Fill the details/instructions form and checkout for your essay - pro writers; top college graduates only in less than 5 mins, NO AI—Plagiarism-free!.
Posted: August 28th, 2022
Glossary of term
3.1 Research – objectives
3.2 Research – Implementation of Use case real-scenario
3.3 Structure of the research
2. Abstract
Cloud Computing has become an adoptable and innovative technology for many organization around the world and changed the way IT infrastructure can be delivered and managed. When we are talking about cloud computing we refer basically to computing resources (hardware and software) that organization and users, across the various industry, can access without the need to know exactly where that hardware and software is physically located. Its dynamic scalability and usage of the virtualized resources as a services accessible through the internet have been a great impact in the industry today. Cloud computing it is likely to have a significant impact on the education environment now and in the future. Education Institute around the world through cloud computing can provision services in the Cloud and providing staff and student with a flexible pay as you go scalable computing service. In these services are including infrastructure, software, hardware and storage on demand and easily deployed when required. With cloud computing technology, Education institution have an opportunity to concentrate more into teaching programme and research activities, rather than the IT infrastructure. Moreover in a time of budget cuts and limited funding in the public sector, cloud computing give the opportunity to educational Institutions to implement a different way of spending money for IT infrastructure and services with a flexible pays per usage. This research paper is exploring the potential use and impact of cloud computing technologies as support to student and staff for learning in the higher education in Ireland. The research will be focusing specifically on the Institute of technology of Sligo in Ireland and it’s identify the types of cloud computing technologies solution implemented within the college, focusing in the project of desktop as a service as use case real-scenario, delivered for computing level 8 courses in the school of Engineering. The research paper will explore the IT transformation that brought the IT Sligo College from a traditional physical IT infrastructure, to implement solution such as virtual server, Cloud-based Email services and Desktop as a service with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). With the explosion in the recent years of mobile device such as tablets, laptops, and smartphone there is a requirement from students and staff within the Institute of Technology of Sligo to provide anytime/anywhere computing resources and accessibility with zero downtime. The research paper will identify the effectiveness, if any in using VDI solution for teaching purpose for students and lectures.
3. Introduction
Today society is highly influenced by technology and cloud computing is changing our lives in many different ways. If we looks at company such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube we can see how people nowadays interact to each other’s. Moreover today industry in different sectors are facing with challenges unlike any in the past because technology is moving faster and thanks to cloud computing is more connected than ever before. This bring industries into a competitive global environment to refine the ways to do business and cloud computing for many years, has been the key of this businesses evolution. Education is one of those industries impacted by cloud computing technologies and in the current financial crisis and being challenged by growing needs, can be consider a valid alternative to institution that are facing problem in providing necessary information technology support for student, staff, research and development activities. With cloud computing, organization can have a highly scalable IT infrastructure were the pillar structure is a technology such as virtualization, where resources can be dynamically allocated as per request by the users and shared between a pool of users. Students and academic don’t need any particular background knowledge and through internet can access resources and exchange information between themselves. Such technology will likely have a significant impact on teaching and learning environment.
This research it exploring the impact and potential use of cloud computing technology as a support to students learning within education institutes. Because the time frame, the nature of the project implemented and also the accessibility to data needed for the success of the research, this project will focus on the Institute of Technology of Sligo in Ireland as benchmark. If we look at the definition of Cloud Computing:
“Cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing resources, everything from application to data centres, over the internet on a pay-for-use basis” [1], offering several advantages such as:
While this definition provides and insight it what it is, it does not identify is it off value to the students and lectures in term of supporting learning. What is known is that the rise of interest in this technology is in direct response to the current financial climate, where public sector and education institute budgets cuts are face challenges and problem to provide necessary information technology infrastructure to support efficiently educations [2]. The introduction of cloud computing technology, is believed to make achievable for the Institute of Technology of Sligo to reduce capital expenditure for the provisioning of information technologies infrastructure to students and staff. Over the last number of years the institute of technology of Sligo implemented several cloud computing technology solution successfully:
This research will examine if these technologies have matched the expectation focusing majorly on use-case real scenario of the Desktop as a Service solution and the effectiveness to support student learning outcomes. The research will try to answer question such as:
Empirical data will be collected within a quantitative methodology, using a survey questionnaire sent to students and lectures in the Institute of Technology of Sligo.
