The document discusses the benefits of adopting cloud technology and virtualization for companies. It identifies key benefits as improved business performance, rapid growth, increased agility, and cost reduction. While cloud computing introduces security risks from shared resources, it reduces financial risks from large IT investments. The document also discusses how cloud computing improves agility through elastic resources, increases productivity, creates new business opportunities, and cuts costs through reduced hardware/infrastructure needs and automated provisioning. It provides recommendations for securing data in the cloud and gaining competitive advantages through automation and self-service.

1. Running Head: PROJECT PAPER 1
PROJECT PAPER 4
Project Paper
Name
Institutional Affiliations
Section 1: Design Document
There are many reasons why many companies would want
to adopt cloud technology and virtualization within their
companies. The most significant ones are identified as business
performance resourcing, rapid-go-to-market, business agility, as
well as, cost reduction. Often, there are no serious reasons why
organizations choose to adopt cloud computing given that the
decisions always depends on the complex combination of
reasons, rather than being based on a single factor. Use of cloud
computing can change the risk posture and profile of a
company. For example, by companies using public cloud, they
will definitely avoid the risk that a large investment in IT
resources will not pay off; however, it can introduce security
risks because the resources are shared with unknown parties.
Conversely, there may be risk of non-compliance and
regulation, due to lack of control over where data is stored. The
need for using cloud technology within the company is the
ability to take advantage of new business opportunities, cost,
agility, and productivity.
Cloud computing delivers improved agility because it has

2. on-demand rapid elasticity. For instance, the IT resources can
be deployed more quickly and increased as needed to meet
demand. This gives opportunities for enterprises to innovate,
introduce new products and services, enter new markets, as well
as, adapting to changing circumstances. The other reason for the
need for the use of cloud technology and virtualization within
the company is that, it increases productivity. Cloud technology
provides a more productive environment not only for a
collaborative working, but also it improves the company’s
productivity by enabling participants in a business ecosystem to
share processing logic. Cloud computing or technologies create
new business opportunities, for example, it can give an
enterprise new business opportunities as a provider of cloud
services or added services. Companies that excel in quality of
its IT can become a public SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), PaaS
(Platform-as-a-Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)
provider. A good example of this is in a case where a company
implements a private cloud, has spare capacity, as well as, sells
that capacity as public cloud. Cloud computing within the
company also cut businesses costs. For example, given the
benefits of agility, productivity, and quality that cloud
computing have, companies might expect these to be generally
more expensive, however, this is not the case; reduced cost is
one of the main reasons why many companies are turning to the
cloud technologies (Perilli, 2009).
Research has shown that few technologies have affected
the IT industry. An example is cloud computing that delivers
computing as a service. Part of cloud’s appeal is evidently
financial; that is, it allows organizations to shed some of their
expensive IT infrastructure (software and hardware) and shifts
computing costs to more manageable operational expenses.
Cloud computing is not only about purchasing hardware and
infrastructure, instead, the companies, as well as, individuals
usually compare the cost of on-premise server to the cost of
cloud server. In the mind of these entities, the on-premise
server is most likely to depreciate itself may be in 3 years to

3. come while the cloud computing server will be treated as a
continuous expenditure. Cost savings in hardware infrastructure
are relatively easy to quantify. For example, if companies adopt
cloud technologies in a public cloud, on-site hardware will be
replaced less often and less new hardware has to be purchased.
This is significant because it will in turn lead to much-reduced
power, less space needed in the data center, as well as, cooling
costs. Studies shows that a medium-sized cloud deployments
lead to about 62 percent savings within a year compared with an
on-premise system. However, for larger cloud deployments, the
annual savings may be about 50 percent compared with on-
premise implementations (Schwartz, 2013).
Labor cost savings is one of the possible reduction of
human capital that can be realized from implementing and
virtualization technologies. By off-loading software, application
or a platform to a private cloud platform, less time is needed to
maintain, administer, as well as, troubleshoot the technologies.
For instance, if there is a system administrator who is in charge
of about 140 servers, the same system administrator can be in
charge or responsible for thousands of cloud –based servers as
well (Schwartz, 2013). IT management costs can as well be
reduced through automated provisioning. For example, in the
cloud, virtual servers are usually provisioned automatically
instead of manually. This is significant because it reduces the
downtime along with the compliance issues.
The diagram below illustrates how cloud and virtualization
technology aligns with the company’s business processes and
assist with attainment of organizational goals.
Cloud Provider
Cloud Consumer
Service Orchestration
Resource abstraction and control layer
Physical Resource Layer
Service
Management
PaaS

4. SaaS
IaaS
The main actors in the above diagram are cloud consumers
and cloud provider. A cloud consumer is an individual or
organization that acquires and uses cloud products and services,
while cloud provider in this case is a person or an organization
that are responsible for making a service available to a cloud
consumer.
One area concern from many organizations regarding cloud
technologies and virtualization is how to trust the infrastructure
upon which the data and workloads will be run. As a result,
companies who are interested in moving to the cloud and
manage their risk profiles should look for Cloud Service
Providers that offer security and trust services, as well as, the
ability to enforce and audit policy on the data being deployed.
A compelling recommendation for solution providers that could
help the company secure a firm competitive advantage using
cloud and virtual technologies is recommending these firms to
advance their server security for physical, virtual, and cloud
servers in regards to what enterprises chose to use for storing
their information in the cloud. Enterprises should adopt data
security that will protect the enterprise applications and data
from breaches, as well as business disruptions. This is important
because it will help organizations to simplify security
operations while enabling regulatory compliance and cloud
projects. Another compelling recommendation for solution
providers that could help the company secure a firm competitive
advantage using cloud and virtual technologies is through

5. automation and self service. Organizations should discover best
practices in the cloud and encapsulate those in new procedures
for ongoing support, provisioning of resources, as well as,
application design. In the case of automation, firms can
radically reduce the human cost of IT if they take the advantage
of schedule maintenance and provisioning.
Section 2: Revised Project Plan
One of the critical factors for project success is having a
well-developed project plan. There are various step approaches
to follow when creating a project plan which includes; project
description, project objectives, project management plan
purpose, project deliverables, project milestones, project Roles
and Responsibilities, project scope management, project time
management, and many others. In this case, we shall revise the
previous project plan while updating the project plan template;
from Project Deliverables 3: Database and Data Warehousing
Design with at least three new project tasks each consisting five
to ten subtasks.
A database is an organized collection of data that can
easily be accessed, managed, and updated. Databases are set up
so that one set of software programs allows users to access to
all. In databases, there are rows and columns which are used to
store information. Data warehouse is an electronic storage of a
large amount of information, and are stored in a manner that is
secure, reliable, easy to manage and retrieve. Usually, data
warehouse is the only option for data collection Company that
has a huge collection of data. For example, every moment users
visit a single page in a website that will generate thousand
records to be saved. Some of the new project tasks in project
deliverables for Database and Data Warehousing Design
include; improving information access, bringing the user in
touch with their data, enhancing the quality of decisions,
managing schema objects, such as tables, indexes, and material

6. views, managing users and security, as well as, providing cross-
function integration.
All the above project tasks in project deliverables for
Database and Data Warehousing Design are important and
difficult step for designing a software product for the reason
that they determine what the user wants, this is because users
often are unable to communicate the entirety of their needs, and
the information they provide may also be incomplete (Parker,
2012). By managing schema objects, such as tables, indexes,
and material views, some of the subtasks include defining
alternatives to triggers by defining data version control and
management while the subtasks of managing users and security
include creating login less users, implementing certificate-based
security, as well as defining appropriate database roles and
permissions for the users.
References
Perilli, W. (2009). The benefits of virtualization and cloud
computing. Retrieved on 18 Feb, 2016 from
http://virtualization.sys-con.com/node/870217
Parker, J. (2012). Business Requirments vs Functional
Requirements. Retrieved on 12 Feb, 2016 from
http://enfocussolutions.com/business-requirements-vs-
functional-requirements/
Schwartz, P. (2013). Cloud Computing can generate massive
savings for agencies. Retrieved on 18 Feb, 2016 from
https://fcw.com/microsites/2011/cloud-computing-
download/financial-benefits-of-cloud-computing-to-federal-
agencies.aspx