In this milestone, you will explain the concepts of virtualization based on the business scenario provided. This milestone will prepare you for your Project One that is due in Module Five. If you have questions or want to share ideas about this project, please post them to the General Questions discussion.

Scenario

The company you work for, Packages Plus Delivery (PPD), currently houses its physical computing environments on site. Packages Plus Delivery is growing, including the number of packages delivered and the number of employees hired each quarter. As a result of this growth and to better meet the needs of the clients, organizational leadership recently made the decision to virtualize all computing environments.

Leadership is deciding between internal virtualization and the use of an external vendor. They are also considering a move to cloud-based architecture but want to know more about the risks and cost benefits of moving to a cloud environment.

As a virtual solutions analyst at Packages Plus Delivery, you serve on the Virtualization Transition Committee. This group has been asked to create a presentation that emphasizes how the decision to move to virtualization will improve business strategy, and what the options are if the company considers moving the infrastructure to a cloud environment. Your presentation will ensure that leadership makes an informed decision.

Prompt

You have been asked to create a presentation that supports the company’s decision to move to virtualization. Within the presentation, you must address each of the following critical elements:

1. Describe how the company’s decision to move to a virtual computing environment will impact its business strategy. If you use sources, be sure to provide a citation.

You must include:

• The benefits of your company’s decision to move to a virtual computing environment
• The constraints of the decision to move to a virtual computing environment
• An explanation of how moving to virtualization will impact the scalability of the business
  • The costs of moving to virtualization
  • The hardware and software, and other technologies involved

1. In order to provide the most detailed information, you need to compare the implications of the organization moving to a virtual environment using its hardware servers in-house with the implications of using a third-party vendor to virtualize. You may create a visual (such as a Venn diagram) or write a passage to explain these concepts. You will need to compare the following factors and describe the advantages, disadvantages, and risks associated with each:

• Cost: equipment such as hardware and software, maintenance (e.g., upgrades and backups), licensing, security (e.g., shared responsibility, on premises)
• Capacity
• Agility
• Service availability

Guidelines for Submission

Your submission should be a presentation file (.ppt, PDF, .doc).

Your presentation must include:

• The evidence that supports your company’s decision to move to virtualization
• A comparison of creating a virtual environment in-house to using an external vendor

Supporting Materials

The following resources may help support your work on the project:

How to Design and Deliver an Effective Presentation
This document shows you how to design an effective presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, Screencastify, and Apple Keynote.

Packages Plus Delivery images
You are welcome to use these images of the company’s logo to enhance your presentation.

The questions below will ask you to consider how the following critical elements relate to your issue (VIRTUAL HEALTHCARE/TELEHEALTH):

• argument*
• key points*
• audience*
• goal*
• potential resources*
• evidence*

This process will allow you to develop a plan for persuading readers to agree with your argument. This plan will be helpful in keeping your thought process on track when you begin writing and revising your essay. Each response should be one fully developed paragraph in length.

As you work on the Writing Notes, remember to refer to the assignment guidelines and rubric below to make sure you’re fulfilling each aspect of the assignment.

Assignment Guidelines and Rubric

Overview: Persuasion is a constant in each of our lives. No matter where we look, what we read, what we see, or who we interact with, we are inevitably going to encounter some form of persuasion. Advertisements want us to buy things. Newspapers and television want to convince us of how we should feel about events. We are put into positions where we must defend our thoughts and beliefs to others, and the process we apply is typically some form of persuasion.

Persuasive writing is one of the most powerful forms of writing—it has the ability to influence one’s thoughts, and also the ability to change one’s mind about a particular issue. The persuasive essay is an ideal tool for supporting an opinion on an issue using researched facts and information. It also gives you the chance to recognize an opposing viewpoint and refute it, noting that those who hold the opposing viewpoint are the intended audience of the piece.

Prompt: For this assignment, you will use a guided prompt to write notes that will help you better understand how to approach the persuasive essay. As you follow the guide, remember to apply what you have learned Modules One and Two in the course when discussing your issue. In Module Three, you will build upon these writing notes to prepare a more refined Writing Plan, which will help to prepare you to draft your persuasive essay.

For this Writing Notes assignment, the following critical elements must be addressed in one fully developed paragraph each:

1. Writing Notes: Use these writing notes as a way to gather your thoughts and determine your strategy for writing your persuasive essay. This process will allow you to develop a potential structure for effectively persuading readers to agree with your argument. These notes will be helpful in keeping your thought process on track when you begin writing and revising your essay.
   1. Your argument is the main point that you are trying to make in your essay. It should clearly state your opinion on your issue. Describe the argument to be addressed in your persuasive essay, and include how the argument is connected to your major, the major you are considering pursuing, or your field of work.
   2. Key points are pieces of evidence that support an author’s main argument. What are three possible key points for your selected issue? How do they support your main argument?
   3. Your audience is the person or people you are addressing in your essay. Who is the audience that will be reading your essay? What potential challenges will you encounter in supporting your argument with this audience?
   4. Your goal is the end result that you wish to achieve in writing this essay. What goal do you hope to accomplish? What will this essay need to be successful?
   5. Potential resources are pieces of evidence that could be used to support your argument. List potential resources that could be used as supporting evidence for your argument, and provide a brief description of each and how it will reinforce your argument.
   6. Using the supporting resources you identified above, list each of the points of your argument with the resources that support them. This process will help you begin to form an effective essay structure.
   7. Determine aspects of your argument that would be effectively supported with evidence. Defend your choices.