The Role of Technology in the Modern World - Research Paper Example

In today’s world, technologies are playing important roles in various spheres of human life, in their every day life to key roles in business firms. With each day passing, newer and updated technologies come into the market, and so there optimal evolution of technology and that is prominently visible in the Information Technology (IT) sector. Among the many emerging IT concept which are having optimal applications, Cloud Computing appears to be the trend setting one now, as it brings in many applications for the efficient functioning of business firms. Cloud Computing with the virtual setting of softwares and hardwares, provides a effective IT network or Information system (IS) to the business firms, thereby even making their own network slightly redundant. Because of the growing potential, many more firms including Amazon are jumping into this field by setting up their own Cloud Computing environment and then commercially renting it to other business firms and clients. So, this paper will focus on the IS of Cloud Computing, discussing how it impacts Amazon’s, and how it has various applications, although there are some challenges while implementing and running it. Cloud Computing in Amazon Introduction The world of today is being ‘run’ mainly with the aid of technology, as it having applications in various facets of human life, starting from day to day activities to key applications in organizational or business environment. Technologies have evolved in various sectors, particularly Information Technology (IT) or Information Systems (IS) have evolved optimally aiding existing business firms in running, expanding, improving and even transforming their operations. Sizable numbers of business firms in various sectors are integrating IT in every aspect of their operations. From carrying out simple operations like opening a door or even authorized entry door to aiding in the accomplishment of complex processes, IT or IS are becoming an all-pervading entity in many of the business firms. The key fact is that emerging technologies or IS has many capabilities to optimally aid the business firms in improving their data storing, sharing as well as communication, which can aid them in carrying out all their organizational processes effective, providing them higher productivity and profits. Among the many emerging ISs, the technological or virtual concept of Cloud Computing can provide optimum benefits to the business firms who are using that concept, or if aptly said, are part of the “Cloud”. At the same time, this Cloud Computing is also positively impacting the business firms who hosting the Cloud and are offering Cloud Computing services to other firms. Amazon, well known online player, is one such firm who is offering Cloud Computing services. Amazon through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 have actualized a Cloud Computing environment, impacting its own operations, as well as the operations of various companies, which depend on it. Importance of Information systems for business and management Early use of Information System in a business environment was for carrying out simple tasks like computing the total figures of the various sales done for a day. When IT technology started grow, with the development and introduction of various IT technological tools and softwares, companies have started using IT in a more rigorous manner to achieve better accuracy as well as speed in their organizational processes. Now, with the growth of networking and its related technologies like Cloud Computing, business firms are striving to implement these so as to achieve maximum efficiencies. “IT today is a vehicle for making substantial changes in business firms, markets and the economy” (Lucas 2001). The basic purpose of any business firm is to either manufacture a product or to provide a service to its customers. To fulfill that purpose, business firms or organizations will be divided into various physical structures or departments and each department will be allocated tasks, accomplishment of which will lead to completion of the product or service. Although, each of these departments could use various technological tools for achieving this goal, IT, as mentioned earlier, will have an all-pervading presence, as it only connects each department and actualizes a smooth flowing working environment and communication channels. Figure 1 below describes this role of IT as per Harold Leavitt. As per this model, IT is the central link between all parts of a business firm (Lucas 2001). Although, it has a separate existence from the other technologies, IT/IS will coordinate with them or even control them, thereby playing the central role in today’s business firm. Information System can be used to refer to the process or the technologies, which collect and processes data through computerization in an organized way. The basic job of any IT/IS department in any business firm is to set up systems to process and analyze information, even while ensuring data security, then creating information storage and retrieval mechanism, thereby facilitating error free smooth flow of information inside the organization as well as its supply chain or relevant stakeholders. Many technological hardwares and softwares will be used as part that system, and it will store, update and even analyze the various forms of information, and these data will only be used to make critical management decisions. While installing this IS, various works has to be carried out based on the needs and expectations of the business firm. Even after the installation, an organized and collective work has to be carried out, with secure support being provided full time. Real time updation and support is the key, because most of the organizations are now relying upon the IS for their day-to-day operations, various management decisions and also other business activities. “It is largely discussed in the literature that IT role in organisations can vary from simple administrative support to a strategic position.” (Laurindo and Moraes 2006). With