Paladino Insurance

[Title Page]

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3

Introduction 3

Background 3

Scope and Assumptions 3

Option I – Third Party Cloud Computing 4

In Brief: 4

Advantages and Disadvantages 5

Advantages 5

Disadvantages 5

Costs & ROI: 5

Implementation Plan for Option I 6

Option II – Establish a Green Data Center 7

In Brief: 7

Advantages and Disadvantages 7

Advantages 7

Disadvantages 7

Costs & ROI: 8

Implementation Plan for Option II 8

Option III – Thin Clients 9

In Brief: 9

Advantages and Disadvantages 9

Advantages 9

Disadvantages 9

Costs & ROI 10

Implementation Plan for Option III 11

Option IV - Server Consolidation & Virtualization 12

In Brief: 12

Advantages and Disadvantages 12

Advantages 12

Disadvantages 12

Costs & ROI 13

Implementation Plan for Option IV 13

Conclusions and Recommendations 15

Summary 16

Appendix 17

Works Cited 18

Executive Summary

Paladino Insurance Corporation (Paladino) has grown so fast that it has not had time to focus on the back-end systems which were put in place to support its operations. As a result, current IT resources are underutilized and too much electricity is being used to maintain the current state. As the consulting group hired to present a solution which would allow Paladino to green its IT and cut costs, we have evaluated a number of options and have decided on three main courses of action.

Our recommendation is that Paladino consolidate its existing servers and through virtualization technology create a “private cloud” to reduce the number of physical servers needed while boosting utilization. We also recommend the adoption of a thin client and terminal server architecture in order to cut both hardware and electricity costs. One final recommendation is to update current cooling systems in order to save even more on electricity costs.

Other options we investigated such as third-party cloud computing and the construction of a...