CASE STUDY: Is It Time for Cloud Computing

5.13 What business benefits do cloud computing services provide? What problem that they solve?

Based on what we learned, cloud computing is defined as a type of computing that depends on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle the applications.

There is several benefits of cloud computing:

•       It helps company to build a large database as company have many information and data keeping.
•     It can store a large amount of data and information and this can reduce data redundancy.
•          It able for us to find the information in an efficient and effective ways.

The cloud computing had solve several problems which is:

•     It helps company with flexible computing power and data storage as well data management, messaging, payment, and other services can be used together or individually as the businesses requires.
•     It helps customers to determine the right amount of computing resources for an example, Amazon had added an automated service called Cloud Formation.
•    It improve response time for customers as Intercontinental move it core room reservation transaction system onto a private cloud within its own data center.

5.14 What is the disadvantages of cloud computing?

There is several disadvantages of by using a cloud computing which is:

•     The service fee is more expensive  compared to having our own IT department to run the cloud computing so by manage their own center there will be more cheaper.
•        There will be unexpected costs if suddenly the system down so there will be an extra charge to solve that problem.
•     Without an internet connection it will having a possible downtime as the cloud computing is depend on internet connection. If the internet in your company not strong enough we did not prefer you to use cloud computing.
•       Cloud computing services do not have a good customer service system as it is very difficult to reached the on telephone or an email and they just rely on FAQ pages.

     5-15 How do the concepts of capacity planning, scalability, and TCO apply to this case? Apply these concepts both to Amazon and to subscribers of its services.

     Capacity planning is scalability, which is defined as the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a large number of users without breaking down. Scalability is a ability of a system, network or process to handle a growing amount of work in capable manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth. Scalability relates to both Amazon and AWS subscribers. Amazon must be able to provide its customers with services that are scalable, as it claims to do on its website: “Take advantage of our massive compute capacity and storage to build whatever kinds of applications your business demands, no matter how fast it grows or how big it gets”.

    Total Cost Ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyer and owners determine the direct and indirect cost of a product or system. Amazon must provide hardware capacity planning and scalability. With the development of information technology, Amazon will have more and more customers. Not just Amazon, but Amazon's customer requires a large database to store a variety of data and information. This will help the company grow. Amazon must bear the total TCO of its services, while Amazon is also needed to maintain the profitability of the company. However, the services' subscribers benefit from not having to worry about these issues.

   As information technology and social development, there have been more and more companies need cloud services. First, the information Internet companies need to use cloud services, such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, Blogspot, Ebay, etc. Because the cloud computing can store large information, and share the information. Second, large multinational corporations, one of the advantages about the cloud computing is that people from around the world can get a faster connection

      5-16 What kinds of businesses are most likely to benefit from using cloud computing? Why?

      Businesses that are most likely to benefit from using cloud computing are large enterprises such as car dealers, warehouse sellers, online businesses such as Lazada, Zalora and many more business oriented companies that has large customer demands.

      The reasons are

(i)                 Data Loss Prevention

      The loss of data could be prevented as they have stored it and it could be          useful for coming future. This is especially true if data about customers and        business partners is lost, which can bring the daily grind of commerce to a halt.  Since backing up data using cloud computer is incredibly easy, and requires  fewer upfront costs, it will be the better choice for many companies and it  would save the companies reputation too.

(ii)               Tracking Employees Performance

       The cloud computing is not only used for business purposes but it can also be      used to store employees information and it is a fast tracking system to see the    employees performance for time to time. It saves time and cost.

(iii)             Online Business

      It shouldn't be surprising to say that online businesses will use cloud computing.  The primary benefit is web server space. The costs of purchasing a sever and  getting a website up and running are high, especially if a significant level of  traffic is expected. Using cloud computer for hosting is the ideal solution,  especially for smaller businesses.

    The use of cloud computing utility has increased significantly in recent years and it appears to be a natural evolution of the data centre to execute computing and storage in a more scalable way. With such a significant increase, the market is growing quickly and more companies are providing new services with better features, including isolated services. With greater flexibility, lower infrastructure cost, and lower operations overhead, there’s a lot to love about a move to a cloud architecture and with private and hybrid cloud options offering all the control and transparency an organization could want, there’s no reason to fear cloud computing anymore. We predict cloud computing will grow, so developers should take it into account.

CASE STUDY: Google, Apple and Facebook Struggle for Your Internet Experience

CASE STUDY : Google, Apple and Facebook Struggle for Your Internet Experience

Question 1

Compare the business models and core competencies of Google, Apple, and Facebook.

	Facebook’s business model smashed the traditional manufacturing style we see with the consumer products, and instead built a ‘consumer platform’ that enabled many around them.  Facebook’s business model is well visualized with the value proposition. It is because when you enter Facebook, you will face with a whole bunch of offers, and it only makes sense to take them because your friends are on it. The enterprises are not only entering Facebook to advertise, but to converse with people, to get ideas and valuable information right from their clients with no intermediaries. The Facebook core competencies is to create this large network of friends using very intelligent algorithms to “suggest” people you may know. It has tried to create a “life album” kind of approach with its timeline and photos features. Its photos functionality became quite popular so it made sense when it bought Instagram, which is also about broadcasting pictures to a large audience.
	Next is Google that the believer in the concept that in the future the devices used to run the applications and other internet options should be a fraction of what they are being charged now and instead the revenues generated should be from the in-app advertisements. Google has core competencies in software engineering in context indexing and maintaining scalable hardware infrastructure. The company’s culture of innovation also can be highlighted as a core competence. Google owns few core products and they are indexing technology, Google Ads and Google Mapping platform and based on the core products the company has developed wide variety of end-products.
	Apple has the basis of creating a very strong hardware base for the internet future and thus logically they play their role in this battle by laying emphasis on the hardware that facilitates mobile computing. Apple’s greatest core competency is how to implement elegant but functional design. The consumer benefit is getting a product that works intuitively, while making everyone else envious. Other companies have been trying to imitate, but not quite successfully and Apple has copied that design success from computers, to music players, to cellphone and its store.

