Cloud Computing Dissertation w2d1i

Course code:04H

Individual Project Can a Small to Medium Enterprise run all of their IT services in the public cloud? SID: 1318715 5/20/2011

An investigation into placing a SME all into the public cloud. Is it possible and would it be effective for their business?

Weighting agreement

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Declaration of own work

In submitting this report I make the following declaration: I understand that the piece of work submitted will be considered as the final and complete version of my assignment of which I am the sole author. I have accurately stated the word count. I understand both the meaning and consequences of plagiarism and my work has been appropriately attributed.

Word Count: ___13160____________

Signed: ___________________

Date: ___19th May 2011 _____

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Abstract Cloud computing has appeared over the past few years with promises of cost saving, green computing and time saving technology. Cloud computing offers savings by supplying s with a virtualised model that allows operating systems to be setup in minutes and programs are ready to use at the press of a button without taking up local storage. Software and hardware can be supplied on a pay-as-youuse basis, so if the program has limited use then you are not paying for its usage. This technology may be ideal for SMEs and may provide them with the computing power of large organisations but only pay when they want that extra power. The question of whether a SME could run all in the public cloud has been researched on the internet and organisations have been asked if they know of any all in the cloud organisations, but no organisation has been found that has make such a bold move. Current economic and political situations in the UK are meaning that organisations are looking to make savings and boost revenue. Yet according to recent surveys cloud computing is still not a priority for SMEs in the UK and they are starting to fall behind the rest of Europe in adopting the cloud. Lack of knowledge and concerns over security seem to be holding them back from utilising these services. Primarily this report wants to answer the question can a SME move all into the cloud, but it also wants to look at the services provided in the cloud to give an SME advice on what the cloud is and how it may be utilised. It is also thought that this report shall be of use to any academic looking to start research into public cloud computing. In order to successfully adopt cloud computing SMEs need to be aware of the services, benefits, risks and how to manage a successful migration to cloud computing. This paper shall use researched

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information from different resources and provide details that shall benefit a SME looking to use these services. The projects aim is to help SMEs adopt services provided by public cloud computing. The main focus of this paper is on SaaS as this is found to be the most likely starting block for a SME looking to start using the services in cloud computing. As many SMEs do not have the IT knowledge, this paper provides descriptions and guidelines of the services in order to make it easier for a SME to understand this technology and how they may be able to use it to their advantage.

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Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to all the tutors who have helped me to increase my knowledge over the past three years of my BSc degree. Without their knowledge and guidance I would not have been able to produce this project and complete the course. Thank you very much to my supervisor who has been of great help over the past three years and her knowledge has helped with the planning and construction of this report. A thank you has to go to Sue Bailey (Careers Adviser in Colchester Institute) for her advice on finding and talking to SMEs and thank you to Haydn White who has always helped with sourcing any research material that was hard to find. Both were very quick in their help and went out of their way to help. Last but by no means least I would like to thank my fiancée Emma who has stood by me and believed in me throughout my degree and who has been neglected during the research of this project.

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Contents Weighting agreement ............................................................... i Declaration of own work ......................................................... ii Abstract ................................................................................. iii Acknowledgement ................................................................... v Table of Figures ...................................................................... 3 Table of Tables ........................................................................ 4 1.

Introduction................................................................... 5

2.

Literature review ........................................................... 8

2.1.

Research project guidance .............................................. 8

2.2.

Research project ......................................................... 10

3.

Methodology review ..................................................... 13

3.1.

Primary research ......................................................... 14

3.2.

Secondary research ..................................................... 16

4.

Main Report ................................................................. 18

4.1.

What is public cloud computing? .................................... 18

4.2.

Why research into public cloud computing is relevant ....... 21

4.3.

Deployment and Service models .................................... 24

4.4.

IT services as a utility .................................................. 27

4.4.1.

Services used in the production of this report ................................ 27

4.4.1.1.

File storage ......................................................................... 27

4.4.1.2.

CRM ................................................................................... 29

4.4.1.3.

Drawing tools ...................................................................... 29

4.4.1.4.

Project management ............................................................ 32

4.4.2.

Other relevant services for a SME ................................................. 33

4.4.2.1.

Ecommerce ......................................................................... 33

4.4.2.2.

Email .................................................................................. 33

4.4.2.3.

Office.................................................................................. 35

4.4.2.4.

Collaboration ....................................................................... 36

4.4.2.5.

ing .......................................................................... 38

4.4.2.6.

Telephony ........................................................................... 39

4.5.

Benefits of public cloud computing ................................. 41

4.5.1.

Technological ............................................................................. 41

4.5.2.

Economical ................................................................................ 43

4.5.3.

Environmental ........................................................................... 46

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4.5.4.

4.6.

Security .................................................................................... 48

Risks of the public cloud ............................................... 50

4.6.1.

Outages .................................................................................... 50

4.6.2.

Cost ......................................................................................... 51

4.6.3.

Security .................................................................................... 54

4.6.3.1.

Internal risks ....................................................................... 55

4.6.3.2.

External risks....................................................................... 56

4.6.4.

Internet access and throughput.................................................... 56

4.6.5.

Data Protection and safe harbor ................................................... 57

4.6.6.

Standards ................................................................................. 59

4.6.7.

Vendor lock-in ........................................................................... 60

4.6.8.

Personal touch ........................................................................... 60

4.7.

Migration to the Cloud .................................................. 62

4.8.

What the future may hold ............................................. 67

4.9.

Conclusion .................................................................. 71

5.

Project Evaluation ........................................................ 74

6.

Future research ........................................................... 77

References ............................................................................ 79 Bibliography .......................................................................... 84 Appendices ............................................................................ 91 Appendix 1 ........................................................................... 92 Appendix 2 ........................................................................... 94 Appendix 3 .......................................................................... 100 Appendix 4 .......................................................................... 101 Appendix 5 .......................................................................... 102 Appendix 6 .......................................................................... 109 Appendix 7 .......................................................................... 110 Appendix 8 .......................................................................... 111 Appendix 9 .......................................................................... 114 Appendix 10 ........................................................................ 116 Appendix 11 ........................................................................ 123 Appendix 12 ........................................................................ 124 Stop Press ........................................................................... 124

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Table of Figures Figure 1: Guide to three of the deployment models ........................ 6 Figure 2: Cloud computing deployment and service models (Greenwood et al, 2010) ........................................................... 24 Figure 3: Service Layer Definitions of cloud computing (Katy, 2010) .............................................................................................. 25 Figure 4: Three network diagrams to show comparison of three diagram programs .................................................................... 31 Figure 5: Screenshots of Aceproject ........................................... 32 Figure 6: Online word processors vs. offline word processors ......... 36 Figure 7: Screenshot of a project collaboration using Huddle.com .. 38 Figure 8: Basics of Skype communications .................................. 40 Figure 9: The ability to connect different devices to the internet .... 41 Figure 10: Cloud suppliers have mobile apps allowing for more control over services whenever (Engates, 2010) ..................................... 42 Figure 11: Dedicated architecture vs. scalable cloud architecture (RightScale, 2010) ................................................................... 43 Figure 12: Microsoft online services cost estimator ....................... 44 Figure 13: Charging structure of Amazon EC2 for a web application 46 Figure 14: A comparison of power consumption of both private and public cloud services (Baliga et al, 2010) ..................................... 47 Figure 15: FreeCRMs security and settings ........................... 49 Figure 16: Applications may cost more to run on the cloud than expected (Velte et al, 2010) ...................................................... 52 Figure 17: Google Apps vs Microsoft Exchange 2007 for 5 s .... 53 Figure 18: The cost to purchase 5 licenses for Microsoft Office 2010 .............................................................................................. 53 Figure 19: Use-case diagram of s of the website (Chaffey, D, 2009) ..................................................................................... 63 Figure 20: How the current office may look ................................ 69 Figure 21: How the office of the future may look .......................... 70

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Table of Tables Table 1: Research stages in conducting a literature review (Randolph, 2009) ....................................................................................... 9 Table 2: Brief overview of computing networks working towards cloud computing (Varney, 2010)......................................................... 19 Table 3: Definition of a SME ...................................................... 21 Table 4: Comparison of three public cloud storage solutions .......... 28 Table 5: Comparison of three diagraming solutions ...................... 30 Table 6: Google Gmail vs. Microsoft Online Exchange ................... 34 Table 7: Comparison of Cloud based ing systems (Veale, 2011) ..................................................................................... 39 Table 8: The cost of network downtime to an organisation (Tomkins, 2009) ..................................................................................... 51

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1.

Introduction

This research project has been conducted with the aim of finding out whether a SME would be able to move their entire IT infrastructure onto public cloud computing and how this may be achieved. This question first became evident when at a CMA (Communications Management Association) seminar on SaaS held in London (2010) – (Is this the right time to move services into or from the cloud?). Mr Martin Rice (CEO of Erudine) was asked at the end of his seminar whether he knew of any Organisations that had moved all into the public cloud. He replied that he had heard of an organisation in the Caribbean that had, but he could not substantiate his claim with any evidence and it was more hearsay than fact. With the hype surrounding cloud computing and the increased number of devices that allow s access to the internet wherever they are, should SMEs be taking advantage of the public cloud now? And may it be advantageous for SMEs to move all to the cloud so that they have the same IT ability as their larger competitors. In the 1960‘s J.C.R. Licklider envisaged an infrastructure that would enable resource sharing, where data could be got at anywhere in the world (Gurd et al, 2005). Some see Lickleder‘s idea as being the inspiration for ARPANET which led to the internet. Another man who made a prediction around the same time was John McCarthy, who said that ―computation may someday be organized as a public utility‖. Is this the time that these concepts and ideas start to become a reality? This paper is going to investigate whether a SME may be capable of moving all into the public cloud and act as a guide to any SME looking at moving into public cloud computing (whether all-in or some-in).

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With this new paradigm there are four different types of deployment models (Williams, 2010): 

Public Cloud



Private Cloud



Hybrid Cloud



Community Cloud

An example of some of the providers of these deployment models can be found in figure 1.

Hybrid Private

Public

Internal IT:

External Provider:

Microsoft office Outlook VMware Oracle Sharepoint Own servers

Salesforce.com Amazon Ec2 Rackspace Googlemail Huddle Google Docs

Combination

Figure 1: Guide to three of the deployment models This project is only concerned with the public cloud and shall not go into depth on the other three models. They may be mentioned in this project but they are not a primary part of this project. Through the use of primary research methods, this project shall gather current information from SMEs to try and understand what they know about the public cloud and whether any of these SMEs is using or have any intention of using public cloud services.

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Secondary research shall be used to gather information from reliable sources such as: 

Peer reviewed journals



Seminars



Current books



News



Internet sources



This Week in Cloud Computing (http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-cloud-computing/)

Using the skills developed over the course of this degree, information shall be gathered together and used to produce a report that may be useful to a SME looking for information about public cloud computing and how it may or may not benefit their organisation. The information gathered in this report may also be useful for an academic looking for relevant information in cloud computing to start their research. Focus shall be given to SaaS in this report as it is felt that this may be sufficient to place a small SME fully onto the cloud and keeps the report within its limits. IaaS and PaaS shall be mentioned but only to make the reader aware of them. To keep with the theme of SaaS some of the free services, available at the time of writing this report, in the public cloud shall be used to help produce this report. These shall be made clear in section 4.4.1. As this is subject that is constantly changing as new models are formed and technology improves, a section has been inserted into appendix 12 called stop press. This contains a selection of articles that have come to light after research has ended that are relevant to this report.

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2.

Literature review

2.1. Research project guidance In order to conduct this research project it was important to show that the literature in the field had been understood (Boote & Beile, 2005 cited in Randolph, 2009, p.1). Randolph has a PhD in educational research and a MEd in international education. His ―Guide to writing the dissertation literature review‖ seemed to have more useful information in it than (Cottrell, 2008). Dawson (2009) was rather brief and Silverman (2010) goes into a lot of detail about a literature review for a qualitative research project. Luck (1999), Randolph (2009) and Dawson (2009) all show the importance of producing a research project and why it shall be useful to the writer and others who may use the report to research information for their own project or for people looking for an explanation on your subject. Relevant information is supplied by Luck (1999) for a research project in general even though his book is rather old now. He offers clear advice on managing the project and the stages that are required for a successful project. Randolph (2009) offers a journal that is up to date and describes the reasons for producing a literature review in an academic research project report. He offers a clear, comprehensive table of the research stages of a literature review that could be overlooked without guidance (as shown in table 1)

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Table 1: Research stages in conducting a literature review (Randolph, 2009) Dawson (2009) is ideal for an undergraduate or postgraduate IT project of this type and his book has been used extensively throughout the life of this project. He breaks his book into sections that are in the same order as you would expect to produce an IT research project report. Cottrell (2008) and Becker (2009) both have rough guides to research projects, but only brief advice for such a project. Their information is more for the modules of a degree course rather than a project. As this project is a qualitative project, Silverman (2009) has been able to offer invaluable advice on conducting this project. His book is not aimed at IT in general but his advice is written in a chronological order and is mainly aimed at helping students to conduct qualitative research. He does have some quantitative research advice, but only to help the qualitative researcher use their information more productively.