the business firms expanding their operations and wanting various applications, more and more new technologies and ISs are being developed. Among these emerging technologies, one which has great potential for current as well as future applications is Cloud Computing. If this emerging technology of Cloud Computing is taken advantage of, it would maximally aid the companies offering these services to tap a large market. At the same time, it will address the business needs of the client, thereby enabling its business to grow with good profits and at the same time lowered costs. This Cloud Computing services can aid both the big business firms as well as smaller firms as it provides them an effective, organized and secured IS structure for its function, even while lowering the costs that may be incurred in the development and installation of IS structure. So, this part of the paper will look at the technology behind this concept and how it could impact the business firms like Amazon. Cloud Computing- Defined and Background Cloud computing is referred to the Internet-dependant IS system, where ‘virtual’ servers or servers outside the business firm’s network infrastructure, will aid the business firms in various IT based functions. Being outside or importantly hosted by other parties, the need to develop and maintain an in-house IS infrastructure, is not there. These Cloud hosting firms or Cloud hosts will store all the information or data, softwares, other business applications, etc that is needed for the firms. The firms for their part can access from any place using a web browser based interface. This concept of Cloud computing works on the basis of ‘services on demand’ concept, as the firms or users just pay the subscription charges for the services utilized, without owning and installing any IS physical infrastructures. “The storing and accessing of applications and computer data often through a Web browser rather than running installed software on your personal computer or office server”. (“Definition: Cloud Computing”).The idea of Cloud Computing got originated in 1960s, when John McCarthy, an American computer and cognitive scientist, stated that “computation may someday be organized as a public utility”. (Frangulyan). This statement of his came true as the main characteristic of Cloud Computing is computation is happening in a public or external environment. The Cloud architecture for the operations as well as the delivery of Cloud Computing services consists of multiple cloud components particularly various hardwares and softwares. All these components can be divided into two categories, the front end and the back end. The front end as seen and operated by the business firm or IT person includes the computer and the other applications to access the ‘Cloud’ through a user interface like web browser. On the ‘other end’, the ‘Cloud’ itself works at the back end, where all the various hardwares like servers, data storage devices and softwares including licensed softwares, specialized business applications, etc. Among the items that are hosted by Cloud hosts or providers (often with extra charges for high-memory or high-CPU instances) are data transfer in and out; storage (measured by the GB-month); I/O requests; PUT requests and GET requests; IP addresses, load balancing, plus various softwares or applications. (patriotnetworkservices.com). The software services that are offered in the Cloud are called as the "Software as a Service (SaaS)". When a business firm requires any software application, they can assess them as a service through their web browser, thus eliminating the need to install and run that particular software in the business firms’ own computer or computers of IS structure. This way, there is no need for the firms to buy these softwares, which may be pricey, and also it simplifies all the maintenance and other support needs for those softwares. With the Cloud host itself taking care of installing and updating the softwares at regular intervals, there is no need for the business firms. This concept of Cloud Computing is on the increase, with many large and also small entities hosting ‘Clouds’ and giving various cloud-based services to various firms, irrespective of the size in different industry sectors. The major cloud hosting and service companies that are operational in the market are Amazon, Salesforce, search giant Google, in addition, major IT firms like Microsoft, IBM and Hewlett-Packard are also currently involved in Cloud Computing activities and services. Cloud Computing and Amazon Amazon is one of the pioneers of this technological concept. Amazon was founded as Amazon.com in 1994 by Jeffrey Bezos as an online bookstore. Naming the company after "Amazon", the worlds biggest river, Bezos called it has the "Earths Biggest Bookstore". From that humble origin, Amazon.com has optimally emerged as a company or website which offers programs and services for three customer sets, consumer customers, seller customers and developer customers through retail websites. (“Amazon”). Amazon.com (online retailer) has pioneered a number of innovative approaches and one among is Cloud Computing. Amazon Web Services is the Cloud Computing arm of Amazon, and it was first launched in the Beta form in the year 2002 itself, thus earning the tag of being the pioneer in Cloud Computing. As Amazon has extensive IS infrastructure to run their own business, including Amazon.com and other services, it got the idea to spent those services commercially for outside clients. “Think of it this way: Amazon has spent a lot of time and money setting up a multitude of servers to service its popular website, and is making those vast hardware resources available for all developers to use” (Michael, 2008, p.42). When it was launched as a public beta it was run using Microsoft Windows Server as well as Microsoft SQL Server. Then during that Beta stage itself, it got enlarged to other operating systems as well, including Linux and OpenSolaris. Then in 2006, it was officially launched with the commercial services starting in that year only. From that