Sub-Task 1.2: Platform as a Service Report

In total this sub-task is worth 40% of the total course work marks.

This report is worth 65% of the marks for this sub-task.

The other 35% of the marks for this sub-task is awarded for achieving the goals set in the lab exercises.

Note that on Blackboard your mark for this report will be shown as a percentage. This mark will be added to your lab work mark and to produce a weighted total mark for this sub-task – also shown as a percentage. A weighted total of sub-task marks will be used to produce an overall percentage mark for the module course work. Course work is 50% of the module assessment with an end of module exam accounting for the other 50%.

Scenario

You work for a small software house that develops, deploys and maintains bespoke web applications for commercial customers. These web applications vary in complexity and size. However, they usually involve server-side program code – usually C# but sometimes Java – and usually a database usually SQL Server but also MySQL.

Example Web Applications

Customers are increasingly interested in having their applications deployed “in the cloud”. Specifically they mean on one of the industry’s leading cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers. The following are current examples of customers’ web applications that seem suitable to be deployed to a PaaS platform.

1. Video Library

A medium sized specialist video library company would like to move the storage and delivery of their videos to a PaaS platform. They plan to significantly increase the size of their library so that they will be offering around 10,000 videos to customers. So the data stored will be large video files plus a small amount of data on each video such as Title, Director, Release Date etc. They expect the videos to be streamed directly from the PaaS platform. All other aspects of the company’s business such as customer registration, billing etc. will continue to be done by the company’s existing systems.

1. Document Store

A small engineering company urgently needs a simple document storage system for their technical manuals. The documents are typically 1MB to 2MB and never more than 5MB. Each document would be associated with a small set of properties such as product number, product type, author, date etc. The system would be for use by the company’s own employees.

1. Commercial Web Application

A company has a general web presence for promoting their products, providing product information etc. They are planning to upgrade the existing site to allow customers to make online purchases and service requests. The company’s current web host does not provide the necessary facilities so the company would like to move to a major PaaS platform in order to implement these upgrades.

PaaS Platforms

In response to these requests you have been asked by your manager to produce “proof of concept” demonstrations of the development and deployment of applications using the following PaaS providers:

• Azure: Microsoft Azure Cloud Services & Web Apps
• Google: Google App Engine
• Salesforce:com

Your manager wants to decide if your company should offer one or more PaaS providers to your customers and if so which ones. In order to make his decisions he would like you to write a brief report to help him have a better understanding of two areas. First, which cloud platform you consider would be the best for each of the example scenarios and why? Second, what are the main general advantages and disadvantages of each platform for developing and deploying applications?

Report

Your report should be no more than 800 words.
Any text above this word count will be ignored and will not be marked.

Your report should be based on your experience in practical classes of developing prototype applications using the three PaaS Platforms (Azure, Google or Salesforce). It should address the following points or questions:

1. State which ONE of these PaaS Platforms you would recommend for EACH of the three example web application – Video Library, Document Store and Commercial Web Application.

Note: Make one recommendation only per example web application.

You will lose marks or be awarded no marks if you make more than one recommendation for an example web application.

(15 marks)

2. For each of your three recommendations in part 1 above, briefly explain TWO reasons in support of your choice of PaaS platform.

(40 marks)

3. For EACH of the THREE PaaS platforms – Azure, Google and Salesforce – discuss ONE major advantage and ONE major disadvantage of using the platform for development and deployment of applications.

(45 marks)

Marking Grid: Sub-Task 1.2