In the following section, a number of cloud based operators have been chosen and evaluated. Their products, service models, deployment models and security features have been evaluated and assessed so that it can be incorporated with a particular company that is planning on transitioning to a cloud based calendar and corporate email application.
There are several advantages of adopting the cloud services provided by Apple iCloud. The unlimited storage provided by the service provider will allow the mentioned company to save plenty of information on calendar and email applications and more. Rather than downloading certain files, the cloud service allows the user to access videos and music from the email application directly (Alshamaila, Papagiannidis & Li, 2013). This can come handy for the organization when a large file need to be accessed with limited hard drive space devices. Data can be restored and backed up in all of the devices. It is free as well.
The service model of the mentioned cloud service provider which it provides to its customer is basically a SaaS application. But it has revolutionized cloud computing beyond SaaS, PaaS and IaaS models by providing a platform for developing software and a process through which software can be delivered.
The deployment process by which the service is deployed to the customers is by preparing, setting up, deploying and managing the services. The infrastructure is evaluated first and an MDM solution is selected. The devices are configured and distributed and personalization options are provided with administrative control for additional content.
The security options that are provided by Apple iCloud is perfect for the organization’s requirements with session encryption by TLS 1.2 data which are retrieved are encrypted (TLS 1.2). From the mail service to the device, the transit of information is encrypted on IMAP servers and S/MIME encryption.
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web services is the cloud computing service provided by Amazon at low variable costs which is perfect for the mentioned organization. The advantages of incorporating its cloud services with the mentioned organization is cost effectiveness, flexibility and agility. Amazon offers its customers reduced prices for its products initially and minimizes the upfront investment (Amazon, 2015).
The cloud computing service model that AWS offers to its customer is SaaS based or Software as a service model which allows businesses to include critical business operations in it with flexible IT resources and low costs.
The deployment model of AWS is through private clouds infrastructure where the services are operated and managed by the organization.
The mentioned organization will be able to benefit from the security standards that AWS uses. ISO 27001, FISMA Moderate, HIPAA, PCI DSS Level 1 and SAS 70 Type II are some certifications that are maintained by AWS services. Many layers of operational as well as physical security is provided to the data centers to maintain data integrity and regular audits are carried out.
Google Docs
Google Docs is a cloud service that is provided by Google and offers products for collaboration and interaction with its customers beyond online storage of information. The advantages that the product offers over other products is due to its ease of accessibility and collaboration in a workplace. Moreover, the learning curve is smaller and the product is free. Also, the contents for the program can be imported and exported easily to other systems enhancing its flexibility.
Google offers the product through a SaaS based service model. All the user has to do is log in to the service and he or she can instantly use the presentation creator, spreadsheet application and word processor.
The deployment model of the company is to first conduct a technical configuration so that it will be users to migrate from the legacy systems to the google ecosystem. Next, change management step is conducted where the users are educated about the transition and training courses are organized (Sharma & Trivedi, 2014). The project management step contains the communication and coordination processes by which the progress can be exchanged with the other teams who are part of the transition. Each phase of deployment is approximately 4 weeks long.
The data centers that maintain Google Docs are SOC 2-audited and SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II with a certification of ISO 27001 (Varia & Mathew, 2014). It is compliant with the HIPAA, FERPA and follows the principles of Safe Harbor Privacy that makes it very secure for the mentioned company.
Windows Azure
Microsoft windows provides a wide number of products through the Azure services which sets it apart from the rest of the competition. It provides computing services such as containers and virtual machines, Mobile and web applications, data storage services with NoSQL and SQL, big data analytics and virtual networking (Tulloch, 2013).
The service model of this platform is mostly considered as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service ).
The service is deployed through a deployment model called Custom Create and Quick Create. The cloud app is prepared and cloud service resource is created. The certificates are then uploaded and the deployment is verified to check if the service is up and running (Betts et al. 2013).
The security features that are addressed by the organization are the architecture, industry specific solutions, PaaS services, identity management, security monitoring and management, endpoint protection, VM security, storage security, network security and resources.
Salesforce.Com
Salesforce.com is a cloud based company and gets its revenue from customer relationship management. The company is situated in California and provides products such as cloud services, sales cloud and collaboration platform. It is the number one CRM platform all around the word and maintains its groundbreaking innovations. AI is built right into the cloud service provided by the company. The service can be accessed from mobile completely and the analytics provides the users with a data driven insight.
The cloud computing service model of Salesforce is that it is both SaaS as well as PaaS. As the cloud based services allows the user to create workflows and objects it can be refereed as a SaaS service model. Moreover, as the services allows the user to create other softwares it can be referred as a PaaS as well (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).
The company offers the deployment model through a number of tools such as Ant migration and change sets tools. Both of these can be accessed from the user interface of salesforce and allows the customer company to migrate its work environment seamlessly with the cloud service provider company (Sen, 2014).
The security features provided by the company are object level security at the first layer. Permission sets are provided to permit accessibility. At the next layer, field level security is applied and record sharing rules are added.
To conclude, it can be stated that for transitioning to a calendar and email application which is cloud based, the mentioned organization will benefit from the adoption of AWS Services. The cost effectiveness solutions that Amazon provides is truly a unique proposition and will provide new opportunities to the company in the long run. Moreover, it is flexible and open and will allow the company to check on innovation rather than upgrading the existing infrastructure.
References
Alshamaila, Y., Papagiannidis, S., & Li, F. (2013). Cloud computing adoption by SMEs in the north east of England: A multi-perspective framework. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 26(3), 250-275.
Amazon, E. C. (2015). Amazon web services. Available in: https://aws. amazon. com/es/ec2/(November 2012).
Betts, D., Homer, A., Jezierski, A., Narumoto, M., & Zhang, H. (2013). Developing Multi-tenant Applications for the Cloud on Windows Azure. Microsoft patterns & practices.
Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2016). Cloud computing: implementation, management, and security. CRC press.
Sen, J. (2014). Security and privacy issues in cloud computing. In Architectures and protocols for secure information technology infrastructures (pp. 1-45). IGI Global.
Sharma, R., & Trivedi, R. K. (2014). Literature review: cloud computing–security issues, solution and technologies. International Journal of Engineering Research, 3(4), 221-225.
Tulloch, M. (2013). Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professiovnals. Microsoft Press.
Varia, J., & Mathew, S. (2014). Overview of amazon web services. Amazon Web Services.