Participants of the study will include students and lectures who have actively engaged in this technology over the last year. The questionnaire will explore their opinion on the benefit of Desktop virtual solution and if this technology can enhance learning/ teaching experience for courses taught in class and online, considering the in demand of online courses.
In this research I will describe a use case real-scenario that I designed and implemented for the School of Engineering as pilot, for computing courses taught online and in class. The project consisted in building a private cloud that provide students and lectures with a dedicated virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI), using a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) model. The VDI will offer to student and academic staff that are part of the pilot, a persistent highly available virtual Desktop with Microsoft Windows 10 Installed. The Virtual Desktops can be accessed through secure internet access (HTTPS) from inside and outside the college network. The solution it is highly independent from hardware and software constraint, in fact the VDI doesn’t care if you are using a PC, tablet, Apple computer or a Linux machine, etc. As long the student and lecture have a solid internet connection they can access their own VDI from everywhere/anytime. Of course this solution offer huge potential and benefit not only to student and staff, but also to IT employee in managing such infrastructure. Below you can see some benefit of VDI:
As you can see there are many benefits to implement a VDI solution within the Institute of technology of Sligo from the technical and practical point of view. However implementing this solution has been very challenging as well and for several reasons. In first place there is the technical aspect on which hardware to implement and build the actual VDI solution, going for Hyper-converge infrastructure, or a much more traditional server cluster with an external shared storage (ISCSI, Fibre channel (FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Network attached Storage (NAS)). The next challenge is the planning of the VDI deployment for students and lectures. Because the nature of the business that is education, all the different courses that took part in this pilot project uses different software, and for this project I decide to implement a single master image with Microsoft Windows 10, with all the software installed needed for each course module. The last step is how the users will access the resources from inside and outside the college, and what I tried to achieve here can be define by the word simplicity. I try to make this solution as simpler as I could for student and staff to access, through a secure Internet connection. Based where the student is connected, from inside or outside the college, will be re-direct to the proper secure webserver for authentication. The webserver interface for the outside campus network connection and the inside campus network connection, has been modified to look alike, to make this process hidden to the users. The authentication is single sign on (SSO) and the students and lectures can use their own credential that they are using to access the college campus network, eliminating any additional username or password.
The structure of this research follows a typical research structure. In chapter 4 will give an in depth description of cloud computing concept, characteristics, service models and deployment models. In this chapter will discuss also literature research related to the impact of cloud computing across industries. The five industries analysed are Financial, Healthcare, Retailers, Manufacturing and Education, with particular emphasis in the Education industry. The background literature research will also describe some use-case real scenario of company and organization that implemented cloud computing technology with benefits and challenges encounter in the transition from a traditional information technology infrastructure to a cloud computing infrastructure. In chapter 5 I will present the impact of cloud computing technology in the Institute of technology of Sligo and a roadmap that brought the college from an IT physical infrastructure to implement a VDI solution for students and Lectures. In this chapter will draw particular attention to the VDI project implemented for students and Lectures and also a brief introduction of future plans for cloud computing technology within the Institute of Technology of Sligo. In Chapter 6 I will describe the implementation plan of the VDI solution. Methodological approaches and analysis are presented in chapter 7. Empirical data have been collected within a quantitative methodology, using a survey questionnaire sent to students and academic staff in the Institute of Technology Sligo. Participants of the study included students and lectures who have actively engaged in this technology over the last year. The questionnaire will explore their opinion on the benefit of the VDI solution implemented and if this technology can enhance learning/ teaching experience considering the in demand of online courses. Will finish the research thesis with chapter 8 were I will discuss perspective and conclusion of the thesis.
4. Background and Literature Research
This chapter is dedicated to the background and literature research and because this research is about Cloud Computing Technology, will start in section 4.1 with an in depth description of what is Cloud Computing and all the different model that can be implemented. From section 4.2 to 4.7 I will describe the use of cloud computing across different industry such as Financial, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retailers and Education. In each industry section I will describe, with the support of use-case real scenario, the benefits but also the challenges encounter for each customer, in implementing cloud computing solutions and re-design the traditional business model. Will finish this chapter with the section 4.8 related to Cloud Service Provider (CSP) offering cloud computing solution to Education customer. This section will show that the interest in re-design the traditional business model in Education is not only from the Institution perspective, but also the big company in Information Technology industry, such as Microsoft such as VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Cisco, Amazon and many more, have a major interest in getting involved.
