Cloud Computing Requirements to Regional Gardens Ltd Assessment 2 Answer

Cloud computing requirements to the Regional Gardens Ltd.

Introduction

This assignment report is about to describe the cloud computing requirements to the Regional Gardens Ltd. It is an organisation which is running many gardening companies. The company has a bigger display garden that is opened for public visit several times in a year. Regional Gardens Ltd and its associated enterprises has a nursery from where they spell garden supplies and plants to the customers. They also offer garden designing, planting, planning and related consultancy service. Regional Garden Ltd is now desire to use cloud computing services for their daily operations. For this reason, they engaged and consult us to advise them and prepare a report on the different aspects which are related to their daily business operations. This advice or proposal report is divided in to several sections, to meet and clarify the needs of Regional Gardens Ltd. 

Part 1:

In this section, we will discuss the plan to move of Regional Gardens Ltd services from the web and other including services to the cloud service. Primarily we need to analyse the need of this movement and plan to acquire the cloud resources accordingly. There are many types of service models offered by a cloud service provider, to suite our requirements. 

1. The company is desired to choose from IaaS or PaaS services. Both of the services are offered by all the cloud service provider as beneficial service that can be chosen according to our demand (Kavis, 2014). The IaaS or infrastructure as a service is like a self-service model. Where we can access, manage, monitor our deployments such as data-centres, network, infra services etc. This model offers us a range of infrastructure service to build the required platform using cloud resources. We can purchase the infrastructure services based on our consumption, use and pay for just what we use. The cloud resources are offered to the company on-premises so that we can remove efforts of planning, purchasing and configuring of hardware, software, networking devices etc. We just need to choose from a vast range of cloud infrastructure and build our service environment (Kavis, 2014). This infrastructure is then use on premises or anywhere via internet. The Infrastructure as a service platform is highly scalable and flexible, cost effective and can be accessible to multiple users at a time. Businesses of all the sizes can use this platform and have complete control over the configured resources (Hou, T., 2020). We can scale up or down any time whenever we want. Besides these benefits, there are so many other advantages of the IaaS platform. Such as – 
2. This platform is very cost effectively and easy to maintain with lower labour cost.
3. The owner of the resources has full control over their resources build using IaaS platform.
4. No need to place trust over external partners, as we can self-build and maintain this platform.
5. This solution is highly scalable and flexible to meet a business’s changing demands. 
6. We can scale down or scale up the cloud resources any-time whenever we need.
7. It offers a future prove infrastructure to meet our future demands.

Although, the IaaS model as so many advantages and benefits, there are also some disadvantages of this model. These are here – 

• The company did not have full control over cloud security as it is totally depending upon the cloud service provider
• As we are maintaining all our infra as own, we need to thoroughly consider to update and upgrade of applications, software and other service infra.
• Due to this, the company may face sudden down-time and there is no third party is available to support them

While, platform as a service or PaaS is majorly used to develop applications or software. The developers have full access of cloud resources that is needed for their development. They can use, develop, test and deploy the applications in an easy and cost beneficial way. We can build this PaaS model in combination with hybrid model which may use both on-premises and cloud resources. The PaaS cloud service provider offer their services over internet to the customer which can be used by the PaaS developers. The developer can use this platform to develop, test and deploy the application in the same environment without any worry. It also offers enough security, server services operating system environment and backup services (Ibm.com. 2020). This model is majorly beneficial for remote collaborative work. The platform as a service (PaaS) has so many advantages, such as – 

• It is majorly used for developers to develop, test and deploy applications (McGrath, 2012).
• The developer does not need to spend time to build test environment and can spend extensive time in writing codes
• It can be accessible to multiple users to work collaboratively
• This platform is easy to run without having enough technical knowledge (McGrath, 2012)
• The platform is enough scalable to fit the size of every need

Besides these characteristics and benefits, there are several dis-advantages of using this PaaS (Cloudoye.com. 2020). These are here – 

