Management Solutions in Practice - Assignment Example

 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Overview of Cloud Computing 3 Task 4 4 Task 5 7 Analysis of the Scenario 7 Benefits 8 External and Internal Security Risks 9 Knowledge Management & Managing Data 10 Organisational Change 12 Task 6 12 Factors to be Considered 12 References 15 Bibliography 17 Overview of Cloud Computing The concept of cloud computing has been stated to be a computing pattern which unites a vast collection of systems in public as well as private networks. This is done so as to offer and make available a vigorously balanced system of communication for the purpose of storing files as well as information and application. With the introduction of this particular technology, the expenses related to computing, storage as well as delivery of data and information and application hosting has been trimmed down to a noteworthy extent. The concept of cloud computing has been referred to as a realistic move that is required for the hassle free management of an organisation’s confidential information. It also assists in bringing down the expenses related to availing IT services in an organisation. The notion of cloud computing has been stated to be reliant on the basic idea of repeating the usage of the competencies related to Information Technology (IT). Cloud computing is learnt to be different from the traditional services as it makes obtainable the IT resources in the internet instead of managing and obtaining them locally. The introduction of this concept does not only make the process faster but also provides the benefit of cost advantage (Harris, 2010; Educause, 2009). Task 4 Challenges Faced by Salesforce and the Ways of Mitigating Them The introduction of inventive and cost advantage IT service models has been attributed to be the chief reason for the growing success of the company, Salesforce. The introduction of such inventive and fresh business models created a revolution in the software industry. The company is known to offer software resolutions related to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and for other various purposes. It provides resolutions by way of software services that are let out on the internet. Their solutions are considered to be unique and much more advantageous compared to those traditional way of providing solutions through software that were needed to be purchased and set up locally or manually on individual machines. The company makes their solution software available on the internet which eliminates the requirement of purchasing or making significant amount of expenses related to hardware as well as software systems along with time consuming procedure of installing those locally on the corporate computers. This concept has made the company and its way of offering solutions quite popular among numerous companies. The huge success of the solution services of the company and their demand by several organisations could be attributed to the fact of availability on the internet. This eradicates the requirement of buying the hardware and incurs additional expenses with regard to its maintenance. The solution services of the company even eliminate the requirement of any kind of installation of database servers, operating systems and application servers. This implies that no heavy investments are needed to be made in the form of licensing as well as maintenance fees. Thus, all these features makes it highly cost advantageous compared to the other available solution and therefore, preferred widely by numerous organisations (University of West Indies, 2010). However, the immense demand for the products of the company and its growth brings along with it, noteworthy challenges for the business. The initial challenge faced by the company is in the form of augmenting competition posed by the customary leaders as well as fresh challengers of the industry who are constantly making efforts to imitate the reason of success of the company. Leaders like SAP, Microsoft and Oracle have been known to develop and offer similar versions of products or solutions with regard to CRM as a response to the strong competition given by Salesforce. The other smaller competitors have been also learnt to make some similar attempts. Although the company has been enjoying a significant amount of popularity and success but it is still required to put in quite a lot of effort with the intention to capture the market share as well as size like its other leading competitors (University of West Indies, 2010). The success for the solution products of the company has been huge but still there exists a significant large amount of people or customers who would prefer solution from the other major leaders’ of the industry in spite of those solutions being expensive. This remains to be a big threat for the company for which it needs to adopt necessary strategies to make those customers avail their services. The company has also been encountering few issues which are acting as threats for the company. For instance, there was a breakdown of one of their central system devices as a result of which processing of important and confidential information was barred and halted in countries such as Japan, Europe and North America for quite some time. This breakdown of the system proved to be critical and grave as more than 177 million dealings were learnt to be affected owing to this. To add more to the worries of the company, a similar breakdown was again recorded in the following month of the same year which had an adverse effect on the dealings of Europe and North America once more. The breakdowns posed a grave hazard for the company as the reliability of their idea of cloud competing came under scrutiny (University of West Indies, 2010). Another significant threat for the company was in terms of security violation. An employee of the Salesforce.Com was hoaxed which made that employee reveal the corporate password and as a consequence the database of the customers of the client was exposed. This action brought serious trouble to their client’s customers as they were targeted with a torrent of high scams as well as hacking efforts. This incident shook the trust of quite few customers which made them keep a regular check on the security system of the company with the help of their respective auditors. All these incidents made Salesforce.Com face serious threats or challenges which the company needed to address and design plans so as to mitigate them (University of West Indies, 2010). The company needs to adopt appropriate strategies so as to reduce the