If we look at the definition of Cloud Computing by the National Institute of Standard and Technology NIST 2011 States:
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics: On-demand self-service, Broad network access, Resource pooling. Rapid elasticity and measured service.”[3]
This Cloud model is composed from 5 essential characteristics, three service model and four different deployments model. The 5 essential characteristics are:
Resource pooling – The CSP (Computing Service Providers) pooled all the resources to serve multiple consumers in a multi-tenant model, with physically and virtually resources allocated and released dynamically, according with the consumer demand. There is a sense of Location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but maybe able to specify location at higher level of abstraction (ex. Country, State, or Datacentre). Example of resources include storage, processing, memory and network bandwidth.
On-demand Self-service– A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider.
Broad network access – Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanism that promote use by heterogeneous thin or tick client platform (ex. Mobile phone, tablet, laptop, and workstation)
Rapid elasticity – Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time
Measured Service – Cloud System Automatically control and optimize resources use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (ex. Storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user account). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled and reported, provisioning transparency for both the provider and the consumer of the utilize service
A Cloud Computing Services can be deploy in 4 different deployment model Public, Private, Hybrid and Community:
Public Cloud – In this deployment the Cloud Infrastructure is provisioned for open use by the general public. It may be owned, managed, and operated by a business, academic, or government organization, or the combination of them. The public Cloud exists on the premises of the cloud provider
Private Cloud – The Cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a single organizations, it maybe owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or some combination of them and it may exist on or off premises
Community Cloud – The cloud infrastructure is provisioned for exclusive use by a specific community of consumers from organizations that have shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be owned, managed, and operated by one or more of the organizations in the community, a third party, or some combination of them, and it may exist on or off premises.
Hybrid Cloud – The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).
Apart the Model, Cloud can be implemented to offer services to an Organization over the network in three different ways:
IaaS Infrastructure as Service: This is a Cloud model that gives the capability to the customer to provide or provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources, where the customer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software that can include operating systems (O/S) or applications. The Customer with this service model does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over the operating system, storage, and deployed applications and possibly in some cases limited control of selected networking component like for example hosts firewall. Example of Service provider for IaaS are Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), Rackspace Cloud, SoftLayer.
PaaS Platform as a Service: Withthis Service Model the Customer has the capabilities to deploy applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools that are provided by the cloud infrastructure itself. The customer with this service model implementation does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including, network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has the control of the deployed applications and possibly some of the configuration settings for the application-hosting environment. Example of PaaS Cloud solution can be Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, and CloudBees.
SaaS Software as a Service: This mode Service gives the Customers the ability to run application, services and store data in a cloud infrastructure. The application can be accessible from any client device through either PC, Tablet, Laptop, or Thin Client. Customer can access the service through web server or program interface. In this service model the consumer or customer doesn’t manage or control the underlying hardware cloud infrastructure that include network, Servers, Operating System, Storage or specific application configuration settings. This is probably one of the most used Cloud service, example of SaaS are Google Docs, Dropbox, and Office 365. Below you can see a picture that will give you an overview of the Cloud infrastructure layer stack with the different deployment model and service model that customer could implement:
Figure 1: NIST definition of Cloud Computing [3]
When we are talking about Cloud we often hear the term Cloud infrastructure, and this is very important aspect to understand because customer and providers share responsibility over it. A cloud computing infrastructure is a collection of hardware and software, that enables the 5 key characteristics of the Cloud Computing “Resource pooling, on-demand Self, Broad network access, Rapid elasticity, Measured Service”. The Cloud infrastructure can be viewed as containing both a physical layer and an abstraction layer. The physical layer is the hardware resources that are necessary to support the cloud services provided and include storage, servers, and network component. The abstraction layer instead is the software deployed across the physical layer that manifest the cloud characteristic and sits above the physical layer [3]. This concept is very important to understand for organization that decide to move to a Cloud Environment because draw the line also about responsibility in the Cloud environment. If we think about IT infrastructure prior cloud computing technology, data typically reside in the organization own servers, storage and network components where the organization itself has full control of the entire system as whole from the software, hardware, maintenance, including the physical access to the data centre. On the other hand, when moving to a cloud environment, the customer data, application and services, are stored on the cloud, were the physical infrastructure is fully controlled by the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) (customer can always decide to implement a private cloud in house but the cost will be high). This model in which responsibility is shared, can trigger many question marks in term of security and privacy. Below you can see tables that highlight the responsibility from consumers and providers, in the different model services of the cloud:
Figure 2: NIST Consumers/Provider activities [3]
Figure 3: Cloud stack service model responsibilities
Cloud Computing has changed all the IT infrastructure landscape and how organizations are delivering services and application to customers. Organization can get many benefits through the implementation of cloud computing-based services. In particular, they become more agile, and get easier to expand into new business area, offering more service and mostly reduce the cost of IT infrastructure that in today financial climate is the biggest challenge for Chief Information Officer (CIO). An interesting study of IBM “The Essential CIO” in 2011 [4], show how CIO and their organization are accelerating change and complexity to mark the competitive economic today landscape. This study consist on interviewing 3018 CIOs over 71 different country in 18 different industries. Cloud computing gives the opportunity for CIOs and organization to shift their budget for IT infrastructure from capital expenditure (CAPEX) were a budget is allocate in advanced for software/hardware infrastructure, to operational expenditure (OPEX) were an organization will pay by the usage of the Cloud service, cutting some intensive cost in hardware/software/maintenance. In the next chapter I will analyse the adoption of cloud computing across various industries.
