Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an IT Infrastructure to IaaS

Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an IT Infrastructure to IaaS

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Abstract

The following case study will illustrate the potential benefits and risks associated with the Migration of an Information Technology system of the Loudoun Water system to the Cloud Operating system. The old on-premise system in which the organization has been overwhelmed by the daily increasing water service demands of the national population. Increasing demands have caused a challenge to the old system. To solve the challenge, the following case study proposes a new method for the organization to migrate from the old system migrating to Cloud infrastructure IaaS.

Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an IT Infrastructure to IaaS

1. Introduction

Loudoun Water is a public utility located in the Northern parts of Virginia and delivers water to over 80,000 customers in the Loudoun Nation. The organization has grown its reputation among its clients, which has led to an increased number of customers. Additionally, the national population has increased with most of them, depending on the organization for water services.  The increased population and number of water users from the organization have become a burden to the old means of water supply used by the organization. To meet the customers’ increasing daily needs, the organization has requested its ICT department infrastructure for a unique opportunity to reinvent itself. The organization needed a new system infrastructure that is more secure, available around the clock, and flexible. As a result, the organization settled to transits from the on-premise to an infrastructure premise service solution. The new service system would be hoisted at the Azure. It would provide reliability and scalability, which the organization needed in supporting the needs and demands of the consumer base and the organization and promising a better manner to operate and handle future organization growth and challenges that would arise (Khajeh-Hosseini, Greenwood & Sommerville, 2010). The organization settles to mitigate a cloud-based automation program, which would open a great door for improved cost management and overall efficiency (Khajeh-Hosseini, Greenwood & Sommerville, 2010). The program would solve the problem within the organization and offer an opportunity to improve work capacity and productivity.  The following paragraphs will highlight how the new method will be installed within the organization to mitigate the new system effectively. The report will be presented with background information, analysis of the current organization situation, introduce the solution and recommendations, the risks which the system can entail, the implementation plan, and a conclusion in that order.

2. Background

Currently, organization business is being developed and disrupted as a result of increased demand from customers.  Consumers of organization products always need quality products and services. When the demand for quality products increases within the consumer base, organizations find themselves in a crisis. As a result, they have to develop means that would solve the aroused problem and move forward in the right direction. It the situation currently at Deloitte and needs to look for means on how to move away from the situation. Since its initialization, the organization has been providing water to over 80,000 consumers in the Loudoun Nation. Recently, the national population increased the weight of the organization’s consumer demands (Khajeh-Hosseini, Greenwood & Sommerville, 2010). The challenge was unbearable for the organization and needed an immediate solution. As a result, the organization sought solutions from its ICT department for a new system, which would help move the organization forward while solving the challenge. After consultations, the organization decided to move from the on-premise to a new infrastructure system. Both Loudoun Water and Deloitte organization corroborated working together towards building a scalable and reliable SAP solution on Microsoft Azure Cloud on Deloitte Open Cloud management platform. The organization cloud architects advised the utility network group to develop a secure network architecture that included periodic security upgrades to effectively withstand frequent outranges or even any form of a disaster that would happen in the future. The newly developed project would solve the challenge once and for all.

Additionally, it would eliminate any performance issues which in the past have happened in the organization. From that, the result is a quality public utility that would be transformed into a Kinetic Enterprise with the ability to evolve (Ahmad, Naveed & Hoda, 2018).  The new project will be a milestone achieved by the organization, and hence they need to consider it.

3. Analysis of the Current Situation

In the past few years, organizations have generally viewed water business as a minimal operational business with little costs and not a strategic issue.  However, with development and increased technology rates, water business has become one of the most environmental, economic, and social issues for both large corporations and the public sector in response to the increased water demand across the nation (Alruwaili  & Gulliver, 2018). Due to increased population, organizations supplying waters services have come to increased demand, with most of its operations systems being overwhelmed by the increased demand. Currently, Deloitte supplies water to over 80,000 persons (Alruwaili & Gulliver, 2018). With the increased population, the demand for the service is expected to rise. The demand is high, and some of its current operating systems are overwhelmed and have raised challenges that call for the organization’s immediate action to be solved.  Currently, the organization operates with an on-form system which has been challenged by the increasing customer demands. Most of the population which the organization serves is the Northern Virginia population in the Loudoun Nation (Alruwaili & Gulliver, 2018). Increased population from the nation has loaded the current organization system heavily and hence called for implementing a new system that would effectively solve the problem facing the organization. The new system proposed by the organization builds a scalable and reliable SAP solution on a Microsoft Azure Cloud on the Deloitte Open Cloud management platform (Alruwaili & Gulliver, 2018). It is believed that the new system will be of great success to the organization and would solve the challenge faced by the old system used by the organization. It worth an investment project for the organization, and the ICT department needs to consider its worth.

4. Introduce Solutions and Justify Recommendations

4.1 Justification on the Migration to the cloud

Currently, organizations are moving towards improved technological applications. One of the recently developed methods and ways is to implementation of Cloud Mitigation in organization operations. One of the organizations which in the future will need to install and implement the application is Deloitte organization (Callanan, O’Shea & O’Regan, 2016). For the organization, cloud mitigation will generate early returns on the organization’s investment from the cloud transformation efforts. However, developing a clear business justification with tangible, tangible costs and returns can be hard. Still, Deloitte will have to work against the complexity of a solution for the arisen challenge.

