Benefits And Risks Of Cloud Computing For Businesses

Advantages of Cloud Computing

Question:

Discuss about the Analysis of Manufacturing and Services Sectors.

Cloud computing is a technology that is used for delivery of information technology related services in which the resources can be recovered from the internet with the help of web based tools and applications through the direct connection of a server. Instead of storing the files as no proprietary and hard drive or local storage device, cloud based storage, the cloud based storage makes it accessible to the remote database. Until the electronic device is able to access the web it is required for it to access the data for the software programs to run it (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2016).   The reason behind calling it cloud computing because the data and information that is able in the cloud computing can be found in the “the cloud” and there is no need for the user to specifically placed in order it is accessible. The companies that specialize in providing the cloud services let the users to store the files and applications that are on the remote servers so that later on all the data can be accessed from the web (Oliveira, Thomas & Espadanal, 2014).

Cloud computing is a very popular trending these days and many companies. It is provided by many companies, this research will focus on the concept of cloud computing and later on benefits and challenges of cloud computing. The readers will get a clear picture about cloud computing after this research paper and will also able to judge to what extent is cloud computing beneficial or harmful (Juels, Oprea & Bowers, 2017).

Cost effective- Cloud computing is one the most cost effective methods for utilizing, sustaining and upgrade. Traditionally desktop software are too costly for the business. When the licensing cost is added for many users it proves to be costlier for the business but the clod computing is slightly cheaper. There is one-time payment option that is available which is very reasonable for the business to utilize (Avram, 2014).

Security- Although there are so many cases of security breaches of cloud computing, still there are many arguments that it much more safer than the house computing.

Manageability- The management of cloud computing is very simple with the help of central administration of the resources, it helps in vendor managed infrastructure and SLA backed contracts. There is updating of information technology system and the maintenance are completely this happens because the service provider removes all the resources (Fernando, Loke & Rahayu, 2013).

Cost Effectiveness

Down time- This particular feature is considered as one of the negative features of cloud computing, there is no such provider of cloud computing who would say that they can resist the service outages. Since the cloud-computing program is internet based this signifies that accessibility of business depends upon internet connection. The hardware of cloud computing often fails like all other hardware. Till the time there is no internet connection, it is impossible for the business to carry out any activities in cloud computing. The robust data plan can solve this issues but only for some time. The cellular service is viable in absence of internet access and power cuts (Bera, Misra & Rodrigues, 2015).

Vulnerable to attacks- Each requirement of the cloud computing is designed for the internet. It is a very well known fact that nothing that is connected to the internet is not secure, even the best teams fails to manage the security breaches and cyber attacks. The data storage in the cloud makes the business more likely to the get attacked by hackers and threats. There are always chances that there is lurking of the stealth of the data that are sensitive (Apostu et al.,2013)

Inflexibility- The cloud computing software is not flexible and this is a very serious issue for the business. Only few vendors allow easy transfer and conversion of the data in to other methods.

What are the different advantages of the use of cloud computing for a business?

What are the different disadvantages of cloud computing for a business?

Whether business should prefer applications of cloud computing?

How cloud computing can be used?

How cloud computing is better than the other software, why it should be preferred by business ?

In this research, mainly primary data will be collected. The researcher will conduct interview sessions through Skype in order to collect the qualitative data. As stated by Mackey & Gass (2015), qualitative data are mainly observational data and it cannot be measured. The researcher is going to interview to senior managers in order to collect the data about cloud computing. The researcher is going to make 5 open-ended questions to ask senior managers about advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing in the arena of their business.

The population of the qualitative research will be senior managers of IT-based Australian businesses. The researcher will conduct interviews to 3 senior managers; hence, the sample size of qualitative research will be 3. The researcher is going to use non-probability sampling technique in qualitative research. In non-probability sampling, the samples are gathered in a way that does not provide all the sampling individuals in the population equal opportunity of being selected (Taylor, Bogdan & DeVault, 2015). As the sample size is only 3, non-probability sampling will be best for this research.

