Cloud Computing Assignment: Cloud Integration In Business Networks

Question

Task: It is your responsibility to ensure that your assignment arrives before the submission deadline stated above. See the University policy on late submission of work.
For the KF7028 assignment, you must produce a proposal for a short research project. The proposal is the foundation of the 60-credit project that you will study as part of your postgraduate programme, KF7029 MSc Computer Science & Digital Technologies Project.

This assignment is therefore doubly important:

• It accounts for 80% of the marks for KF7028
• It is essential preparation for your research project.

As stated, the KFG7029 research project will account for 60 credits (one-third) of your programme of study. Typically, you will spend 600 hours on this project.

Your KF7028 research proposal will be approximately 2500 – 3000 words and specify the project background, motivation and relevance to your programme of study; its scope, aims and objectives; a plan of the major activities. Your proposal should draw on current and recent research and other appropriate sources of information and cite these sources using a consistent standard referencing system. The proposal will be assessed by your allocated module tutors for the module or by your supervisor and a second marker, feedback will be provided, consisting of suggestions and comments on how to improve the project.

You will be allocated your project supervisor in semester two of your study period. If you start your study in September, you will be allocated a project supervisor in second semester January – May. If you start your study in January, you will be allocated your supervisor in your second semester September – January

This proposal should be based on the outcome of your own research and of the meetings with your tutors, peers and supervisors. This supervisor/tutors will be confirmed with you by the end of week 6. By this time you should have produced a draft copy of your proposal. Your supervisor/tutor will provide individual support and formative feedback during the preparation of your research proposal.

Research question
You should aim to outline a research question. This research question defines what you want to study and is the first step in development of your project proposal.

Aim
Produce a summary of what your project will achieve in one or two sentences. 

Background, Motivation and Relevance – literature review

• Set out and justify, using supporting literature, where your work will fit in the computing body of knowledge.
• Outline and critically discuss what relevant research has been undertaken, in the past, in your area of interest and why this project is necessary.
• Outline and critically discuss why the research will be of value, in the future, and what the anticipated impact of the outcomes will be.
• Provide a diagram such as a mind map illustrating the position in the computing body of knowledge.
• Outline why you want to undertake this work, some areas to consider are, personal motivation, skills set and career choices, a gap in the knowledge base.

Scope, Objectives and Risk

• Outline and justify the scope of your project – what you intend to do, you may also want to say what you will not include but might be expected by others to be incorporated.
• Outline numbered steps (SMART Objectives) you will have to complete in order to achieve the aims and would provide sufficient work to conclude your research question.

After each objective outline the deliverables and or outcomes that will be produced as a result of this objective’s work. Outline how you will assess and or measure the quality for that objective. Outline what research method/design you will adopt for each objective and how each method will support one another.

• Break down the objectives into tasks and produce a task list, each task should outline, deliverable, resources (all types) required, skills required, time required.
• Produce a risk log (see example on your Blackboard Assessment tab) for you project. Each objective should be assessed based on risks, such as technical, personal, resources, time, and costs etc factors.

Sources and use of Knowledge

• Identify and justify a journal where your work would be relevant for publication.
• Identify and apply aspects of the standards for publication in the target journal that you can incorporate into your project proposal, so for example the referencing system, font style and pitch etc, instructions usually found under the journal’s advice to authors.
• Identify, justify and critically discuss any authors, journals where previous relevant research has been published within the last 5 years.
• Ethics, Legal, Social, Security and Professional Issues

Using literature, write out a separate section for Ethics, Legal, Social, Security and Professional Issues. In your deliberations discuss, explore and define all of the issues associated with your project, including how you will consider security issues. If you think an area of this section is not applicable to your project, you should justify why this is the case; leaving any section blank will result in a loss of marks.

Answer

1. Research Question
The prime research question based on which the study on the cloud computing assignment has been conducted includes the following:

• What is the importance of cloud integration in business network and how can it help to achieve brand goals or improve brand performances?