4.2 Cost and Benefits of moving to the cloud

The organization will pay an initial total of $104,000 to organization B for the system. Out of the total amount paid to organization B, $19,400 will be for the system infrastructure cost. At the same time, the rest will cater for the cost of system development and implementation. All new systems in organizations call for new costs from the relevant authority (Wan, Duan & Wang, 2017). It means that the organization will have to spend new costs for the new system to be implemented. The organization will have to forgo the old operating system and will be needed to invest new funds into the new system.

Some benefits which will come with the new system include;

• Reduced costs
• Increased mobility
• Increased collaboration
• High disaster recovery
• Loss prevention
• Sustainability
• Competitive edge

A disruption of the organization’s operating systems will be disrupted, and a reduced number of services will be affected (Saini, Upadhyaya  & Khandelwal, 2019). However, though moving to the new system will come with increased benefits. The new system will come with complete cloud migration and decomposing of the mission-critical SAP and the non-SAP on the premise services while avoiding the expensive investments on new on-premise hardware (Saini, Upadhyaya  & Khandelwal, 2019).  The new platform and hardware upgrades resulting in improved application performance and speed while improving its utility (Saravanan, Nallusamy & George, 2018). The new system will come with an increased disaster recovery solution, which will provide complete business continuity. The IT department will focus on the strategic initiatives with the lights on and the value-added activities that the Deloitte organization will manage.

4.3 Disaster Recovery Solutions on Cloud

The old system of operation within the organization has not provided a clear disaster recovery system. However, the new system will come with a new disaster recovery solution (Wan, Duan & Wang, 2017). The new recovery system will provide complete business continuity while assuring the ability to provide around clock customers’ ability (Alruwaili & Gulliver, 2018).  Cloud will provide the best opportunity for the organization to implement the new system and move in the right direction.

4.4 Recommend Solutions

With challenges mounting in the organization operating system, a new system is therefore needed. It is recommended that the organization should implement a new cloud operating system. All customers should be made aware of the new system and how it will operate in operating. All systems should be connected to the new system to make it operate as the focal point in all operations.

Risks

Some of the risks associated with Migration to cloud computing include incompatibility with the old existing data loss, added latency, and wasted costs (Widyastuti & Irwansyah, 2018). Though it is assumed that the organization will benefit from the newly implemented system, it is connected with some risks. While in operation, data flight in it will be intercepted as it moves from the cloud. This risk will pose a greater challenge to the customer’s information into problems (Alruwaili & Gulliver, 2018). Risk associated mitigation includes ensuring that all data transmissions are a strongly encrypted band. The data transmission endpoints will be authenticated to ensure that they are legitimate.

5. Implementation Plan

Implementing Cloud Computing Technologies

6. Recommendations

For proper implementation of the new, the following recommendations will be considered and put into the application;

• New evaluation methods will need to be implemented to monitor the effectiveness of the system.
• The whole community should be made aware of the new system and how it works to upgrade it.
• The implementation will be made in phases to upgrade all the management and the community with the new system.

8. 8. Conclusion

Computing is an upcoming and disruptive technology that is set to change how Deloitte IT systems work. IT support departments are developed for simple, cheap, and scalable nature. Findings from the case study show that cloud computing will be important for the organization. It will provide a cheaper alternative for the organization in developing and maintaining the future of the organization. Cloud computing will potentially eliminate any related support issues within the organization, and there would be no physical infrastructure to maintain. The new system will provide a new alternative to the old organization operating system and is worth considering and implementing.

References

Alruwaili, F. F., & Gulliver, T. A. (2018). Secure Migration to compliant cloud services: A case  study. Journal of information security and applications, 38, 50-64.

Saravanan, V., Nallusamy, S., & George, A. (2018). Efficiency enhancement in a medium-scale   gearbox manufacturing company through a different lean tools-A case study.           International Journal of Engineering Research in Africa (Vol. 34, pp. 128-138). Trans         Tech Publications Ltd.

Saini, H., Upadhyaya, A., & Khandelwal, M. K. (2019). Benefits of Cloud Computing for Business Enterprises: A Review. Available at SSRN 3463631.

Widyastuti, D., & Irwansyah, I. (2018). Benefits and challenges of cloud computing technology adoption in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Bandung Creative Movement (BCM) Journal, 4(1).

Alruwaili, F. F., & Gulliver, T. A. (2018). Secure Migration to compliant cloud services: A case       study. Journal of information security and applications, 38, 50-64.

Khajeh-Hosseini, A., Greenwood, D., & Sommerville, I. (2010, July). Cloud migration: A case    study of migrating an enterprise it system to aims. In 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on cloud computing (pp. 450-457). IEEE.

Khajeh-Hosseini, A., Greenwood, D., & Sommerville, I. (2010, July). Cloud migration: A case study of migrating an enterprise it system to aims. In 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on cloud  computing (pp. 450-457). IEEE.

Callanan, S., O’Shea, D., & O’Regan, E. (2016, June). Automated Environment Migration to the Cloud.     In 2016 27th Irish Signals and Systems Conference (ISSC) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Wan, Z., Duan, L., & Wang, P. (2017, June). Cloud migration: layer partition and integration. In 2017         IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing (EDGE) (pp. 150-157). IEEE.

Ahmad, N., Naveed, Q. N., & Hoda, N. (2018, November). Strategy and procedures for Migration to Cloud Computing. In 2018 IEEE 5th International Conference on Engineering Technologies and       Applied Sciences (ICES) (pp. 1-5). IEEE