Cloud Computing: DevOps Practices to Secure and Improve AWS Pipeline; Factors that Influence Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to Adopt Cloud Computing and How SMEs are Changing Economies

Cloud Computing is extremely prevalent in business and is now one of the main technologies that businesses incorporate to handle their data and their day-to-day operations. While developing my prospectus, I was at an internship with a fintech company where I oversaw the operations that were being done on the cloud pipeline. Through this experience I noticed that one of the most common issues that companies experience is scalability and how cloud computing can help solve this. Additionally, by working on the cloud pipeline, issues of security and data handling also arose. My prospectus focused on how business can utilize cloud computing the grow scalability and the technical side focused on how cloud security infrastructure can be improved. The STS research developed into understanding the impact and implications that cloud computing has had on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the economic impact of this. Moreover, the technical research focused on the types of security issues that cloud computing has which causes millions of user’s data to be stolen, and practices that businesses can incorporate to prevent this.

The technical portion of my thesis was a state-of-the-art paper analyzing my internship and focuses on the topic of cloud security and best practices. The research discussed the value of data monitoring as it relates to cloud performance and application deployment. Cloud computing is responsible for handling a lot of different aspects of a company from data protection, application deployment to scaling computing power. Due to the vast array of uses for the cloud, data monitoring software can be integrated into the cloud to create easy to understand information which provides companies valuable insight on performance. The research highlights my experience integrating this technology in a fintech company as a mechanism to provide better understanding of the cloud and more security. Additionally, the research highlights the value of procedure in companies and how company principles are fundamental to creating a secure product. When deploying new applications or versions of software it is important that there is a procedure to verify the code before being deployed so that there are no future errors. The technical research is extremely valuable since it mentions the practices that a cloud banking company uses to secure their cloud infrastructure and as cloud computing is being more adopted by companies, these procedures can prove vital to company security.

The STS research aims to help governments and institutions the impact that cloud computing can have on economies as it is a new technology that is being heavily adopted without an understanding of societal implications. The research looks at data around the growth of SMEs and how that correlates the adopting of cloud computing. Once illustrating the correlation between two, research on the affects that cloud computing has had on businesses as well as case studies of the adoption of cloud computing in countries is used to highlight trends that can occur with SMEs. One major reason that cloud computing has had such an impact on SMEs is because it lowers the enter cost to markets so that small companies can compete with the larger companies that use to have all the market share. Additionally, SMEs need fewer employees which lowers their costs because of the cost effectiveness of cloud computing. With growing SMEs this can promote domestic spending which can improve local economies. The research draws evidence from various studies to understand the potential of cloud computing as it relates to SMEs so that governments are better able to make informed decisions that help economic growth.

The two projects are tightly coupled to provide a complete and concise argument on cloud computing and its impact. The technical researched influenced the direction of the STS research. The technical research was based upon a reflection of my internship with a in depth study of cloud security. However, the topic of scalability kept on arising through this research. Ultimately, the technical research enriched the STS research by presenting the question of how businesses has changed because of more scalability due to cloud computing, by studying it impact of technology and society I wanted to focus on a specific section of the market and thought that SMEs are most likely to benefit from cloud computing because of the cheap pricing options for the computing benefit received. Through this process, I better understood how technology will always alter society and it is important to understand to what scale this might be on.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Technical Advisor: Rosanne Vrugtman
STS Advisor: Kathryn Neeley