Question 2

Why is mobile computing so important to these three firms? Evaluate the mobile strategies of each firm. 

The Apple’s product is “iOS” and the closed platform that is it is applicable for apple products and only apple apps could work on this. Some of the remarkable features among them are:· here is an option over which you can reply later on the calls which you can’t take immediately.

·         Integration with the Facebook over which you can share all your iPhone activities.
·         There is a passbook app through which you can use your iPhone as a credit card.The Google provide its “Android”. A universal platform or you can say it’s an open platform when compared to the mobile platform offered by Apple.  Some of the notable features of this version are:· A simple screen swipe would provide you with search results related to Google
·         The voice recognition tool in this version would rub offline.
·         Another of the new feature is GOOGLE NOW in which the preferences are chosen based on the data like the time location and personal history and over this the search results are provided.


The Facebook by Microsoft’s purchase included rights to place international advertisement on the social networking site. On September 26, 2006, Facebook was opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address. In late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 business pages (page which allowed companies to promote themselves and attract customers). These started as group pages, but a new concept called company pages was planned. Pages been rolling out for business in May 2009. 

Question 3

What is the significance of search to the success or failure of mobile computing? How have Apple and Facebook attempted to complete with Apple and Facebook to compete with Google? Will their strategies succeed? 

The development of applications and software’s to match these expectations is a task that all the companies in  the fray to be the leader in the mobile computing market, whether it be Apple, Google, Facebook, or any other new player, shall have to look into great detail and precision. 

The importance of mobile applications can be justified on this basis itself that Google based their future growth prediction on the very same. Right now the scenario for mobile applications is such that they have are being considered as the future bread and butter of mobile IT firms. Mobile applications have such a great scope of growth in the future that they can one day eclipse the sales of the hardware part of mobile computing and form a major market themselves here players like Google and Apple shall have tough competition even from a small fray players if a common platform for application usage is formed, the very same reason why Apple is resisting Google’s repeated efforts for a common mobile platform. Their strategy will succeed if they create a strong business strategy that can competes each other and gain revenue. 

Question 4

Which company and business model do you think is most likely to dominate the Internet and why?

So it's Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook, all with their own revenue platforms. Google has the web, Facebook has its app, and Apple has the iPhone. This is the newest and biggest war in technology going today. 

There was a time, not long ago, when you could sum up each company quite neatly: Apple made consumer electronics, Google ran a search engine and Facebook was a social network. How quaint that assessment seems today.

Remember when Google's goal was to catalog all the world's information? Guess that task was too tiny. In just a few months at the helm, CEO Larry Page has launched a social network (Google+) to challenge Facebook, and acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, in part to compete more ferociously against Apple. Google's YouTube video service is courting producers to make original programming. Page can afford these big swings (and others) in the years ahead, given the way his advertising business just keeps growing. It's on pace to bring in more than $30 billion this year, almost double 2007's revenue.

Apple’s market capitalization; the value of all of the shares of its stock is more than $758 billion, greater than any other companies. Yet the Wall Street consensus is that Apple is still having a growth spurt. In fact, if Apple’s watches, phones, laptops and other gadgets and services keep generating favorable publicity and if its quarterly earnings report on Monday is as strong as the market expects it to be  there’s a reasonable chance that Apple’s value will keep swelling. Not far down the road, it might even reach the $1 trillion level that some hedge funds predict. Now it’s Apple’s world.

Question 5

What difference would it make to a business or to an individual consumer if Apple, Google, or Facebook dominated the Internet experience? Explain your answer.

The company that changed the nature of friendships also pulled off the biggest bait-and-switch in marketing history. After convincing brands to invest in building Facebook communities, it started charging for access. Organic reach on Facebook is at 6%, meaning brands can get virtually no access without spending. Facebook also made two of the best acquisitions in tech in the past decade: Instagram and Whatsapp. Instagram is growing faster than any other social platform in the world, except WeChat.

Galloway calls reports that say Facebook is declining in popularity “hogwash.” It is still the platform people of all ages spend the most time on. Furthermore, Facebook has the ability to track users by their identity, something only Google is able to do through Gmail.

Google is dominant in search, but other brands are chipping at Google’s share. Two-thirds of product searches – which are high-value searches – are happening on Amazon, and a billion searches a day are done on Facebook vs. 3 billion on Google. Furthermore, the mobile world is unfriendly to Google, which has resulted in a lower cost-per-click and revenues slowing down.

Google failures: Google Glass and Google+.

Apple has the pillars of a luxury brand: craftsmanship, an iconic founder, an exceptional price point, vertical control of distribution, globally recognizable, and with a self-expressive benefit. It’s on it way to becoming the world’s largest luxury brand with the help of former Burberry and YSL CEOs Angela Ahrendts and Paul Deneve. Proof is this map of New York where red represents iOS and green represents Android. The operating system has become an indicator of wealth.Apple is completing its transition to luxury with the Apple Watch, predicted to have more sales than any other watch company in 2015.

As a conclusion, big companies can behave badly when they dominate a market. They might not want to invest in product research and development or new equipment to better serve the public.