Essay On Office Automation: Ad-Hoc And Prototype Approaches

Implementation of Ad-Hoc and Prototype Approaches

The integration of functions of the firm, which are usually related to management of information, is referred to office automation. Different approaches for office automation are the ad-hoc approach, structured, pilot and prototype. This report highlights the two approaches that must be used by SoftArc Engineering in order to implement office automation for civil staffs of their organization. The two approaches that must be used by the firm are ad-hoc and prototype approach.

Adhoc-The two main evolving standards for the implementation of ad-hoc approach are IEEE 802.11 standard and WLAN (Josephson, 2013). The adhoc network is created by wireless gadgets such as cell-phones, sensors and gadgets. It is in demand for the implementation of office automation in organizations. It is a table driven approach. It can be proved as the best for the civil engineers at SoftArc as wireless networks create the approach.

Prototype-In this approach of office automation, the people who work in the firm uses the office specification tools in order to start the operations by using the benefits of the system in a direct way or to carry out pre specified procedures of the office (Hassan, 2017).

Simple- This approach is simple and thus it can easily be made clear to the civil engineers in the firm.

flexible - It is flexible and thus can be expanded in near to far future (Patil & Reddy, 2013).

does not relies on pre-existing infrastructure -It does not relies on pre-existing infrastructure and thus it can be implemented easily and any disturbance would not be caused because of problems in existing infrastructure.

unstructured -It is not structured and thus the individual has to remember all the scenarios performed.  inconsistent -it has inconsistent level of performance.

Feedback can be generated - First, a prototype is created and hence feedback can be derived from the engineers whether they are able to understand and implement it properly.

Progress can be checked- It can also be checked whether the civil engineers are able to follow the approach.

Major aim may not be reached- There are possibility that a major function will not be performed properly.

Unestimated time- the total time cannot be estimated for implementation and work (Fountas et al., 2015).  

These approaches can help SoftArc Engineering to develop the phase of office automation for the civil engineers. After the technologies are implemented by the firm, the firm does not have to wait anymore for any cycle execution or other phases (Tsafnat et al., 2014). These procedures cab help the firm to know their scopes and durations of other applications. If right plan is executed at right place, these methodologies can be very effective for the organization.

• Collaboration must be increased in the organization in order to implement the approaches successfully and proper communication must be encouraged between the teams in order to get better results (Cintuglu, Elsayed & Mohammed, 2015).
• Automation must be done wherever it is needed. Automation must be used in all the areas of the organization.
• The engineers of the firm must be asked to co-operate with the current processes plus  adapt to the changes taking place. This can help the system to be implemented successfully and in an organized way. 

Benefits of the Proposed Approaches

Difference between locally hosted infrastructure and infrastructure provided using an IaaS provider in a public Cloud

Hosting refers to the service, which offers the company to use space on the physical servers, which run in the facilities of the service provider (Krishna, 2013). Locally hosted infrastructure is a scenario where the digital signage server is hosted on Local Area Network (LAN). This scenario ensures that the network is within the full control of the administrator and on the location. This is the traditional method used in setting up of digital signage network (Wang et al., 2015). Cloud service of different from hosting as it focuses more on the services rather than simply renting of a particular place on the server. The main differences between the two processes are-

Accessibility- cloud system is superior when it comes to accessibility as it takes advantage of many ways that the people use to store their data. It does not limit the access of people, but here, the ability of reaching out to customer’s demands is enhanced (Jalali et al., 2016).

Cost- here is a huge difference between the hosting and the cloud services. Cloud services help to reduce the cost too much extent as having a space on the cloud is less expensive. Situations may occur where the cloud provider takes charge of only the resources and also additional services are provided in a cloud system such as virtual terminals, suites of software and automatic allocation of bandwidth and resources based on the traffic in the network (Cao et al., 2014).

Security- when it comes to security, local hosting services are the best way to keep the data secure as they provide very high level of security (Zhang et al., 2014). The resources of the server belong exclusively to the company. Whereas, in a cloud based system, informations and resources are shared over the network and the user does not have the same control as in a hosting network.

Backup and recovery- cloud offers a great deal for backup and recovery of the data and this is an essential phase for the company to consider. Reliable and flexible backup and recovery options are provided in the cloud based system

Redundancy and Resiliency- the architecture used to make the cloud system is robust and thus the users get the advantage of redundancy and resiliency. An automatic failover hardware platforms is provided in the cloud based system which is a great advantage.

Issues

Quick deployment and ease of integration- quick deployment is a major benefit of the cloud computing system as it takes a very short span of time.

Technical difficulties and Downtime-the whole setup of cloud depends on the access of internet and thus, any problem in the network connectivity can cause problems in the system. Outage and downfall is a major problem in the cloud and been the vest service providers face this problem often.

Increment in vulnerability- all the cloud-based solutions are exposed on the public internet and thus it is a more vulnerable target for the hackers and attackers. Personal informations can be leaked in this system. 

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)- here traditional physical computer hardwares are considered  for instance  the servers, networking and the storage arrays. Then the virtual infrastructure is built then. Can be created, resized and reconfigured within very short span of time.

Platform as a service (PaaS)- it provides a procedure for the programming languages to enter into conversation with platforms such as the database, the file storage and the web servers. It does not have to deal with the low level requirements such as the amount of space needed, if a copy must be made to protect the data and distribution of workload.

Software as a Service (SaaS)- this is the top layer of cloud computing. Here the independence of the platform is not taken into account. Here, softwares are provided for end users for instance email, word processing and business CRM. The software and service is typically charged on the basis of month or week. The users can be added or removed at any time without charging any extra consent.

The firm must use SaaS as here, the customer does not have to care much about the new technical changes being made in their gadgets as the provider itself implements the changes. When any new technology hits the market, the service provider makes the changes and thus, the customer does not have to do the change themselves (Xia et al., 2014). This service is better for the firm as the firm does not have to worry much about the changes being made in the Microsoft SharePoint 2013.

Benefits

Affordable- it is an affordable service for the firm as there are no huge up-front costs.

Quick to deploy- for SaaS, the only things needed are internet connection and a web browser. It does not require installation of any software and thus it takes a short span of time to be deployed (Kavis, 2014).

Summary

Backups and recoveries are done automatically- in the traditional software, the automated solutions needs to be implemented, which is costly. Here, the firm does not have to worry much about the backup and recovery process as it is automatically done by the provider (Noor et al., 2014).

Long term customer relationship- the high adoption rate of the technology helps the user to be related to the function for a long period of time.

Flexibility and scalability- SaaS is not much flexible as the traditional methods and it is not much sophisticated enough to tackle the rough situations. This can be resolved by supporting multiple integration, which moves in both the directions (Abdi & Béra 2014).

Security- it is the major concern in adaption of cloud system. To solve this problem, the firm must be able to authorize and access to the firm’s resources (Anselmi et al., 2014). 

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