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2.2. Research project As cloud computing is still in its infancy it was difficult to source relevant books for this report. Colchester Institute did not possess any books and The University of Essex only had Velte et al (2010). For an established University to only have one book on an up to date topic shows how much this subject is still in its infancy. Velte et al (2010) talks about some of the big players (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Salesforce.com, etc.) in cloud computing at the time of writing their book. They go into great depth about the types of cloud computing and the technology that the vendors are using to make cloud computing exist. The authors are all wellestablished authors and co-authors of more than a dozen IT books. To make the subject of cloud computing more understandable, to any business wanting to move into cloud computing, it would be advised to read the material produced by Barnatt (2010), Velte et al (2010) and Williams (2010). They all produce guides to what cloud computing is and how it can be used by organisations. Barnatt (2010) offers a brief guide to cloud computing and shows the reader what cloud computing is and what he thinks it will bring in the future. He covers briefly what services are offered in the cloud and mentions lots of service providers and what they offer. His insight into the future of the cloud is interesting and is entitled ―The second digital revolution‖. This chapter shows how the continuing development of interfaces is enabling the cloud to become a reality and grow produce more uses. This has been demonstrated in a recent TV ment by PC World which shows how with the use of a touch screen computer the is able to put picture on the cloud, alters it and then prints it at home. This is only a small part of cloud computing, but it shows how the use of the interface (the

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computer) can improve the s experience and draw them to use the services of the cloud. While Barnatt (2010) shows the services in the cloud, Williams (2010) gives an explanation about: 

Risks and benefits



Choosing suppliers



Protecting your data in public clouds



A five step process to moving into the cloud

His guide is brief but does explain cloud computing in plain English so as to avoid the confusion that cloud computing brings with its terminology. He has used a chapter with case studies to demonstrate how organisations have used the cloud. To make sure that this subject is relevant it has been important to use both peer review journals and internet sourced articles to make sure that the information is up to date. Business Link (www.businesslink.gov.uk) has been used to try and investigate the IT systems that are used by a SME to run their business. They are a government resource that provides clear information for SMEs setting up and running their own business. They also offer a valuable insight into cloud computing that is designed to give SMEs a basic insight into what they can do in cloud computing. For a SME looking to move to the cloud this is a great service that business link offer as other organisations like them do not seem to be offering this service. Keboko is a company run by Charlie Cowan in the UK and he has teamed up with salesforce.com to offer services to move SMEs to cloud computing. He has a blog at http://iamcharliecowan.com/keboko/ and this continues on http://www.keboko.com/category/blog. His blogs offer the reader

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advice on how he has trialled the services he offers first and how he has gone about doing so. His blog offers an insight into some of the new things that are happening in both cloud computing and in SMEs. He takes into the recent political and economic situation that has arisen lately and makes a point to mention it in a blog of its own. Although blogs are not very academic or reliable, they are part of the changing way that we communicate and if they are current then they may well be reliable.

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3.

Methodology review

To produce this research project a qualitative methodology was chosen as this was thought to be more suitable for the research of this project. The report did not require any statistics to find out how many had done something (quantitative research). It was not aimed at finding out how many SMEs were moving to the cloud or how many had certain issues with the cloud. Its main focus was on researching how an SME could move onto the public cloud and whether this was achievable. In order to gain the knowledge to produce this report, information has to be gathered from reliable sources. Primary research was aimed at investigating what knowledge and worries a small group of SMEs have about public cloud computing. This did take on a bit of a quantitative research but still stayed within the scope of a qualitative methodology. To research the relevant type of information for such a report it was necessary to conduct secondary research to begin the project. Authors like Cottrell (2008), Becker (2009), Luck (1999) and Dawson (2009) help to plan the gathering of information in a project management type fashion. Knowledge of this type of planning was also learnt from IT Project Management module and was put to good use throughout this project. A project plan (appendix 1) and log (appendix 2) were used to monitor the project throughout its life. Project preparation made sure that risk assessments had been put in place. Amendments to the project were noted in the project plan to keep track of them. As the project was based on a report about public cloud computing, it was only fair that some cloud computing services were used in the production of this report. The following SaaS services were used:

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

Aceproject was used to create a project plan (aceproject.com)



Dropbox was used to store the project (dropbox.com)



CRMfree was used to build a database of some local SMEs (freecrm.com)



Gliffy was used to produce some of the network diagrams (gliffy.com)

These services were chosen because they were either free or recommended by colleagues. Aceproject was found after trialling Microsoft Project and Zoho Project. Aceproject was easier to use and produced a relevant Gantt charts. Google Docs was looked at and trialled but due to its lack in functionality it was decided that it did not have the correct tools for a project of this type at present. All email correspondence with the supervisor was printed out and kept in a folder. This proved to be invaluable when a question was deleted from my emails and the hard copy had to be retrieved. Several of these messages can be found in appendix 3 as evidence. Regular meetings were held with the supervisor so that any questions could be answered and the project could be tracked by the supervisor. Meetings were held on Monday afternoons during term time.

3.1. Primary research A questionnaire was designed for conducting interviews to try and understand what SMEs knew about cloud computing. After circulating a draft questionnaire to colleagues, careful consideration of their was combined with my own ideas to tailor the questionnaire. It was realised that this could be used for interviews and it may also be circulated to SMEs through email or directly canvassing them asking them to fill it in. This may provide a larger from SMEs than just interviews.

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After producing a cover sheet describing the study, the questionnaire was sent out to local SMEs. Sue Bailey (Careers Adviser) of Careers Guidance Centre in Colchester Institute, helped compile a list of 43 SMEs (appendix 4), who were emailed a copy of the questionnaire. It was expected that there may be no response to this approach of canvassing them, but 12 did reply and one company did explain that they had a lot of requests for questionnaires to be filled in and so they would not have the time to complete mine. Several SMEs did give comments which were of great help in understanding the knowledge they had about cloud computing. Interviews were structured and conducted in a face to face manner. In this way the interviewer was able to capture the most detail, both verbal and non-verbal (Maylor and Blackmon, 2005). This structured approach of using a pre-made questionnaire allowed the answers to be written in a space below each question and as the interview was face to face it was possible to explore unexpected answers. A journey to the Cloud Expo in London on the 2nd of February 2011 was used to gather information from cloud computing suppliers. The seminars were the most useful part of this trip and some of the slides were emailed to me after the show. The major manager (Paul Augaitis) of an established cloud computing supplier (carrenza.com) provided some very helpful information and agreed that I could him in the future. The seminars gave good up to date qualitative information from some of the top cloud computing suppliers in the world, including Rackspace, HP, etc. Emails communication with Paul Augaitis provided a little information on the processes involved in setting up a cloud and the basics of the planning process required putting an organisation into the cloud. This was helpful and provided guidance to carry out research in relevant areas.

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Cloud services were used to trial some of the services that a SME may be expected to use to help run their IT on a day to day basis. File storage has been used in the cloud so that this report and other college reports could be retrieved from any computer anywhere as long as there was an internet browser and internet connectivity.

3.2. Secondary research As this is still a relatively new subject, books were not readily available on the subject. The few books that I was able to source that were of any use to this research project can be found in the literature review in section 2. Haydn White (Learning Resources Adviser) of Colchester Institute Library was consulted with on two occasions through the life of this project. As this is a new topic he was asked if he had any knowledge what the Dewey numbers for this subject may be. He was unaware and advised that as it is a new subject it may not have been assigned to any particular Dewey number and he could find no evidence otherwise. The books sourced for this project have been found in the business section of Colchester Library and the computing section of Colchester Institute, University of Essex and Braintree College. The internet was a major source of secondary research information and provided journals, case studies, government information and up to date information in the news. Business Link (UK government's online resource for business) are providing information on their website about cloud computing and it was found when trying to research the types of information systems that an SME may use. The Chambers of Commerce and Colbea, that are set up to help SMEs, were not providing information on their website on cloud computing yet. They were asked if they were providing information and as yet there has been no response.

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The BCS were used to try and find forum groups on cloud computing to try and make with people who have the same interest. The BCS only had one forum group that consisted of 6 people at the time of writing this report. One person on there was helpful and pointed me in the direction of their manager who has set up his own company and is currently running it in the cloud and selling cloud services. This was fruitful as he has a blog that was full of information on how he went about setting up his business and exploring the clouds services. I did him but he was brief in his answers and only pointed me towards his blogs.

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4.

Main Report

4.1. What is public cloud computing? Before we discuss cloud computing it is important to trace its history in order to understand it. Cloud computing is a new word that has entered the world of computing but it is not a new concept. In the 60‘s J.C.R Licklider and John McCarthy envisaged an infrastructure where data and computations could be accessed anywhere in the world and delivered as a public utility where you only pay for what you use (similar to the way gas and electricity are used) (Timmermans et al, 2010). Cloud computing is similar to centralised computing in that the is using services and storage not on their local computer. Table 2 shows how between the 50s and late 70s the use of centralised computing was used due to poor local storage on computers. Poor networks and improved local storage in the 80s led to devolved computing, where the needs for centralised computing diminished and the personal computer started to be used more as application were now able to be stored and run on computers. The 90s and 2000s had great improvements in both Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) which allowed organisations to start using centralised storage again and the possibility to save money on the amount of servers run in the organisation. Now organisations can run their IT on dumb terminals (thin clients) again after technology has come round full circle with improvements in virtualisation and networks.

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1950s Transistorised Computer Centralized Computing, Centralised Storage, No Network 1960s Improved Computers, Dumb Terminals Centralized Computing, Centralised Storage, Rudimentary Networks, Business Applications 1970s Multiple Computers, Multiple Dumb Terminals Ethernet Networks. Centralised Computing, Centralised Storage Complex Networks, Business Apps 1980s Personal Computer Devolved Computing, Local Storage, No Network Data Interchange by Disk, Business Apps on Computer Late Networked PCs 1980s Devolved Computing, Local Storage, Local Business Apps, Data interchange over Simple Network 1990s PCs Networked to Central Storage Local Computing, Centralised Storage, Local Business Apps Local Area Network (LAN) Late PCs Networked to Central Storage and Computing 1990s Connected to the Internet. Centralized Computing, Local Computing, Centralised Storage Local Storage, Centralised Apps, Local Apps Local area Network & Wide Area Network 2000s Cloud Computing, Dumb Terminals (Thin) Centralised (Cloud) Computing, Centralised (Cloud) Storage, Centralised (Cloud) Business Apps Wide Area Network Table 2: Brief overview of computing networks working towards cloud computing (Varney, 2010) The term cloud computing comes from the way that Wide Area Networks (WAN) and the internet are drawn as a cloud in network diagrams. There are many definitions of cloud computing but the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) offers a definition that is publically available and from a reliable source. Their definition of cloud computing is: ―Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, ondemand 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

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provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.‖ (Mell and Grance, 2010) Public cloud computing allows s to be able to rent space on virtual servers. This means that you only pay for what you use. So unlike a data centre or local storage where you pay for a set amount of storage or use of applications, public cloud computing uses a pay as you use model. If you use an application more or less or storage use alters up or down then the cost moves on a sliding scale and you only pay for what you are using. This sounds good but as with all technology it does come with its benefits and risks which will be covered in sections 4.5 and 4.6.

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4.2. Why research into public cloud computing is relevant Public cloud computing has been described by John Engates of Rackspace, at the Cloud Expo 2011 in London, as being easy for SMEs and start-ups to adopt but harder for large corporations. It has been said by many that the public cloud may give SMEs the same computing power as larger organisations, but only pay for what they use when they require it. What is a SME? According to the European Commission for Enterprise and Industry (2003): ―Enterprises

qualify

as

micro,

small

and

medium-sized

enterprises (SMEs) if they fulfil the criteria laid down in the Recommendation which are summarized in the table below. In addition to the staff headcount ceiling, an enterprise qualifies as an SME if it meets either the turnover ceiling or the balance sheet ceiling, but not necessarily both.‖ A rough guide to this is shown in the table 3 as defined at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figuresanalysis/sme-definition/index_en.htm. Enterprise Category Medium-sized

Headcount

Turnover

Or

< 250

< € 50 million

Balance sheet total < € 43 million

Small

< 50

< € 10 million

< € 10 million

Micro

< 10

< € 2 million

< € 2 million

Table 3: Definition of a SME When a questionnaire was sent to local SMEs (appendix 5), most of them that replied did not know exactly what the public cloud had to offer and some did not even know what the cloud computing is. Several did not have any intention of using the cloud at the moment and no view of using it in the future. These results were backed up

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by a recent survey by peopleperhour.com who survey 1300 SME across the UK and discovered that almost 74% did not use cloud computing and 43% of those did not even know what the term meant. 36% of those who understood cloud computing did not see a need for it in their business and 10% saw the technology as to expensive. Only 9% avoid the cloud because of security fears even though many companies site the security as being the reason that they avoid it (Scott, 2011). Organisations like the Chambers of Commerce and Colbea do not seem to be presenting information openly for SME‘s at the current time. An email from the Chambers of Commerce explained that they are not yet advising directly. Business Link is supplying basic information that may be useful to a SME looking to move to cloud computing. Primary and secondary research conducted has shown that the two main obstructions for a SME moving into the public cloud are: 

Trust



Knowledge

It seems that SMEs are still not getting the information that they require to understand cloud computing. Koehler et al (2010) states that most research work focuses on the technical aspects of cloud computing and not enough research on consumer‘s preferences. This research report shall investigate how the public cloud may be adopted by a SME, so that both academic and SMEs understand some of the perquisites before adopting the public cloud. This research report may also show whether or not such a move would be of benefit or not. The report aims to investigate whether a SME is able to move all into the public cloud and shall inform SMEs what public cloud computing can offer them. With only 48% of UK firms using some form of cloud

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computing compared to 60% of European SMEs (Tyrsina, 2011) it seems clear that the SMEs in the UK are still unclear about what cloud computing is. Public cloud computing may need to be clarified in order to elucidate the myths and stories about the services. Forrester and Gartner predicted that cloud computing revenue is expected to rise from $41 billion in 2011 to $118.7 billion and $148.8 billion respectively by 2014 (Valentino-DeVries, 2011). With such predictions it is clear that cloud computing is here to stay and so research should be carried out in order to make public cloud computing more understandable to SME‘s.

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4.3. Deployment and Service models The four deployments and three service models that have been mentioned in the NIST (Mell and Grance, 2009) definition of cloud computing are shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Cloud computing deployment and service models (Greenwood et al, 2010) All three service models can be accessed in the public cloud deployment. The three services according to NIST are: 

SaaS – Software as a Service – This offers the the ability to access applications over a network, typically applications on a pay-as-you-use rate. The only controls the application and has no control over the hardware or operating systems. Some key providers are Google Apps, Zoho, Netsuite, Salesforce.com and Microsoft 365.