Security

In qualitative research, the data should be valid and credible as the researcher will be collecting the observational data of the interviewees, the researcher will cross-check the data that the interviews are going to provide. Credibility is the element of the validity of the data with natural phenomenon, observations and standards. Qualitative research is mainly involved with the interviewee’s insights, the validity of data should be checked. Transferability is related to the external validity as the data are mainly generalised and based on assumption.

In order to collect quantitative data, the researcher is going to conduct the survey. Before conducting the survey, the researcher will prepare 12 close-ended multiple type questions. According to Flick (2015), quantitative data is mainly numerical data that are collected from the respondents and these data can be measured. The survey questionnaire will be distributed to the employees of IT based companies in Australia. The researcher will upload the survey questionnaire on the Facebook community page. The researcher is aiming to collect quantitative data from 75 employees of IT-based organisations in Australia. The findings of the quantitative research will be given in tables. The collected data will be presented through excel bar graph and pie charts.

The researcher aims to collect survey data from 75 employees, hence the sample size will be 75 for quantitative research. The sample population of the research is the employees of IT-based organisations in Australia. The researcher will use simple random sampling technique in conducting the survey. As stated by Silverman (2016), simple random sampling is a subset of the population in which each individual of the subset can get the equal probability of being chosen.

In the quantitative research, the transferability is subjective and validity of the study is depended mainly on the collection of the data. The collected data will be reliable as the researcher will only collect those replies which would be given by the researcher of all 12 questions. Quantitative research needs the features of reliability due to repeatability to become reliable as same options are given to all. Conformability is the degree to which respondents must corroborate with the options and they can impact on findings.     

The limitations of the research is that it does not give important technical details about cloud computing. How cloud computing can be used has not been described by the literature making it difficult for the readers to understand how is it better than house computing. There is not much comparison between cloud computing and other software used by the businesses, which was very much required for the readers.

Detail	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5
Project Proposal
Literature review
Research design
Data collection
Data analysis
Final project report

Conclusion

Cloud computing has many benefits, it is cost effective, it management is simple and it is very much safer than the house computing. Although there are certain disadvantages to the cloud computing like it is completely dependent on the internet accessibility and power. One cannot access it when there is no internet connection. It is safer than house computing but this does not mean that it is not vulnerable to cyber threats and attacks. Clod computing is used by many businesses because they find it very simple for management. With the help of cloud computing lot of information can be stored in the internet of the cloud which can be later retrieved. The following paper will help the readers to understand the concept of cloud computing, they will also understand its benefits and the risks of cloud computing to a business.

References

Apostu, A., Puican, F., Ularu, G. E. A. N. I. N. A., Suciu, G., & Todoran, G. (2013). Study on advantages and disadvantages of Cloud Computing–the advantages of Telemetry Applications in the Cloud. Recent Advances in Applied Computer Science and Digital Services. New York: Wseas, 200, 118-123.

Avram, M. G. (2014). Advantages and challenges of adopting cloud computing from an enterprise perspective. Procedia Technology, 12, 529-534.

Bera, S., Misra, S., & Rodrigues, J. J. (2015). Cloud computing applications for smart grid: A survey. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 26(5), 1477-1494.

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

Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. London:  Sage.

Juels, A., Oprea, A., & Bowers, K. D. (2017). Security Issues for Cloud Computing [3]. Meta, 4(5).

Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design. Abingdon: Routledge.

Oliveira, T., Thomas, M., & Espadanal, M. (2014). Assessing the determinants of cloud computing adoption: An analysis of the manufacturing and services sectors. Information & Management, 51(5), 497-510.

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

Sadiku, M. N., Musa, S. M., & Momoh, O. D. (2014). Cloud computing: opportunities and challenges. IEEE potentials, 33(1), 34-36.

Silverman, D. (Ed.). (2016). Qualitative research. London: Sage.

Taylor, S. J., Bogdan, R., & DeVault, M. (2015). Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.