#1: Cloud Computing Strategy

You are the IT director for XYZ Manufacturing. Your company is a B2B (business-to-business) organization that supplies auto parts to General Motors. There are 200 employees at XYZ Manufacturing with a headquarters in Detroit, Michigan, and field offices in Omaha, Nebraska; Austin, Texas; and Orlando, Florida. There are over 10,000 items in the inventory for XYZ Manufacturing and you receive raw material (i.e. steel, plastic, wiring, etc.) from China.

XYZ Manufacturing has been struggling for years with inadequate computer resources to track inventory and handle user requests from internal management, orders and invoices from General Motors, orders and invoices from your suppliers, and management reports. There is clearly an inability to store and retrieve complex “big data,” and recently there have been frequent security breaches. Your CIO is extremely frustrated with this situation and is looking for an alternative approach to providing IT services. She has asked you for input on this investigation.

Write a paper that describes advantages and disadvantages that cloud computing offers to XYZ Manufacturing. Include a sensible, detailed strategy to migrate to cloud computing, addressing the issues of performance, scalability, and economic factors.

Your paper should be 8-10 pages in length and conform to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements (Links to an external site.). Include at least five credible references in addition to the course textbook. The CSU-Global Library is a good place to find these references.

#2: Big Data and Cloud Solutions

After completing this course, you have learned a great deal about the cloud and how it works. The cloud and big data go hand in hand. According to Chong (2014),

“A recent study indicates that unstructured data account for at least 80% of the world’s data. This means that many companies today are making mission critical decisions with only 20% of the data they have, the 20% of data that is structured and stored in relational databases … Now it is possible to manage this vast amount of data, structured and unstructured. When we talk about big data, we not only refer to existing data that have been collected for years. We also talk about huge amounts of data being generated because of social media, mobile devices, sensors, and other technologies.” (para. 5)

IBM offers one solution—Hadoop and the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise. There are other solutions provided by multiple other vendors out there as well.

For this project you will be researching at least four different big-data/cloud solutions. You may use Hadoop as one if you wish.

The paper should begin with an introduction to what big data is and its relationship to cloud computing.

The second section of the paper should define the following terms:

• Big data storage
• Application hosting
• Big data analytics
• Machine learning
• Streaming processing
• Data import
• Data sources

The third section of the paper should outline the four big-data/cloud computing solutions you will be comparing and contrasting, including justification as to why you chose those four. The final section of your paper should include a detailed matrix (explanations and details for each aspect) of the four solutions you are comparing. Use the following template:

Finally, end your paper with a conclusion recommending the solution you think is the best.

Your paper should be 8-10 pages in length and conform to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements (Links to an external site.). Include at least five credible references in addition to the course textbook. The CSU-Global Library is a good place to find these references.