PaaS – Platform as a Service – Offers a platform for deploying web applications without the need to buy and manage the specialist hardware and software required to produce such applications. The can control the application and select an operating system but tends not to control the hardware. Some key providers are Google Appengine, Force.com and Azure.



IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service – The supplier offers storage, servers, networking components and hardware which is housed and maintained by them for clients to use on a pay per use basis. The has the ability to control the operating systems

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and alter settings in the hardware. Sometimes known as Hardware as a Service (HaaS). Some key providers are Amazon EC2 & S3, Rackspace and Carrenza. Figure 3 shows a visual representation of the service layers for the services defined above and shows how they stack on top of each other.

Figure 3: Service Layer Definitions of cloud computing (Katy, 2010) The public cloud offers the three service models but according to a survey run by European Network and Information Security Agency

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(ENISA, 2009), 34% of respondents would use SaaS and 28% would most likely use PaaS. This may be down to SMEs not having the IT skills or the money to employ a dedicated IT staff member that would be involved in setting up their infrastructures in IaaS or PaaS. Instead they may outsource the setting up and maintaining of their servers and networks to third parties. According to ENISA (2009) the main service that most SMEs would be inclined to use at this time is SaaS. This seems quite logical as the completed questionnaires (appendix 6) show that SMEs worry about security and IaaS and PaaS mean storing your information on someone else‘s system. With the introduction of Apple IPods, IPhones and IPad‘s most people know about applications on the web but they may not understand IaaS and PaaS due to lack of understanding. This report centres on SaaS as this is thought to be the most understood service available to SME‘s at this time.

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4.4. IT services as a utility This section shall try and describe some of the SaaS services in the public cloud that a SME may use to help run their organisations IT. After interviews with two SMEs (appendix 7) of different sizes and researching information systems of a SME, the main IT systems that may be used to help run a generic organisation may be: 

Email



Internet



CRM



Office (Word, Excel, etc)



Finance

Suppliers like Zoho, Salesforce and Google can supply packages of software or applications can be individually sourced. Appendix 8 has a list of resources compiled by Velte et al (2010) as an example of some relevant resources. The following sections show some SaaS solutions that may be of use to a SME in running their organisation smoothly.

4.4.1. Services used in the production of this report To produce this report it was planned that SaaS services would be evaluated and used to help produce the report. These services were chosen because they were either free, easy to trial and recommended by colleagues. These were all setup quickly, easily and did not require installation on the local computer.

4.4.1.1. File storage For storage Dropbox was used and is now being used for other projects at the same time. It was tempting to use Microsoft SkyDrive but at the time of producing this report Dropbox had some

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advantages that made it more appealing. Table 4 shows a comparison of three public cloud storage providers. Dropbox Free storage

Paid for plans

Microsoft SkyDrive 25GB free

2GB free and extra 250MB for each friend referral up to 8GB maximum 50GB at $99/yr None 100GB at $199/yr

Automatic synchronising

Yes

Sharing Store history of work Mobile device apps

Yes Yes Yes (most devices)

Largest file size

No limit on desktop but 300MB cap on website Security Stored files have AES-256 encryption. Data transmitted is sent over SSL Table 4: Comparison of three

No (only with services like Gladinet) Yes No

Amazon Cloud Drive 5GB free

20GB at $20/yr 50GB at $50/yr 100GB at $100/yr 200GB at $200/yr 500GB at $500/yr 1000GB at $1000/yr No No No

Only now starting to come out No bigger than 50MB

No

You have to encrypt your files before ing manually

You have to encrypt your files before ing manually

No limit

public cloud storage solutions

The table above shows that when selecting a storage service it depends on what the is looking for, whether it is storage, price or functionality.

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In using Dropbox to produce this report there was a problem with a files synchronising and a file was almost lost but thanks to the work history being stored for a month the previous copy of this file was retrieved successfully online.

4.4.1.2. CRM Customer Relations is an integral part of the sales of any organisation and Customer Relations Management (CRM) software solutions allow an organisation to strategize to reduce cost and increase profitability. CRM solutions are ideal for tracking, sales, customer services and business management (Gander, 2011). CRMFree was used to automatically email the questionnaire for this project to 43 SMEs. This was successful but was rather tricky to set up. CRMFree has no integration with Google docs where competition like Zoho and Salesforce.com do have integration which makes it easier to use a truly online solution to create your ment, etc. and then email it to all that it may concern. To truly benefit from CRM cloud solution it is felt that it would be beneficial to let a member of the sales team trial some of these services to find the ones that they prefer to use.

4.4.1.3. Drawing tools For most projects around an office it is important to be able to put words into pictures or diagrams to get your point across especially in presentations. For example to produce this report Gliffy was trialled to see if it was powerful enough to compete with installed software solutions. Unfortunately it was not as powerful a solution as Edraw. Another solution that was found was at www.diagram.ly, this offered a similar solution to Gliffy and was still limited as shown in table 5.

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gliffy.com Free or $5 $1750 p/m depending on amount of s Secure SSL on version 2MB free Unlimited on Public on free version Private, public or shared on edition

diagram.ly

Edraw Max

Free

£79.95 £99.95depending on version 1

None

Not required

None

N/A

Private

Private

MS Office

No

No

Yes

Save file as

jpg/png/svg

xml/vdx/jpg/png

jpg/bmp/dib/png/ tif/wmf/emf/html/xml

Cost

security

limit

Who can see my diagrams

375 plus own Over 4600 plus save 198 and save own objects own objects Table 5: Comparison of three diagraming solutions

Predefined objects

Other solutions exist like lucidchart.com, cacoo.com and creately.com but were unable to be tested at this time due to time constraints. Figure 4 shows some simple network diagrams created on each of the solutions mentioned above to show a comparison.

1

Source: Google shopping

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Diagramly

Gliffy

Internet Cloud

Edraw Figure 4: Three network diagrams to show comparison of three diagram programs Whilst they all look similar Edraw has the better selection of tools to use. The online solutions were very limited to what they could produce, but they were more than capable of being able to create basic diagrams.

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4.4.1.4. Project management The project management of this report was managed using software supplied by aceproject.com. This software was mainly chosen after trying for several hours to get to grips with Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project seems awkward to use and it is felt that it would require training to use it successfully. Aceproject was rather simple to use and had great functionality for keeping track of this project and can be collaborated between shareholders by supplying them names and s to access it anywhere with internet access. The screenshots in figure 5 show some of the functionality of Aceproject to give an idea of some of its uses and simplicity.

Figure 5: Screenshots of Aceproject Other solutions to project management solutions can be found at http://pm-sherpa.com/solutions/. Due to time constraints, the

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solutions on this site could not all be trialled but do correspond with previously used solutions like Huddle.

4.4.2. Other relevant services for a SME The following services have been researched for this project but have not been used to produce it. They are all relevant solutions that a SME would be able to use.

4.4.2.1. Ecommerce If a SMEs main business is selling products, they shall probably have some sort of software that allows them to carry out their daily ecommerce functions. There are many SaaS solutions in the cloud. Some of the larger suppliers of this service are Corecommerce, ePages and Actinic. They each offer similar solutions and ePages offers its solution through resellers like BT, 123Reg and Kingston Communication to name a few. A full list can be found at http://www.epages.com/en/partners/providers/overview/. Each supplier of ecommerce solutions offers a variety of different packages. Most of them also offer a trial version that can be used to evaluate the services that they offer. The advice on moving into a cloud computing ecommerce solution would be to try before you buy.

4.4.2.2. Email Both Google and Microsoft offer SaaS solutions for business. Both offer similar packages as can be seen in table 6. Other cloud organisations like Cobweb, Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) and Iron Mountain, all offer variations of email systems in the cloud.

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Service

Google Gmail

Cost

£33 per /per year As part of the Google Apps bundle

Up time Spam Filter Storage Web interface Email archival Tasks Desktop Email client integration

99.9% Yes 25GB per Yes Yes No Yes but calendars and s need a separate app that can only run on windows to synch them Google has built its client for internet browsers from scratch and Google Apps has been designed for internet browsers from the bottom up

Web Client

Active Directory Integration

Microsoft Online Exchange £3.36 per /per month Or bundle with BPOS for £6.71 per /per month 99.9% Yes 25GB per Yes Yes Yes The use of Microsoft Outlook allows simple integration Microsoft web client resembles Outlook and compared to most web based email systems encountered, has not been designed from a web browser perspective Exchange integration is simpler than Google Many smartphones come with Exchange

Google Apps requires some Python scripts to integrate Mobile phone Synchronising integration s and calendar can be a problem if your phone is not a Blackberry Google offer great Microsoft offer a documentation but representative 24/7 only offer phone who can be called if the service with almost any query is down Table 6: Google Gmail vs. Microsoft Online Exchange Who to choose would depend on the service that is required or whether savings were of higher priority. Yale Daily News reports that Yale University is moving 20,000 email s from Horde email to

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Gmail over the next two years in phases and expects to make savings of at least one-third of its email budget (Gorman, 2011). The comparison between Gmail and Microsoft Online Exchange (table 6) show that clear savings can be made, but the cost to train staff in the new system may also balance out the savings.

4.4.2.3. Office Office packages are available (word, excel and presentation software in one) or they can be accessed for free using services like Google Docs or Zoho Writer. Both of these solutions enable: 

Collaboration



Storage



Access control

A full list of features for Google docs can be found at http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en-GB/whatsnew.html.

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Zoho Writer

Google Docs

Microsoft Word 2010 Figure 6: Online word processors vs. offline word processors Zoho Writer and Google Docs did not offer the same functionality as Word 2010 to produce this report. The automatic table of contents was not available in both products. If it had of been then they would have been used. Both online products have about the same functionality and they operate well as basic word processors so it would be down to the operator‘s preference in choice.

4.4.2.4. Collaboration If s are based in different offices or a SME is collaborating with another organisation to complete a project then collaboration

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software may help them to achieve their goals. By granting access to s or other organisations it is possible to share certain documents. Dropbox has a function that allows documents to be shared with invited s but Huddle has more access control and the ability to lock documents while they are being edited. The free version of Huddle was used in the past to produce both a Project Management module and an Ecommerce module. Both of these projects had shareholders that were unable to meet up in person. Since these were t ventures single documents had to be worked on collectively. With the help of Huddles functions and tools this goal was achievable. A few of Huddles functions are: 

Document storage



Document sharing



Calendar



Shareholder approval system



Meetings Diary



Whiteboard



Online for editing Microsoft documents



Mobile device application

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Figure 7: Screenshot of a project collaboration using Huddle.com Huddle has case studies from organisations that are from all different types of business including government, education, charities, health, professional services and agencies. These case studies can be found at http://www.huddle.com/customers/featured-customers/.

4.4.2.5. ing ing systems are available on the public cloud for SME‘s. Suppliers like Xero offer consumers the ability to trial the software before buying. A blog by Veale (2011) offers a comparison table that is updated every 5 minutes as shown in table 7.

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Table 7: Comparison of Cloud based ing systems (Veale, 2011) ancy software should be looked at by ants before any decision is made on a solution.

4.4.2.6. Telephony Providers like Skype could be used to set up a public cloud solution. Skype works by either using your computer with a microphone and headphones or a separate VOIP phone plugged in to make your phone calls through your computers internet connection as shown in figure 8.

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1) Skype software is installed on PC and can either use microphone and speaker or use a VoIP telephone to make the telephone calls through the computer.

2) The call is sent over 3) The call can the computers internet either be received connection on a landline or can be made to another computer with Skype installed. Calls to other Skype s are free. Figure 8: Basics of Skype communications

This solution may suit a small organisation but may not have the quality for larger organisations. This is because Skype uses the same connection as the computers, so as the network load gets busy the connection may lose quality and may even loose connection altogether.

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4.5. Benefits of public cloud computing The internet is full of promises that using cloud computing services will save organisations money. This may be the case but not always. This section shall try and show some of the benefits the cloud can bring to SMEs.

4.5.1. Technological With so many mobile devices available for organisations to use in business and broadband networks being improved over the coming years, organisations can use technology to improve the productivity by allowing employees access to working tools and documents from anywhere.

Figure 9: The ability to connect different devices to the internet Android and Apple apps are allowing the ability to access systems from anywhere in the world as long as they have some sort of network connection on their mobile devices. These allow s the power to be able to manage their cloud solutions as the example shows in figure 10.

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Figure 10: Cloud suppliers have mobile apps allowing for more control over services whenever (Engates, 2010) Other technological benefits are the ability to deploy systems rapidly and the ability to scale them up or down on a sliding scale basis to suit your needs. This means smaller organisations can use as much or as little power or storage as they want. Unlike traditional systems where you increase the power or storage it stays in the machine and may never be fully utilised again. Complete operating systems can be set up in minutes due to the virtualisation that is happening in the cloud environment. This could save SMEs time in setting up s on systems, where an operating system would normally take time to install and set up permissions the cloud may reduce this time. With the scalability of services like Amazons AWS, SQL functions that may take hours to complete can be done quicker. By paying for extra compute capacity for as long as you want and then revert back to as little power as you need may allow organisations to get the work done in fraction of the time. Figure 11 shows a comparison between dedicated architecture and scalable cloud architecture.

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Figure 11: Dedicated architecture vs. scalable cloud architecture (RightScale, 2010) Due to applications being accessed through web browsers it does not matter what operating system is running on the computer and some applications are also accessible through other mediums like smartphones. This gives a great advantage over previous software which most of the time depended on operating systems installed on the computer.

