Dr. Schadt is a founding member of Sage Bionetworks which is an open access genomics
initiative designed to build and support databases. Dr. Schadt is one of a handful of other
scientists that are blending mathematics, biology and supercomputers to understand human
diseases and human biology (Duncan, 2009).
Nowadays, companies need more computing power to function and achieve their goals. As
stated in the case, the usage of cloud computing is one of the best option available to
individuals or even companies needing excessive data storage capability and mainly
computing power. Cloud computing is an architecture based on services provided over the
Internet (Pearlson & Saunders, 2013). Dr. Schadt uses cloud computing for several
reasons:
•Cost effectiveness
•Easy access
•Excessive data storage capability
Because the servers are maintained by another company it helps companies to stay cost
effective by not investing tremendous amount of money to maintain the infrastructure. Dr.
Schadt was able to access its data, tells the system what needs to be computed and within a
couple hours the results are available for him to view. “Dr. Schadt is able to initiate a
complex analysis of his data using Amazon’s services, which crunch the data while Dr.
Schadt flies across the country. When he lands, the analysis is done and he has the results”
(Pearlson et al., 2013, p.196). Extreme amount of data processing requires tremendous
computer power to process them in a desirable amount of time. With the use of a credit
card, anyone can have access to a supercomputer to conduct extensive research and data
analysis.
Even with all these advantages, some negative aspects are still important to keep in mind
when anyone thinks about using cloud computing. Being dependent on a third-party
supplier is the main disadvantage. The supplier might decide to close down or some
hardware or software issues might incur at the suppliers side resulting in massive loss of
data. Furthermore, security might be another concern. The data stored might be sensitive
data that might have some undesired consequences if stolen.
1. 1. How would you describe the architecture of Dr. Schadt uses to do his
research?
The architecture being used by Dr. Schadt is a web-based architecture or service-oriented
architecture (SOA). This type of architecture provides the user with flexibility and most of
the data and computing capabilities are done over the Internet. Furthermore, the fact that
he can have additional processing capability by paying a fee indicates that the architecture