year, Amazon’s Cloud in the form AWS has been hosting various clients or business firms, providing them various applications. “Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS you can requisition compute power, storage, and other services–gaining access to a suite of elastic IT infrastructure services as your business demands them” (“What is AWS?”). With its Beta version and commercial idea providing it with good results, Amazon further expanded its Cloud Computing arm, by launching Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) as part of AWS and also to complement AWS. As a first step, it launched S3 in March 2006, as an online storage IS, which can provide storage options to the clients. Although, Cloud constitutes both storage options as well as software applications, Amazon initially launched only the storage service, following it with the applications little later. S3 allows storage of unlimited data, starting from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes in size, and all these data can stored and then retrieved by the clients through the distributed channel, HTTP or BitTorrent. Amazon has fixed monthly fees for this service, with the clients paying for both the data stored and then retrieved or transferred. Also in 2006, Amazon came up Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which started providing the clients various software applications, which can be run by them at their flexible time. These software applications included the ones which can be used for running simulations, to do various programming languages, web hosting, etc. “EC2 enables scalable deployment of applications by letting customers request a set number of virtual machines, onto which they can load any application of their choice.” (Michael, 2008, p.43). Apart from these key components, Amazon is continuing to add few more specialized components, which are impacting their clients or business firms in various ways. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) – This provides “cost-efficient and resizable capacity for MySQL deployments in the cloud” (“What is AWS?”) Amazon SimpleDB – This enables the clients to run queries on structured data, that to in the real time. Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) – This service adds more flexibility to the message notification process, as the businesses can send notifications or messages to applications or people using just a “push” mechanism and importantly can have them delivered over a protocol of choice, which includes HTTP, email, or even mobile phone. (“What is AWS?”). Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) – This service enables distribution of application processes, according to the demand and usage, through a queuing system. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) – This provides exclusive services to certain business firms, by actualizing a “secure and seamless bridge between a company’s existing IT infrastructure and the AWS cloud.” (“What is AWS?”). All these services are being utilized by many clients, and that includes not only the large business firms but also small firms, private developers, etc. “Now, Amazon is AWS is perhaps the most popular cloud computing service to date. Amazon claims a market of more than 330,000 customers—a combination of developers, start-ups, and established companies.” (Michael, 2008, p.43). Many clients are utilizing Amazon’s Cloud services because as mentioned above it is very cost effective and at the time offers wide range of services, even while maintaining the security. Apart from these advantages, there are certain challenges and threats as well for the Cloud Computing services. Advantages and Challenges from the perspective of Amazon and also its customer base One of the key features of Cloud Computing is ‘Elasticity’ and that is visible Amazon’s AWS also. With this feature, the business firms or users can increase their usage of all the services or facilities, available in the ‘Cloud’, which they need. That is, when business firms need more storage data space or even increased transfer of data at peak times, the business clients can themselves increase their usage or access to the Cloud services. They can do this paying extra fee and then they can scale it down after that high usage or peak period is over. “Can easily and seamlessly scale up (add more resources in order to increase the overall processing power when needed) and scale down (being able to switch off some of those resources when the load on the overall system goes down). (Moyne, 2009). As Amazon’s business clients or any other users can launch and terminate their server ‘instances’ by paying for hour rates, it is named as EC2, with E denoting Elasticity. In addition, users of Amazon’s EC2 are provided with the control of selecting the apt geographical location of their Cloud. That is, with Amazon’s Clouds dispersed throughout the world, users will connect to the Cloud which is physically nearer to them. However, the problem with depending on only one Cloud is, when that Cloud fails or has high traffic, the user may not have other options and has shut down their work. This could occur any time, wrecking the confidence of client on Amazon and so it will be a serious challenge to overcome for the Amazon. Actually, Amazon suffered this high traffic outage in a major manner twice in the last 3 years, one in 2008 and now in 2011. When it first happened in 2008, it brought down various service of it. “Amazon Web Services last month suffered a multi-hour outage to its Simple Storage Service (S3), which affected several Web 2.0 sites” (LaMonica, 2008). To avert this problem only, as mentioned above Amazon came up with the system called of Availability Zones feature, which allowed the users to control and select their Clouds, so when their primary Cloud becomes unworkable, they can migrate to the new functioning Cloud seamlessly. “This Availability Zones feature is important because people can now add redundancy to their application. Choosing multiple zones, people can have server instances with separate power, cooling, network access, and