Advantages And Disadvantages Of Cloud Computing In Modern Enterprises

Project Objective

The following report is based on cloud computing technique which is a modern Information Technology paradigm that helps to store and process the variety of information with the least manual effort over the internet. The business units can either access data from their privately owned cloud or a third party based cloud service that is present in some other location. The research has aimed to find out the different advantages as well as the disadvantages of the cloud technology when it is implemented and integrated in the business environment. The research will unfold all the different processes that will explain the process on how the cloud computing forms an integral part of the modern day business units.

           The researcher has identified some of the objectives of the research in detail. The objectives have been determined by the researcher to outcome the different advantages and disadvantages of the mentioned technology. Some of the objectives are as follows;

1. Determining the importance of cloud computing business in the modern business environment
2. To determine and analyze the level of information security provided by the software based on cloud computing systems
3. To identify whether the system meets the requirement of the business unit
4. To provide a recommendation on the renovation and proper maintenance of the system that will help to manage the business more effectively
5. To get a clear picture of cloud based software system that will help in the process of ensuring a proper IT system for making the business much smoother and easier to manage

        The report prepared by the researcher has a huge scope as it has highlighted exclusively on the advantages and disadvantages of the cloud computing system software. The researcher has provided a detailed analysis of the different types of cloud computing servers including the applications of the software (Dinh et al. 2013). Different companies operating in the market have different types of strategies in the market thus it is quite common for the companies to have a difference in their necessities. The difference in the requirements is thus important to determine their choices for the cloud based software. The vast level of discussion regarding the various elements of the cloud technology makes the scope of the research much bigger and wide in size.

         In this section of the report the researcher has in detail reviewed the use and the pros and cons of cloud computing software in the business environment. Cloud computing has a variety of advantages that helps it to be one of the most sought after solutions in the modern business enterprises. The researcher has also discussed about the cons of cloud computing that is believed to be a major hurdle in the business environment.  To make the research more reliable and accurate the researcher has also added the safety measures that are needed to be followed while using the cloud based computing systems. The major reasons for the addition of such different types of elements and factors related to the cloud computing services makes the research more effective and flawless.

 

Figure 1- Cloud Computing Framework

Source- (Hashem et al. 2015)

         According to Leyman, cloud computing refers to the use of a network that is based on some remote servers hosted over the internet. The software is used for storage of the information in different places that are accessible by the users. The places include hard drives, laptops, desktops and other computing devices used by the service users (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). The main use of the cloud computing devices lies on its feature to both store and process the information in the internet itself. Maintaining a cloud based software system in the company helps the management of the company to keep a proper database of the company for using it in different ways.

Project Scope

          The following technology was first used in as early as the 1990’s when a handful of technical experts and some of the technical executives of Compaq Computers hatched the idea of the cloud computing (Fernando et al. 2013). Compaq developed the cloud computing system which was just capable of storing the information and did not have the provision for processing it further. The passage of time increased the use of cloud computing and gradually the technology became an integral part of the total system. The additional features of cloud computing was developed as cloud computing was slowly integrated into using the applications, management of the information of the organization, providing a secured process of data storage and many more as such (Arora et al. 2013). The advancements in the technological process slowly forced the other leading information technology companies to adopt the new system software for their use. The main advantage of using the cloud computing devices as well as software is to retain the information within the organization. This helps the organization to access the important information at any point of time.

Some of the main uses of cloud technology are;

1. Infrastructure as a service and Platform as a service-The companies prefer to use a pay per use scheme for using the present infrastructure of the company. This helps the companies to save the cost of investment to acquire, maintain and manage the different Information Technology infrastructure. On the other hand PAAS is basically used to increase the speedy development on a readymade platform to deploy applications (Almorsy et al. 2016).
2. Private cloud and Hybrid cloud-There are a lot of different incentives that are provided by the companies to use the cloud system. However among the vast majority of such different systems two of the main situations are generally preferred by the organizations (Li et al. 2013). One of them being the private cloud and the other being the hybrid cloud. The test and development process may be limited in time but the adoption of the hybrid system helps to test the application workloads which in turn helps to provide the application of the workloads and therefore provides a initial investment that could have been useless on the failure of the workload.
3. Test and development-The cloud computing system must be used in a test and development environment to test its effectiveness before integrating in the system of the company. The test environment consists of installation and configuration of your platform, setting up the environment with the help of the physical assets, significant manpower and timing. The evolution of cloud computing has been helpful for the company in a number of ways (Wei et al. 2014). The cloud computing environments helps the organization to smoothly carry out the daily operations of the business.
4. Analysis of the large information-The large scale information is stored and processed with the help of cloud computing environment (Chang 2015). The retailers and suppliers extract the data that are derived from the buying patterns of the consumers. Social networking platforms are providing analytics on behavioral patterns that the organizations use to derive the meaningful information that is needed for running the business smoothly (Bitam et al. 2015).
5. File Storage-As mentioned earlier file storage is one of the most important use of the cloud computing system. File storage helps the organization to store all the necessary documents in the system for both present and future references.