4.5.2. Economical Cloud computing can offer economic benefits in the way that it charges. The following is a rough guide to how the three main service models of public cloud computing is charged (Williams, 2010): 

SaaS – Not all services have to be paid for and some small start-ups may well get away with using the free services that are available on the public cloud. Some of the pay for services charges tends to be either monthly or yearly. Many of the

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services are broken down and you pay either for the package at a reduced bulk price or you just pay for the applications that you use. Figure 12 shows how Microsoft online services can be broken down so you may only pay for the applications that you use or you can pay for the suite and receive all the applications.

Figure 12: Microsoft online services cost estimator This allows different s of the organisation to be charged for the services that they use. There‘s no point in paying for John in s to have live meeting and SharePoint if he does not use it. Some of the services may have requirements (minimum amount of s, minimum term). Prices may also vary with the amount of that a service provides. 

PaaS – This is charged differently by different suppliers. For example Google charges for units as follows: o Outgoing Bandwidth per gigabytes o Incoming Bandwidth per gigabytes o U Time per U hours o Stored Data per gigabytes per month o High Replication Storage per gigabytes per month o Recipients Emailed per recipient o Always On per daily Salesforce.com‘s PaaS service Force.com charges slightly differently:

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o Number of s o Number of applications o Number of database objects o Storage size o Access to CRM s and in salesforce.com CRM o Desirable level of customer Both of the above services charge per month and this seems to be the same across most service providers. 

IaaS – The charges for IaaS are complicated widely vary. To give an example Amazon offer a simple monthly calculator to work out the cost and it has some common examples to pick from. Figure 13 shows the things you would be expected to be charged for if you were to run a web application scenario in Amazon EC2 cloud. This shows some of the things that an organisation using IaaS may be charged for. o No of IPs o Amount of servers and utilisation o Data transfer o Total data processed

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Figure 13: Charging structure of Amazon EC2 for a web application As you shall see in the risks in section 4.6, the cost is not always a benefit and should be carefully researched before adopting the public cloud.

4.5.3. Environmental Although it has been said that cloud computing is beneficial to the environment. Baliga et al (2010) has been shown this to be an inaccurate comment and investigation should be carried out before assuming that because you are using cloud computing you are now environmentally friendly. Baliga et al (2010) found that the power consumption of the private cloud seemed to be less than s using the public cloud. Both the private and public cloud were more efficient than local storage so they are both more beneficial than using local storage when the computational tasks were small but this can soon change when the transporting of information to the cloud increases. It was found that even with the energy saving technology techniques and advanced cooling systems, cloud computing is not always the greenest

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computing technology. Figure 14 graphs the power consumption between transport, storage and servers in both the private cloud and public cloud.

Public Cloud

Private Cloud

Figure 14: A comparison of power consumption of both private and public cloud services (Baliga et al, 2010) Cloud computing allows s to use thin clients and laptops that have a lower power rating than an average desktop computer. This may offer greater energy savings depending on the uses of the computer and so offer a greener solution for the environment. Barnatt (2010, p19) states that countries like Iceland are realising that they are some of the best countries to cut down on the carbon footprint due to cold weather being used to cool datacentres instead of air conditioning and geo thermal power being used to power them. These advancements could improve on Baliga et al‘s theories. It is thought that advancements in computing technology shall help with power saving as UK and EU regulations on carbon footprint put pressure on organisations. Chip producers like Intel and AMD are already producing processors that use less energy than previous processors. Cloud computing may also help to reduce the carbon footprint by allowing workers to collaborate online through SaaS services like

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video conferencing, document sharing and instant messaging. This will make both carbon and financial savings as workers will be able to work from home and less travel will be required to have meetings with offices abroad.

4.5.4. Security Every organisation that uses IT has to put there information at risk. Risk is then mitigated and minimised. Cloud computing is no different to traditional infrastructure when it comes to security. The information is still sent over networks and employees have access granted to them, so that they can access the system. Cloud computing may actually give some of the smaller organisations more security than they could ever afford to implement on their own infrastructure. Not only do large cloud computing suppliers have to comply with regulations, they also have to make sure that their reputation is not tarnished by serious problems like security breaches. Most security risks come from the staff within the organisation. The Guardian ran a recent story about the NHS being involved in 909 data breaches by the 30 trusts in London alone over the last three years. Almost all of these breaches were down to staff errors and lack of knowledge (Laja, 2011). This suggests that if you make your staff aware of their responsibility and obligations through policies, then your information should be safer. No matter where your information is held, human error is always going to be a risk. Some cloud computing suppliers will be able to carry out audits and have the ability to monitor their networks better than a SME and they are likely to employ dedicated security staff. Some actually simplify the process of access control so that if a were to have their employment terminated then it is simple to remove their access to

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sensitive information as shown in figure 15. If they have their datacentres in the UK then they will also have to comply with UK and European legislations. For a SME it is all about how much risk they want to take and how many questions they ask the supplier before ing.

Figure 15: FreeCRMs security and settings When looking to cloud services for security you should focus on five key areas: 

Authentication



Authorisation



Confidentiality



Integrity



Non-repudiation

―These building blocks work together to provide a comprehensive data security infrastructure‖ (Ford, 2010).

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4.6. Risks of the public cloud 4.6.1. Outages As public cloud computing relies on a connection to the internet, there is always the chance that there may be network outages. Any type of outage may cause a business to lose money and customers but if all assets were in the public cloud then productivity may come to a standstill as well. Bill Rhys Jones of Computerwise Ltd. (appendix 9) advised me that one of their clients use a cloud based solution. The gas board were doing works on their estate and cut through some phone cables, this left the client with no access to their system for a whole day and had to do everything manually. Problems occurred in Egypt on the 27th of January when the government cut off internet access to the country to try and stop communication between protestors. This would have had a knock on affect to organisations that were using the public cloud (Arthur, 2011). The most recent outage recorded came on April 21st 2011 when Amazon had a networking storm that caused them to have a service outage. Some services were resumed in hours and some took days. The main criticism that has come to light about this outage is that many s did not know about it until they were notified by their customers (Hickey, 2011). Network downtime can have a dramatic cost to an organisation as shown in table 7.

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Table 8: The cost of network downtime to an organisation (Tomkins, 2009) Many organisations give their availability time in the Service Level Agreement in the form of a percentage. These figures are normally quite high and may lead you into thinking that 99.5% or 99.9% mean that there is going to be very little downtime. This can equate to 1.83 days and 8.76 hours per year. From research carried out through a questionnaire sent to SMEs, most responded that they had outages in their infrastructure. From this section you can see that any sort of outage is going to cost your business money. Outages happen in both in-house and cloud computing infrastructure so it depends on how much you trust a cloud organisation to hold your information.

4.6.2. Cost The cloud carries no guarantee that it shall make savings for an organisation. In certain cases the cloud may be cost effective but in some cases it may be cheaper to buy a server and run the service yourself. For instance if you offer a service streaming high-definition

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video over 100 sources then your costs are going to spike as the throughput increases as shown in figure 16 (Velte et al, 2010).

Figure 16: Applications may cost more to run on the cloud than expected (Velte et al, 2010) As has been pointed out to me by Bill Rhys Jones (appendix 9) the cloud is not always the most effective in cost for some of the smaller SMEs. Some of the larger SMEs have contracts that have their IT changed or upgraded within a certain time limit. This is not always the case with the smaller SMEs. They may buy software and it may well last them for well beyond three years. When the cost of cloud services is calculated it is sometimes more expensive beyond three years. Figure 17 shows a comparison between the purchase of 5 licenses for Google Apps and Microsoft Exchange 2007 and shows that a larger SME using its own servers may benefit from using Google Apps. This may be ideal for a larger SME but figure 18 shows that it would only cost £1548.25 to purchase five licenses to run Microsoft Office 2010 Standard. This works out cheaper to run over three years or more compared with Google Apps.

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Figure 17: Google Apps vs Microsoft Exchange 2007 for 5 s

2

Figure 18: The cost to purchase 5 licenses for Microsoft Office 2010

3

2

Source: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/enGB/business/appscalculator/index.html 3 Source: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/mla/quickquote.aspx

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4.6.3. Security According to the BSI‘s Small to Medium Enterprise Statistics (Infosecurity, 2011): ―SMEs for 99.9% of all businesses in the UK and 49% of total business turnover, yet often treat esecurity as a "grudge purchase" or do not realise the need for compliance with key legislation‖ And ―The average number and cost of a security breach in a small organisation rose from an average of six incidents, with the worst costing an of average £20,000 in 2008, to 11 incidents in 2010, with the worst costing £55,000 on average‖ These figures should be an eye opener for any SME. Cloud computing carries risks the same as any information system but by using the cloud there are risks in the security. Some of the main security risks come from: 

Internal



external



data protection



data loss

The following sections break these down and give a brief summary of them so as to make the reader of this report more aware of them. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) should be checked over thoroughly to make sure that any data loss, security breach, downtime, etc. is effectively covered. Goo et al (2009) reveals that changing characteristics of SLAs may be dampening the level of trust and commitment between organisations.

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4.6.3.1. Internal risks Just like traditional IT infrastructure, cloud computing is also at risk from internal employees and lack of internal security. As the cloud services are accessed over the internet, a malicious attacker may only require your to access your services and information. Some of the internal risks include: 

Disgruntled member of staff



Ex-employee



Key loggers



Homogenous s

These risks can be minimised by access controls, removing s when they leave the organisation, running up to date antivirus and using two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication involves using a name and and any one of the following authentication examples: 

Biometric (retinal, fingerprint or voice scans)



Token (smart card, USB stick)



Typing Rhythm



Public Key infrastructures



Sending one of s to mobile or email when you sign in

This is only a few of the mechanisms that can be used along with security policies that help inform how the system is to be used by employees and contractors and their duties to the organisation. Internal security measures cannot be forgotten about just because the information is held somewhere else.

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4.6.3.2. External risks As the information and services are being held on third parties infrastructures, it is important to realise that any network is only a secure as its weakest link. If the cloud supplier has a security weakness in any of their software then any SMEs who are using that supplier are at risk. Mazzon (2009) reported in a blog for Google that Google Docs had a bug in it that led to a small percentage of documents being shared among unauthorised s. If SMEs information is of any importance to them then they will no doubt have security policies in place internally. It is of upmost importance that they also make sure that their cloud suppliers also have good policies and security in place. Some of the cloud suppliers are large organisations like Amazon, Google and Microsoft to name a few. These large names all have something in common and that is that they are targets for hackers trying to break their system or gather information. In December 2010 Anonymous (a hacker group) tried to bring down Amazon with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. This attack failed and barely made a chink in Amazons armour (Vijayan, 2010). This type of story goes to show that attacks are planned on large cloud operators and your information is at risk but some organisations have got strong measures in place.

4.6.4. Internet access and throughput At the moment some areas still have no broadband access and use dial up to get any internet access. Due to the cost and the speed of dial up it would not be advised to use the public cloud services at this time as this may increase cost and cause lag on your system. Some places do not have phone lines and due to one company having a fire and relocating they were unable to have access to phone lines

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and so had no access to the internet. If they had the cloud then their system may have been saved from the fire, but they would have no access to the system at the new location. In January 2011 Bell Canada and Telus of Canada were to start charging usage based billing on broadband connections. They started changing from charging consumers a flat monthly rate for s to charging them a monthly rate and then charge them when they go over the limit. This affected households and businesses in Canada. These bandwidth caps mean that organisations that use a lot of bandwidth may be put off setting up in these countries. If your organisation wants to set up in the cloud then the bandwidth you use should be considered very carefully.

4.6.5. Data Protection and safe harbor ―The purpose of data protection legislation is to ensure that personal data is not processed without the knowledge and, except in certain cases, the consent of the data subject, to ensure that personal data which is processed is accurate, and to enforce a set of standards for the processing of such information‖ (Data Protection Act, 1998). The problem that faces SME‘s entering into cloud computing is that they own the information and not the cloud service suppliers. If the information is not held securely, then the blame rests at the feet of the SME. Sensitive data should not be held in other countries outside of Europe as the security of this data would be held outside of the European Law and could not be guaranteed protection. However there is an agreement between Europe and America called the Safe Harbor Agreement which allows European organisations to store information on US systems and have their data protected.

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Legal company Eversheds Have reported that a German privacy watchdog has recommended organisations to conduct their own checks on US companies as research has shown that a number of US companies are falsely claiming Safe Harbor hip (Fitzsimons, 2010). After checking on the Information Commissioner‘s Office news releases (www.ico.gov.uk) to research any breaches in the Data Protection Act through the use of cloud computing, it was found that most breaches came from: 

laptops being lost or stolen and not being encrypted



Information being improperly secured on internal networks



Information being disposed of incorrectly



Emails being sent in error

These cases have been at the fault of human error or human neglect. No cases of breaches in the Data Protection Act 1998 could be found in cloud computing. This could be because: 

Organisations are not using the cloud for this information



There has been no security breaches of this type yet



Organisations have not been reporting these breaches to save reputation

Lately Sony has had trouble with their PlayStation Network (CellanJones, 2011) and this led to ‘s details being stolen by hackers. This is not a cloud computing case but it does highlight that there are problems in storing data in internet services. There have also been worries about information being disclosed. This has come to light in the recent case with Wikileaks. Not only did Amazon shut down the service they were providing them but subpoenas were issued to Google, Facebook and Twitter asking that all information be handed over to the US government. Now Julian

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Assange has accused the US intelligence of developing an interface that runs on Facebook, Google and Yahoo and is able to record information and help to build their databases of who knows who (Horn, 2011).

4.6.6. Standards Cloud computing has not got any set standards. Just as operating systems work on different standards so too does cloud computing. Marlin Pohlman of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) was quoted as saying that globally, organisations are asking ―What is the baseline security standard we have to have to trust third parties to govern our data?" (Field, 2011). Without global standards in security, privacy and software it may make it difficult to understand cloud computing and the implications that may be hidden by cloud suppliers. With global standards it would make it easier to understand and also to move from one provider to another. With no standards in place it makes it easier for some cloud providers to lock consumers into contracts that they find difficult to leave when they expire. Organisations are beginning to together to produce standards that they can all work on collaboratively. One of these standards is OpenStack. As open source software like Linux has gained s over the years and is now being used by more organisations than before and Android now has 38% and Apple has 23% of the UK smartphone market (Chris, 2011). This shows that open source is becoming more popular so it is of no shock to see that OpenStack is backed by Rackspace, NASA, Dell, Citrix, Cisco, Canonical and over 50 other organizations. The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) have also announced that they are going to team up to try and promote best practices and industry standards (Preez, 2011).

