new regional group of stores to test their strategy of using the Cloud to better integrate their operations. Your task is to:

1. Prepare a PowerPoint briefing for the Directors of Webb's Stores. Your briefing should:

a. Describe the key concepts of Cloud Computing and why do you think that a move to the cloud will benefit Webb's Store.

b. Explain how Webb's could use either AWS or Azure to integrate their new regional group of stores into their existing operations.

c. Explain which cloud architectures you could use to integrate these operations and the reasons for their use.

d. Each slide in the briefing must also include speaking notes in the notes section to explain the slide, and all images used in the briefing should be referenced.

2. The Board of Webb's is considering moving to a SaaS model for providing email and office automation services (this includes mainly word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software such as PowerPoint). There are a number of providers of these services that are now available and you are asked to recommend one of these services to Webb's. You are to prepare a PowerPoint briefing for the Directors that includes:

a. The advantages that Webb's can achieve if they use this type of SaaS service,

b. The disadvantages that Webb's will face from using this type of service.

c. The SaaS service that you would recommend. including:

i. The name of the service

ii. How it is better than other similar services?

iii. What are its specific disadvantages?

3. Webb's Stores has data centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane that run MS SQL Server 2012 R2 databases. These databases form the operational core of Webb's. These data centres are linked by a fibre based WAN and data is replicated between the data centres daily. The 3 data centres each run x86 based servers attached to a HPE 3PAR SAN with 1 PB of storage. The databases in each data centre are stored on the SAN. There is a copy of this database at the Auckland data centre, but they are having issues replicating data to Auckland because of latency and other issues. Webb's is now considering moving its databases into the cloud to resolve this issue. But they are unsure of the issues that are involved with this migration. You are to write a report for the Webb's board that:

a. Describes the differences between using:

i. An laaS approach to migrating Webb's database to the cloud. and

ii. A PaaS approach to migrating Webb's database to the cloud.

iii. Create a table that shows the advantages and disadvantages of each approach,

iv. What is the approach that you would recommend and give your reasons for recommending this approach.

Attachment:- Speaking Notes.rar