Assessment 3: Report

Due date: Week 7

Group/individual: Individual

Word count/Time provided: 2000

Weighting: 30%

Unit Learning Outcomes: ULO1, ULO2, ULO3, and ULO5

Assessment 3 Detail

Case Study

eMoney

A hybrid cloud model is the preferred model for organisations looking to modernise their

environment, offering all the advantages of an on-premises cloud, with the ability to meet

regulatory and compliance issues, combined with the cost-effectiveness and

scalability/flexibility of the public cloud.

Such was the case with eMoney. It has hundreds of locations across the U.S. and Canada and

provides consumers with financial assistance, ranging from check cashing to loans and

money transfers.

Decision makers recognised that it was no longer feasible to solely serve customers through

brick-and-mortar locations. They invested in cloud services to expand their infrastructure and

increase the company’s marketplace relevance.

“You can’t be a consumer finance leader with brick-and-mortar only. Not in today’s day and

age,” says Manny Laver, CIO, eMoney.

“So, we’re pivoting to an omnichannel model that provides services wherever and whenever

consumers need them.”

Company leaders knew they wanted to build new digital channels and engage with clients

across more touchpoints. That meant moving to the cloud using SaaS.

“Putting everything in the cloud was a learning experience,” says Lot Samani, CTO, eMoney.

“We learned some applications, like our core transaction platform, should remain on-

premises in a private cloud but with tie-ins to the public cloud.

“We also learned cloud-based storage is very expensive, and we have a lot of data. So it

became clear that a hybrid cloud model would be the key.”

Laver says the cloud transition helped the company operate more cost-effectively and

consolidate 32 equipment racks down to four. As a result, the company estimates they will

save over $3.5 million over the next three years.

For example, they need servers for three functions:

• Store business email securely,

• Run a customer-facing application, and

• Run internal business applications.

Each of these functions has different configuration requirements:

• The email application requires more storage capacity and a Windows operating system.

• The customer-facing application requires a Linux operating system and high processing

power to handle large volumes of website traffic.

• The internal business application requires iOS and more internal memory (RAM).

To meet these requirements, the company sets up three different dedicated physical servers

for each application. The company must make a high initial investment and perform ongoing

maintenance and upgrades for one machine at a time. The company also cannot optimize its

computing capacity. It pays 100% of the servers’ maintenance costs but uses only a fraction

of their storage and processing capacities.

With virtualization, the company creates three digital servers, or virtual machines, on a single

physical server. It specifies the operating system requirements for the virtual machines and

can use them like the physical servers. However, the company now has less hardware and

fewer related expenses.

The cloud investments have collectively helped the company engage customers in new ways

and keep its business model moving forward.

“We’re becoming more touchless and frictionless as a company, and our IT has to match,”

Laver says. “The cloud technologies we’ve implemented are helping us be faster, more agile,

and increasingly consumer focused.”

Industry: Financial services

Use case: Reinventing its long-established business model will allow eMoney to better serve

customers and maintain a competitive advantage.

Outcome: The company created a hybrid cloud model to build a simplified and fully

integrated technology stack, allowing the company to give its customers an omnichannel

experience while improving its IT management.

Your Tasks

1. Compare and contrast the three main types of cloud architecture, namely: public, private and

hybrid cloud. In your discussion, explain the management mechanisms and delivery modes of

the services. For example, in a hybrid cloud environment, companies have the advantage of

being able to keep sensitive data that must be stored in-house while also optimising the use of

public cloud storage for everything else. This can significantly reduce costs as well as time

spent on in-house private cloud management. Additionally, in a hybrid cloud model,

enterprises deploy workloads in private IT environments or public clouds — including IaaS,

PaaS and SaaS — and can often move workloads and data between them as computing needs

and costs change. This gives a business greater flexibility and more data deployment options.

2. Describe the term virtualisation and appraise how it helped the company financially and

improves server management.

3. The case study mentioned some of the issues involving cloud computing deployments, such

as regulatory and compliance issues, cost-effectiveness, and scalability/flexibility of the cloud

solution. Identify at least 5 more issues and challenges of cloud computing and briefly discuss

each.

4. Summarise how the company implemented a SaaS and IaaS solution to solve their specific

business objectives. You need to clearly explain how the cloud solutions are aligned with

their business needs.

Assessments 2 Marking Criteria and Rubric

The assessment will be marked out of 100 and will be weighted 30% of the total unit mark.

The marking criteria and rubric are shown on the following page.

Assessment 2 Marking Criteria and Rubric

Marking

Criteria

Excellent

(85-100% of the

criterion mark)

Very Good

(75-84% of the

criterion mark)

Good

(65-74% of the

criterion mark)

Satisfactory

(50-64% of the

criterion mark)

Not Satisfactory

(0-49% of the criterion

mark)

Q1 Cloud

architecture

(30 Marks)

Clear, comprehensive

description of a cloud

architecture differences,

critical points identified &

discussed

Detailed description of

a cloud architecture

differences, critical

points identified &

discussed,

Good description of

cloud architecture

differences, some

critical points identified

& discussed,

Adequate description

of cloud architecture

differences, some

critical points

identified

Incomplete or inadequate

description of cloud

architecture differences,

none or few critical

points identified

Q2

Virtualisation

(30 Marks)

Clear, comprehensive

description of

virtualisation, critical

points identified &

discussed,

Detailed description of

virtualisation, critical

points identified &

discussed,

Good description of

virtualisation, some

critical points identified

& discussed,

Adequate description

of virtualisation,

some critical points

identified

Inadequate or incomplete

description of

virtualisation, none or

few critical points

identified

Q3 Issues and

Challenges

(20 Marks)

Clear & comprehensive

description of issues,

challenges and emerging

trends in cloud computing

Detailed description of

issues, challenges and

emerging trends in

cloud computing

Good description of

issues, challenges and

emerging trends in

cloud computing

Adequate description

of issues, challenges

and emerging trends in

cloud computing

Inadequate or incomplete

description of issues,

challenges and emerging

trends in cloud

computing

Q4 Cloud

solution

(20 Marks)

Clear & comprehensive

description of cloud

solution with reasoning

Detailed description of

cloud solution with

reasoning

Good description of

cloud solution with

some reasoning

Adequate description

of cloud solution with

limited reasoning

Inadequate or incomplete

description of cloud

solution with no

reasoning

Spelling,

Grammar,

Presentation

Up to 5 marks may be deducted for poor presentation, spelling and grammar