Contracts and Procurement Bpo and Cloud

BPO and Cloud Computing PROJ410 Case Study 1

Contracts and Procurement

Purpose:

Smith Information Services, Inc. is considering the replacement of the company's data center by an outside service. The CIO of the company is investigating the possibility of a business process outsourcing project that would move the data center to the cloud. The data center has grown rapidly and the cost associated with its growth is mounting up every year and the cost of doing business might get out of control. Along with the rising hardware and software costs, the number of employees needed to run this data center has grown considerably. Bob Smith is looking for possible ways of outsourcing to keep with the organization need of data growth and also making sure that cost is within control and within acceptable limit. The CIO of the company has been evaluating three different options and is in the process of information gathering to understand the pros and cons of each alternative. There are many options from which to choose, including: a local data center, a well-known data center, and a data center that is located overseas. Each of these solutions has pros and cons, and one main issue is the security of the data. Some of the other issues include:

- Service-level agreements

- HR issues related with local and remote staff members

- Other issues, such as informing or not informing the customer that Smith’s Information Services will be outsourcing the data somewhere.

Cloud computing is a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the go without investing in new infrastructure, training new personal or licensing new software. This type of server service is a great because there are no compatibility issues; a Mac user accesses the same internet as a PC user.

Three different alternatives and evaluation of these alternatives

Local data center

Having the data center close to customer is important factor in...