Impact Of Cloud Computing In Business

Project Objective

Discuss about the Impact of Cloud Computing in Business.

With the advent of the digital era business operations are becoming complicated as information is treated as the main resource. So every business needs a smooth single entry solution in a cost effective way to cope up with the environmental changes. With the technological advancements business can take reward of the above efforts by utilizing the concept of cloud computing. Cloud computing can drive business operation from its complex forms to a smooth form (Damsgaard & Scheepers 2001). Business of all trade focus on profit and by utilizing the concept of cloud computing business can earn maximum profit with low budget. Access to data and other process can get done via promised inbuilt software. Even the business becomes portable as the end user can access from anywhere via the device used. Business is getting transformed to smooth and sophisticated form via cloud computing (Rahul et al, 2012). Irrespective of the workers of the IT departments the other departments gets active with the advent of the cloud computing applications. With legal licensing the cost of cloud computing can get monitored with proper security and integrity. This helps business to go for the concept of cloud computing whether it’s small or big. And even the package system can get altered or updated in a dynamic manner as per the need of the business. Before going for the change an organization should analyze some aspects that are very crucial to make the cloud computing fruitful (Linthicum 2009). The factors that are important will be discussed in the literature review section.

The topic selection for the business research lies in the fact that cloud computing is a user friendly interface for the users and more over the user can retrieve data without having much knowledge of IT and perform their operation smoothly. The concept of cloud computing is new and getting upgraded through advancement in technology. The users are using the data in real time and real time is the best time to correct errors. Pros and Cons of cloud computing will be the core research activities.

The primary objective of the research: Analyse the impact of cloud computing in business.

Secondary objectives:

1. Cloud computing as a tool for decreasing risk and increasing business revenue
2. Determining Pros and Cons behind cloud computing in business
3. Analyzing Cloud computing as driver for fighting competition
4. Project Scope

The scope of the project suits from small start-up companies to big business organization as per the requirements of the business operation and cost of operation. As the project needs to get completed in a specific period of time the researcher faced the following limitations:

• Time is limited
• The primary source of data is limited so mostly secondary data is used.
• Limited edition of literature review was found of the proposed topic

Literature Review

Throughout the report the researcher has tried to distinguish the changes that cloud computing can bring in business operations. As the cost of hardware components reduces with time every company can increase profit margin with low investment. Critical analysis of Pros and cons of cloud computing is analyzed to great extent. Strategies required to overcome the risk associated with cloud computing is recommended by the researcher. 

Background

In this section critical analysis of the literature review of the impact of cloud computing is done. Critical analysis of the literature review enhances the research validation by data analysis against the problem statement of the research objectives (Saunders et al, 2009).

In cloud computing internet computer technology are used in a standard manner by tuning the capabilities under a protocol. With minimum effort of the management of the organization the operations are processed under a network access by sharing the relevant information under a single point for gaining the results is termed as cloud computing. The data are stored, accessed and retrieved under a protocol for running the business in a competent manner with the environmental changes.

In information technology the term cloud can be defined as the remote hub of data access where the date get stored and retrieved from any stand point, highlighted by Nabil, 2010. The definition of cloud computing is dynamic as various researchers have produced ideologies of their own about the concept. User can access data with the compatible application provided by the provider that gets linked with the cloud.  The architecture of cloud computing is divided into four parts.

Variation of Cloud Computing Concept

Now a day’s various types of cloud computing packages are available in the market and so based on the requirement of the business and its size the package are chosen. Some common types of cloud computing that are in use are analyzed below:

• (IaaS): INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE
• (PaaS): PLATFORM AS A SERVICE
• (SaaS): SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE

Small business house with limited business operation use IaaS. Even this package startup business can use for moving ahead with nominal costing.

When the business operation size is huge and the tasks are complicated Paas and IaaS are utilized as SaaS has limited service and moreover this type of cloud computing software installation is highly cost intensive. Big business organization is taking advantages of third type of services. Amazon is using the components of IaaS and gaining huge profits in the market by being the biggest bookstore virtually. Several other IaaS are like the Google compute engine, HP cloud Etc.

Variation of Cloud Computing Concept

Companies using PaaS type of cloud computing are Microsoft Azure, SAP weaver cloud, and Amazon elastic beanstalk.

Case Study

For enhancing the validation of the business research the researcher has taken Google, Amazon, and IBM as the service provider. The global users choose the service providers as per their choice and requirement.

	IaaS	SaaS	PaaS
GOOGLE	The user using this model gets access to millions of information in a short period of time and from various options they can choose their requirements.	Via Google Docs the service provider is placing this interface.	The users are able to store, update, retrieve, and analyze data as per their requirements via Google App engine.
AMAZON	Multiple services are offered to the customers for the growth of the providers with better functioning of the users.	This service is not provided by Amazon	The users need to pay for the interface that Amazon is providing to the users.
IBM	Open interface interested users are provided by this interface. Public, Private and hybrid clouds are offered to the users.	Loyal customers who have their own business functioning uses this interface.	End users are using static computing infrastructure.

Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

Reason behind business getting transformed to cloud computing:

By 2020 it is forecasted that cloud computing will cross 240 billion$ market value (Columbus 2013). Cloud computing is transforming the complicated business operations to a smooth operations for increasing the profit margin by reducing the expenditure (Rahul et al, 2012). Some of the benefits of cloud computing is discussed below:

Optimization of the cost of investment is one of the biggest advantages of going for cloud computing concept in the current business scenario. Companies can take advantage of the cloud computing model by either of the below given mechanism:

1. Reduce the running cost of the technology that is in use
2. Reduce cost of capital expenditure and increase cost of operating expenditure
3. Getting the cost of technology reduced
4. Increase business values by focusing on core competencies

The above benefits are taken by business in their initial stages or the business that has just set up the cloud computing concept. Other than this there are several pros for getting business transformed to cloud computing.

Pricing based on usage concept can be used in a pay as you go pricing concept where the users need to pay as per their usage of the IT support based on their business operations. So it suits the decision makers to purchase IT supports as per their budgets and requirements. So it is a low cost intensive move for the business to go for cloud computing model for their daily operations. As per the demand with time the infrastructure can get optimized in a dynamic manner for coping up with environmental changes and fight competition. The decision maker can regulate the cost management in a smooth and viable manner via a user friendly interface. 

Usage based pricing protocol enhances rise in operational expenditure from capital expenditure for business (Roomi et al 2013). Start up business or business with limited resources can run their business by investing nominally in their fixed investment via cloud computing model. Without investing a lot in infrastructure development some common components of ICT like computers, internet can be purchased for taking the advantage of the whole cloud computing model. Business can focus on operational expenditure instead of focusing on cost of expenditure for gaining return with low cost cloud computing model instead of remaining stick to high cost investment(Columbus 2013).

Case Study

Business owners can reduce the cost of the business by eliminating the cost of purchasing fixed cost hardware components in daily basis and not only that the maintenance cost also gets reduced. Beside that the service provider of the cloud computing assures the security and reliability of the functioning. Once the implementation is done the business can take advantage of the cloud computing model with a user friendly mode. The business operations become more flexible as whenever required the service can be updated and the obsolete operations can get eliminated when required. However for every operation some investments are required for purchasing software’s and other functional activities of cloud computing.

Controlling risk in business operations is another important pros of the cloud computing model. The cloud computing support service providers are having team to handle all type of risks that are associated in cyber business operations. No one can be expert in every field and hence the business can get support to run the business and fight competition as risks can get anticipated by adopting cloud computing model. In a single package end user can get benefit of various business operations to risk management. The run time problems get eliminated once it is conveyed to the service providers. If the problem is not solvable the SaaS provider it gets solved by the external IaaS. Mostly the risks are eliminated by the SaaS service providers for the end user of the cloud computing model.

Total cost of ownership (TCO) can be easily calculated by the end users as the model providers always propose a transparent cost of the required service without any hidden charges (ENISA 2012). So as per the bid end users can compare their requirement and purchase their needs with respect to time without going for mass investment in the initial stage. Even often single user packages can be shared with multi user discipline without extra charges. Resource can get shared and utilized to its extent with cloud computing model with low cost budget for better output. 

