Innovative Ways of Using Emerging Information Technologies
There are several ways by which users can evaluate and gage the performance of cloud providers. Usually, they are assessed based on costs of the utility model, though there are several variations to further gauged each provider’s desirability such as the location, reliability and security factors. There are organizations that offer certification to providers that comply with specific standards; for instance, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) developed the Trusted Cloud Initiative Program that help cloud providers comply with standards and practices (Cloud, 2011). In addition to relying on certifications, users must take considerable steps in evaluating the performance of cloud service providers before making the final decision to use it. This paper aims to discuss about the difference and similarities of Amazon, Google and Microsoft, three of the most popular cloud providers.
The technology associated with cloud computing was an almost unimaginable prospect many decades ago. The emergence of new technology, such as the internet and computers allows for the development of innovative ways to interact, communicate and do business. Currently, there are many cloud computing providers, but three of the providers that stand out among others are amazon, google and Microsoft. Accordingly, most people know amazon as the biggest online retailer all over the globe, google as a popular search engine and Microsoft as a dominant developer of computer softwares and hardwares. These three big names in the computer and information technology paved the way for innovative ways by which business and people perform many of their activities. Accordingly, despite their somewhat difference in their initial programs, these giants are now headed towards a rigid competition specifically in the field of cloud computing.
During the first quarter of 2016, Amazon reported a 64% increase in its annual revenue, showing off its control in the cloud market. As observed by many analysts, Amazon is the leads by a large margin in the field of public cloud services (Frank, 2016), and this can be attributed with having started earlier than the others. It is to be noted that Amazon pioneered the cloud revolution when it launched the Amazon Web Services as a means to meet the demands of its growing customer base. Reports revealed that Amazon gained advantage in cloud computing because of its initial move; the biggest online retailer gained about a third of the cloud computing market.
In some respect, Amazon, Google and Microsoft tend to offer an almost similar prospect to customers all in the field of computing, networking and storage. Moreover, they share common attributes in terms of several features such as instant provision, security and compliance. However, the need to innovate amidst the stiff competition spells the emerging differences from time to time, because of the continuous investment in new features and cloud services. An example of which was when Amazon’s AWS came up with the EC2 and its related apps, Microsoft developed Virtual Machines with its related tools (Finnegan, 2016). One of the reasons why users tend to choose AWS is because of the large number of following that the latter receives. Amazon’s AWS has a very strong hold in terms of having a substantial customer base, as the business capitalize on its reputation as the largest online bookseller. The online retailer has turned itself into the biggest player in cloud computing, and this image that symbolizes the willingness to change held a positive impact on the decisions of many IT users.
Microsoft
Many regarded Microsoft as coming in second to the Amazon in the field of cloud computing. It was claimed that Microsoft failed in many respects in contrast to that of the AWS features, however it is observed that the former is already implementing measures to be considered at par or even surpass Amazon in that respect. It is to be noted that while has years of reputation in online retailing, Microsoft has decades of leadership in the field of IT, thus giving it a push in offering its Azure services (Tibcom, 2016).
While Amazon, Microsoft and Google all allow for the installation of container hosts, they still differ in many respects. Microsoft’s Azure container service is considered as the newest among the three, and what differentiated it from the rest is the integration of cluster management tools that can be utilized by default (O’Leary, 2016). People who opted for the Azure cloud and who are keen on seeing its progress may find that the Azure team are constantly involved in the continuous improvement of this tool. Just like other IT providers, they are always on the look out for ways to improve the functionality of the cloud.
In view of the competition, Microsoft has been cautious on its pricing strategy, making sure to stay within the parameters. Many vendors that do not only try to offer new features, but who are also willing to drop prices to gain patronage. Amazon’s strategy on its AWS implement the rounding up on the hours used, and it allowed its customers to pay through, a) on demand, where the customer is required to pay their usage without an upfront cost, b) reserved, where the customers can reserve up to 3 years of use with an upfront cost, and c) spot, where the customer may bid for the capacity available (Aldiab, 2015).
Coming in third among the three is Google, which capitalized on being a leading search engine in putting up its cloud computing business. It built upon its huge data centers that are used to run its search engine, in addition to developing its programs such as Gmail and Google Maps (Titcomb, 2016). Despite its tremendous experience in the provision of computing security and infrastructure, Google was considered to have arrived late in the field of cloud computing. It introduced its Google Compute Engine (GCE) in 2012, though it was only in 2013 when it became available in the market. This engine allows the users to use virtual machines, a feature that can be compared to that of Amazon’s AWS (Aldiab, 2015). Moreover, this international technology company was previously focused on providing for the technological needs of consumers, which is different from product selling.
