Select an organization that has leveraged Cloud Computing technologies in an attempt to improve profitability or to give them a competitive advantage. Research the organization to understand the challenges that they faced and how they intended to use Cloud Computing to overcome their challenges. The paper should include the following sections each called out with a header.

• Company Overview: The section should include the company name, the industry they are in and a general overview of the organization.
• Challenges: Discuss the challenges the organization had that limited their profitability and/or competitiveness and how they planned to leverage Cloud Computing to overcome their challenges.
• Solution: Describe the organization's Cloud Computing implementation and the benefits they realized from the implementation. What was the result of implementing Cloud Computing? Did they meet their objectives for fall short?
• Conclusion: Summarize the most important ideas from the paper and also make recommendations or how they might have achieved even greater success.

There should be at least three scholarly sources listed on the the paper.

 

Developers are continuously trying to integrate cloud technology into business in numerous ways which can ultimately result in benefitting business activities. People having "cloud on their mind" have been lured by the vast promise associated with cloud computing.

Cloud computing is a new loom which is being accomplished by many industries in the world. We can do number of things using cloud computing. It is a talk of the town in computing and business industry. Cloud computing is gaining popularity and provide a lot of opportunities for the business. Cloud computing is the driving force in the information technology world.

AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

The automotive companies create an operating system, cloud indigenous applications, the internet of things, devising wide-ranging software development methodology which has the power to transform it into a global powerhouse with the help of cloud computing platforms. For example, the world's second-largest car, manufacturer company Volkswagen uses the open source cloud computing platform to build a private cloud to host websites for its brand like Porsche, Audi, VW.

VOLKSWAGEN is one of the many automotive companies that are leveraging transformational technologies for a digital future.

GENERAL OVERVIEW OF VOLKSWAGEN

Volkswagen Group, also called Volkswagen AG, major German automobile manufacturer, founded by the German government in 1937 to mass-produce a low-priced "people's car." Headquarters are in Wolfsburg, Germany.

The company was originally operated by the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront), a Nazi organization. The Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who was responsible for the original design of the car, was hired by the German Labour Front in 1934, and ground was broken for a new factory in the state of Lower Saxony in 1938. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 occurred before mass production could begin, and the factory was repurposed to produce military equipment and vehicles. Volkwagen's military involvement made its factory a target for Allied bombers, and by the end of the war the factory was in ruins. It was rebuilt under British supervision, and mass production of the Volkswagen began in 1946. Control of the company was transferred in 1949 to the West German government and the state of Lower Saxony. By that time, more than half of the passenger cars produced in the country were Volkswagens.

CHALLENGES

Competition from small cars with more-modern designs and the company's increasingly troubled finances eventually dictated a change in corporate philosophy toward developing more-contemporary and sportier car models. As a result, Volkswagen began phasing out its rear-engine cars in the 1970s, replacing them with front-engine front-wheel-drive designs. The first of those new cars was the short-lived K70 in 1970, followed by the Passat in 1973. Most significant, however, was the Golf, initially called the Rabbit in the United States, which was introduced in 1974. The Golf was an instant sales success, effectively replacing the Beetle in the company's lineup and ultimately becoming Volkswagen's best-selling model worldwide.

Joint ownership of Volkswagen by the West German government and the state of Lower Saxony continued until 1960, when the company was mostly denationalized with the sale of 60 percent of its stock to the public. Since the 1950s Volkswagen has operated plants throughout much of the world, including in Mexico, Brazil, China, and the United States. In addition to passenger cars, the company also produces vans and commercial vehicles. Volkswagen owns several other automotive companies, including Audi and Porsche in Germany, SEAT (Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo) in Spain, Škoda in the Czech Republic, Bentley in the United Kingdom, Lamborghini in Italy, and Bugatti in France.

In mid-2015 Volkswagen briefly held the distinction of being the world's largest car manufacturer by volume after surpassing Toyota Motor Corporation. However, shortly thereafter Volkswagen faced a public relations crisis when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the manufacturer's diesel-powered cars contained software that altered the vehicle's performance in order to pass emissions tests. Volkswagen admitted to installing the "defeat device," and it recalled more than 10 million automobiles worldwide. In the United States alone, the carmaker faced fines of more than $4 billion, and several Volkswagen officials later were found guilty of various crimes. Despite the scandal, Volkswagen sales worldwide continued to increase.

CLOUD ARCHITECTS AT VOLKSWAGEN

Volkswagen relies on cloud computing, and the company needs cloud architects like Hischam Abul Ola to develop the strategy for doing this.

The development of Volkswagen cloud architectures is in the hands of IT experts like Abul Ola. Cloud architects are the generalists in the IT departments, whose job it is to develop suitable cloud strategies and set up IT environments so that users feel at home in them. Cloud architects need technical competence, knowledge of programming languages such as Java or Python as well as a computer scientist's know-how and a basic understanding of the processes needed to store, link and structure data.

As a cloud architect, Abul Ola works to configure the right solution for each task with a suitable technology stack.

The cloud is also changing the way people work, and that has its advantages. "Agile methods enable fast and efficient solutions," says Abul Ola. "We keep to them ourselves, because they allow quick adaptations to new requirements. Our motto is: plan less, do more," he explains. For example, in the use of chatbots and machine learning: "To speed up internal release processes, we simply started with several drivers to get to know the possible applications for Volkswagen." All this requires a lot of communication, spontaneous conversations and discussions.