Cloud computing is a fast growing industry that affect more and more Enterprise IT strategies. However industries are looking at the cloud not only to address IT function but also to help them to gain advantages as their specific industries evolve and how they will best position themselves to succeed in this changing environment. Every industries sector from Banking to Retailer to Healthcare in the past few years have started dealing with the cloud while seeking to retain the compliance, safety and performance standards for more mature technology options, see figure 4 [5].
Figure 4. Industries use of Cloud Computing (Source Gartner May 2012).
As with any new technology, cloud carries risks (such as noncompliance with regulations concerning data security) and opportunities (such as greater efficiency compared the traditional environment). As we can see from the above table most industries today use the cloud computing for necessary office and support such as emails, with the implementation of Software as a Service (SaaS) (ex. Microsoft Office 365 or Gmail). However, in the last few years, industries start to explore the cloud computing as an opportunity to improve their own business, this is the case of retailers with e-Commerce that use Platform as a Service (PaaS) to support the increasing demand of e-commerce request over holidays season such as Christmas. Another industry that in recent years has adopted the cloud computing technology is the healthcare with the sharing of medical records and the archives of medical images through cloud-based management systems. Also manufacturers industry look at the cloud for product development, lifecycle management and some key manufacturing operations. Recently VMware in collaboration with the Economist and the Intelligence Unit publish the following report, “Ascending cloud: The adoption of cloud computing in five industries” published in March 2016 [6]. This report is based on a global survey of 360 Senior Executive that are familiar with Cloud Computing in their own industry. The five key industries described in the report, that are moving towards Cloud Computing Solution are, Financial Services, Retailing, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Education. The implementation of Cloud Computing Technology in these industries came with several challenges, from the data security to the needs of qualified personnel to build and operate the Cloud Computing Infrastructure. At the same time Cloud Computing offer new ways for each of the 5 industry to expand their own business and lower costs. Below you can see a brief analysis of the adoption of cloud computing solution in the five industries mention above, but also will describe the importance and impact cloud computing solution will have in supporting each business in these five different industry.
| Over the years Financial Institution, used Cloud –based Solution for non-Core Services like virtualization for data centre consolidation, storage and Disaster recovery solution, but in the recent years the Banking Industry start to implement Cloud-based solution for Core Services. With Cloud Computing Banking Industry found a new way of expanding and offering their own services. As you can see from the ascending Cloud report in figure 5 [6], the banking industry have found new way to increase their own business in more efficient way and in the same time lowering the cost for infrastructure. |
Every student wants the best grades and that’s our Focus
Our team consists of outstanding writers who have specialized knowledge in specific subject areas and professionals experienced in academic research writing. They hold at least a graduate degree—230 with Masters and MSN, experts carefully selected and trained to ensure the best quality of our work. .
We are committed to hiring the most skilled writers who can deliver high-quality work at a reasonable price for college students. Thus, we offer the best value for money without sacrificing the standard of our essay writing services; the quality of the paper's content. #Remember to activate the DISCOUNT Code on the order form COUPONS' section before making payment for your essay.
The service guarantees that our final work is 100% original, rearched and human written. We are committed to delivering plagiarism-free and AI-free work to each university/college student's 'write my paper' request. To uphold this promise, we check every draft for any possible instances of duplication, wrong citation, grammar errors and artificiality before we send it to you. Thus, you can always rely on us to write genuine and high-standard content for your essay assignments.
When you decide to place an order with Homework Ace Tutors, here is what happens: