QUESTION 1 (45 MARKS) 1.1 Critically discuss the essence of each of the followin

Question

QUESTION 1 (45 MARKS) 1.1 Critically discuss the essence of each of the following technologies: (20)

(a) An extranet

(b) Service-oriented architecture (SOA)

(c) Virtualisation (technology based)

Explain the (possible) relationship of each of the above with cloud computing. In each case consider the use of PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS.

1.2 Read the Case Study 1.2: “eBay – the world’s largest online business”, pp. 34 – 37 in Chaffey (2015), 6th edition and critically discuss how eBay could use each of the above technologies, namely an extranet, SOA and virtualisation to obtain a competitive advantage in their industry.

Textbook available here if needed for case: http://www.academia.edu/31859772/Digital_Business_and_E_Commerce_Management_6_Dave_Chaffey_1_

Explanation / Answer

1.1)Answer:

a)An extranet:

An extranet is a controlled private network allowing customers, partners, vendors, suppliers and other businesses to gain information, typically about a specific company or educational institution, and do so without granting access to the organization's entire network. An extranet is often a private part of a website. It is restricted to select users through user IDs, passwords and other authentication mechanisms on a login page

An extranet can be viewed as part of a company's intranet that is extended to users outside the company. It has also been described as a "state of mind" in which the Internet is perceived as a way to do business with other companies as well as to sell products to customers.

An extranet requires security and privacy. These can include firewall server management, the issuance and use of digital certificates or similar means of user authentication, encryption of messages, and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) that tunnel through the public network.

Companies can use an extranet to:

Advantages of extranets include:

Disadvantages are expensive implementation and maintenance if hosted internally and the potential for compromised sensitive or proprietary information. Alternately, it may be hosted by an application service provider.

b) Service-oriented architecture (SOA):

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) references a set of principles and methodologies applied by software engineers to design and develop software in the form of interoperable services. Services are usually built in the form of components that can be reused for different purposes than originally intended. For this reason, the interfaces are often defined in a practical manner, allowing use across varying applications and multiple platforms

SOA has two major functions. The first is to create a broad architectural model that defines the goals of applications and the approaches that will help meet those goals. The second function is to define specific implementation specifications, usually linked to the formal Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) specifications.

The emergence of SOA

For decades, software development required the use of modular functional elements that perform a specific job in multiple places within an application. As application integration and component-sharing operations became linked to pools of hosting resources and distributed databases, enterprises needed a way to adapt their procedure-based development model to the use of remote, distributed components. Simple models like the remote procedure call (RPC) were a start in the right direction, but RPC lacked the security and data-independent features needed for truly open and distributed operations.

The solution to this problem was to redefine the old operation model into a broader and more clearly architected collection of services that could be provided to an application using fully distributed software components. The architecture that wrapped these services in mechanisms to support open use under full security and governance was called the service-oriented architecture, or SOA. SOA was introduced in the late 1990s as a set of principles or requirements; within a decade, there were several suitable implementations.

SOA's primary goal is to provide agility to businesses, allowing them to adapt quickly and cost-efficiently to changes in the marketplace.

SOA separates functions into well-defined components, which computer developers make accessible as services over a network. This makes it possible to run SOA on a variety of distributed platforms, which can be accessed across various networks. Data sharing between different applications is the heart of SOA business applications. These applications are designed to work with APIs, which result in application integration and functionality sharing. Systems located in the same enterprise, as well as different ones, achieve business process integration while adhering to a standardized business process model.

The SOA repository is a database containing metadata, or large amounts of data, which is interactive and constantly changing. This repository allows business-to-business communications through Web services. Test measurements are validated within SOA repositories and workflow support exists throughout the repositories. The SOA repository also includes schemata, policies and processes, which involve the principles and methodologies critical to SOA.

c) Virtualization:

Virtualization refers to the creation of a virtual resource such as a server, desktop, operating system, file, storage or network.

The main goal of virtualization is to manage workloads by radically transforming traditional computing to make it more scalable. Virtualization has been a part of the IT landscape for decades now, and today it can be applied to a wide range of system layers, including operating system-level virtualization, hardware-level virtualization and server virtualization.

The evolution of virtualization

Operating system virtualization is the use of software to allow a piece of hardware to run multiple operating system images at the same time. The technology got its start on mainframes decades ago, allowing administrators to avoid wasting expensive processing power.

How virtualization works

Virtualization describes a technology in which an application, guest operating system or data storage is abstracted away from the true underlying hardware or software. A key use of virtualization technology is server virtualization, which uses a software layer called a hypervisor to emulate the underlying hardware. This often includes the CPU's memory, I/O and network traffic. The guest operating system, normally interacting with true hardware, is now doing so with a software emulation of that hardware, and often the guest operating system has no idea it's on virtualized hardware. While the performance of this virtual system is not equal to the performance of the operating system running on true hardware, the concept of virtualization works because most guest operating systems and applications don't need the full use of the underlying hardware. This allows for greater flexibility, control and isolation by removing the dependency on a given hardware platform. While initially meant for server virtualization, the concept of virtualization has spread to applications, networks, data and desktops

The most common form of virtualization is the operating system-level virtualization. In operating system-level virtualization, it is possible to run multiple operating systems on a single piece of hardware. Virtualization technology involves separating the physical hardware and software by emulating hardware using software. When a different OS is operating on top of the primary OS by means of virtualization, it is referred to as a virtual machine.

A virtual machine is nothing but a data file on a physical computer that can be moved and copied to another computer, just like a normal data file. The computers in the virtual environment use two types of file structures: one defining the hardware and the other defining the hard drive. The virtualization software, or the hypervisor, offers caching technology that can be used to cache changes to the virtual hardware or the virtual hard disk for writing at a later time. This technology enables a user to discard the changes done to the operating system, allowing it to boot from a known state.

Virtualization can be categorized into different layers: desktop, server, file, storage and network. Each layer of virtualization has its own set of advantages and complexities. The technology offers many benefits, including low or no-cost deployment, full resource utilization, operational cost savings and power savings. However, deploying virtualization technology requires careful planning and skilled technical experts. Since the virtual machines use the same resources to run, it may lead to slow performance.

There are six areas of IT where virtualization is making headway:

1. Network virtualization is a method of combining the available resources in a network by splitting up the available bandwidth into channels, each of which is independent from the others and can be assigned -- or reassigned -- to a particular server or device in real time. The idea is that virtualization disguises the true complexity of the network by separating it into manageable parts, much like your partitioned hard drive makes it easier to manage your files.

2. Storage virtualization is the pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console. Storage virtualization is commonly used in storage area networks.

3. Server virtualization is the masking of server resources -- including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors and operating systems -- from server users. The intention is to spare the user from having to understand and manage complicated details of server resources while increasing resource sharing and utilization and maintaining the capacity to expand later.

The layer of software that enables this abstraction is often referred to as the hypervisor. The most common hypervisor -- Type 1 -- is designed to sit directly on bare metal and provide the ability to virtualize the hardware platform for use by the virtual machines (VMs). KVM virtualization is a Linux kernel-based virtualization hypervisor that provides Type 1 virtualization benefits similar to other hypervisors. KVM is licensed under open source. A Type 2 hypervisor requires a host operating system and is more often used for testing/labs.

4. Data virtualization is abstracting the traditional technical details of data and data management, such as location, performance or format, in favor of broader access and more resiliency tied to business needs.

5. Desktop virtualization is virtualizing a workstation load rather than a server. This allows the user to access the desktop remotely, typically using a thin client at the desk. Since the workstation is essentially running in a data center server, access to it can be both more secure and portable. The operating system license does still need to be accounted for as well as the infrastructure.

6. Application virtualization is abstracting the application layer away from the operating system. This way the application can run in an encapsulated form without being depended upon on the operating system underneath. This can allow a Windows application to run on Linux and vice versa, in addition to adding a level of isolation.

Virtualization can be viewed as part of an overall trend in enterprise IT that includes autonomic computing, a scenario in which the IT environment will be able to manage itself based on perceived activity, and utility computing, in which computer processing power is seen as a utility that clients can pay for only as needed. The usual goal of virtualization is to centralize administrative tasks while improving scalability and workloads

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