Assignment

Length: 3-5 pages

XYZ Firm is diverse in its interests, with many different divisions. The chief information officer (CIO) is looking to you for assistance in lowering costs and providing new value-added services to the business. He wants to use the Widget division as a pilot for consuming cloud services. Throughout your 5-week contract with the firm, you will build a methodology that defines an approach for consuming cloud services.

The first step is to socialize the business to the notion of cloud computing. There is a lot of fear of the unknown, and it is going to be up to you to help the business take the first step. The CIO wants your assistance in preparing a proposal that he will share with the executive leadership.

Write a report that details the possible cost savings with adopting cloud-based solutions and the benefits of using cloud services. Research at least 2 cloud-based providers, and select 1 the following service lines as the basis of your analysis:

Human Resources

Supply Chain

General Office Function (such as e-mail and collaboration tools)

Your analysis should also give consideration to the following topics for the 2 providers you selected in comparison to an on-premise type of deployment:

Speed of deployment

Costs (when possible)

Service offerings

Elastic scaling

Vendor lock-in

Finally, identify the cloud type that might be most appropriate for the service line you selected out of the following:

Public

Private

Community

Hybrid

You may use the following sample as a guide for any cost analysis you wish to consider. The table represents some sample costs that a firm may incur for hosting an on-premise solution to support a business service. The table contains sample cost allocations for IT hosting an on-premise business service.

Asset Expenditure One-Time Cost Annual Expenses Recurring costs (every 4 years)

Hardware 20,000

Software License 5,000

Hardware Maintenance 4,000

Software License 1,000

Administrator Support 10,000

Developer Support 10,000

Facilities Costs 3,000

Software/System Upgrades 4,000.