• While choosing the PaaS service provide, we need to have enough research to find out the required benefits like supportive languages, programs, interfaces etc.
• They should offer enough scalability with reducing cost
• The cloud service provider should offer data backup service in case of any disaster.
• Building a resilient cloud architecture is very important for any business for their success. Resiliency ensures the availability of our cloud architecture or platform to be available always or anytime whenever we need it. The cloud platform must be highly available so that we can recover all the losses of data in case of a disaster. It should offer the backup and recovery process for every need of our business. The cloud service provider today, offer so many options to build resiliency in the cloud infrastructure. It is applied on the virtual infrastructure and storage of data provided by the cloud. These are the main objects of any cloud service where all the customer’s business is depending and working on. Primarily, all the cloud resources that are configured by us, are used with proper authentication either username and password with secure access. While, in terms of data storage and access, it can be easily accessible to any authenticated user via an internet connection. To build much better security, we can build multi-factor authentication using smart phone, USB key etc. Beyond the limits to these criteria, a good resiliency can be build using proper security of database and ease of access with best possible way (Ontrack. 2020). 

Part 2:

As per their new security policy, they want to save all their data at the Bathurst data centre. So that all the user accessing their web services, need to have data from the Bathurst data centre. 

1. For this approach to work, we need to build an on-premises data centre at Bathurst location. While using infrastructure as a service approach, we can build a cloud architecture of our need and build an on-premises data centre at our required location or at our company. This will also be considered as a hybrid approach where we build a cloud and on-premises infra. A hybrid cloud approach is a combination of cloud deployment and on-premises deployment (SearchCloudComputing. 2020). The company services can move from cloud or on-premises infra. It requires that all the basis infra is built using cloud model and some of the servers or data centres are resides at the company location or in-premises. As per the company demand, this approach has its own benefits such as we have full control over the data, self-maintained resources, security and no involvement of any third party. To make it work, we will build all the required infra using IaaS model and deploy a database server at the Bathurst location. So, when any user accesses their web site, this is access via cloud and when there is a need to upload or download data, they are redirected to the local server at Bathurst data centre server (Felter, B., 2020).
2. This approach has several advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of this approach are – 
3. We have full control over in-premises resources with scalability
4. We can maintain cost according to our demand
5. We can have better support of local and remote workforce
6. We can increase agility and implement innovation by using and trying approach at our own risk
7. It better support for continuity of business

The dis-advantages of this approach are – 

• It need cost to spend to build the in-premises environment
• We need to manage and maintain different vendors for proper functioning
• All the risks are maintained and own by the company itself.

Part 3:

All the staff of the Regional Garden Ltd want to have access of office automation tool to do their daily business tasks. These tools will automate the process of movement of data or other company resources that are used by their employees, with proper security. 

1. The Regional Garden Ltd will provide this office automation benefits to their staff by two means. They can build a cloud instance and configure all the required application or services like email, spreadsheet etc at the server. In this approach, every user has a restricted access of their user account to use these services. In the second approach, they can use a combination of SaaS model, where will deploy necessary applications to be used and accessed by their staff via cloud. In this approach, we do not need to purchase, install and configure the application. The cloud provider itself maintain the deployed services (Lucidchart.com. 2020).
2. Both of the approaches are beneficial by so many ways. We just once need to configure the services and it is always be available for the staff. The first approach of deploying services on an instance need good amount of efforts in installing, configuring and maintaining. While the second approach of using it via the SaaS model, we do not need to worry about the maintenance and further configuration, the cloud itself do it for us. 
3. Recommendation – based on the company demand, we recommend to use the software as a service or SaaS for the office automation tools. This approach is more beneficial then deploying all the required tools and services at the cloud instance and provide access to the staff and assigning user roles to access the service. In the SaaS model, we once configure the required office services and provide link to access the resources to the staff and it will always be available to the staff and the service provider will itself take care of the rest.

Part 4:

Both of the approaches of using the DynaScape software suite wile on local laptops or Software as a service platform have their own benefits and losses. Here are the main advantages and dis-advantages of both these approaches.

Advantages and dis-advantages of local installation approach – 

• Its implementation took enough time and needs to be maintained by their own
• It needs a number of licenses as per user demand
• Update and upgrade of software is a challenging task to maintain security
• This approach has full control of the end user over the resources
• It is costly as compared to the SaaS model
• We need to maintain the security and regulatory compliances by own

Advantages and dis-advantages of SaaS approach – 

• It reduces time and efforts to build the required services
• Cost beneficial approach then the other one
• It is more scalable and can be integrated with other approaches
• Updates and upgrade will be maintained by the service provider
• It is easy to use and pay as to use approach