Options

Soft-arc office Automation is all about synchronization of office automation services like electronic data storage, processing and data management. Office automation software will store all the information and will facilitate manipulation of the data as per need. Office automation will enable data management. Data management can happen even for very big organizations with ease. Data exchange will be enabled using office automation in real time. More efficiency in operations is guaranteed with office automation tools. It is cost effective as well reduce the time wastage during the process. However the selection of office automation tools as per the business needs and the software available in office is very important step in making office automation materialized. However soft-arc does have an option either to go for office automation using the cloud services or with the collocation services of hardware. Co-location is an option where in the organization will share the expenses of the power, cooling, communication and data center floor space with other companies in the vicinity. Also it is a good option for companies to maintain complete control over their equipment. In collocation option, Soft-Arc will be requiring to purchase its own hardware as well it is required for the organization to have its own IT personnel for managing and maintaining the software and to troubleshoot the operations when and where required. Alternatively Soft-Arc can go for Cloud Service provider (CSP) for its day to day requirements. In this option, organization can seek the services of the cloud based services where in CSP will purchase the infrastructure and will take care of daily maintenance of all the infrastructure retained with him. The internal IT experts of the organization can focus on more profitable and productive activities as they will be relieved off from the critical maintenance activities of the infrastructure. Now office automation can be integrated either on Co-location infrastructure or on cloud.  It is more likely that the cost of the Co-location of the equipment can be much lower than the cost of the cloud services for Soft-Arc and the organization can go for those services if cost effectiveness is the only criteria. However apart from cost effectiveness there are several other issues that the organization has to take care of. At present the total organizational strength is limited (around 200). The total strength of the organization is limited and there is need that the IT personnel need to focus on several internal operations and the expertise available for the organization cannot be allocated for the maintenance of co-location facilities. Hence a better option can be taking up Cloud based services for the sake of organizational office automation requirements as well as for other It Operational Requirements(Mell,2011).

The major benefits of co-location is that the actual expenses of total infrastructural management and the capital investment will comes to be less than those expenses which will be invested for undertaking the cloud services. The obligation of the service is that there is need for the service to integrate with a number of compliances and there is need for the service to be in coherence with the data security requirements. Also there is need for the organization to continuously keep its IT personnel to take care of the maintenance and the operational activities of the infrastructure. Cloud services can be little costlier than the co-location , however will relieve the staff of the company in real-time for the necessity of investing their time in taking care of maintenance and troubleshooting activities.

Benefits and Disadvantages

Considering the  current situation of the organization. Location of the organization in four different regions and considering the total strength of the organization is comparatively less i.e., 200. It is more appropriate for the organization to go for cloud based services for its IT operational requirements that include office automation. It may be true that initially the organization may require to invest little more overhead for the sake of taking up the services, however it is justified and the staff can spend their time on more productive and profitable activities of the organization and hence can go for cloud based services for its IT operations. Also considering the organization’s unique geographical condition, it is better for the organization to go for Cloud based services. 

Soft-Arc do have number of data centers in different regions and they are linked by a fiber based WAN and the data is replicated between the data centers daily. It is possible that the operations can be migrated from the data centers to the public cloud, however there do exist several core differences between managing a dedicated Enterprise data center and the IaaS through a public cloud(Snevely,2002).

Cloud based data centers are different from enterprise based data centers in principal in the way of difference in their constructional features as well they are different in management procedures. Like in enterprise data centers, organizations need not carry the infrastructure and the hardware in cloud based data centers.  It is possible that in cloud based data centers, the organizers can operate more than one data centers in geographically distinct location and can make sure that the data availability is assured.