2. Aim
The aim of this proposal on cloud computing assignment is to understand the significance of cloud integration in business networks, its effects on business performances and security of sensitive information.

3. Problems Addressed
The main problems addressed within this study prepared in the cloud computing assignment involves the integration of cloud computing to decrease costs, improve speed and operational efficiency as well as ensure better security. Increasing business costs can lead to high brand losses which can be managed by implementing cloud computing systems. Cloud computing systems provide various utilities for efficient operations, leading to decreased costs of various operations. Additionally, cloud offloading and downloading processes are fast which contributes to significant speed in operations. Additionally, the use of AES encryptions within business clouds lead to better security. These issues and processes leading to the need for Cloud Systems have been presented in details within the cloud computing assignment.

4. Background

• Literature Review: In the modern contemporary world, the demand for cloud computing systems has been raised due to its quality networking services and integration. As per the views of Sundarakani et al. (2019), cloud services help to access the information and data and help the business ventures in cost-saving. A business network is a cloud platform that aids to connect tall types of information and data and enables streamline processes. Cloud integration help to produce and deliver quality insights and values to the organization. The main motive of cloud services outlined in the context of cloud computing assignment is to save the budget i.e. the capital cost of the organization by minimizing the use of physical hardware systems.

The main benefit of using cloud integration is it helps in the communication process and restores the information and sensitive data along with that it helps in the backup process. It offers a huge number of services for enhancing the productivity and profitability index. As commented by Shirazi (2019) it is stated herein cloud computing assignment that there are mainly three pillars of this cloud platform namely Infrastructure as a service i.e. IaaS, along with Software as a service (SaaS) and Platform as a service (PaaS). IaaS comprises firewalls as well as numerous networking sites that help to provide the virtualized resources with the help of the internet. PaaS is used for testing the applications and it is considered a cost-effective process. On the contrary, Li et al. (2019) stated that in the technological era, these cloud services are used to enhance the degree of business operations and it is cost-friendly. SaaS helps to maintain and regulate the runtime applications and eliminates the installation of applications on individual systems. Cloud integration is beneficial for business ventures because it enhances the communication process within business partners and enhances market integration.

The business network helps to reduce the cost, improve decision-making skills, minimizes complexities and ensure data compliance with the help of a cloud platform. As stated by Shirazi (2019), the Cloud integration system helps to provide elasticity along with flexibility and has a large contribution to the sustainable development process. From previous research on cloud computing assignment, it has been found that the IT system helps to facilitate the use of multiple suppliers as it minimizes the economic costs on a large scale. On the contrary, Bruschi et al. (2019) stated that it helps to decrease the vertical integration process and enhance the trading process in multiple markets. Moreover, it has been found that the use of cloud integration might affect the lower transaction costs and minimize the prices used for coordination and monitoring process. On the contrary, Cocconi et al. (2017) stated that various business ventures stated that cloud computing has enhanced the process of exchanging real-time data and information.

• Related work: Based on the previous research on cloud computing assignment it has been found that cloud integration as improved the aspects of business ventures and it has enhanced the productivity of the companies. As per the views of Dizdarevi? et al. (2019), in the previous papers on cloud services it can be observed that there are some security risks associated with business networks. Compliance violations and malware infections might result in low productivity (Khattak et al. 2019). It might affect the reputation of the company in front of consumers and users. According to Nguyen et al. (2019), with the increasing innovations, the risk of the breach has been increasing on a large scale. By understanding the related works mentioned above it can be stated that all the papers highlight the main concepts of cloud computing and its frameworks to enhance productivity and security. This proposal on cloud computing assignment can help the researchers to accomplish quality outcomes based on cloud services.

Past researches have been focused on the use of cloud computing for business security but have been focused on decreasing operational costs. Additionally, the speed and efficiency of cloud computing have been taken into account but these factors have not been the main focus within previous researches. This research paper will focus on cloud integration and the use of various cloud utilities for faster and efficient operations while decreasing business costs.

As per the views of Novais et al. (2019), the strength of technological networks become stronger and efficient with the increasing number of the organization. It has been observed that cloud integration might affect the networking size due to the transfer of knowledge and information. The main motive of the cloud integration process is to connect the systems with numerous applications and sectors to transfer real-time information and data with the help of the internet.

• Relevance: In the modern era, network and service providers examined that the main issues faced by the cloud integration system are based on the integrity of data and preserving privacy. There is an increasing security issue in the cloud service such as illegal invasion and other traditional security threats. As per the views of Qi and Tao, (2019), it has been observed in the cloud computing assignment that the main elements of this networking field are front end platform along with back end platforms and other networking sites such as an intranet and inter-cloud. Researchers stated that it is important to understand the impact of cloud integration on business processes; business networks enhance data integration and data management process in order to enhance security while transferring data to different business partners (Verma and Sharma, 2019).

Therefore, this project proposal on cloud computing assignment will help future researchers to gain advanced ideas about cloud integration and its impact on modern business ventures.

• Motivation: There are two main reasons behind the selection of this proposal on the cloud computing topic; the first reason is that I have completed engineering and I want to explore my knowledge in this domain to gain a better experience. It will help the users to gain a better understanding of business networks (Taneja et al. 2017). My personal motivation is totally associated with a passion for learning new and modern cloud concepts and its influence on business networks. I have quality experience in traditional networking methods but I want to gain more knowledge about modern technology and network. My main motive behind developing this cloud computing assignment is to learn new technological skills which will further help me to explore more career opportunities. In addition, this topic will help me to explore many methods and theories used for business networking. As influenced by Wamba and Mishra (2017), the cloud integration process will help me and my peers to gain more knowledge and I can apply our engineering knowledge to enhance the business operations. Cloud computing in the business network will help the country to enhance its economic growth by minimizing the complexities.

5. Scope, Objectives and Risk
Scope and Objectives
Scope
The scope of the study prepared in the cloud computing assignment is to implement cloud utilities and cloud security processes to enhance business operations. The cloud integration process will be examined in order to discuss the loopholes of these networking services.

SMART Objectives
Specific
To accomplish the aim i.e. cloud integration in business networks it is important to enhance the knowledge in this domain. In addition, the data and information should be specific in nature i.e. the main causes behind cloud integration and privacy issues must be clear (Wu et al. 2019). The depth knowledge of the cloud integration process will help to enhance the economic growth of the county.

Deliverable: Written documentation based on cloud integration with the help of previous research and literature.

Measurable
In the second step of cloud computing assignment, it is important to maintain the quality of cloud service in order to improve the products and services of business ventures; which will further attract the consumers. The researchers should adopt quality cloud integration strategies and business improvement methods to complete the project within a given time interval.

Deliverable: Documentation process is carried out with the help of the internet and existing sources

Achievable
In order to accomplish the project on cloud computing assignment the students should use Gantt charts and WBS to divide the tasks into different groups. It will help the team to gain better results.

Deliverable: Budget planning tools can be used here to note all the details accurately.

Relevant
To fulfill the aim of project, it is necessary to use relevant journals and articles while gathering information about the topic. In addition, the students should take the guidance of higher level authority to complete the project with accuracy.

Deliverable: Proper documentation, testing process and opinions of stakeholders are considered for further improvement.

Time-frame
It is important to maintain the given deadline or timeframe to avoid further complexities and to showcase the final presentation after completion of the dissertation on cloud integration in business networks. It will further help to build trust within the project team and teamwork will help to complete the project on time.

Deliverable: Final presentation in front of the supervisor

Based on the aims presented above within the cloud computing assignment, the following tasks can be obtained and presented within the task list. These tasks presents the deliverables, resources, skills and time required.

Risk log

In regards to objectives of cloud computing assignment relating to data collection regarding business enhancement opportunities of cloud computing, the prime issue that may occur includes the fact that health issues may occur, leading to improper data collection. In order to prevent this issue, team member health need to be checked on a daily basis to avoid such problems. Additionally, this process deals with collection of data using surveys and thus may lead to high costs and negative effects on budgets. On the other hand, in regards to data security related information, the collection of this information may be delayed or affected due to problems with both health issues as well as the maintenance of finances. Maintaining finances requires significant amount of time and effort, thus decreasing opportunities for data analysis and evaluation processes. In regards to decreasing operation costs, knowledge regarding cloud utilities is required along with the evaluation of finances. Past researches do not focus on utilities of cloud and thus it may lead to delays. On the other hand, continuous evaluation of finances takes significant amount of time and thus can lead to major problems with completion within time constraints.

6. Sources and use of Knowledge

• Journal: There are various journals that are related to this topic of cloud computing assignment i.e. Cloud integration in business networks. It has been observed that most of the journal papers have been published by IEEE transactions. In addition, IEEE is categorized as a quality option to gain information about cloud integration and B2B networks study. These journals include all the relevant information about the topic and various methods are explained in this paper for better understanding.

• Standard: The proposal on cloud computing assignment has followed the IEEE guidelines because mostly IEEE journals have been selected for examining the topic.

Font: Times new roman

Font Size: 12

Font color: Black

Line spacing: 1.5

Title: font size 16, Upper case, bold

Table of Contents and headings: Bold, 12 sizes and Times new roman

References: All the references used in the cloud computing assignment will be arranged on ascending order (Alphabetical ascending order)

• Relevant Authors

• Sources: In order to gain information about the topic, various internet sites will be used such as Google scholar, science direct sites, IEEE along with other website articles and journals. In a similar way, much information about cloud integration and business networks can be gathered through Northumbria University Library.

The selected article used to prepare this cloud computing assignment provides a detailed view regarding the security processes utilized by cloud computing technologies in order to prevent access to data by hacker groups or data breach criminals (Li et al. 2019). It was found that the use of AES encryptions contribute to better security. However, it can also be stated herein cloud computing assignment that network processes such as NAT (Network Address Translation), DNS (Domain Naming System) and VTP (VLAN trunking protocol) can be effective as well. However, the selected paper does not provide insights on new cloud utilities that may be used which can be presented within this research paper. Therefore, this research paper can be uploaded to the IEEE Access.

7. Ethics, Legal, Social, Security and Professional Issues

• Ethics: This study developed within the cloud computing assignment will not affect any human being or project team members because the topic is totally based on theories and methods. It will mainly include the software simulation process and will not harm any researchers. In addition, the proposal is been done under strict guidelines of University and all the team members have been following the rules and regulations of government. It has been observed that there are no ethical issues in this project as it has followed all the legal rules and regulations.
• Legal: This work does not have any legal issues because no outside organization is involved in this project. In addition, all the legal rules and regulations have been followed by the researchers to avoid further consequences. The topic explored in the cloud computing assignment is based on cloud integration in different business organizations and entire research is based on technological standards and protocols.
• Social: It has been observed that the research on cloud computing assignment does not use any human resources and every step has been regulated and examined by the technical protocols. In addition, this project will not harm the social and biological environment as it is fully dependent on the technological aspects and software present in the technical laboratories (Ryen, 2016). In addition, it has been observed that there are no issues of society and there is no contribution of any vulnerable communities.
• Professional Issues: As per my engineering standards, I have a target to develop and complete this project on cloud computing assignment with full efforts and responsibility. Honesty and integrity are my strengths through which I can accomplish success and can easily achieve the goals. There are no professional issues as it was entirely based on research which was already published and the public can easily analyze that information. moreover, there are no security issues because the project is based on the public domain and it does not need the involvement of outside peoples.

8. Schedule of Activities
Gantt chart
Gantt charts are used in order to schedule and plan the project effectively for avoiding future consequences (Gupta et al. 2016). It helps to accomplish the target and effectively helps to determine the needed resources to complete each task.

Monitoring and Control Table for the case scenario of cloud computing assignment

Work Break down structure
The main motive of WBS build in the cloud computing assignment is to minimize the complexities of work by dividing the tasks into different sub-parts (Rahman et al. 2019). It will help to accomplish the target effectively in given deadlines.

Reference List
Bruschi, R., Bolla, R., Davoli, F., Zafeiropoulos, A. and Gouvas, P., 2019. Mobile Edge Vertical Computing over 5G Network Sliced Infrastructures: An Insight into Integration Approaches. IEEE Communications Magazine, 57(7), pp.78-84.

Dizdarevi?, J., Carpio, F., Jukan, A. and Masip-Bruin, X., 2019. A survey of communication protocols for internet of things and related challenges of fog and cloud computing integration. cloud computing assignment ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 51(6), pp.1-29.

Khattak, H.A., Farman, H., Jan, B. and Din, I.U., 2019. Toward integrating vehicular clouds with IoT for smart city services. IEEE Network, 33(2), pp.65-71.

Li, X., Wang, Q., Lan, X., Chen, X., Zhang, N. and Chen, D., 2019. Enhancing cloud-based IoT security through trustworthy cloud service: An integration of security and reputation approach. IEEE Access, 7, pp.9368-9383.

Nguyen, D.C., Pathirana, P.N., Ding, M. and Seneviratne, A., 2019. Integration of Blockchain and Cloud of Things: Architecture, Applications and Challenges. arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.09058.

Novais, L., Maqueira, J.M. and Ortiz-Bas, Á., 2019. A systematic literature review of cloud computing use in supply chain integration. Cloud computing assignment Computers & Industrial Engineering, 129, pp.296-314.

Qi, Q. and Tao, F., 2019. A Smart Manufacturing Service System Based on Edge Computing, Fog Computing, and Cloud Computing. IEEE Access, 7, pp.86769-86777.

Rahman, W.A.Z.W.A., Zaki, N.M. and Husain, M.A., 2019. A review of work breakdown structure and man-hours estimation method used in shipbuilding production. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, 10(1), pp.1141-1158.

Ryen, A., 2016. Research ethics and qualitative research. Qualitative research, pp.31-48.

Shirazi, B., 2019. Cloud-based architecture of service-oriented MES for subcontracting and partnership exchanges integration: A game theory approach. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 59, pp.56-68.

Sundarakani, B., Kamran, R., Maheshwari, P. and Jain, V., 2019. Designing a hybrid cloud for a supply chain network of Industry 4.0: a theoretical framework. Benchmarking: An International Journal.

Taneja, S., Singh, V.V. and Arora, J., 2017. Role of Cloud computing in the Era of cyber security. Cloud computing assignment IITM Journal of Management and IT, 8(1), pp.71-74.

Verma, D.K. and Sharma, T., 2019. Issues and Challenges in Cloud Computing. Int. J. Adv. Res. Comput. Commun. Eng, 8, pp.188-195.

Wamba, S.F. and Mishra, D., 2017. Big data integration with business processes: a literature review. Business Process Management Journal.

Wu, H., Yao, L., Xu, Z., Li, Y., Ao, X., Chen, Q., Li, Z. and Meng, B., 2019. Road pothole extraction and safety evaluation by integration of point cloud and images derived from mobile mapping sensors. Advanced Engineering Informatics, 42, p.100936.

Gupta, S., Dumas, M., McGuffin, M.J. and Kapler, T., 2016, April. MovementSlicer: Better Gantt charts for visualizing behaviors and meetings in movement data. Cloud computing assignment In 2016 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis) (pp. 168-175). IEEE.

Cocconi, D., Roa, J. and Villarreal, P., 2017, September. Cloud-based platform for collaborative business process management. In 2017 XLIII Latin American Computer Conference (CLEI) (pp. 1-10). IEEE.