IMPLEMENTATION OF CLOUD COMPUTING

In a bid to trim costs, consolidate data collection and boost efficiency, the Volkswagen Group is developing its own cloud computing platform with help from Amazon that could save hundreds of millions.

The company initially launched its cloud server with Volkswagen Passenger Cars plants in Chemnitz, Wolfsburg and Polkowice, Poland.

In 2020, they intend to bring 15 further plants into the Cloud, according to Gerd Walker, head of Production of the Volkswagen Group, who noted that work on the project continued during the shutdown of facilities due to the coronavirus pandemic, giving the company a good start on the project. They are now forcing the pace and taking the Industrial Cloud to a large number of plants. This year, up to 15 further plants from the Audi, Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Porsche and Components brands are to be connected. The program includes the plants at Brunswick, Emden, Hanover, Ingolstadt, Kassel, Leipzig, Neckarsulm, Salzgitter, Zuffenhausen and Zwickau in Germany as well as Martorell in Spain, Palmela in Portugal, Gyoer in Hungary and Mladá Boleslav and Vrchlabi in the Czech Republic.

The functionality they jointly developed on top of AWS is providing a cost-effective and standardized way to collect and organize plant data into the Industrial Cloud and accelerate the delivery of use cases that further improve the efficiency of Volkswagen's manufacturing and logistics processes.

In the first step, the group defined 15 different applications that are now being made available as standardized apps for all plants. The effort focuses primarily on the predictive maintenance of machines and the reduction of reworking on vehicles through artificial intelligence.

The implementation of the first 15 apps alone is expected to net cost savings of about €200 million, or $219.1 million, through the end of 2025.

Currently, 220 experts within the group are working on the project and the number is due to rise to about 500 by the end of 2020. The solutions and applications currently being developed by Volkswagen are also to be made available to other companies within an open system. The development work on these applications will then continue together with the other companies.

Some of the applications already created for VW's Industrial Cloud include:

• An algorithm using artificial intelligence to calculate requirements for driverless transport systems for plant logistics, developed by SynaOS;
• Software for optimizing plant efficiency using overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), developed by Dürr; and
• An application for generating a digital twin in the cloud to simulate the capacity deployment and maintenance intervals of machines without intervening in the physical production process, developed by ASCon Systems.

BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Since the Volkswagen Group began using cloud computing around two and a half years ago, IT functions and systems have gradually been lifted into the cloud, new applications are developed in the cloud, and tasks are solved with applications from the cloud. Cloud computing, in other words the provision of IT services such as computing power and storage over the Internet, is becoming increasingly important.

One example is the Volkswagen car configurator. It was introduced (technical term: migrated) into the cloud one and a half years ago, and this benefits customers and everyone interested in Volkswagens. That's because, especially in the evening hours when many more people have the time to use it, more capacities can be made available to the program through the cloud so that everything continues to run smoothly. These speaks of elasticity.

By using cloud computing, suppliers and machinery producers will be able to leverage the potential of production data even more effectively and also improve product quality.

The advantages of an overarching network include more efficient control of material flows, early detection and correction of supply shortages and process glitches, and enhanced operation of machines and systems. Some concrete examples: if a truck gets stuck in traffic, a component is defective, or a machine breaks down, everyone involved will know immediately. All the information will be available on the cloud.

The aim of the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud is to gain an overall view of all the data. The resulting transparency will lead to different possible types of optimization. Volkswagen will be able to act even more rapidly because the Industrial Cloud will enable smart control in real time - simultaneously in Wolfsburg, Shanghai, Chattanooga and Uitenhage.

Reducing cost is one result. But the main aim is to become faster, more transparent and more secure.

CONCLUSION

Greater efficiency, transparency and flexibility - with the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud, the Group is laying the foundation for the digitalization of its production and logistics.

The Volkswagen Group is using this solution to go live with Industry 4.0. The cloud-based platform with its streamlined data exchange is a crucial prerequisite for making innovations available rapidly at all sites. Examples include intelligent robotics and data analytics that can evaluate and compare processes on a trans-site basis. The cloud-based platform will enable new applications to be scaled up directly to all the plants.

Volkswagen is setting up its Industrial Cloud as an open platform. The aim is to integrate companies from the automotive industry's entire value chain. The long-term goal is to integrate the Volkswagen Group's global supply chain: more than 30,000 sites run by more than 1,500 suppliers and partner companies. It is also possible that the cloud platform will be made available to other carmakers. This will result in a continuously expanding worldwide industrial ecosystem.

Volkswagen will be doing its own additional encryption of all the data compiled in the Industrial Cloud. The company is setting the highest standards for this. The Volkswagen Group and Amazon Web Services have decided to have the Deutsche Cybersecurity Organization (DCSO) in Berlin lead the way in developing the architecture for the cybersecurity solutions needed.

Cloud computing provides a scalable and elastic way to support business operations from remote locations and unprecedented data computation and storage capabilities form the foundation of the industry. Cloud computing offers various features to the industries like scaling your needs without the hardware headaches, reduce innovation costs, use the right machine for the job, draw insights from data where it lives, simplify your operations.