IaaS is not as safe as WAN network. It is more likely that the services provided by IaaS are prone to hacking and there are data security is not as comprehensive as it can be on Enterprise data center. It may require more cost and time to make IaaS based public cloud as secured as Enterprise based data centers. Public cloud will be totally outsources and the third party personnel will be responsible for the maintenance and management of the services in cloud, which is not the case in Enterprise data center. Enterprise data center do have inherent disadvantage of non-scalability, the service is not scalable to the business needs as a cloud service. There is huge capital and effort involves in tailoring the enterprise data center to the changing enterprise operational requirements. Whereas cloud based services can be increased and tailored to the operational requirements with ease as the third party will take of all the requirements for scaling. Since the enterprise data center is connected to WAN the security of operating the service is better than the cloud service, it is possible only the organization approved personnel can access the services. For small and medium size enterprises Cloud based services are not only ease in operating, but also cost effective than enterprise based data center operations. At present HPE3PAR SAN with 1PB storage scaling is more complex than when it got migrated to cloud services. Also RHEL 6 servers hosting the web-pages can be transferred to the cloud services however the control will not be as good as it is there on the enterprise data center.

Advice to SoftArc

Conclusion:

Based on the scenario provided with regarding the internal data center operations in Soft-Arc, the organization is provided with multiple options to choose from for its future requirements. It is true that the cloud based data center is not as secured as enterprise based data center. Also it is not as controllable as the enterprise based data center, yet it has its own advantages as provided in the discussion (Dhillon,2010).  

Iaas Paas and SaaS do have several major operational differences from each other. SaaS is a software as a service model and it is like old thin-client model of software provision where in the clients usually the web browsers will provide the point of access to software running on servers. Like in other cloud services, SaaS also moves out the task of managing the software and its deployment to the third-party services. SaaS applications for business like Google Apps, storage solution like Box, Drop Box all fall in this category. Iaas is the infrastructure as a service is the fundamental building block of the cloud service. The service is scalable as is complemented by cloud storage and network capabilities which can be self-provisioned metered and available on demand(Bhardwaj,2010). IT is most flexible cloud service model and will enable automated deployment of the servers, processing power; storage and networking all will be in accordance with the requirements and can be scaled. PaaS like SaaS facilitates moderate outsourcing of the application services however it is at much lower level than SaaS. PaaS providers abstract much of the work of dealing with the servers and give clients an environment in which the OS, server software as well as underlying server hardware and network infrastructure are taken care of(T OGRAPH,2008).

Share point service can be obtained through Software as a service provider service (SaaS). Since all the clients do have Microsoft office 2013 suites as well as they have Project central tools, it is right fit to employ the share point service as SaaS for the organizational requirements. When Office suite 360 is employed as SaaS it can meet all the organizational requirements with ease and without any investment or maintenance requirements. It is cost effective as well suitable for organizational requirements. Apart from share point office 360 will also provide features of collaboration, Exchange(email), instant messaging(Lync) and office web apps(Online document edits).

One of the common problems with using SaaS for the organizational requirements is the fact that SaaS can be available only online. When it is not a problem for those employees who do work in the organizations online as well as for those who work with the dedicated internet services. However it can be a problem for those people who will be consistently on move. Data security is also vulnerable with SaaS, in general organizations will not outsource the data security to the third party and hence there is no scope for the organizations to have control over the data and data security is not comprehensive on SaaS unlike on premise softwares. The enterprise freedom is at stake, the software updates and other related updates are totally in the hands of the vendor and the SoftArc need to just follow the vendor without any option.

The exact solution that SoftArc can employ to face above problems do depend on several other factors as well. For example when it comes to the organizational usage of the SaaS software, it can be advised to let the organization to have a hybrid solution which can be a combination of the on-premise software as well as SaaS. The routine and secured business dealings can be performed using the on-premise software and less secured solutions can be dealt with on cloud Saas Services. Also based on the actual SaaS services taken for the organization, it is possible to employ more secured SaaS services at a possible higher price.  

References:

Mell, P., & Grance, T. (2011). The NIST definition of cloud computing. 

T OGRAPH, B., & Morgens, Y. R. (2008). Cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 51(7), 9-11. 

Bhardwaj, S., Jain, L., & Jain, S. (2010). Cloud computing: A study of infrastructure as a service (IAAS). International Journal of engineering and information Technology, 2(1), 60-63. 

Dillon, T., Wu, C., & Chang, E. (2010, April). Cloud computing: issues and challenges. In Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA), 2010 24th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 27-33). Ieee. 

Snevely, R. (2002). Enterprise data center design and methodology. Prentice Hall Press.