Cloud Computing at Tullow Oil Company Profile

Tullow Oil is one of the renowned multinational companies in the oil and gas exploration industry. The company is headquartered in London in United Kingdom. The firm had investment interests across 150 licenses in 25 countries and had up to 67 producing fields. In 2012, the firm produced 79,200 barrels on average each day. The largest activities are based in the Atlantic Margins and Africa where there is a discovery of oil provinces for places such as Uganda, Kenya, French Guiana, and Ghana. The company's main production is based in six African countries and Southern North Sea. Jubilee oil field in Ghana's offshore was discovered back in 2007 and production started in 2010. This is the largest discovery of the company.

Cloud Computing Case Analysis

As the storage and bandwidth prices continue to drop, the solutions of cloud-based services are translating into attractive aspects for the small and medium business categories seeking to enjoy reduced licensing costs. The following study shows how Tullow Oil satisfies its data management needs and capacities now. It also proposes viable alternatives related to PaaS cloud computing (Marinescu, 2013).

Tullow Oil can use the solutions as a way of avoiding to recruit more IT staff besides allowing to fully focusing on its core responsibility and growth of the organization. Although the focus on Cloud computing will provide Tullow Oil with opportunities of embracing cost-effective alternatives, the firm needs to worry about the 'all-Cloud' solution mentality. This paper shows that no one model can satisfy all the needs of an organization. This is because diving headfirst to the scope of PaaS cloud computing may result in Tullow Oil seeing how best to maximize its benefits from the existing set-ups. This is also applicable in negotiating for Cloud-based services among the market vendors (Furht & Escalante, 2010). The hybrid delivery models allow the company to have a mix of the most appropriate long-term commitments with reduced unnecessary expenses. The pop management can identify and address inefficiencies from on-premise and hosted models. Tullow Oil is currently facing the dilemma of whether to go for online hosting or retain the on-premise solutions (Marinescu, 2013).

The variables to each alternative have positive and negative impacts and the companies keen on assessing its business needs, as well as infrastructure foundation prior taking such decisions. Fundamental points are that most solutions may work within the Cloud and an on-premise. The choice of the platform requires trade-off comparisons between costs and security while optimizing returns. Tullow Oil identifies numerous advantages and disadvantages from PaaS, and the subject of typing software and service is of intense consideration (Bahga & Madisetti, 2013).

One of the variables of comparison is data portability. In on-site storage solutions, firms have all control over the content and hence mobility of infrastructure. Data portability through the clouding option enables the firm to re-use data components within different applications. For instance, if the enterprise engages SaaS products in Customer Relations Management, the commercial terms in usage of such products may be unattractive as compared to other SaaS products that use in-site CRM solutions. Customer data can be retained in the SaaS products with crucial focus on the enterprise's internal operations. The levels of ease in managing the data include removal of data from other forms of CRM solutions (Rhoton, 2009).

In some cases, this is a difficult task. The data structure takes a mutual design that fits certain application processing forms as well as significant transformation necessary in producing data handled by different products. This does not differ from difficulties of having to move data around different products as well as among other forms of the traditional environment. In the traditional environments, customers are able in doing most aspects of their jobs to remain with previous versions of their products. For instance, instead of upgrading to newer and more expensive cloud machinery, Tullow Oil opts to retain the old versions. With the SaaS cloud management solutions, vendors can easily force customers to pay more or risk losing services altogether. The cloud introduces technical problems even with the differences in commercial arrangements making old technical problems more serious.

The second variation is application portability (Marinescu, 2013). For in-house storage mechanisms, there are increased levels of customization of data. In such case, Tullow Oil risks producing data that is not compatible with different application platforms in the industry. Application portability is an enabler of re-usage for application components on cloud PaaS services as well as on other traditional computing platforms. The fact that Tullow Oil has applications built on ascertained cloud PaaS services; the elements of performance, cost, and other reasons may hinder movement to other PaaS services and onto the in-house systems. The ease in shifts...

If such applications use features that have specified platforms, or if the in-house platform interfaces without industry-standard, the levels of ease are hampered (Bahga & Madisetti, 2013).
Application portability calls for standard interfaces as exposed through supporting platforms. Tullow Oil can engage Application Interoperability through enabling industry-standard application while using information communication and service discovery protocols implemented within the platform (Barry, 2012). This is a case of providing Tullow Oil with ample access to the platform and capacitates support for direct application. The cloud PaaS option allows platforms to run on cloud IaaS services so that applications can permit the diversified management of underlying resources.

One of the issues of application portability arising from Tullow Oil's cloud computing is its portability between operational and development areas. Cloud PaaS has particular attractiveness for the development environments based on financial perspectives while avoiding the essence of investing in the expensive systems that remain unused, as development cases are complete. When different environments are used to the run time, in-house systems and different cloud services for Tullow Oil are essential in devising appropriate applications. This is an alternative to the unchanged differences of the environments (Erl, Puttini & Mahmood, 2013). Cloud computing will bring higher levels of development in operations together with the increasing lead of integrated developments. The component works in case the environments are used in developments and operations, and Tullow Oil applies consent to information development and processing operations.

The other variable is platform portability. The in-house computing and data management systems in Tullow Oil pose difficulties in establishing platform compatibility. The platform portability kinds are facilitated through re-using platform components on cloud IaaS services as well as on the non-cloud infrastructure through platform source portability. Tullow Oil can re-use bundles that contain applications and data from supportive platforms based on machine image portability. UNIX operating systems avail illustrations of portability on the platform sources (Bahga & Madisetti, 2013). The system is appreciated as C. programming language. It is critical to establish the system in different hardware through a re-compiled system and a re-written section of small hardware-dependent codes established in C. Alternative operating systems are ported in similar ways. However, this traditional approach to platform portability poses more challenges to Tullow Oil. The reversal of the situation would enable applications portability while advancing applications using standard operating systems and interfaces similar to the re-compiled run on established systems on different hardware (Rhoton, 2009).

Portability of machine image permits the application vendors and enterprises to embrace new ways to achieve applications portability. Tullow Oil can bundle the applications using its platform as well as port the outcome bundles through the Machine Image Portability model. Tullow Oil requires standard programs in representing deployed differences of IaaS as used in similar environments (Barry, 2012).

The other factor in defining suitable solution for Tullow Oil is the application interoperability. Application interoperability ensures the smooth operations its components as established within SaaS and the applications that use PaaS in its platforms applications as IaaS. In traditional enterprise models, the IT environment solely focused on client devices. Application components are completely monolithic applications distributed the applications (Erl, Puttini & Mahmood, 2013). Interoperability requires Tullow Oil to establish a balance between different components and identical components that run on different clouds. For instance, hybrid cloud solutions for Tullow Oil have application components deployed one private cloud with provisions for copies ran into public clouds to address traffic peaks. The components are expected to work coordinatively so that efficiency can be realized.

Tullow Oil's data synchronization is an issue as components within different clouds, and internal resources are working together. This is irrespective of the levels of similarities. The components maintain copies of similar data alongside the copies while establishing consistent states (Furht & Escalante, 2010). Communication of the clouds has a typical command on high latency rates that make synchronization more difficult. The clouds have different points of access control regimes that complicate the tasks involved in moving data along each segment. The overall design should address management of the systems and record sources. Tullow Oil can manage data while evaluating the transitioning labels and the domains destined for the control of cloud service provider or consumer (Barry, 2012).

The proposal achieves data visibility and transparency Tullow Oil in a number of ways. The…