Challenge of cloud computing

Beside superficial benefits there are some challenges in adopting cloud computing in business as said by (Reza 2013). As said by (Anthony 2011) the efficiency of the concept goes down when the utilization is more than 80% as the hardware peripherals becomes inactive for generating desired outputs. Other than that there are several challenges that must be taken into consideration before adopting cloud computing in business and are discussed below:

Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

Data thieving: as per (Anthony 2011) it is seen that security issues holds the main impact in adopting cloud computing according to the survey of International Data Corporation (IDC). Mathew 2013 concludes most of the service provider of cloud computing don’t have their own server and they rely on third party server, this is a major issues in reducing the data security of the users. Report of (Abhinay et al. 2013) justify that more than 37% cloud computing users is getting affected from external hackers. In real life the case of Zappos is a true example of the malicious cyber attack. 

Malware injection assault: in this type of attack the hackers injects malicious code inside the cloud of the user and get access to user’s database said by Te-Shun 2013. SQL injection is the common strategy used by hackers for getting access to the database of the cloud highlighted by Sara & Kausar 2012.

Wrapping assault: in this attack the hackers utilize extensible markup language for gaining access to the web server highlighted by (Wen & Ling 2010). By penetrating the cloud the unauthorized users gets access to the user’s database by reducing the security of the cloud highlighted by (Subramaniam & Deepa 2015).

Authentication attack: business using ineffective encryption system might get affected by this attack where the hackers hacks the cloud in the authorization step of the web server as described by Subashini & Kavith 2011.

Denial of service attack (DoS): This type of attack occurs in the peripherals either it can be in the network or in the CPU. In this type of attack usually the users don’t get access to their server as the hacker’s miscues the stored data of the cloud, highlighted by (Wang, et al. 2014).

Data privacy: the issue related to data privacy depends on the control and compliance of the users, improper operation management of the user increase reduces the data privacy level, justified by Waleed & Li (2016).  It is the responsibility of the users to store and retrieve data with validation for insuring data security of the cloud, addressed by Choubey & Namdeo( 2015).

Strategies for resolving challenge of cloud computing

As discussed above cloud computing is having some bad effects that need to get resolved before going for cloud computing adoption in the organization. Below mentioned strategies can rectify the problems associated with cloud computing.

Data thieving resolution: this type of threats can be reduced by the applications of generating new codes after the end of every session; this will conceal the penetration of hackers to enter the cloud for malfunctioning as suggested by Angadi et al. 2013. The control and monitoring process of the server plays an important role in reducing this kind of risk as it’s controllable.

Malware assault resolution: for reducing this type of challenge the server should interfere in cross checking of the operating system related to security issues with the user to avoid the opportunity of the hackers to inject malware in the cloud as said by (Kazi & Susan 2010).

Wrapping assault resolution: the resolution for this is provided by Apurva et al. 2013; the server should generate extra bit security system for saving the operating system so that the hackers find it difficult to penetrate the cloud and get access to data.

Authentication attack resolution: as per the suggestion of (Sumitra, et al. 2014), better key management program can reduce this type of risks, as better coordination between the server and the user via ID management increases the security of the cloud.

Denial of service attack resolution: as per the suggestion of the (Poonam & Sujata 2013) this type of risk can be reduced by utilizing the concept of firewall and signature. The use of firewall and signature will hike the security system and reduce threat from external hackers.

Conclusions:

The report focused on the adoption of cloud computing in business and the pros and cons associated with it. It is seen that there are various service providers in the market where the giant players are competing for money with their unique service interface.

Profound knowledge about the mechanism of cloud computing is shared within the report and mostly secondary source of data are used for the critical analysis. Both pros and cons are associated with adopting the cloud computing mechanism in business. For the competencies of the mechanism business gains profits and for the cons business operation gets affected and incurs loss.

The objective of the research is examined through the critical analysis of the literature review and theories. Cloud computing mechanism will not only enhance the profit margin but will lead to innovation among the business environment.

Beside advantages there are certain challenges in developing cloud computing. The researcher has proposed strategies that can reduce threat of cloud computing. Standardization and virtualization process will allow the user to use the data that are in need with a user friendly interface with proper rules and regulations. Via cloud computing the information within the business can get shared smoothly without barriers that will lead to better decision making process for the wellbeing of the business and better job satisfaction of the employees.

From the report it can be concluded that cloud computing adoption in business will lead to profit maximization without increasing the expenditure cost and the pros holds more weighted advantages compared to cons.

References

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