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After attending several seminars, the topic of standards has been raised time and time again. With organisations now forming alliances it looks like cloud computing may be starting to form some global standards.

4.6.7. Vendor lock-in Vendor lock-in is the level of difficulty that is associated with moving your information or applications from a cloud service provider. Some cloud providers make it difficult to move your information from their systems or your applications are written in languages that make it very hard to move them between vendors. Variables like time, cost and level of difficulty all need to be addressed when planning to a vendor and a plan put in place for the moving of information in the future. Organisations like The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum, The Distributed Task Force‘s Open Cloud Standards Incubator, The Cloud Manifesto and The Open Grid Forum‘s Open Cloud Computing Interface Working Group are all trying to introduce cloud interoperability proposals (Williams, 2010). This would make the moving of your information or infrastructure from one vendor to another easier.

4.6.8. Personal touch With the advent of cloud computing there is now a time when you no longer require talking to a consultant or sales person to get advice on an information technology product or buy one. These services can be accessed, ordered and implemented online. The services can be altered at the press of a button and if you have a problem with the service there‘s always a knowledge base somewhere or a forum with the answer.

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The social aspect of business seems to be disappearing and automation is kicking in. Cloud service providers probably do not know who most of their customers are (especially the small organisations). This may become a problem when you have a problem and do not know who to for help.

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4.7. Migration to the Cloud Migration to the public cloud would involve a full risk analysis and project management. It may also be a good idea to find a good glossary of , like Velte et al (2009) has produced (appendix 10), to learn the terminology used in this new technology before beginning research. If you have no knowledge about cloud computing and would like to learn more, then Rackspace have what they are calling Cloud University (available at http://www.rackspace.co.uk/cloudhosting/cloudu/?cmp=email_bcsnewsletter_cloud) which is full of webinars and white papers to educate about cloud computing. Williams (2010) also offers a Quick start guide to cloud computing that is an ideal tool for a business looking to move into cloud computing. The use of system design tools like use-case diagrams, such as the one in figure 19, help designers and testers work out who uses the systems and how they are used. Figure 19 shows how the s may use an ecommerce website and shows the parts of the system each has access to.

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Browse Website

Search for goods

Sales Advisor



Consumer

Purchase on website

Customer Relations

Cancel Order

Email Queries

Customer Services

Figure 19: Use-case diagram of s of the website (Chaffey, D, 2009) In order to try and ensure that the transition to cloud computing is a smooth journey common project management tools should be used: 

Gantt charts



Critical path analysis (PERT charts)



Risk analysis



Time and cost management



Contingency planning



Regular meetings with staff involved

The CSA offer free tools to help cloud customers assess the security of cloud providers. The GRC Stack contains three tools for assessing cloud providers (Cloud Security Alliance, 2011): 

Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) is a form that can be used to provide a control framework that provides control direction in relationship with other industry accepted security standards such as ISO27001/27002, COBIT, PCI and NIST.

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

Cloud Audit is used to provide a common interface for cloud computing providers to automate the audit, assertion, assessment and assurance of their services and allow authorised consumers an open and secure common interface. This tool is provided to enable transparency and trust in the cloud.



Consensus Assessment Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ) focuses on providing an industry-accepted ways to document security controls.

All of the above are powerful tools in providing the correct questions to a consumer of cloud computing to ask the suppliers. These forms would be of great help to any SME with a limited knowledge of cloud computing and supply some of the questions that may help them to choose a secure provider. The CSA offer a host of information on cloud security issues and would be a great place to start checking out the security in cloud computing. For a small SME to start-up in the public cloud there may be less risk and the migration may be smoother with the correct plan in place, compared to a larger SME or a SME already running as they would be required to think about: 

Licenses



Software migration



Information migration



Network bandwidth utilisation

Network bandwidth may be overlooked but as Velte et al (2010, p294) points out a bank decided to use Salesforce.com‘s solution and after careful planning and piloting they went ahead only to find out that they slowed down their whole network and affected other workers network access.

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One of the main problems with costing cloud computing is that it requires all of the components to be taken into consideration to do a proper comparison. To compare costs properly it is important to consider (Shroff, 2010): 

Server utilisation



Power and cooling cost



Management time



Hardware purchase cost



Life expectancy of the hardware

Do not try to move all your systems at once. Move each system one at a time and trial each one before you move onto the next. If you are start-up then it may make sense to trial the services before starting the business. Put it in your business plan and make sure to find alternative in house solutions in the event that the cloud does not work out. It may be best to get staff to trial SaaS and observe them and get them to keep diaries, to see how they manage with the new software. Find out from them how it compares to other systems they may have used in the past. If you are a larger SME then you are going to have to train staff how to use the new system. So you should be sure that they are going to be able to migrate with ease to try and keep the cost down and the efficiency of your organisation. Granneman (2009) offers a book which is more like an instruction manual on how to migrate to or start using Google Apps. Literature like this can be very helpful in making a smooth transition. The internet is also full of forums and literature that can help with this process. Velte et al (2010) has compiled a list of resources that may be a starting point and are in appendix 8.

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Make sure services are tried before you buy and make sure that there are telephone numbers to allow with suppliers if things go wrong. If IaaS or PaaS are the services planned to be used then it is essential to carry out access capacity planning to manage the space that will be required on a virtualised system. These cloud services will require continuously monitoring and evaluating of the systems.

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4.8. What the future may hold At present primary research has shown that some SMEs require a traditional IT infrastructure due to the speed of their internet connections. At the moment this is hampering them from adopting services that cloud computing offers them. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have said that they Government have a £850 million strategy in place that shall mean that Britain has the ―best broadband network in Europe by 2015‖ (DCMS, 2010). They say that the proposal includes: 

A ‗digital hub‘ in every community by the end of this Parliament.



Investing £50 million in a second wave of projects to test how we deliver this (on top of the four pilots we are currently running on how we deliver superfast broadband to remote and rural areas).



Cutting the costs of and access to infrastructure – increasing shared access, work with house builders to make new home broadband ready, and cutting the costs of laying cable by clarifying the rules on street works.



Awarding spectrum for mobile services.

These advances in the broadband could be the turning point in cloud computing, that allows it to boom as some start-ups choose to start their business in rural areas to avoid paying high outgoings. Currently technology is changing the way we use computers and this is changing the way organisations use their technology. The introduction of the IPad and IPhone is now progressing and more tablet computers are being released along with computers being built into touch screens. Although Apple has not announced any cloud services yet, Android have started to use the cloud and allow s to stream music directly from a cloud service. With Office2 app installed

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on an IPhone a is able to access Word and Excel documents stored in some cloud services like Dropbox, GoogleDocs and Box.net. Cloud services like Skype may also offer solutions where businesses can set up s and assign s to their . This would free up further space by removing the telephone and supplying Bluetooth headsets to connect to the Tablet PC. So the future office could see the end of the desktop PC and the introduction of wireless devices. This may be good for making more desk space and cutting down on the amount of cabling in an office but with the security vulnerabilities in wireless technology this may still be some time off. The cloud may also help the environment by helping to produce the paperless offices, where the only filing cabinet is the computer. The term paperless office has been around for some years now but not all offices are achieving this goal yet. Desks are being produced that are a screen (figure 21) and allow the to manipulate documents and with the advances in touchscreen and tablets this may well be the way forward. Document management can be hosted on the cloud and documents can be collaborated so in the future will there be a need for paper in the office?

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Figure 20: How the current office may look

4

4

Source: http://workingsmarter.typepad.com/

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6

5

8

7

Figure 21: How the office of the future may look

5

Source www.pcworld.com, 2010 at http://www.pcworld.com/article/212022/benddesk_a_multitouch_desk_with_a_cur ve.html 6 Source www.styleofdesign.com at http://www.styleofdesign.com/page/345/ 7

Source www.touchinterface.com at http://www.touchinterface.com/2009/12/is-touch-prepared-for-your-desk.html 8 Source futurenow.dw-world.de

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4.9. Conclusion This report has shown that all the services required to run a small SME are available in the public cloud. So it would be feasible to say that a SME would be able to run all in the cloud. This would probably be practical for a small organisation and they may be able to benefit from some of the free services that are available. Larger SMEs could run all in the cloud but as this report has shown, this may not be the practical or beneficial thing to do. Research and interviews have shown that it may be more practical for SME‘s to either use the services that would be of most benefit to them or run a hybrid cloud, where they could benefit from both private and public cloud computing. For a SME to go fully into the public cloud, they would require a vast amount of planning and testing if they were to succeed at such a task. No organisations have been found yet that are all in the cloud. Even though after asking one consultant, he said that there were organisation all in the public cloud, but he could not back this up with any evidence. There has been a myth that has grown that says that Cloud computing saves you money. This may be the case but depending on situations it has been found that it may cost an organisation more to run on the cloud than it would to run their own systems. With careful planning and assessment there may well be services on the public cloud that save SMEs money. Some of the smaller SMEs may not change their systems that often and so they may not benefit as much as the larger organisations, that may change their hardware and software as often as every three year under outsourcing contracts.

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Smaller SMEs may benefit from some of the free services that exist and save them buying licenses for software like Microsoft Office that may be wasted as they get services on these packages that they may never use. If a SME was to be running on the public cloud then they should make sure that they have policies in place to cover what can and cannot be done by employees. These policies should inform staff of their responsibilities, their general use of organisations resources and how sensitive data should be handled. The Policies provide a list of what is acceptable use and what is prohibited activity, thus engaging the staff in the securing of the company‘s critical systems (Danchev, 2003). The use of policies may protect both the staff and organisation from law suits for not protecting sensitive information. One of the problems that have been found is that many services on the cloud do not encrypt information securely and the encryption is supposed to be done by the of the system when they are sending the information over the cloud. This is not true for all cloud service providers but on some of the trialled services like Google Docs, Microsoft SkyDrive and Amazon Cloud Drive the was expected to encrypt the data before ing it. If the information is that important to the business functionality then think twice about putting it on the cloud. If it really needs to be on the cloud (for backup reasons, etc.) then make sure you use a service (like Dropbox) that allows the information to be synchronised and a copy is still held locally. SaaS was supposed to offer s software applications that would be charged on a pay-as-you-use basis, but a recent survey by IT analysts Gartner estimated that only 10% of global SaaS applications are charged in this way. The rest of the applications resemble traditional software licence agreements, whereby the is tied to

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contracts (Shane, 2010). This means that the SaaS offering are starting to look more like outsource and license contracts which the cloud was supposed to be moving away from. Future research should be carried out on IaaS and PaaS before a SME moves completely over to cloud computing as these services offer other benefits and risks that have not been covered in this report.

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5.

Project Evaluation

A successful understanding of public cloud computing is important to the adoption of the cloud computing. This new paradigm is gaining popularity with advances in end device technology and the need for more computing capability and lower costs. Public cloud computing may offer a solution to a SME but they need to be advised on the adoption of this technology. This research project was conducted in a planned manner to try and research the information that could be used by a SME investigating information on how to move to the public cloud. Through the use of a project plan (appendix 1) the research was able to be monitored and any changes that were made were recorded and alterations implemented into the plan to produce and amended plan (appendix 11). A project log (appendix 2) was kept to keep a memory of events and monitor changes like: 

Interviews



Meetings



Seminars/conferences



Changes to the project plan

Regular meetings with the supervisor were necessary to obtain advice and to keep the supervisor up to date with the progress of the research. Notes were taken at the meetings and then entered briefly into the project log so that they could be reflected on. It became clear that public cloud computing was a large project and that this could not be covered by the word count or the time scale. Parts of the project had to be altered such as: 

Interview schedules

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

Methodology report schedule



Literature review schedule



Title



Scope

These changes were recorded in the project plan, log and were all discussed with the supervisor so that a clear decision could be made on these matters and re-arrangements were made successfully. In reflecting upon the scope, the work breakdown in the planning should have broken the scope down further. The project should have concentrated more on just one of the service models (SaaS) and possibly concentrated on small start-ups instead of SMEs. This did not cause any problem as the project was planned and the risks were considered before implementing this. Questionnaires (appendix 5) and interviews (appendix 7) were used to show that the subject was relevant and to gather information about what SMEs understood about public cloud computing. In hindsight questionnaires shall be better developed in the future and not based on the same questionnaire used for interviews. Sending the questionnaires to random SMEs was a gamble but it fulfilled a curiosity as to whether there would be any replies. There were replies and this method would be used again but to a larger audience in the hope that there may be more responses. It would have been good to use the questionnaires to obtain more statistics in a quantitative manner from SMEs and use them to produce a graph rather than so many qualitative questions. There was a plan in the original project plan to produce a leaflet to give out to a SME but this was cancelled due to the size of the project. It was not felt that this would have been of any benefit to a SME and that the main report would be of more use than a leaflet.

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As cloud computing is still in its infancy it is thought that this research will only be relevant for approximately a year. The technology in public cloud computing is changing rapidly and in researching this project it has become clear how much it has changed over the last two years. The information researched to produce this project has increased my knowledge of cloud computing and should be of use to any SME thinking of moving into cloud computing. References should be of use by any academic looking to further research this topic or just investigating cloud computing.

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6.

Future research

It has become clear in this project that cloud computing may have social implications as the information, software and even the hardware is being removed from the s location and placed wherever the third party is using it, this requires further research to find what implications there may be. Adopting cloud computing does not quite follow the same pattern as traditional computing and further research may be required in producing more models on migration to the public cloud. The information that is available tends to deal with the services that are available and how cloud computing works, but there could be more studies about models for adopting public cloud computing. If organisations had models to guide them, then the uptake may be faster and cloud computing suppliers may use them to help produce a better service and achieve the benefits that cloud computing aims to achieve. As Information technology is constantly changing and governments are trying to get organisations to reduce their carbon footprint, it is important that more research is carried out on the energy used in cloud computing. Organisations try to sell cloud computing telling the consumer that it is green. Baliga et al (2010) have shown that although environmental savings can be made, the energy used in transferring information across the cloud may be more than using an up to date laptop to do the computing locally. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for SMEs are normally what they see online and non-negotiable due to the nature of cloud computing purchasing model (Williams, 2010). Possible studies could be conducted on where a procurement model could be developed to help give SMEs more power over these agreements. Could procurement give SMEs more control over things like Service Level Agreements?

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Research found that most SMEs are using SaaS as their starting block for the public cloud. Whilst IaaS and PaaS were touched upon in this report, they were not deemed necessary to be able to allow SMEs the ability to go fully into the cloud. Most of the research was aimed at SaaS as this is the most used service by SME‘s at this time (ENISA, 2009) and it was thought that this should be researched the most. Future research should be conducted on informing SMEs about how to use services like IaaS and PaaS as they may be causing the most confusion for SMEs.

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References Arthur, C., 2011. Egypt cuts off internet access | Technology | The Guardian. [online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/28/egypt-cuts-offinternet-access [Accessed May 7, 2011] Baliga, J., Ayre, R., Hinton, K. and Tucker, R., 2010. Green cloud computing: Balancing energy in processing, storage and transport. Proceedings of the IEEE 99 (1), p149-167 Barnatt, C, (2010). A brief guide to Cloud computing: An essential guide to the next computing revolution. London: Constable and Robin Becker, L. 2009. The mature students handbook. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd Cellan-Jones, R., 2011. BBC News - Sony faces legal action over attack on PlayStation network. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13192359 [Accessed May 11, 2011] Chaffey, D, 2009. E-Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 4th edition. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall Chris, 2011. Android vs Apple Smartphone market share statistics: TechnoCloud. [online] Available at: http://technocloud.com/2011/05/11/android-vs-apple-smartphonemarket-share-statistics/ [Accessed May 11, 2011] Cloud Security Alliance, 2011. GRC Stack : Cloud Security Alliance. [online] Available at: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/research/projects/grc-stack/ [Accessed May 11, 2011] Cottrell, S. 2008. The study skills handbook. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd Data Protection Act 1998. {c.29}, London: HMSO Dawson, C. 2009. Project in computing and information systems. As students guide. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson education DCMS, 2010. Next phase of superfast broadband plans announced. [online] Available at: http://www.culture.gov.uk/news/media_releases/7619.aspx [Accessed April 30, 2011]

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Engates, J., 2010. Cloud Computing: A Vendor Perspective. [online] Available at: www.ihrimatlantase.org/.../2011q1_cloudvendorperspective_johneng ates_ rackspace.ppt [Accessed May 9, 2011] ENISA, 2009. An SME perspective on cloud computing. [online] Available at: http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/rm/files/deliverables/cloudcomputing-sme-survey [Accessed April 24, 2011] European Commission for Enterprise and Industry, 2003. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): SME Definition. [online] Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figuresanalysis/sme-definition/index_en.htm. [Accessed May 11, 2011] Field, T., 2011. Cloud Security Needs Global Standards. [online] Available at: http://www.bankinfosecurity.co.uk/articles.php?art_id=3620&opg=1 [Accessed May 11, 2011] Fitzsimons, L., 2010. Data protection - current trends - Publications Eversheds LLP. [online] Available at: https://www.eversheds.com/uk/home/articles/index1.page?ArticleID =templatedata%5CEversheds%5Carticles%5Cdata%5Cen%5CLocal_ government%5CData_protection-current_trends [Accessed May 12, 2011] Ford, S., 2010. Managing your global business with cloud technology. Financial executive, October 2010, pp.57-59 Gander, G., 2011. 10 Ways an Integrated CRM Tool Can Improve the Forwarding Process | Journal of Commerce. [online] Available at: http://www.joc.com/2010/10-ways-integrated-crm-tool-can-improveforwarding-process-0 [Accessed May 18, 2011]. Goo, J., Kishmore, R., Rao, H. and Nam, N., 2009. The role of service level agreements in relational management of information technology outsourcing: An empirical study. MIS Quarterly, 33{1}, pp.119-145 Gorman, Z., 2011. Yale email to move to Google | Yale Daily News. [online] Available at: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/18/yale-email-tomove-to-google/ [Accessed May 5, 2011] Granneman, S., 2009. Google apps deciphered: Compute in the cloud to streamline your desktop. Boston: Prentice Hall Greenwood, D., Khajeh-Hosseini, A., Smith, J. and Sommerville, I., 2010. The cloud adoption toolkit: Addressing the challenges of cloud adoption in enterprise. Arxiv preprint arXiv:1003.3866v2

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Gurd, J., Hey, T., Papay, J. and Riley, G., 2005. Grid Performance Licklider and the Grid. Concurrency and Computation Practice & Experience, 17 (2). pp. 95-98. ISSN 1532-0626 Hickey, A., 2011. Amazon Cloud Outage Aftermath: Questions, Concerns Linger. [online] Available at: http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/229500034/amazon-cloud-outageaftermath-questions-concernslinger.htm;jsessionid=63Y3bTd+yKL6dsIpg8jkmQ**.ecappj01 [Accessed May 12, 2011] Horn, L., 2011. WikiLeaks‘ Assange Calls Facebook ―Most Appalling Spying Machine Ever‖ | News & Opinion | PCMag.com. [online] Available at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384783,00.asp [Accessed May 12, 2011] Kaplan, A. and Haenlein, M., 2009. s of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business horizons (2010) 53, pp. 59-68 Katy, 2010. IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS definition | Kate‘s Comment. [online] Available at: http://www.katescomment.com/iaas-paassaas-definition/ [Accessed May 7, 2011] Koehler, P., Anandasivam, A. and Dan, M., 2010. Cloud services from a consumer perspective. Americas Conference on Information System (AMCIS): AMCIS 2010 Proceedings. [online] Available at: http://aiscel.aisnet.org/amcis2010/329 [Accessed March 20, 2011] Laja, S., 2011. The biggest threat to NHS data security: its staff | Healthcare Network | Guardian Professional. [online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcarenetwork/2011/may/04/biggest-threat-nhs-data-security-staff [Accessed May 12, 2011] Luck, M. 1999. Your student research project. Aldershot: Gower Publishing Maylor, H and Blackmon, K, 2005. Researching Business and Management. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Mazzon, J., 2009. On yesterday‘s email: Official Google Docs Blog. [online] Available at: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/onyesterdays-email.html [Accessed April 10, 2011] Mell, P. and Grance, T., 2009. The NIST definition of cloud computing, Version 15. [online] Available at: http://www.newinnovationsguide.com/NIST_Cloud_Definition.pdf [Accessed April 10, 2011]

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Preez, D. du, 2011. Cloud bodies team up to promote best practice 12 Apr 2011 - Computing News. [online] Available at: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2042761/cloud-bodies-teampromote-practice [Accessed May 12, 2011] Randolph, Justus, 2009. A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 14(13). Available online: http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=14&n=13 RightScale, 2010. Grid Computing | Cloud Computing Management Platform by RightScale. [online] Available at: http://www.rightscale.com/products/cloud-computing-uses/gridcomputing.php [Accessed May 10, 2011] Scott, J., 2011. Cloud computing ―remains a mystery‖ to SMEs | IT PRO. [online] Available at: http://www.itpro.co.uk/630226/cloudcomputing-remains-a-mystery-to-smes [Accessed April 28, 2011] Shane, D., 2010. Gartner questions cost benefits of SaaS. [online] Available at: http://www.information-age.com/channels/businessapplications/news/1260918/gartner-questions-cost-benefits-ofsaas.thtml [Accessed April 30, 2011] Shroff, G., 2010. Enterprise Cloud Computing: Technology, Architecture, Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Silverman, D., 2010. Doing Qualitative Research. 3rd ed. London: Sage Publications Timmemans, J., Ikonen, V., Stahl, B. and Bozdag, B., 2010. The ethics of cloud computing: A conceptual review. In Proceedings of 2010 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cloud computingTechnology and Science (CloudCom), 30 November - 03 December 2010, Indianapolis, USA Tomkins, B., 2009. The High Cost of Network Downtime: Q&A With Charles Nault -- InformationWeek. [online] Available at: http://www.informationweek.com/news/218100462 [Accessed May 12, 2011] Tyrsina, R., 2011. Late News: UK SMEs Slow In Adopting Cloud, Global Cloud Market Expected To Grow, NFC Technology Adoption | ITProPortal.com. [online] Available at: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/04/27/late-news-uk-smes-slow-inadopting-cloud-global-cloud-market-expected-to-grow-nfctechnology-adoption/ [Accessed May 4, 2011] Valentino-DeVries, J., 2011. More Predictions on the Huge Growth of ―Cloud Computing‖ - Digits - WSJ. [online] Available at:

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http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/21/more-predictions-on-thehuge-growth-of-cloud-computing/ [Accessed May 8, 2011] Varney, J., 2010. Cloud Computing. [online] Available at: http://www.bcs.org//pdf/jvarney-200410.pdf Veale, M., 2011. Michael Veale‘s blog: Comparison of cloud based ing systems. Available at: http://michaelveale.blogspot.com/2011/01/comparison-of-cloudbased-ing.html [Accessed May 19, 2011]. Velte, A., Velte, T. and Elsenpeter, R., 2010. Cloud computing: A practical approach. New York: McGraw Hill Vijayan, J., 2010. Anonymous attack on Amazon.com appears to fail - Computerworld. [online] Available at: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9200639/Anonymous_attac k_on_Amazon.com_appears_to_fail [Accessed May 12, 2011] Williams, Dr. M. 2010. Quick start guide to cloud computing: Moving your business into the cloud. London: Kogan Page Ltd

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Bibliography Legend 

O = out of date

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R = Relevant to this report

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I = Irrelevant to this report

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S = Simplistic

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H = Highly detailed

Title Arthur, C., 2011. Egypt cuts off internet access | Technology | The Guardian. [online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/28 /egypt-cuts-off-internet-access [Accessed May 7, 2011] Baliga, J., Ayre, R., Hinton, K. and Tucker, R., 2010. Green cloud computing: Balancing energy in processing, storage and transport. Proceedings of the IEEE 99 (1), p149-167 Barnatt, C, (2010). A brief guide to Cloud computing: An essential guide to the next computing revolution. London: Constable and Robin Becker, L. 2009. The mature student‘s handbook. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd Brynjolfsson, E., Hoffman, P. and Jordan, J., 2010. Economic and business dimensions: Cloud computing and electricity: Beyond the utility model. Communications of the ACM. May 2010 53{5}pp.32-34 Buyya, R., Yeo, C., Venugopal, S., Broberg, J. and Brandic, I., 2008. Cloud computing and emerging IT platforms: Vision, hype and reality for delivering computing as a 5th utility. Future Generation Computer Systems (2009), doi:10.1016/j.future.2008.12.001 Candan, K., Li, W., Phan, T. and Zhou, M., 2009. Frontiers in information and software as a service. ICDE '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering.

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Title Cellan-Jones, R., 2011. BBC News - Sony faces legal action over attack on PlayStation network. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13192359 [Accessed May 11, 2011] Chaffey, D, 2009. E-Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. 4th edition. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall Chatman, C., 2010. How cloud computing is changing the face of health care information technology. Journal of Health Care Compliance May – June 2010, pp37-38, pp.69-70 Chen, Y. and Sion, R., 2010. To cloud or not to cloud? Musing on cost and viability. [online] Available at: www.cs.sunysb.edu/~sion/research/cloudc2010draft.pdf. [Accessed March 10 2010] Chris, 2011. Android vs Apple Smartphone market share statistics: TechnoCloud. [online] Available at: http://technocloud.com/2011/05/11/android-vsapple-smartphone-market-share-statistics/ [Accessed May 11, 2011 Cloud Security Alliance, 2011. GRC Stack : Cloud Security Alliance. [online] Available at: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/research/projects/g rc-stack/ [Accessed May 11, 2011] Cottrell, S. 2008. The study skills handbook. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd Data Protection Act 1998. {c.29}, London: HMSO Dawson, C. 2009. Project in computing and information systems. As students guide. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson education DCMS, 2010. Next phase of superfast broadband plans announced. [online] Available at: http://www.culture.gov.uk/news/media_releases/76 19.aspx [Accessed April 30, 2011] Engates, J., 2010. Cloud Computing: A Vendor Perspective. [online] Available at: www.ihrimatlantase.org/.../2011q1_cloudvendorper spective_johnengates_ rackspace.ppt [Accessed May 9, 2011] ENISA, 2009. An SME perspective on cloud computing. [online] Available at: http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/rm/files/deliverable s/cloud-computing-sme-survey [Accessed April 24, 2011]

