Competency
In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competencies:
- Explain the concepts of virtualization
- Explain the concepts of cloud-based architecture
Scenario
The company you work for, Packages Plus Delivery (PPD), currently houses its physical computing environments on site. Packages Plus Delivery is growing, including the number of packages delivered and the number of employees hired each quarter. As a result of this growth and to better meet the needs of the clients, organizational leadership recently made the decision to virtualize all computing environments.
Leadership is deciding between internal virtualization and the use of an external vendor. They are also considering a move to cloud-based architecture but want to know more about the risks and cost benefits of moving to a cloud environment.
As a virtual solutions analyst at Packages Plus Delivery, you serve on a Virtualization Transition Committee. This group has been asked to create a presentation that emphasizes how the decision to move to virtualization will improve business strategy, and what the options are if the company considers moving the infrastructure to a cloud environment. Your presentation will ensure that leadership makes an informed decision.
Directions
You have been asked to create a presentation that supports the companys decision to move to virtualization. Within the presentation, you will need to address each of the following topics in order to inform leadership:
- Describe how the companys decision to move to a virtual computing environment will impact its business strategy. If you use sources, be sure to provide a citation. You must include:
- The benefits of your companys decision to move to a virtual computing environment
- The constraints of the decision to move to a virtual computing environment
- An explanation of how moving to virtualization will impact the scalability of the business
- The costs of moving to virtualization
- The hardware and software, and other technologies involved
- In order to provide the most detailed information, you need to compare the implications of the organization moving to a virtual environment using its hardware servers in-house with the implications of using a third-party vendor to virtualize. You may create a visual (such as a Venn Diagram) or write a passage to explain these concepts. You will need to compare the following factors and describe the advantages, disadvantages, and risks associated with each:
- Cost: equipment such as hardware and software, maintenance (i.e., upgrades and backups), licensing, security (i.e., shared responsibility, on premises)
- Capacity
- Agility
- Service availability
- As the company moves toward virtualization, you want to inform leadership of cloud-based architecture by describing the cloud service models that are available. You must describe:
- IaaS
- PaaS
- SaaS
- For each cloud service model, you must:
- Explain how it supports virtualization
- Advantages for organizations
- Disadvantages for organizations
- Describe different types of cloud deployment models that the company can deploy. You must include:
- The benefits of each cloud deployment model
- The constraints of each cloud deployment model
- An explanation of how each cloud environment impacts the scalability of the business
- The costs of moving to that type of deployment model
- The training involved in moving to that type of deployment model
What to Submit
To complete this project, you must submit the following:
Presentation
Your presentation should be submitted on a file that your instructor can easily access (.ppt, PDF, .doc).
Your presentation must include:
- The evidence that supports your companys decision to move to virtualization
- A comparison of creating a virtual environment in-house compared to using an external vendor
- Information on the various cloud service models
- Description of cloud deployment model options