challenges or threats faced. The company should keep updating their products and work towards introducing some additional features with their offered solution so as to stay ahead in the competition and in capturing the market share. The company also needs to take necessary measures in order to prevent the breaking down of their systems as this might make them drop on their customers. It should engage advanced research and technology while developing their systems which would help them to overcome the problem of system failures. The company should also continue to upgrade their security system with the goal to maintain the confidentiality of their customer base. The security system needs to be constantly upgraded and tested to ensure the prevention of such security violations in future and also to bring back the lost confidence of their customers (University of West Indies, 2010). The company has been lately branching out its services in other different areas as a part of their competitive strategy. The company is attempting to capture the market and lead in the competition by way of developing and making available additional features. Therefore, the above strategies would help the company to mitigate the competitive threats as well as help the company to attain competitive advantage in the industry over the big players (University of West Indies, 2010). Task 5 Analysis of the Scenario In offices or organisations, personal computers or laptops are used for the purpose of office work. It is a common scenario that those computers as well as laptops gradually become old with time which makes them work slowly. Owing to this slow pace of functioning, the running of the software becomes slow as well. Another fact to be considered in this scenario is that the software has become quite old and obsolete which calls for the requirement of replacing it (University of West Indies, 2010). The slow working of the computers and the laptops are known to hamper the procedure of working in the organisation as well as the progress of the organisation. The non-cloud solution to the problem could be to upgrade the laptops and the computers. To solve the problem of the software, a fresh installation of enhanced software could be done in the existing desktops of the organisation. This non-cloud solution would solve the present problem of the organisation but would engage a substantial amount of time as well as expenses. The software would be required to be installed manually or locally in the computers of the organisation which would involve quite some time. The involvement of such a substantial amount of time would halt the operations of the organisation till the time of setting up. Purchasing and installing fresh software for the organisation would involve a huge amount of expense. The expenses of the company would not remain limited till the purchase and installation of the software as additional expenses would be required to be incurred by the organisation in the form of license as well as maintenance fees. The regular up gradation of the software would also engage expenses. The non-cloud solution could not be expected to provide a complete resolution to the crisis. The purchasing and installation of the software would make the information accessible only to the employees of the organisation but there would still remain chances for anyone within or outside the organisation to use the information from the computers. The benefit in case of this non-cloud solution would be that the chances of accessing the confidential information of the organisation and misusing them would be reduced and ensure the security of the information. The employees of the organisation could obtain the information only from computers where the software would be installed. Accessing the information from any other computer would not be possible and this would give rise to accessing constraint in times of need and urgency (University of West Indies, 2010). Benefits The service of Salesforce for public cloud solution for the organisation in order to overcome the present problem would prove to be much more beneficial and efficient. The company would take into consideration the need of the client and provide an appropriate software solution which would be best suited. The first and the most important advantage for public cloud solution would be the reduction of expenses of the organisation as it would need to incur heavy costs for availing the software. Salesforce eradicates the need of buying software and their maintenance. Therefore, the organisation would save on a huge amount of cost if it opted for Salesforce solutions. The software solutions offered by Salesforce would also eradicate the need of installing the software on the computers of the organisation as their solutions would be provided on the internet. This would help the organisation to save on time and enable continuation of their operations and work (Kondo & Et. Al., 2011; Miller, 2008). External and Internal Security Risks In spite of the advantages, an organisation might face certain problems in terms of security issues that are prone to such public cloud solutions. The software offered by Salesforce would be made available on the internet which would provide an advantage in relation to easy accessibility but would also involve issues regarding the security of the information. Chances of accessing the data of the organisation by breaching the security system of the company would be increased as a result of which there would be high chances of misusing the data. There would be internal security issues too which would crop up with the introduction of this kind of a solution but they could be controlled by the organisation itself. The organisation needs to maintain a list of the existing employees, the new employees and the previous employees who no more form a part of the organisation. This would help the organisation to keep a track of the employees accessing the information or the software and keep on altering the user accounts in case an employee quits from the organisation. This would prevent the former employee from accessing the organisation’s information (Williams, 2010; Winans & Brown, 2009). The external security risks entail the risk of the information getting shared with other users. There are chances of unauthorised access to the organisation’s confidential information by way of hacking. Hackers could take control of the information by way of gaining right of entry in an illegal way to the system. Security breaches and unauthorised access to the information of the organisation might call for prosecution