physical servers.” (LaMonica, 2008). This option provided the users with apt back up services, when there is outage, and aided them in their continuous functioning. Although, this aided the Amazon to operate their services without any major blockage, after three years or so, the outage again happened. This time also, it proved to a major challenge for Amazon, as it affected various stakeholders, who are dependent on this service. “The outage that affected a hundreds of applications running in the provider’s US-EAST region…took down a number of popular services, including EC2, Elastic Block Storage and Relational Database Service.” (“Amazon Brings Countless Millions Offline”). So, from these incidents, it is clear that although Amazon effectively managed in the aftermath of the outage in 2008 by coming up with Availability Zones feature, it still did not prevent it from being shutdown in 2011. Although, Amazon has an advantage with Availability Zones feature, it has to be optimally tuned to face future challenges. With the Cloud Computing needs and services taken by the Amazon, the business firms will have minimal role to play. With all the applications being provided and regular updates done on those software applications by Amazon itself, it makes in-house network infrastructure inside the organization mostly invisible. However, business firms cannot remain idle, as they have to carry out their part in the management of Cloud Computing environment. The bottom line is, organizations does not need to install and oversee its IS and thereby data environment maximally, instead they need manage the Cloud environment. Hughes (2008) points out this nature of network management by stating that companies need a management system, but one tuned to managing in a cloud environment not a data centre environment. If this done, Amazon for their part will carry out all the other requirements. Another key necessity of Amazon is to keep on updating its services according to the changing needs to the client. For example, business firms may need access to their Cloud Host on a round the clock the basis, so that its data centers, stationed within the organization’s premises, gets updated with all the real time data. That is, as Nolle (2009) states companies use IS and the related concepts like Cloud Computing for highly distributed activities including transaction processing, Web retail and customer support, data analysis and mining, and regulatory reporting. So, when these applications are hosted in the ‘Cloud’, it becomes very important for Amazon to completely connect the resources in the ‘Cloud’ with the business firms’ data centre resources. This way, Amazon can continue provide real time datas and updates to its customer, which they are doing optimally in the current competitive environment. The other challenge to Amazon can come in the form of security threats, which will not only wreck its clients’ data sources, but could also derail its functioning. Although, Amazon provides its Cloud Computing in a foolproof manner, there will be occasion, when the Cloud environment could be compromised and are actually compromised. That is, there is clear concern that it can be hacked, leading to loss of crucial data. “The main concerns about Cloud Computing are security and privacy as data inside the ‘cloud’ is outside a company’s firewall and that brings with it an intrinsic threat of risk. (minttwist.wordpress.com). Amazon suffered this fate, when anti-spam entities Outblaze as well as Spamhaus.org started blocking Amazons EC2 address pool, as it was feared to be distributing spam and malwares to the users, who access their cloud. “All of the spam came from Amazons Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) servers, which are marketed to companies” (Kerbs, 2008). According to IS security experts, with Amazon AWS being a low cost IS option to carry out various activities, many mischievous individuals are using it wreck other business firms, as well as damage the creditability of Amazon. These spammers and scammers can access the Cloud Computing services through their own payment or by paying with stolen credit cards, and then use Amazons service as another place to host their junk, (Kerbs, 2008). Thus, because of these challenges, both Amazon as well as the companies needs to implement set of security features and processes, so that it is fully foolproof. “…. companies need to implement stringent security measures such as proven cryptographic methods to authenticate users.” (minttwist.wordpress.com). While the normal in-house IS puts the onus on the companies to secure their network, in the case of Cloud Computing, both the host as well as the company are responsible. Conclusions The above analysis of Cloud Computing as a technology and its impact on business firms’ functioning shows that it can have wide range of applications. From doing away with the need to establish IS infrastructures, to downsizing costs, providing wide range of softwares, extensive storage options, optimized and flexible performance, Cloud Computing is a great boon. With these advantages, more and more firms are trying out this technology and importantly will also try out in the future, as it accentuates the business firms’ productivity, fulfills the client’s expectations and at the same time increases its profits. Thus, Amazon Cloud Computing services, AWS and its various components from EC2 to S2 can be optimally marketed to these companies. Although, business firms from all sectors are adopting Cloud Computing, Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are adopting more, so Amazon has a big target market there. With Cloud Computing as a technology is continuously evolving with the entry of more IT and other technological tools, it has the ability to make optimal impact on many business firms, thereby elevating Amazon in the process. References “Amazon.Com, Incorporated (NASDAQ: AMZN)”. (n. d). Forbes. Retrieved March 21, 2010 from http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=AMZN “Cloud computing”. (n. d). 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