The research questions were formulated by the researcher for the questionnaires to answer. They were;

1. What is cloud Computing? What can be the uses of cloud computing?
2. How can cloud computing be installed and properly integrated in a business environment?
3. What are some of the main cloud deployment models that are adopted by the organization?

Qualitative Research

           Qualitative Research involves the use of unstructured and unreliable data sources and information collecting methods that includes observations, research interviews, surveys, documents and many more as similar to such things (Chang et al. 2013). Qualitative research is a theoretical form of research and thus includes a detailed research procedure. It provides the details of what, where and when. The steps involved in such a research include;

1. Preparing the research
2. Deciding on a particular question and making it the main focus of the study
3. Conducting a literature review
4. Evaluating the need for the qualitative research
5. Taking care of the sample size
6. Research methodology
7. Analyzing the data

          Sampling is the collection of the information from the participants that are selected for interviewing during the conduction of the research.

              The researcher considered a sample size of 50 persons to conduct the research. The sample size was considered on the basis of the research.

Quantitative Research

               Quantitative Research methods refer to the objective calculations and the different mathematical, statistical and numerical analysis of the information collected through the polls or the research questionnaire and survey (Garrison et al. 2015). The methods that are followed during the quantitative methods are;

1. Identifying the research problem
2. Reviewing the literature
3. Describing the theoretical framework
4. Methodology
5. Discussion of the results
6. Conclusion 

         The research has been organized in a proper and efficient manner. All the necessary specifications, factors and elements have been discussed properly by the researcher. However the research lacks some important elements which should and must have been considered by the researcher before the completition of the research. The researcher has taken a limited number of references and has omitted some of the main journals and earlier researches which could have made the research more compact in nature. The absence of some important statistics including the proper estimation of the cloud computing frameworks used in the companies and their period of use has hampered the cause of the research. The research conducted by the researcher has overall fulfilled the aims and objectives but has lots of area for improvement.

 

Figure 2- Timeline 

Source- (As Created by the Author) 

Conclusion

         The researcher has been able to fulfill all the aims and objectives of the research. The research has provided all the necessary details regarding the cloud computing technology. The advantages and disadvantages of the project will be further discussed in the actual project. Analyzing the whole project it can be concluded that the research is specific and has been able to meet all the necessary specifications. After reading this particular project the readers will get a clear idea about cloud computing and can apply them in their researches in the future.

References

Almorsy, M., Grundy, J. and Müller, I., 2016. An analysis of the cloud computing security problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.

Arora, R., Parashar, A. and Transforming, C.C.I., 2013. Secure user data in cloud computing using encryption algorithms. International journal of engineering research and applications, 3(4), pp.1922-1926.

Bitam, S., Mellouk, A. and Zeadally, S., 2015. VANET-cloud: a generic cloud computing model for vehicular Ad Hoc networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 22(1), pp.96-102.

Chang, V., 2015. A proposed cloud computing business framework. Nova Science Publisher.

Chang, V., Walters, R.J. and Wills, G., 2013. The development that leads to the Cloud Computing Business Framework. International Journal of Information Management, 33(3), pp.524-538.

Dinh, H.T., Lee, C., Niyato, D. and Wang, P., 2013. A survey of mobile cloud computing: architecture, applications, and approaches. Wireless communications and mobile computing, 13(18), pp.1587-1611.

Fernando, N., Loke, S.W. and Rahayu, W., 2013. Mobile cloud computing: A survey. Future generation computer systems, 29(1), pp.84-106.

Garrison, G., Wakefield, R.L. and Kim, S., 2015. The effects of IT capabilities and delivery model on cloud computing success and firm performance for cloud supported processes and operations. International Journal of Information Management, 35(4), pp.377-393.

Hashem, I.A.T., Yaqoob, I., Anuar, N.B., Mokhtar, S., Gani, A. and Khan, S.U., 2015. The rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research issues. Information Systems, 47, pp.98-115.

Li, M., Yu, S., Zheng, Y., Ren, K. and Lou, W., 2013. Scalable and secure sharing of personal health records in cloud computing using attribute-based encryption. IEEE transactions on parallel and distributed systems, 24(1), pp.131-143.

Rittinghouse, J.W. and Ransome, J.F., 2016. Cloud computing: implementation, management, and security. CRC press.

Wei, L., Zhu, H., Cao, Z., Dong, X., Jia, W., Chen, Y. and Vasilakos, A.V., 2014. Security and privacy for storage and computation in cloud computing. Information Sciences, 258, pp.371-386.