Climate change and the impact it has on our lives have forced many governmental and also
non-governmental organizations to conceive of new rules, regulations, and standards to
control CO2 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Calculating the energy efficiency and
reducing the electricity consumption in data centers are important steps towards greening
the IT in organizations. Several studies have shown that by migrating into the cloud,
companies in most cases could reduce their costs in addition to decreasing their greenhouse
gas emissions.
Unfortunately, lack of guidelines and varying and limited services from different cloud
providers, have made the adoption of appropriate Cloud services a challenge for many
organizations. In this regard, there is a vital need to study and analyze available services
from different cloud vendors and provide enterprises with the best solutions available
regarding their specific business requirements.
This thesis focuses on cloud computing and its efficiency for individual organizations. It
attempts to study the potential benefits of cloud computing by taking the environmental
and energy consumption advantages into consideration.
Cloud Computing is not a new concept and has been a hype term in recent years. Cloud
computing is based on the available technologies and it is all about using a new term for
the existing technologies. But the question is why to create a new name for what already
exists? The answer to this question is closely related to the potential that Cloud computing
has for organizations. It is all about conversion of capital expenditure (CAPEX) to the
operational expenditure (OPEX) and the possible advantages that this conversion could
have for any organization that choses to migrate into the Cloud.
In the following, upon introducing the cloud computing concept and its related technologies,
business functions and processes, information systems available for enterprises are explored.
Later, based on the required business processes and functions of organizations, a
comprehensive market analysis is carried out. For this purpose different cloud providers and
their available services are analyzed.
I developed an ontology for cloud computing based on the market analysis.
This thesis is an attempt to make the process of mapping business processes/functions to
cloud services easier by providing organizations with a matrix of cloud services/business
processes (distribution of market) and an ontology for cloud computing.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION
1.1. STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS
CHAPTER 2 - CLOUD COMPUTING FUNDAMENTALS
2.1. HISTORY
2.2. DEFINITION
2.3. KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
2.4. CLOUD DELIVERY MODEL (CLOUD SERVICES)
2.5. CLOUD DEPLOYMENT MODEL (CLOUD TYPES)
2.5.1. Private Cloud (Internal Cloud or Corporate Cloud):
2.5.2. Public cloud or external cloud:
2.6. CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES
2.6.1. VIRTUALIZATION
2.6.2. SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE AND WEB SERVICES
2.6.3. MASHUP AND WEB 2.0
CHAPTER 3 - GREENING THE IT AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
3.1. GREEN IT
3.1.1. ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN DATA CENTERS
3.1.2. HOW ENERGY WILL BE USED IN A DATA CENTER
3.2. MEASURING DATA CENTER EFFICIENCY
3.2.1. SPEC STANDARD
3.2.1.1. SPEC FOR VIRTUAL SERVERS
3.2.2. EPA METRICS
3.2.3. LEED RATING SYSTEM
3.2.4. GREEN GRID POWER EFFICIENCY METRICS
3.2.5. POWER USAGE EFFECTIVENESS (PUE)
3.2.6. DATA CENTER PRODUCTIVITY (DCP)
3.3. MODULARITY OF DATA CENTERS
3.4. ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
3.5. REGULATIONS AROUND THE WORLD
3.5.1. KYOTO PROTOCOL
3.6. CLOUD COMPUTING
CHAPTER 4 - ORGANIZATIONS AS SYSTEMS
4.1 BUSINESS FUNCTIONS
4.1.1 BUSINESS FUNCTIONS ONTOLOGY
4.2. BUSINESS PROCESSES
4.5. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT
4.6. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (BPMS)
4.7. BUSINESS PROCESS DISCOVERY
4.8. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT IN THE CLOUD
4.9. BUSINESS PROCESS CLASIFICATION FRAMEWORKS
4.10. INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN AN ORGANIZATION
4.10.1 Office Automation (OA) and Personal Information Management Systems (PIM)
4.10.2. Transaction Processing Systems (TPS)
4.10.3. Functional Area Information Systems (FAIS)
4.10.4. Enterprise and Inter-organizational Information Systems (IOS)
CHAPTER 5 - COMPREHENSIVE MARKET ANALYSIS
CHAPTER 6 - CLOUD ONTOLOGY
6.1. WEB ONTOLOGY LANGUAGE (OWL)
6.2. PROTÉGÉ- A SEMANTIC EDITOR
6.3. CLOUD ONTOLOGY
6.3.1 DEFINING CLASSES
6.3.2 OBJECT PROPERTIES
6.4. SEMANTIC REASONER
CHAPTER 7 - MOVING INTO THE CLOUD
7.1. CONSIDERATIONS BEFORE MOVING INTO THE CLOUD
7.1.1. CLOUD COMPUTING BENEFITS
7.1.2. CLOUD COMPUTING CHALLENGES AND RISKS
7.1.3. SECURITY ISSUES IN CLOUD COMPUTING
7.1.3.1. SECURITY ADVANTAGES
7.1.3.2. SECURITY CHALLENGES
7.1.4. INTEGRATION WITH LAGACY SYSTEMS
7.2. CLOUD ADOPTION DECISION MAKING
7.2.1 CLOUD DECISION AND AHP
CHAPTER 8 - EVALUATION OF THE WORK
8.1. FIRST USE CASE
8.2. SECOND USE CASE
CHAPTER 9 - CONCLUSIONS
CHAPTER 10 - APPENDIXES
10.1. APPENDIX I
10.2. APPENDIX II
REFERENCES
Research Objectives and Themes
This thesis investigates the potential efficiency and benefits of cloud computing for individual organizations, with a specific focus on environmental impact and energy consumption. The core research question addresses how organizations can effectively map their business processes and functions to appropriate cloud services available on the market, thereby navigating the complex landscape of cloud offerings through the development of a specialized cloud ontology.
- The evaluation of cloud computing as a means to transition from capital expenditure (CAPEX) to operational expenditure (OPEX).
- An in-depth market analysis of cloud providers and their specific service offerings.
- The development of a cloud ontology to simplify the identification of suitable cloud solutions based on organizational requirements.
- A detailed study of green IT principles, focusing on energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction in data centers.
- The implementation of decision-making strategies, such as the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), to guide organizations in cloud migration.
Excerpt from the Book
INTRODUCTION
Rapid growth of businesses and the vital need for using Information Technology as a tool for monitoring, improving and optimizing business processes led many enterprises into moving towards using appropriate and effective Information Technology solutions such as Enterprise Resource Planing (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems.
Presently there are several cloud service providers available around the world that provide their customers with different computing services starting from simple email services like “Google Mail” or social networks like “Facebook” to more complicated Anything-as-a Service (XaaS) solutions such as Customer Relationship management (CRM) by salesforce.com or even real-time image processing services for spatial data processing or MRI brain scanning[2, 3].
Despite of all the benefits that would result from cloud migration, executing this transfer is surely no easy task for most organizations. Legacy application problems, security and sensibility of data (loss of confidential data during the transfer) and complexity of services available from different cloud providers are among the challenges that each organization might face[3].Broad and varying needs of each organization and only limited services from the respective cloud providers make this move a very difficult and stressful process for many companies and organizations. Hence there is a vital need for a comprehensive study that focuses on the available services of various cloud providers and provides a mapping solution between business processes and available cloud services on the market. This is done through a comprehensive market analysis and its results are used as the basis for developing the subsequent the cloud ontology.
Summary of Chapters
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION: This chapter introduces the research context, highlighting the role of cloud computing in business optimization and outlining the structure of the thesis.
CHAPTER 2 - CLOUD COMPUTING FUNDAMENTALS: This section explores the history, definitions, key characteristics, delivery models, and supporting technologies such as virtualization and SOA that underpin cloud computing.
CHAPTER 3 - GREENING THE IT AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: This chapter analyzes the impact of IT on the environment, specifically focusing on data center energy efficiency, metrics for measurement, and the role of cloud computing in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
CHAPTER 4 - ORGANIZATIONS AS SYSTEMS: This section defines organizations through the lens of systems, business functions, and business processes, detailing classification frameworks like BFO, e-TOM, and APQC.
CHAPTER 5 - COMPREHENSIVE MARKET ANALYSIS: This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the current cloud market, presenting a matrix of business functions mapped to cloud providers and services.
CHAPTER 6 - CLOUD ONTOLOGY: This section explains the development of a cloud ontology using Protégé and OWL, describing classes, object properties, and the role of semantic reasoners.
CHAPTER 7 - MOVING INTO THE CLOUD: This chapter discusses decision-making strategies for cloud migration, including risks, benefits, and the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP).
CHAPTER 8 - EVALUATION OF THE WORK: This chapter demonstrates the practical application of the developed cloud ontology through two use cases using SPARQL queries.
CHAPTER 9 - CONCLUSIONS: This chapter summarizes the findings of the thesis, confirms the effectiveness of the proposed ontology-based mapping, and suggests future research directions.
CHAPTER 10 - APPENDIXES: These sections provide technical snippets of the OWL source code and ontology structure used in the research.
Keywords
Cloud Computing, Ontology, OWL, Business Process, Business Function, SPARQL, Green IT, Data Center Efficiency, PUE, DCiE, Cloud Migration, Decision Making, AHP, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the primary focus of this thesis?
The thesis focuses on how organizations can bridge the gap between their business requirements and the vast array of available cloud services by creating a systematic mapping solution.
What are the central themes discussed in the work?
The work covers cloud computing fundamentals, the relationship between green IT and data center energy efficiency, business process management frameworks, and the application of ontology and semantic web technologies to cloud service discovery.
What is the main goal or research question?
The primary research goal is to answer how business processes and functions can be accurately mapped to appropriate cloud services, addressing the complexity of the current market.
What scientific methods are applied in the research?
The research utilizes market analysis to map services, develops an OWL-based ontology for classification, and employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for decision-making support in cloud migration.
What topics are covered in the main body of the thesis?
The main body covers a comprehensive market analysis, the creation of a cloud ontology, decision-making frameworks for cloud adoption, and empirical evaluations through two use cases using SPARQL.
Which keywords best describe this research?
Key terms include Cloud Computing, Ontology, OWL, Business Process, Green IT, Data Center Efficiency, and Cloud Migration strategy.
How does the Cloud Ontology assist organizations?
The ontology acts as a navigational tool that allows organizations to search for specific cloud services that match their precise business requirements, reducing time and complexity in the selection process.
What is the role of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in this work?
AHP is used as a structured decision-making method to evaluate whether specific enterprise applications are suitable candidates for migration to the cloud based on business value, technical fitment, and risk exposure.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Dipl.-Ing. Seyed Amir Beheshti (Autor:in), 2011, Business Process on‐Demand; Studying the Enterprise Cloud Computing and its Role in Green IT, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.hausarbeiten.de/document/177372
