Current Trends Of Information Technology

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report has been produced to examine the current trends of information technology with regard to understand the products and services the market is offering and changes in the industry.

IT infrastructure generally important in all organizations, whereas the changing of the market is fast, therefore companies and organizations need to be updated to keep pace with the changes. Besides that, issues and challenges that an organization face couldn’t be neglect which it may be the major problem for decision making. As an emerging technology and business paradigm, cloud computing has taken commercial computing by storm.

To avoid elimination and stay competitive, basically cost or money will plays the most important role in an organization. Keep track with the updated hardware and software will always affected an organization’s budget, the change is fast and it’s costly. Money is the main obstruct. Understanding a technical area as complex as cloud computing is not easy and requires identifying its fundamental characteristics. Clear concepts and terminology into cloud computing help but do not entirely solve the problem of how to design, develop and adopt a cloud computing system.

The latest trend of IT world is cloud computing, which allows user of an organization to download software from the web. It generally saves a lot of money from purchasing new software. This report examine and investigate what is cloud computing about and what is the benefits of owning cloud computing services. To own the service we need to know what the service is about, and also understand how the service or system works. Cloud computing platforms provide easy access to a company’s high performance computing and storage infrastructure through web services. It is a new method that shares basic framework. The basic principles of cloud computing is to make the computing be assigned in a great number of distributed computers, rather than local computer or remoter server. The running of the enterprise’s data center is just like Internet. This makes the enterprise use the resource in the application that is needed, and access computer and storage system according to the requirement.

Cloud computing comes into the market is for every user convenient. But of course there are still a lot of matters need to be take care of like, the budget and size of company, whether is suitable to use cloud computing. Even though cloud computing is beneficial but will also examine the company’s need of the service. Information moves with incredible speed across and between networks and the cloud, making sensitive information challenging to track and locate. And with an IT infrastructure that is virtual and shared via the cloud, organisations must learn new ways to throw light on to risks, threats and compliance performance.

This report introduces the background and principle of cloud computing, the character, style and actuality. This report also introduces the application field of cloud computing, such as, it do not need user’s high level equipment, so it reduces the user’s cost. It provides secure and dependable data storage center. It can realize data share through different equipments and puts forward some solutions, and discusses the future of cloud computing. Cloud computing is a computing style that provides power referenced with IT as a service. Users can enjoy the service even he knows nothing about the technology of cloud computing and the professional knowledge in this field and the power to control it.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Page

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3

INTRODUCTION 5

IT INFRASTRUCTURE ECOSYSTEM 6

2.1 IT INFRASTRUCTURES 6

2.2 ISSUES AND CHALLENGES 7

CLOUD COMPUTING 8

3.1 CLOUD COMPUTING CURRENT TRENDS 8

3.2 CLOUD COUMPTING SOLUTION 8

3.3BENEFITS AND COSTS OF CLOUD COMPUTING 9

COMPETITIVE FORCE FOR IT INFRASTRUCTURE 9

4.1 IT INFRASTRUCTURE 10

4.2 STRATEGY FOR CLOUD COMPUTING 10

CONCLUSION 11

REFERENCES 12

APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1- JOURNAL 14

1. Introduction

Petaling Tin Berhad is a progressive property development and investment group listed on the Main Market Of bursa Malaysia, with major ongoing development projects and exclusive land banks in the Klang Valley hub and parts of Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and future high-end resort themed development at Karambunai, Sabah. The group had proven track records in master-planned residential communities, commercial township center and industrial developments for discerning businesses (Petaling Tin Berhad 2010).

At Petaling Tin Berhad, we continue to strengthen our core in property development, whilst diversifying into property related businesses such as property investment, management and construction. Today, Petaling Tin Berhad had net assets worth in excess of RM350 million. The Group’s continuing strategies include:-

– Building on a solid foundation of assets by making informed and strategic decisions.

– Pursuing innovative property products by responding to changes/evolution in needs of consumers.

– Continuous relationships with our customers, business partners, investors, agencies and communities.

The group has few listed companies under the banner and more than ten subsidiaries. Every single company is allocated with different area of responsibility, either in property development or investment. For Karambunai, with cost of RM3 billion eco-nature resort at Nexus Karambunai, Sabah is the next upcoming mega project. The Government will allocate RM100 million to support the tourism industry. With lots of project coming and subsidiaries located separately, group’s employees rely on the Internet either to communicate or share updated information.

The Malaysian Government initiations via the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) coupled with continued implementations of stimulus packagers augur well for the country, brought with it major property development plains particular within Greater KL, certain indentified infrastructure and tourism projects. The property sector shall continue resilient, moving forward barring unforeseen circumstances, the Group continues to focus of its core business of property development, and shall endeavour to roll-out future planned developments to generate higher sustainable revenue, with continuing effort to optimize the Group’s performance.

The group currently focuses its commitment contributions along the core themes and concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As a responsible property developer, the Group adopts and promotes “Green Environment” approaches and practices in all its property development activities. The Group works closely with its business associates and partners, with emphasis placed on using resources efficiently and effectively whilst adopting environmental best practices whenever possible. Providing a safe, secure, healthy and conductive workplace for employees is a continuous feature of the Group’s CSR practice as we recognized the importance of our human resources and work force and their contribution.

For the financial year, the Group recorded a higher turnover of RM19.4 million as compared to previous year and also recorded a higher loss before tax. The higher pre-tax loss for the year was mainly due to the write back of profit from the property subsidiary company, mitigated by net gains from changes in fair values of investment properties of the Group.

2. IT Infrastructure Ecosystem

2.1 IT Infrastructures

2.1.1 Internet Platforms

Linux is the Internet hardware server at the moment for our group. Internet platforms overlap with, and must relate to, the firm’s general networking infrastructure and hardware and software platforms (Laudon & Laudon 2010).

2.1.2 Computer Hardware Platforms

In 2008, U.S. firms spend about $150 billion on computer hardware. This component includes client machines and server machines. The server market is complex. Our group is using HP and IBM, which are the top firms in the market that concentrated in.

2.1.3 Operating Systems Platforms

At the client level, 95% of PCs in the world use Microsoft Windows operating system to manage the resources and activities of the computer and our group is one in the category. We are also comprised with Linux as our secondary operating system, which is inexpensive and reliable.

2.1.4 Enterprise Software Applications

In our group, software for enterprise application is treated as components of IT infrastructure. The software we are using calls IFCA, its platform one of Malaysia’s top developer’s software to fully automate operation. IFCA is paid licensed software that requires renew every year, it is a generally use to update the company whole projects.

2.1.5 Networking/Telecommunications

Windows Server is predominantly used as local area network operating system, followed by Linux and Unix. Many local area networks, as well as wide area enterprise networks, use TCP/IP protocol suite as standard. In Malaysia, generally network uses TM. TM is the largest telecommunications service company that offer voice and data connectivity, wide area networking and Internet access.

2.1.6 Consultants and System Integrators

Software integration means ensuring the new infrastructure works with the firm’s older, so-called legacy systems and ensuring the new elements of infrastructure work with one another. This is not necessary for the group while it’s costly.

2.1.7 Data Management and Storage

There are few choices for enterprise database management software, which is responsible for organizing and managing date so that it can be efficiently accessed and used. We are engage with SQL Server by Microsoft, which is one of the leading database software providers.

2.2 Issues and Challenges

The biggest challenges for IT professionals are applications, integration, financial and cultural (Kennedy 2009). Even though we have well maintain and established infrastructures for the group but there are still some issues we need to emphasize on like security, connection problems, management cost control, employees’ knowledge and training, updated hardware and software, data storage and documentation.

2.2.1 The Application Challenges

Keeping up with all of the latest technology that is released on a constant basis is another problem. Therefore current applications somehow is not the best, for example connection problem and security issue in Malaysia still need long way to improve on it, sometimes the latest offer in the market might not get upon expectation.

2.2.2 The Integration Challenges

Consolidating and integrating multiple finance data warehouses into a single, unified data warehouse is something IT still struggles with. We are property development company, there are too many documentation and process either among external like lawyer firm and banker, or within internal between finance, project and marketing department. Therefore IT department need to ensure everything is going smooth to avoid any hesitation.

2.2.3 The Financial Challenges

Financially tight for IT budget is difficult in maintaining information infrastructure under the current budget pressures. Doing more with less continues to be a priority, or as one participant put a fine point on it, getting more results with a big budget reduction. Moreover, these increased expectations are coupled with the reality of lower IT budgets. Providing more service for less money will be a reality we’ll all have to deal with.

2.2.4 The Cultural Challenges

Cultural difference play important role in an organization, religious differences and age differences will also play a greater role. However, using them to our advantage will be the challenge. Other than that, implementing change, keeping up with new developments are challenges for the group as well while the products in IT market is changing in a fast pace. Especially giving employees training for new information is not easy task whey they are already get use with the current hardware or software.

Thomas C. Staab outlined challenges facing Information Technology leaders in the years to come; he sees challenges based upon the experience and insight he’s gained and other technology leaders around the globe (Rosberg 2008).

3. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing refers to a model of computing where firms and individuals obtain computing power and software applications over the internet, rather than purchasing their own hardware and software (Laudon & Laudon 2010).

The cloud computing service model involves the provision, by a service provider, of large pools of high performance computing resources and high-capacity storage devices that are shared among end users as required (Vaquero 2009). The service provider’s offering may also extend to the software applications required by the end user. Cloud service model requires a high-speed network to provide connection between the end user and the service provider’s infrastructure.

Cloud computing potentially offers an overall financial benefit, in that end users share a large, centrally managed pool of storage and computing resources, rather than owning and managing their own systems (Kondo 2009). The end user in turn sees convenience benefits from having data and services available from any location, from having data backups centrally managed, from the availability of increased capacity when needed, and from usage-based charging (Weiss 2007 & Hayes 2008).

3.1 Cloud Computing Current Trends

Datapipe, a provider of managed services and infrastructure for IT and cloud computing, is predicting that 2011 “will be the year when industry giants from across the spectrum-including major financial institutions, pharmaceuticals and retailers-will migrate major internal and external IT systems to the cloud.” (Sowinski 2010).

Amazon was first to use a cloud-computing model for their business and now is the leader in providing cloud services to other businesses. Entrepreneurs are exploiting Amazon’s Web services, Microsoft’s Windows Azure hosting platform and other cloud services in order to start up companies because of the zero capital equipment requirements. Payment is by credit card and you pay as you go (Bell 2011), examples like iTunes, Dropbox, Salesforce.com and HealthVault; which lets you store and share your medical information.

The idea of cloud computing is to make all the information and services run in data centers around the world available via the Web. These new approaches come along roughly every decade and promise to make computers cheaper and more accessible.

3.2 Cloud Computing Solution

A number of organizations are already hosting and/or offering cloud computing services. Examples include Google Docs, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Storage services, Microsoft’s Windows Azure Platform, IBM’s Smart Business Services, Salesforce.com, and WebEx (Baliga 2011).

Amazon is on the Internet the biggest online retail merchant, everyday is bearing the massive network transaction, and simultaneously Amazon also provides the cloud computing service platform for the independent software development personnel as well as the developer. Amazon calculates theirs cloud the platform to be called elastic compute cloud (EC2), is most early provides the long distance cloud to calculate the platform service the company.

Amazon own elastic computation cloud establishment in the platform which the company interior large-scale colony calculates, but the user may operate through the elastic computation cloud network contact surface in the cloud calculates each instance.

Amazon elastic compute cloud comes by the named Amazon Web services existing platform development. Amazon Web Services mainly is composed by 4 core services: Simple Storage Service; Elastic Compute Cloud; Simple Queuing Service as well as still occupied at present test stage SimpleDB (Zhang 2010).

3.3 Benefits and Costs of Cloud Computing

Cloud services will ultimately save organizations money; cloud services are succeeding in delivering key benefits to the supply chain in the long run. In the cost modelling of cloud services, to offset the initial cost of acquisition of cloud services against existing system licensing and asset costs they will no longer have to pay (Shacklett 2010). Cloud services are less expensive solutions than internal systems, moreover the best solutions for what a given business is striving to achieve in a given business scenario.

Cloud computing also allows users to automatically store and back up data without the risk of losing the information in a server crash. It provides organisations with sufficient control over cloud security and compliance to adapt to any type of workload, even mission-critical ones. And giving IT teams the ability to directly inspect and monitor conditions in private, public, or hybrid clouds so they can base their trust on first-hand observations, not just outside Attestations (Patterson 2011).

Cloud allows organization to move away from managing their own data centers to focusing their attention and their resources-financial and human-on their core competencies. Cloud is enabling businesses to respond much more effectively to changes in demand. Cloud networks are evolving, linking organizations through complex, multiparty processes into single, virtual organizations (Giniat 2011).

Cloud computing do not need high quality equipment for user, and it is easy to use. Cloud computing provides dependable and secure data storage center to avoid data loss or virus problems (Chen 2010). User saved the equipment and maintenance cost with the integrity virtual machine movement controls by user.

4. Competitive Forces Model for IT Infrastructure

There has been a growing trend to use off-site infrastructure resources to manage the company IT needs. This has opened up a number of options for large and small companies because it allows them to quickly scale their infrastructure to meet their changing needs, adopt new technology as it comes available, and control all the expenditures related to the IT department (Dell 2011). Cloud computing companies are making it possible to be more efficient, flexible, and cost effective than ever before, it is a very safe, secure way to store data and manage various applications. Cloud services will help organizations enter the age of utility computing in an incremental manner (Hurwitz 2010).

4.1 IT Infrastructure

Infrastructure as a service allows us to pay for the things we need. We won’t be spending money on physical servers or storage space and won’t have to make new technology purchases based on the possibility of growth. We will be able move faster when our IT infrastructure is scalable and flexible by keep up with the recent changes of new technology. This is good from our standpoint, we have no desire to buy and maintain lots of hardware and software. If we can let someone else look after the basic technology, we can more focus on future development. With cloud computing, we have come full circle: the efficiencies of a centralized computing infrastructure that can be easily accessed via the Internet are just too compelling to ignore.

Our group doesn’t own any servers, with everything else off in a cloud, and we only have the basic productivity software on our personal computers. Recently Google joined with IBM to promote cloud computing, the idea of cloud computing it’s sufficiently compelling that in large measure it already exists (Weber 2008). We use Google, for search and for analytics and for document sharing, among other things. We are established developer in the industry for more than few decades; we should upgrade our IT infrastructure to be more competitive in the market. Especially over the years, we have too many documents to sort out, but to list systematically is difficult. Lots of burden will be reducing if with the assistance of cloud service. Furthermore it can simplify the documentations between us with lawyer and banker. We can retrieve and trace every document from the web rather than waiting dispatch to send or collect, or need to search the document in the storage room. And also can download software from the web anytime without any hassle while waiting for IT personnel.

4.2 Strategy for Cloud Computing

The first type of resources is infrastructure resources, which include computing power, storage, and machine provisioning. For example, Amazon EC2 provides web service interface to easily request and configure capacity online. Xdrive Box service provides online storage to users. Microsoft SkyDrive provides free storage service, with an integrated offline and online model that keeps privacy related files on hard drives, and enables people to access those files remotely (Zhang & Zhou 2009). Infrastructure as a service refers to the sharing of hardware resources for executing services, typically using virtualization technology. With Infrastructure as a Service, potentially multiple users use existing resources. In Platform as a Service, the offering includes software execution environment, such as application server. In the Software as a Service, complete applications are hosted on the Internet so that e.g. your word processing software isn’t installed locally on your PC anymore but runs on a server in the network and is accessed through a web browser (Ohlman 2009).

Through storage as a service, users can outsource their data storage requirements to the cloud (Buyya 2008). All processing is performed on the user’s PC, which may have only a solid state drive, and the user’s primary data storage is in the cloud. Data files may include documents, photographs, or videos. Files stored in the cloud can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection at any time (Kondo 2009). In addition, after a user uploads a file to the cloud, the user can grant read and/or modification privileges to other users. One example of storage as a service is the Amazon Simple Storage service.

Conclusion

Infrastructure management is becoming more important in a dynamic business environment, the right business infrastructure can help optimize IT efficiency, minimize costs, and help organization respond quickly to industry changes. Why we need cloud computing? It is to utilize the vacant resources of computer, increase the economic efficiency through improving utilization rate, and decrease the equipment energy consumption.

Among the many IT giants driven by trends in cloud computing has not doubtful. It gives almost everyone has brought good news. For enterprises, cloud computing is worthy of consideration and try to build business systems as a way for businesses in this way can undoubtedly bring about lower costs, higher profits and more choice; for large scale industry, After the financial turmoil will be the cost of infrastructure for large-scale compression seems likely; developers, when in the face of cloud computing, can effectively improve own capacity, cloud computing will bring a revolutionary change in the Internet. Cloud computing announced a low-cost super-computing services to provide the possibility, while there are a large number of manufacturers behind, there is no doubt that cloud computing has a bright future.

Certainly, there are many of challenges we need to face, or continue to face, in the unknown coming days. And as we face these challenges proactively, with open minds, and by embracing change, working these things to our advantage, the opportunities we’ll find will ultimately result in our success. If our group depend on someone else for the technology and that can limit our flexibility and creativity. In fact, the personal computer itself arose because the old model of business computing, in which companies had big mainframes and everyone connected to them via “dumb” terminals, was enormously frustrating for the people sitting at those dumb terminals. They could only do what they were authorized to do. They were dependent on the computer administrators to give them permission or fix problems. They had no way of staying up on the latest innovations. The personal computer was a rebellion against the tyranny of centralized computing operations. Security problem of the exposure to the web still resolve while the user will manage and monitor everything.

Cloud computing will help the group save money in the long run, and to be more productive when documentations are done within a faster period. And also provide employees with a greater IT environment with always getting the most updated software in the market. With cloud computing, the aim is to hide the complexity of IT infrastructure management from its users. At the same time, cloud computing platforms provide massive scalability, reliability, high performance, and specifiable configurability. These capabilities are provided at relatively low costs compared to dedicated infrastructures.

Cloud computing is making it possible to separate the process of building an infrastructure for service provisioning from the business of providing end user services. It will cut complexity, improve flexibility and make IT more strategic to business there is a misconception about the cloud that the Cloud is cheaper than traditional IT.

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