Title

An Industry-Based Study on the Efficiency Benefits of Utilising Public Cloud Infrastructure and Infrastructure as Code Tools in the IT Environment Creation Process

Author

Shane Callanan, Department of Computer Science, Cork Institute of Technology

Date of Award

5-2018

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Computer Sciences

First Advisor

Eoin O'Regan

Second Advisor

Dr. Donna O'Shea

CIT Disciplines

1.2 COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCE; Computer Sciences

Abstract

The traditional approaches to IT infrastructure management typically involve the procuring, housing and running of company-owned and maintained physical servers. In recent years, alternative solutions to IT infrastructure management based on public cloud technologies have emerged. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), also known as public cloud infrastructure, allows for the on-demand provisioning of IT infrastructure resources via the Internet. Cloud Service Providers (CSP) such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer integration of their cloud-based infrastructure with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools. These tools allow for the entire configuration of public cloud based infrastructure to be scripted out and defined as code. This thesis hypothesises that the correct utilization of IaaS and IaC can offer an organisation a more efficient type of IT infrastructure creation system than that of the organisations traditional method. To investigate this claim, an industry-based case study and survey questionnaire were carried out as part of this body of work. The case study involved the replacement of a manually managed IT infrastructure with that of the public cloud, the creation of which was automated via a framework consisting of IaC and related automation tools. The survey questionnaire was created with the intent to corroborate or refute the results obtained in the case study in the context of a wider audience of organisations. The results show that the correct utilization of IaaS and IaC technologies can provide greater efficiency in the management of IT networks than the traditional approach

Recommended Citation

Callanan, Shane, "An Industry-Based Study on the Efficiency Benefits of Utilising Public Cloud Infrastructure and Infrastructure as Code Tools in the IT Environment Creation Process" (2018). Masters [online].
Available at: https://sword.cit.ie/scimas/5

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess