Which paas can allroad use

BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit IV Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

2. Distinguish the similarities and differences between the personal knowledge management tools.

5. Evaluate the approaches to developing organizational knowledge management strategies.

Reading Assignment Chapter 6: The Cloud Chapter 7: Processes, Organizations, and Information Systems

Unit Lesson In Unit III, we discussed the basic concepts of hardware and software. We also discussed open source software development, database management systems, and compared the differences between native and thin-client applications. Lastly, we explored mobile systems and the characteristics of quality mobile user experiences. In this unit, we will discuss the cloud and how the cloud works, the types of business processes, and ERP systems. Networks and IP Addresses The author of your textbook does a great job of breaking down computer networks as described below:

A computer network is a collection of computers that communicate with one another over transmission lines or wirelessly… A local area network (LAN) connects computers that reside in a single geographic location on the premises of the company that operates the LAN. The number of connected computers can range from two to several hundred. The distinguishing characteristic of a LAN is a single location. A wide area network (WANs) connects computers at different geographic locations. The computers in two separated company sites must be connected using a WAN… An internet is a network of networks. Internets connect LANs, WANs, and other internets. The most famous internet is "the Internet” (with an uppercase letter I) …In addition to the Internet, private networks of networks, called internets, also exist. A private internet that is used exclusively within an organization is sometimes called an intranet (Kroenke, 2015, p. 206).

An IP address is a number that identifies a particular device. Public IP addresses identify a particular device on the public Internet. Because public IP addresses must be unique worldwide, their assignment is controlled by a public agency known as ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Private IP addresses identify a particular device on a private network, usually on a LAN. Their assignment is controlled within the LAN. The private/public IP address scheme has two major benefits. First, public IP addresses are conserved. All of the computers on the LAN use only one public IP address. Second, by using private IP addresses, you need not register a public IP address for your computer with ICANN-approved agencies. Furthermore, if you had a

UNIT IV STUDY GUIDE

The Cloud, Processes, Organizations, and Information Systems

BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 2

public IP address for your computer, every time you moved it the Internet would have to update its addressing mechanisms to route traffic to your new location. Such updating would be a massive burden. Once again, Kroenke gives a wonderful description; this time of the virtual private network:

A virtual private network (VPN) uses the Internet to create the appearance of private, secure connections. In the IT world, the term virtual means something that appears to exist but in fact does not… a VPN uses the public Internet to create the appearance of a private connection on secure network… The remote user is the VPN client… Once the Internet connection is made, VPN software on the remote user's computer establishes a connection with the VPN server… The VPN client and VPN server then have a secure connection. That connection, called a tunnel, is a virtual, private pathway over a public or shared network from the VPN client to the VPN server (Kroenke, 2015, pp. 223-224).

The Cloud Cloud computing is defined “as the elastic leasing of pooled computer resources over the Internet” (Kroenke, 2015, p. 199). The term elastic is used because the amount of leased resources can grow or shrink in response to needs seamlessly and quickly, and fees are charged only for resources used. The term pooled is used because many organizations share the physical hardware through virtualization. The term Internet is important because cloud resources are accessed using standardized Internet protocols and standards. Cloud-based computing does not require a large investment in typical computing center resources. Organizations will not have to invest in significant development costs, maintenance costs, support costs, personnel costs, management costs, and will not bear the risks of technical obsolescence. Cloud computing customers expect excellent computing resources to be provided and expect excellent security and support. If an organization chooses to utilize in-house computing, it retains control over its physical computing resources and knows exactly how its computing resources are secured and protected. Some of the most salient advantages of cloud computing are:

 lower costs,

 known cost structure,

 scalability of resources to meet varying demand,

 access to skilled resource management, and

 no worry about technical obsolescence. Three factors have made cloud-based hosting advantageous today:

1. Processors, data communication, and data storage are so cheap as to be nearly free. Because data communication is so cheap, getting the data to and from that processor is also nearly free.

2. Virtualization technology enables the near instantaneous creation of a new virtual machine. The customer provides (or creates in the cloud) a disk image of the data and programs of the machine it wants to provision. Virtualization software takes it from there.

3. Internet-based standards enable cloud-hosting vendors to provide processing capabilities in flexible, yet standardized, ways.

For example, the cloud [iCloud] will give Apple a competitive advantage over other mobile device vendors because the iCloud enables Apple to offer significant enhancements to its mobile device product line. The ability to synchronize each device’s content is an incredible advantage, and relieves users of a common frustration when the content of their various devices is not synchronized. This definitely differentiates Apple’s mobile device offerings from their competitors. The iCloud will help to lock in customers who will not consider moving to another provider’s devices and hence give up the advantages of the iCloud. Apple has already moved to lock in suppliers by only accepting apps developed by committed Apple developers. This huge investment in the iCloud data center will be difficult for new entrants in the market to duplicate, thus raising barriers to entry. Apple should experience lower costs with the almost self-managing data center it has created.

BBA 3551, Information Systems Management 3

AllRoad Parts has been using a traditional, third-party hosting organization. It pays for a monthly plan for certain servers. Those servers may or may not be virtual (AllRoad does not know how they are managed within the vendor), but they are most certainly not elastic. The benefits of the cloud are substantial to a business like AllRoad Parts, especially considering the need to store the new, large 3D printing design files. AllRoad Parts does not know if it will sell one or 100,000 such files. Elastic servers provide strong benefits. Also, regarding security concerns, the major cloud service vendors employ thousands of highly trained, skilled specialists to create, manage, administer, and improve their cloud services. It is nearly impossible to imagine that the security they provide could be done better in a private internet managed by the IT department at AllRoad. If security is paramount, AllRoad should consider a Virtual Private Cloud, which is a subset of a public cloud with highly-restricted, secure access. The cloud is based on the Internet as its foundation. It also utilizes a design philosophy called the service- oriented architecture (SOA). According to this philosophy, all interactions among computing devices are defined as services in a formal, standardized way. This philosophy enables all the pieces of the cloud to fit together. For many organizations to use the cloud and to be able to mix and match Web services, they need to agree on standard ways of formatting and processing service requests and data. That leads us to cloud protocols and standards. The protocols that run the Internet also support cloud processing. WSDL (Web Services Description Language) Web services description language is a standard for describing the services, inputs and outputs, and other data supported by a Web service. Documents coded according to this standard are machine readable and can be used by developer tools for creating programs to access the service. SOAP A protocol for requesting Web services and for sending responses to Web service requests. XML (Extensible Markup Language) XML is a markup language used for transmitting documents. It contains much metadata that can be used to validate the format and completeness of the document, but includes considerable overhead. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) JSON is a markup language used for transmitting documents. It contains little metadata and is preferred for transmitting volumes of data between servers and browsers. While the notation is the format of JavaScript objects, JSON documents can be processed by any language.

Cloud-based hosting makes sense for most organizations. The only organizations for which it may not make sense are those that are required by law or by industry standard practice to have physical control over their data. Such organizations might be forced to create and maintain their own hosting infrastructure. A financial institution, for example, might be legally required to maintain physical control over its data (Kroenke, 2015, p. 203).

Be careful not to confuse the cloud with the Internet. The Internet is a group of interconnected computers that span the globe called the World Wide Web. Through the World Wide Web, you are given access to web sites and hyperlinked web documents. The Internet is also known as the largest network in the world because it consists of thousands of networked computers. Cloud computing is technology that provides resources and services such as software distribution over the Internet. Another service is SaaS (software as a service), which eliminates the need for proprietary email and local servers. Instead, businesses can choose SaaS cloud services like Google for email, rather than setting up local email servers.