of the organisation by the nation’s authorities. Therefore, it can be observed that security breach would not only expose the information and increase the chances of misusing the information but could also involve legal actions taken against the organisation. There are risks of cloud outages which implies to the breaking down of systems which could adversely affect the organisation. There are even chances of losing the information if proper backups are not maintained. Therefore, the organisation needs to ensure that the service provider has sufficient backup of the information (Williams, 2010). Knowledge Management & Managing Data Choosing Software as a Service (SaaS) would help the organisation to easily access and store their information. The organisation should adopt enough measures and ensure that the software service provided should be strongly secured so that there is no unauthorised access to the data. The organisation should also keep a track of the security measures undertaken by Salesforce or the service provider so as to ensure the security of their data. The organisation should also ensure with the service provider that enough back up of the data is taken so that in case of any kind of loss, the data could still be recovered. Adopting these necessary measures would ensure the knowledge management and management of the data for the organisation (Williams, 2010). Organisational Change Selecting SaaS as a ‘public cloud solution’ for the organisation would reduce the expenses, save on a considerable amount of time and also facilitate the ease of availability of the data. This would prove to be quite beneficial for the organisation as the saved expenses or the cost and the saved time could be used for some other developmental purposes by the organisation which would contribute significantly towards the growth of the organisation. Managing the information on the internet and the easy accessibility would also bring in positive alterations in the way of working in the organisation (University of West Indies, 2010; Williams, 2010). Task 6 Factors to be Considered The most important benefit associated with the application of Salesforce.com for businesses is that it saves on a lot of time as well as cost which are considered among the most important elements of a business. However, the other risks with respect to the security issues associated with it should also be considered. Security of the confidentiality of the stored information is a critical factor for businesses as access of an organisation’s confidential information would increase the chances of misusing the information. Leakage of the confidential information might also call for legal actions against the organisation. Another factor that needs to be considered while selecting Salesforce.com for the business is to ensure that the service provider maintains enough backup of the stored information so that in case of data loss, the information could be recovered from the backup systems of Salesforce. Organisations or businesses should take a proper note of the security measures undertaken by Salesforce to protect the information (University of West Indies, 2010). Using the application of Salesforce.com would help to provide a better solution in terms of managing and storing the information of an organisation. Salesforce.com entered into a partnership with Google and combined its services as an attempt to provide its customers to execute additional tasks through the internet by way of bringing together its services with Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail and Google Talk. The company has been also learnt to enter into a partnership with Apple with the purpose of delivering or making available their applications on the iPhones. The company has even shifted its focus from just offering software solution to a much broader platform of service. The company categorised its products into different clouds such as Service Cloud, Sales Cloud and Custom Cloud under Force.com applications. The sales as well as the services cloud would entail applications which would be focused on enhancing the sales as well as customer services. The Custom Cloud would be a structuring platform which would enable the customers to structure or design applications for its own use according to their needs and preferences. This would prove beneficial for a particular business as it would help in selecting the appropriate solution software (University of West Indies, 2010). Force.com has been known to offer certain development tools as well as IT related services which would facilitate the existing users of their applications to modify their Salesforce related applications in CRM or even structure a complete fresh application. The Force.com was given easy access to different other individual software designers. The application of AppExchange would provide an opportunity to small business organisations to download numerous software applications which would prove highly beneficial for the business. Force.com even provides the opportunity of developing Web pages as well as getting their domain names recorded (University of West Indies, 2010). Therefore, it can be stated that apart from the security issues, the application of Force.com, Salesforce.com and AppExchange would prove advantageous for a business to a great extent. Information systems as well as technologies have been stated to be crucial and significant tools that are accessible by managers or organisations for attaining soaring degree of productivity and competence in businesses (Laudon, 2010). References Educause, 2009. Things You Should Know About Cloud Computing. Library. Harris, T., 2010. Cloud Computing- An Overview. An Overview, pp. 1-6. Kondo, D. & Et. Al., 2011. Cost-Benefit Analysis of Cloud Computing versus Desktop Grids. MESCAL. Laudon, K. C., 2010. Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm. Pearson Education India. Miller, M., 2008. Cloud Computing: Web-Based Applications That Change the Way You Work and Collaborate Online. Que Publishing. The University of West Indies, 2010. Salesforce.Com: Cloud Services Go Mainstream Case Study. IT Infrastructure & Emerging Technologies. Williams., 2010. Risks of Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing. Winans, T. B. & Brown, J. S., 2009. Cloud Computing A Collection of Working Papers. Deloitte Center for the Edge. Bibliography Krutz, R. L. & Vines, R. D., 2010. Cloud Security: A Comprehensive Guide to Secure Cloud Computing. John Wiley & Sons. Marks, E. A. & Lozano, B., 2010. Executive’s Guide to Cloud Computing. John Wiley and Sons. Read More