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Title European Commission for Enterprise and Industry, 2003. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): SME Definition. [online] Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/factsfigures-analysis/sme-definition/index_en.htm. [Accessed May 11, 2011] Field, T., 2011. Cloud Security Needs Global Standards. [online] Available at: http://www.bankinfosecurity.co.uk/articles.php?art_ id=3620&opg=1 [Accessed May 11, 2011] Fitzsimons, L., 2010. Data protection - current trends - Publications - Eversheds LLP. [online] Available at: https://www.eversheds.com/uk/home/articles/index 1.page?ArticleID=templatedata%5CEversheds%5Ca rticles%5Cdata%5Cen%5CLocal_government%5CD ata_protection-current_trends [Accessed May 12, 2011] Ford, S., 2010. Managing your global business with cloud technology. Financial executive, October 2010, pp.57-59 Foster, I., Zhao, Y., Raicu, I. and Lu, S., 2008. Cloud computing and grid computing 360 degree compared. Arxiv Preprint arXiv:0901.0131v1 Gander, G., 2011. 10 Ways an Integrated CRM Tool Can Improve the Forwarding Process | Journal of Commerce. Available at: http://www.joc.com/2010/10-ways-integrated-crmtool-can-improve-forwarding-process-0 [Accessed May 18, 2011]. Goo, J., Kishmore, R., Rao, H. and Nam, N., 2009. The role of service level agreements in relational management of information technology outsourcing: An empirical study. MIS Quarterly, 33{1}, pp.119145 Goodburn, M. and Hill, S., 2010. The cloud transforms business. Financial executive. December 2010, pp35-39 Gorman, Z., 2011. Yale email to move to Google | Yale Daily News. [online] Available at: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/apr/18/y ale-email-to-move-to-google/ [Accessed May 5, 2011] Granneman, S., 2009. Google apps deciphered: Compute in the cloud to streamline your desktop. Boston: Prentice Hall

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Title O R I S H   Greenwood, D., Khajeh-Hosseini, A., Smith, J. and Sommerville, I., 2010. The cloud adoption toolkit: Addressing the challenges of cloud adoption in enterprise. Arxiv preprint arXiv:1003.3866v2  Gurd, J., Hey, T., Papay, J. and Riley, G. (2005) Grid Performance - Licklider and the Grid. Concurrency and Computation Practice & Experience, 17 (2). pp. 95-98. ISSN 1532-0626  Hickey, A., 2011. Amazon Cloud Outage Aftermath: Questions, Concerns Linger. [online] Available at: http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/229500034/amazo n-cloud-outage-aftermath-questions-concernslinger.htm;jsessionid=63Y3bTd+yKL6dsIpg8jkmQ** .ecappj01 [Accessed May 12, 2011]   Hong, S. and Sundar, S., 2011. Social responses to computers in cloud computing environment: The importance of source orientation. [online] Available at: lister.cms.livjm.ac.uk/.../cloud2011papers/Hongand Sundarchi2011_cloud_0228_revised.pdf. [Accessed May 12, 2011]  Horn, L., 2011. WikiLeaks‘ Assange Calls Facebook ―Most Appalling Spying Machine Ever‖ | News & Opinion | PCMag.com. [online] Available at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384783,00 .asp [Accessed May 12, 2011]   Kaplan, A. and Haenlein, M., 2009. s of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business horizons (2010) 53, pp. 5968   Katy, 2010. IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS definition | Kate‘s Comment. [online] Available at: http://www.katescomment.com/iaas-paas-saasdefinition/ [Accessed May 7, 2011]   Koehler, P., Anandasivam, A. and Dan, M., 2010. Cloud services from a consumer perspective. Americas Conference on Information System (AMCIS): AMCIS 2010 Proceedings. [online] Available at: http://aiscel.aisnet.org/amcis2010/329 [Accessed March 20, 2011]  Laja, S., 2011. The biggest threat to NHS data security: its staff | Healthcare Network | Guardian Professional. [online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcarenetwork/2011/may/04/biggest-threat-nhs-datasecurity-staff [Accessed May 12, 2011]

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Title Li, A., Yang, X., Kandula, S. and Zhang, M., 2010. CloudCmp: Shopping for a cloud made easy. Proceedings of the 2nd USENIX conference on Hot topics in cloud computing 2010. pp5-5 Luck, M. 1999. Your student research project. Aldershot: Gower Publishing Maylor, H and Blackmon, K, 2005. Researching Business and Management. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Mazzon, J., 2009. On yesterday‘s email: Official Google Docs Blog. [online] Available at: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/03/onyesterdays-email.html [Accessed April 10, 2011 Mell, P. and Grance, T., 2009. The NIST definition of cloud computing, Version 15. [online] Available at: http://www.newinnovationsguide.com/NIST_Cloud_ Definition.pdf [Accessed April 10, 2011] Pal, R. and Hui, P., 2011. On the economics of cloud markets. Arxiv:1103.0045v1 Preez, D. du, 2011. Cloud bodies team up to promote best practice - 12 Apr 2011 - Computing News. [online] Available at: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2042761/clo ud-bodies-team-promote-practice [Accessed May 12, 2011] Randolph, Justus, 2009. A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 14(13). Available online: http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=14&n=13. RightScale, 2010. Grid Computing | Cloud Computing Management Platform by RightScale. [online] Available at: http://www.rightscale.com/products/cloudcomputing-uses/grid-computing.php [Accessed May 10, 2011] Ryan, M., 2011. Cloud computing privacy concerns on our doorstep. Communications of the ACM 54{1}pp.36-38 Scott, J., 2011. Cloud computing ―remains a mystery‖ to SMEs | IT PRO. [online] Available at: http://www.itpro.co.uk/630226/cloud-computingremains-a-mystery-to-smes [Accessed April 28, 2011]

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Title O R I S H  Shane, D., 2010. Gartner questions cost benefits of SaaS. [online] Available at: http://www.informationage.com/channels/businessapplications/news/1260918/gartner-questions-costbenefits-of-saas.thtml [Accessed April 30, 2011]   Shroff, G., 2010. Enterprise Cloud Computing: Technology, Architecture, Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press   Silverman, D., 2010. Doing Qualitative Research. 3rd ed. London: Sage Publications  Spinola, M., 2009. A pragmatic. Effective and hype-   free approach for strategic enterprise decision making. [online] Available at: http://www.mariaspinola.com/cloud-computing/ [Accessed February 10, 2011].   Timmemans, J., Ikonen, V., Stahl, B. and Bozdag, B., 2010. The ethics of cloud computing: A conceptual review. In Proceedings of 2010 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cloud computingTechnology and Science (CloudCom), 30 November - 03 December 2010, Indianapolis, USA  Tomkins, B., 2009. The High Cost of Network Downtime: Q&A With Charles Nault -InformationWeek. [online] Available at: http://www.informationweek.com/news/218100462 [Accessed May 12, 2011].  Tyrsina, R., 2011. Late News: UK SMEs Slow In Adopting Cloud, Global Cloud Market Expected To Grow, NFC Technology Adoption | ITProPortal.com. [online] Available at: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/04/27/late-newsuk-smes-slow-in-adopting-cloud-global-cloudmarket-expected-to-grow-nfc-technology-adoption/ [Accessed May 4, 2011].   Valentino-DeVries, J., 2011. More Predictions on the Huge Growth of ―Cloud Computing‖ - Digits WSJ. [online] Available at: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/21/morepredictions-on-the-huge-growth-of-cloudcomputing/ [Accessed May 8, 2011]    Vaquero, L., Rodero-Merino, L., Caceres, J. and Lindner, M., 2009. A break in the clouds: Towards a cloud definition. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 39{1}pp.50-55

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Title Varney, J., 2010. Cloud Computing. [online] Available at: http://www.bcs.org//pdf/jvarney-200410.pdf Velte, A., Velte, T. and Elsenpeter, R., 2010. Cloud computing: A practical approach. New York: McGraw Hill Vijayan, J., 2010. Anonymous attack on Amazon.com appears to fail - Computerworld. [online] Available at: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9200639/ Anonymous_attack_on_Amazon.com_appears_to_fa il [Accessed May 12, 2011] Williams, Dr. M. 2010. Quick start guide to cloud computing: Moving your business into the cloud. London: Kogan Page Ltd Youseff, L., Butrico, M. and Silva, D., 2008. Towards a unified ontology of cloud computing. [online] Available at: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~lyouseff/resume.htm [Accessed February 10, 2011]

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Appendices

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Appendix 1

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Final project plan

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Appendix 2

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pg. 94

Project Log 2010/2011 13th of December Supervisor meeting Kick off meeting with supervisor. Shared ideas with Julie as to how this project is going to be researched. Discussed literature review and what may be required (trade journals, latest books and recommend sources). Hayden in library to find latest Dewey code for cloud computing. ed Hayden straight away. No Dewey code as yet, some books just fitting in with sections. Asked if he knew of any information and he is going to get back to me.

2nd of January Cloud Expo Europe 2011. Attended expo to gather information about the cloud. Sat through several presentations by Rackspace, BAE and Carrenza to name a few. Made with Paul from Carrenza who agreed that I can him for information.

24th of January Supervisor meeting Talked about interview questions and tried to scope it down. It is starting to turn into a questionnaire and shall be sent out to local SME‘s to fill in.

10th of February First made with Paul of Carrenza. Changed start date of literature review and started it today.

14th of February Supervisor meeting

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Discussed what was expected in the methodology

21st of February Seen Sue Bailey who supplied me with a resource to find SMEs in the local area. Shall use this to send questionnaire out to SMEs. Also was supplied details of Chambers of Commerce and Colbea to find what information they have on cloud computing.

28th of February Supervisor meeting Discussed what would be expected in my literature review. Supervisor to ask husband to look over and fill in questionnaire and then return it to me.

4th of March Started Methodology as per discussed with supervisor.

7th of March Supervisor meeting Kept supervisor up to date on what had been happening and that I had an interview with Kelly soon. Also notified her about my meeting with John Rawnsley (RawApple).

10th of March Sue Bailey has supplied me with a copy of the Business directory of Essex. This shall be used along with a cloud CRM solution to send my questionnaire out to SME‘s to see what their view on public cloud computing is.

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16th of March Questionnaire finally completed and a copy shall be sent out to a list of SME‘s from the business directory of essex.

17th of March Kelly Moon interview Colne Housing

19th of March File on Dropbox did not synchronise and all information has disappeared. Used the history on the website to recover the file successfully.

23rd of March Convergence summit north in Manchester Summit only had a couple of bits of information on the Cloud but did have 1 seminar on 2 companies, 1 cloud and 1 outsourced, competing for 1 case study. Learnt how the telecoms trade works though (interesting) John Rawnsley interview( RawApple)

4th of April Supervisor meeting Discussed methodology and literature review as drafts had been given to supervisor prior. Supervisor advised that they look up to date. Time to move onto main report. Let supervisor know that I was going to start on main report and get project log up to date. Supervisor agreed to send dates through of

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previous meetings (done) and asked for draft of contents to be sent through before next meeting.

28th of April Sent a copy of the basis of my main report to Julie for her to look over

9th of May Supervisor meeting. Gave in a draft of what has been completed to date. Supervisor happy with stage I am at. Only one table of contents to be used and do not use my past reports as they cannot be traced after I leave college.

12th of May Changed title as old did not quite make sense and thinking of changing the main aspect to SaaS only as I think scope is too big.

13th of May Telephoned supervisor. Discussed title of project with supervisor and agreed that it was ok to change that. Discussed the scope of the project and agreed that I could change it if I wanted. This would need some backing up in the evaluation, log and introduction. Project now aimed at SaaS as SME may run on SaaS and mention IaaS and PaaS but only in ing. Further research required in these layers. Glossary to be in back but taken from a book and only there as a guide to the types of glossaries that the reader may be looking for ( a starting point for them) Project on track Cut off point today for research any more news that comes to light that may affect this report shall be put in a stop press section.

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16th of May Meeting with supervisor. Produced draft and received . Made sure had details and backup plans for if anything went wrong in producing the report. Received to act upon. Last meeting now unless emergency one needed. Questions on table of contents, appendices (whats expected) and stop press section.

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Appendix 3 Emails to and from the supervisor to go here to show that communication had existed between us. Hard copies kept in case access to email was unavailable.

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Appendix 4 List of SME‘s to go here to show that I was able to source organisations that I could supply a questionnaire and to show that I was using as many resources as I could.

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Appendix 5

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Could you please take a short amount of time to fill in this questionnaire? I am a degree student and I am conducting a survey for my final year dissertation of my degree. The information in this survey shall be used anonymously. The report is based around moving or setting up a SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) in the public cloud. I want to learn whether it is possible and if it is not possible then what are the barriers that are stopping SME‘s from moving all into the public cloud. The public cloud is the services offered by third party organisations that allow you to use their resources instead of your organisations own. This differs from having your own servers in another one of your offices and you access the resources there. Service like SaaS offer software that you can use as and when you need to and you only pay for what you use. This can be likened to apps on an ipod, ipad or android. IaaS allows you to store information and use a third parties computer infrastructure so that you don‘t require your own. This would save buying servers and you would only pay for the amount of space and computing power that you use. PaaS allows organisations to be able to deploy their own applications onto the internet and use a third party to run this application and test it. Public cloud computing can be likened to utility computing where you only pay for what you use.

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Company………………………………………….

Name …………………………………………………..

Approx. amount of employees ……………………………………………… Which of the following systems do you currently use in your business?    

Desktops Thin Clients Laptops Tablets (IPads, etc)

IP printers PDA Smartphones

   

  

What systems do you currently run on your internal computing system?

          

Customer Relationship Management Backup File server Database server Mail server Network Attached Storage eCommerce Collaboration Project Management Web Hosting ing and Finance

Yes

No

Not sure

          

          

          

Which services would you use in the public cloud?

       

Iaas Paas SaaS CRM Database server ing and Finance Server Backup

Would Have Like 

     

Email Service eCommerce Web Hosting File Storage Project Management Collaborative Software

Would Like

Have

Others please put in the box below:

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Do you currently use or provide any public cloud services?

   

IaaS PaaS SaaS Other Please specify

Use

Provide

not sure

   in the box

  

  

Do you see an increase in server usage at different points within the year? 

Yes



No



Mark the highest months of server usage if known. Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

|__________________________________________________________________|

How often have you had downtime of your internet connection?   

Once a year Twice or more a year None in the last year

  

For ___ minutes For ___ minutes

If you could find a system on the cloud that offered reliable backups at different geographic locations and a 99.999% up time would that influence you into using the public cloud to run systems like your s, desktops, email, document storage, CRM, Procurement, etc.? 

No



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

Yes



Would your current licences stop you from installing any of your current systems onto the public cloud? 