ACTi Case Study on the use of Amazon Cloud Computing
Founded in 2003 with the mission to provide a video surveillance solution, ACTi Corporation’s continuous growth can be attributed to the use of Amazon’s AWS cloud services. According to ACTi’s IT manager, the use of AWS resulted in the creation of new product in a much quicker pace, such that the development time is lowered by about 30%, while the testing and quality assurance part can be accomplished 40% faster (Amazon, 2016). The company used to cater to small-to-medium sized businesses as well as large corporations, though it now caters to the surveillance system needs of retail to rise, and this can be attributed to the effectiveness of the cloud computing technology provide by AWS. The challenged that was faced by ACTi came when it decided to seize the opportunity to make cloud-based solutions available to both large and small companies.
It was during the time when its technical department runs into difficulties in developing a cloud-based surveillance that the company opted to turn to AWS. The big data analytics are too much to handle, and this disrupted the company’s plans to turn to a cloud-based platform from the internal systems. Further, the situation resulted in the inhibition of growth and the inability of the organization to reduce operational cost. The goal in seeking the help of another cloud-based provider is to lessen the costs through decreased overhead costs, while prioritizing the development of cloud-based surveillance solutions as a means to increase market share.
The popularity of AWS prompted ACTi management to approach Amazon; in addition to that, the stakeholders also took considerable time to review the breadth of AWS offerings. The strong documentation of the different business cases prompted ACTi’s IT managers to make his decision in favor of AWS. In about two weeks, ACTi’s website and business intelligence portal and all its internal systems were transferred to the clouds. The success of the system’s migration to the cloud was followed by the transfer of the Cloud Network Video Recorder and ACTi’s Market Application Suite platform to AWS. The company took advantage in leveraging the diverse AWS offerings, which included the Amazon EC2 for increased computing power. There is also the Amazon S3 which caters to the need of storing repetitive information.
The Benefits
The benefits of turning to the cloud-based services provided by AWS leads to greater revenue for ACTi. The company was able to expand to a wider customer base of differing sizes. The customers find satisfaction in the services provide by the company because it combined its surveillance services with information analytics. Moreover, the lower costs associated with the overhead of product development reduced costs. This has a good implication to the customers because it meant lower purchasing costs. Further, customers may find the several most advantageous of having cameras and other hardwares connected to the cloud. Currently, ACTi customers enjoy the benefit of not having to face the expenses, time and effort spent when deploying, testing and constructing a large infrastructure. It is to be noted that physical infrastructures are generally considered as the contributor of large overhead costs. The cloud-based surveillance powered by AWS allows the users to be able to freely view and manage the specific configurations, thus making the products more popular for companies. The excellent performance in providing for ACTi is transferred to other possible users who appreciated the values associated with the product.
Unilever and AWS
Unilever is an internationally known company that has been established in 1930, and has since sold consumer goods ranging from food, and refreshments as well as personal and home care to hundreds of countries throughout the globe. The challenged faced by Unilver came Uniliver North America based in New Jersey has to come up with a new design for its infrastructure in support of the company’s digital marketing strategy. Previously, the company used diverse technologies hosted by its on-premise data centers; but later realize the need to standardize its environment to have a speedier time-to-market cycle. The idea was that Uniliver should capitalize on this business model by using it as a campaign in a specific country. The company analysts thought that the success of the system in the pilot country signals the high probability of success in other regions. It was this idea that sparked the concept of resorting to the cloud for an efficient implementation of the project.
Why Amazon
The main reason why Uniliver opted to use Amazon’s AWS can be attributed to the result of the comprehensive examination of the request for proposals (RFP) from 16 companies. In choosing a digital marketing platform, Uniliver is keen about the flexibility, the nature of the global infrastructure, existing technology and the excellent network among members. The global technical manager of Unilver favored AWS because it can provide the same hosting to all the regions, which was what the stakeholders wanted in the first place. As pointed out, Uniliver does not cater to IT solutions, yet with the most innovative yet affordable strategies provided by AWS, they can be able to focus more on catering to the needs of their customers.
The digital marketing platform provided by AWS allows Unilver to customize and change the hosting solutions based the characteristics of one region. In its decision to the cloud through the assistance of the AWS, two of the company’s goal is to a) deliver a platform-base technology for websites that are modified for each region, and b) to migrate the present web contents to the cloud.
In order to develop the platform, representatives from Uniliver were required to attend an AWS workshop where they were introduced to the architectural design of the system. The digital marketing services team developed a preliminary platform for the consideration of the stakeholders. Accordingly, after consideration and approval of the preliminary platform, Unilever selected CSS Corporation. The CSS Corporation is a leading technological support company which is considered as an Advanced Consulting Partner of Amazon Partner Network (APN), the main task of which caters to integration and app development. Consequently, the digital marketing services team cooperated with CSS towards the development of a content management system that cater to the global needs of the organization (Amazon, 2016). Since Uniliver migrated to the Cloud, it has been reaping the advantages of doing business through this innovative technology. Amazon AWS is characterized by an ever-expanding infrastructure that cater to the needs of different business. What makes AWS popular is the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of the cloud storage service (Solomonov, 2014). In the case of Uniliver, AWS provided a well-designed solution that aims to protect the management systems. Consequently, the excellent demonstration and application leads to a heightened confidence in the reliability of cloud services provided by the AWS.
GE Oil and Gas
Headquartered in London, UK, GE Oil and Gas are a multinational company that caters to diverse segments of oil and gas businesses, including gas distribution, offshore and onshore drilling, pipeline and storage and refinery among others. Just like any other international companies, GE Oil and Gas found it necessary to migrate many of its works to the cloud, specifically in running its applications. An analysis of the company’s performance upon the adoption of the AWS cloud solution revealed that the costs of the apps used were reduced to about 52% on average (Babcock, 2016).
The Chief Technology Officer of GE Oil and Gas, Ben Wilson, was the first among all the other AWS users to take the stage. According to Wilson, his company migrated 350 apps onto AWS within a 30-month period. However, the migration was first done with the simplest and least critical part of the app, in addition to ensuring that the GE staffs were already familiar with the intricacies of cloud computing. When the staffs became knowledgeable and proficient in the AWS operations, the workloads transferred to the cloud was increased. It was a gradual process, where one application is migrated and analyzed based on the ability of the staffs to take on the manage them.
An application that was already up and running in the AWS clouds is the company’s customer billing application. The app was designed in a way that it produces a single invoice for a customer, notwithstanding the multiplicity of transactions. It allows for a quick reference to transactions because it reduces the time and effort in tracking different transactions with a single customer. This leads to better customer service as well as reduced operational cost to the company.
Among the apps used by GE Oil, the Epsilon custom application helps in data analysis. This app has a critical function because it is tasked to search for incongruities and other manifestations of deficiency in the pipelines. The use of AWS in this instance, calls for the need for the use of a device, which in this case is the Snowball data transporter of Amazon. This is a physical device that is equipped with an encrypted data which has features that can be unlocked when it reached its destination. The flexibility of the AWS computer platform lets the Epsilon to generate the needed data.
The GE Oil and Gas knew of the benefits of trusting and using Amazon’s AWS cloud services and has continually moved segments of pig data into the providers' cloud services. The decision to move the majority of its apps to the AWS clouds can be attributed to the better analysis platform of Amazon. The stakeholders of GE found an improvement of the timeliness of their data; that is, while it took about 100 days to transfer data through its link to Amazon, it is now observed that the time was considerably reduced to only about two weeks (Babcock, 2016).
The decision to resort to the use of cloud computing resulted in a more efficient, but less costly operation for GE Oil and Gas. One of the staff who was tasked to oversee the migration to AWS clouds noted that their company has become more technical recently. This was in reference to the launching of ‘bot army’ that are designed to watch over the workloads that are already in the clouds. Currently, GE Oil and Gas is highly satisfied with the cloud services provided by AWS, and the stakeholders are waiting for another of the innovations being developed by the largest cloud provider.
Bibliography
Amazon Web Services. (2016). ACTi Case STudy. Retrieved fromhttps://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/acti-case-study/
Babcock, C. (2016). GE Oil & Gas Finds Amazon Use Lowers TCO 52%. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-a-service/ge-oil-and-gas-finds-amazon-use-lowers-tco-52-/d/d-id/1325194
Cloud Security Alliance. (2011). Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing V3.0. Retrieved from https://downloads.cloudsecurityalliance.org/assets/research/security-guidance/csaguide.v3.0
Finnegan, M. (2016). Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS public cloud comparison: Which cloud is best for the enterprise? Retrieved from http://www.computerworlduk.com/it-vendors/microsoft-azure-vs-amazon-aws-public-cloud-comparison-which-cloud-is-best-for-enterprise-3624848/
Frank, B. (2016). Sixty-four percent revenue growth points to how much companies rely on AWS. Retrieved from http://www.infoworld.com/article/3062902/cloud-computing/massive-growth-shows-why-amazon-is-the-public-cloud-leader.html
Bibliography
O'Leary, R. (2016). How to Compare AWS vs Azure vs Google vs Softlayer. Retrieved from http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-management-best-practices/how-compare-aws-vs-azure-vs
Solomonov, M. (2014). Why are so Many Large and Small Companies Transitioning to AWS.Retrieved http://www.smartdatacollective.com/connectriahosting/197171/who-are-some-heavy-users-amazon-web-services-aws
Titcomb, J. (2016). Cloud wars: Google, Amazon and Microsoft battle to own the future of computing. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/25/cloud-wars-google-amazon-and-microsoft-battle-to-own-the-future/