Yes

No

Unsure







Special Agreement Required 

What sort of level are your servers running at the moment? Hard drives

Memory (RAM)

U utilisation

Running well Running poor Not sure Will soon require upgrading

What action would you take if your servers started to fail?     

consider the public cloud consider a private cloud Virtualise the current servers Replace the hardware (U, RAM, hard drive, etc.) Other, please put in the box below:

   

Have you considered using public cloud services for record management archiving?     

Actually do it Serious consideration Briefly considered No consideration Any comments below please:

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Mobile technology is a fast growing platform, have you considered the cloud to increase your reach onto that platform? If not why not?    

Yes Definitely not Considering Any comments below please:

Have you any questions/concerns about public cloud computing?   

Yes No What are your main concerns?:

Do you think over time you could integrate your whole IT system over to the public cloud?   

No Yes If yes then could you please mark below over what time period you think it would take:

1month

1year

2year

3year

4year

5year

|___________________________________________________________________|

Are there any problems that you can envisage with moving a non-cloud based infrastructure to the public cloud?

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Thank you very much for taking the time to fill in this questionnaire. The time taken has been greatly appreciated. If you have any concerns or would like to meet me and talk about this research then I can be ed at [email protected] Alternatively post to:

Student ID: 1318715

Andrew Stewart 32 Pampas Close Colchester CO4 9ST

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Appendix 6 Questionnaires completed by SME‘s to go here. These have been omitted from electronic copy due to ethical issues. No permission from SME‘s to publish them.

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Appendix 7 Interviews to be published here as evidence, but have been omitted from electronic copy due to ethical issues. No permission to print interviews.

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Appendix 8

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Appendix 9 One manager of a SME sent a detailed response to the questionnaire that pointed out some points to consider in the cloud. Dear Andrew, I have replied to your questionnaire where I can however I thought a few comments might be appropriate. We are a computer re-seller selling both networking solutions and ing systems. You seem to have made some assumptions about the cloud in your summary that really need to be questioned and I am not sure what your dissertation is actually on because you are stating facts rather than questioning them. You are correct in defining a cloud however the following points you seem to have already assumed and need more consideration. 1. You say that SAAS you only pay for when you need it. In fact for most commercial software you have to take out a contract for a minimum term that ties you into that company. There is some software that does not do that however that tends to be from smaller companies and then you start to question the security of your data etc. A lot of the new companies entering the market do not seem to have considered what would happen if a company wants to move to an alternative system, the supplying company goes bust or it withdraws the service. Even Microsoft withdrew its low end ing system giving companies less than 3 months to find alternatives and only 1 month for payroll s. Whilst they did supply alternatives and the majority of their s were very small companies with minimal data this would not be true if it was a more mainstream company and the disruption could be horrific. 2. Saving cost is the big one. If you compare the cost of hosting a system compared to owning a running it in house the costs are not dramatically different. There certainly are advantages in the hosted scenario in that the systems are always, or should be, kept up to date. In the real world a lot of SME customers do not automatically replace their systems every 3 years and if you compare costs over more than 3 years you can find hosting is more expensive. In of software licencing the cost of renting something like office is also comparable to about three years, when many small businesses do not replace or update their software as quickly as every 3 years. Thus it is possible that the cloud system will be more expensive although there will be advantages in of cash flow and fixed costs and being up to date. 3. The final problem is the internet connection. Unfortunately in this country the access speeds vary considerably from place to place and although there are any number of ISPs most have to use lines provided by BT which has a terrible reputation for reliability and . Just two examples of how this has affected our customers in the last year. We have a customer who runs large furniture

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stores. They actually use a cloud based solution. The gas board were digging up the road and went through all the telephone lines. Their store could not operate for a whole day expect by using manual systems. Another customer recently had a fire and lost everything. They have found new premises and have had a complete new system including their ing systems recovered and installed. Agreed that if they were in the cloud they could have carried on working from home etc which would have been a benefit, however one of the first things they ordered for their new offices was phone lines. Agreed installation due in 10 days. Three weeks later BT have now said they cannot provide lines as there are none available on that estate. If they were cloud based they would have to be still working from home or trying to make alternative arrangements.

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Appendix 10 Advertising-based pricing model: A pricing model whereby services are offered to customers at low or no cost, with the service provider being compensated by rs whose ads are delivered to the consumer along with the service. Application virtualization: The separation of the application from the OS. This applies to applications at all tiers, from servers to desktops. Normally, this is achieved using encapsulation. Encapsulating and isolating the application from the OS changes the way applications can install and interact with the OS. This makes it possible for the application to be moved from one system to another, patched, and updated without interactions with other applications or OSs. Application virtualization also allows applications to be copied or backed up as a single file. Capsules: Capsules embody an isolated application and its dependencies so that an application in a capsule can run on any host OS. With encapsulation, the application‘s OS dependency has been broken. Cloud app: A software application that is not installed on a local machine. It is accessible via the Internet. Cloud arcs: An abbreviation for cloud architectures, which are designs for software applications that can be accessed over the Internet. Cloud bridge: Running an application so that its components are integrated within multiple cloud environments. This could be a combination of internal or private or public clouds. Cloud client: A computing device for cloud computing. Also known as a thin client. Cloud envy: A vendor who rebrands an existing service to jump on the cloud computing bandwagon.

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Cloud lock-in: The level of difficulty associated with moving an application or data from one cloud provider to anywhere else—to another provider or back to your organization. Cost, time, level of difficulty, and portability are all variables in determining cloud lock-in. Cloud Hosting: Cloud hosting is a form of infrastructure as a service where customers rent virtual server instances from a cloud data centre on demand. A major supplier of this kind of service is Amazon Web Services. Cloud OS: Another way to describe Platform as a Service (PaaS) like Google App Engine or Salesforce.com Cloud portability: The ability to move applications and data between several cloud computing vendors. Cloud provider: A provider that makes storage, software, or an operating system available to others over a private or public network. Cloud service architecture (CSA): An architecture in which applications and application components act as services on the Internet. Cloud storage: Storing data on a cloud provider‘s storage infrastructure. Data you generate is housed off-site with a third party. NOTE: Cloud storage is often compared to leasing a car—you always have the latest and greatest technology, but you pay for it each month and never own it. Cloudburst: A euphemism used when your cloud service has a security breach or you are unable to access your data. Cloudcentre: A large service provider (like Google) that rents its infrastructure. Cloud-oriented architecture (COA): An architecture that lends itself to incorporating cloud computing components. Cloudsourcing: Making use of any type of cloud service. Student ID: 1318715

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Cloudstorm: Occurs when multiple cloud computing environments are tied together. Also called cloud network. Cloudware: Software that allows building, deploying, running, or managing applications in a cloud computing environment. Cloudwashing: Putting the word ―cloud‖ on products and services you already have. Encapsulation: Defining an application and all of its dependencies, and then locating them in a physical, isolated folder. External cloud: A cloud computing environment that is external to the organization. Funnel cloud: Dialogue about cloud computing that goes round and round, yet never touches the ground (that is, comes to fruition). Grid computing: A technique in which disparate computing and storage resources are organized to perform a specific task. The resources are brought together through the Internet or more secure private networks. Hardware virtualization: A technology that emulates hardware to allow multiple OSs, multiple instances of a single OS, or any combination thereof to coexist on the same machine. Hypervisor: Software that controls the layer between the hardware operating systems. It allows multiple operating systems to run on the same physical hardware. There are two types of hypervisors:  

Bare metal, which allows the hypervisor to run directly on the hardware Hosted architecture, in which the hypervisor runs on top of an existing operating system

Hybrid cloud: A computing environment in which both public and private cloud computing environments are present.

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IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service. Infrastructure as a service is where a cloud computing vendor provides online infrastructure on which customers can store data and run their own new or existing applications. Popular infrastructure as a service providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), GoGrid and Rackspace Internal cloud: Sometimes called a private cloud. This type of cloud exists within the boundaries of an organization. ISP: Internet Service Provider. An ISP is an organization with which an individual or organization obtains an that enables them to connect to the Internet. Network virtualization: Mapping two disparate networks into a single, unified network. This makes it look as if all remote networks are in a single place. OS virtualization: The creation of a separate run-time environment within the same operating system. Applications are installed and interaction with the operating system is not changed, so there are no substantial changes occurring to the host operating system. Para virtualization: A virtual server technique that emulates hardware for a guest operating system. Para virtualized servers are modified guest operating systems existing on top of the hypervisor. The chief difference between a virtual machine and a Para virtualized machine is that the guest OS on a virtual machine is unmodified, while the OS in a Para virtualized environment is modified to work more directly with the hypervisor. PaaS: Platform as a service provides a customer with cloud infrastructure and development tools that allow them to develop and deliver online applications. Popular PaaS offerings include Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure and Force.com.

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Personal cloud: Sometimes known as MiFi (pronounced ―me fi‖). This is a portable, personal router that allows multiple s to connect by taking mobile wireless signals and translating them to Wi-Fi. Physical-to-Physical migration (P2P): Moving a complete OS environment and installed applications from one physical server to another. This is done either by cloning drives and putting the cloned drive into a new server, or by using application virtualization to control the transfer from server to server. Physical-to-Virtual migration (P2V): The process of capturing and migrating a complete OS environment and applications from a physical to a virtual environment. Private cloud: See internal cloud. Public cloud: Cloud computing environments that are open for use to the public. SaaS: Software as a service is a computer application that is accessed over the Internet using a web browser, rather being than installed on a local computing device or in a local data centre. Examples of SaaS include the free online application Google Docs Server: A server is a computer that provides remote processing power and/or storage capacity. Servers are therefore the fundamental building blocks of cloud computing infrastructure. When rented online from an infrastructure as a service provider, servers can be real or virtual. Real servers are dedicated, individual circuit boards - known as 'blades' mounted within hardware racks in a data centre. Virtual servers - also known as virtual server instances - are software-controlled slices of real, physical servers. Virtual servers are created by a process called virtualization that allows many s to share the processing power of one physical server.

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Server virtualization: The ability to host multiple OS images on a single hardware platform. Service level agreement SLA: A contractual agreement by which a service provider defines the level of service, responsibilities, priorities, and guarantees regarding availability, performance, and other aspects of the service Storage virtualization: The abstraction of physical storage from logical storage. Storage may consist of storage pools and devices in different physical locations, but the end would only see it as one, centrally managed pool. utility computing: A metered service in which computing or storage is provided on a needed basis, much like the way public utilities (water, gas, and so on) are provided to homes and paid for on a similar basis. Utility customers pay for the service they use, rather than specific equipment. Virtual appliance: A minimalist virtual machine image designed to run a virtualization technology (like VMware). Virtual appliances aim to eliminate the installation, configuration, and maintenance costs associated with running complicated software. The difference between a virtual machine and a virtual appliance is that a virtual appliance is fully preinstalled and preconfigured, while a virtual machine is ready for software to be installed. Vertical cloud: A cloud computing environment that is optimized for a particular vertical industry. Virtual machine: A server emulating real or fictional hardware for an unmodified guest OS. It is installed as an application on a host OS. Applications installed on the virtual machine are not aware that they exist on a virtual machine. Virtual-to-Physical migration (V2P): The process of installing a virtual environment onto a physical server. Student ID: 1318715

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Virtual private cloud (VPC): Akin to a virtual private network (VPN), but the cloud version of it. It is often used to bridge private clouds to a public cloud. Web 2.0: Web 2.0 refers to a range of world-wide web developments that are enabling interpersonal content sharing and online service delivery. Three key aspects of Web 2.0 are interpersonal computing (including social networking and new forms of online collaboration), web services (that can be automatically interlinked into integrated service "mashups"), and software as a service or "SaaS" (and which involves the delivery of software applications online).

Source: 



Barnatt, C, (2010). A brief guide to Cloud computing: An essential guide to the next computing revolution. London: Constable and Robin Velte, A., Velte, T. and Elsenpeter, R., 2010. Cloud computing: A practical approach. New York: McGraw Hill

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Appendix 11 Amended project plan to go here.

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Appendix 12

Stop Press

Google has released a new range called Chromebooks. This software is an operating system that runs on notebooks and is basically Google Chrome operating system which supplies a web browser. The idea is that most people use web-browsers for most of the day and cloud services like Google Docs, etc. can be used to avoid the complexity of installing software. Samsung and Acer are manufacturing machines that may be available in June that will run the system and it is claimed that they should run quicker than Computers running Windows. They also claim that it opens webpages in a sandboxed mode which effectively means that antivirus will not be required. Ten O‘clock News ITV. 12/05/2011 Lister, J., 2011. New Google Netbooks Won‘t Need Antivirus: Report / Infopackets.com. Available at: http://www.infopackets.com/news/business/google/2011/20110517_new _google_netbooks_wont_need_antivirus_report.htm [Accessed May 18, 2011].

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The European Commission are seeking to gather views on cloud computing to help build its own strategy. The EU executive believes cloud computing could generate £30 billion in revenue in Europe by 2014. The UK government is already using the cloud and has extended its relationship with Huddle. Jowitt, T., 2011. EC Opens Cloud Computing Public Consultation | eWEEK Europe UK. Available at: http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/ec-openscloud-computing-public-consultation-29507 [Accessed May 18, 2011].

Skype bought out by Microsoft on the 10th of May. This will provide Microsoft with 600 million s already using Skype. Tim Weber of the BBC has predicted that marrying Skype services with Xbox Kinect and an HD television which could be used for one to one training, home schooling, patient care and of course family teleconferencing. Bring that to the business world and they challenge Cisco and Polycom for their telepresence. As Skype is cloud telephony it can be linked to mobile phones and can be paired with Windows Phone 7. Weber, T., 2011. BBC News - Microsoft confirms takeover of Skype. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13343600 [Accessed May 18, 2011].

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Business link have announced on their website that they will be closing on November 2011 www.businesslink.gov.uk

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