Business Continuity Management of SMEs Cloud as a Service ByZWAKAMI BARDE JUNIOR Free Essay Example

Business Continuity Management of SMEs: Cloud as a Service. ByZWAKAMI BARDE JUNIOR A00022056COURSE TITLE/CODE: Disaster Recovery and PlanningInstructorProf ChidiAmerican University of Nigeria ” YolaSchool of IT & Computing April 2019Business Continuity Management of SMEs: Cloud as a serviceAbstractSmall and Medium Enterprises are very much crucial to the economic strength of a Nation. Therefore, there is a need to ensure these SMEs strive to attain sustainability in their operations, because they work under uncertainties and hostile environment. SMEs tends to lack the financial muscle and documented plans for disaster recovery in an event of crises.

This review of literatures aims to consider the various challenges faced by SMEs in an event of disaster, how to ensure continuity of business operations of SMEs in a world where continuous operations is key to business survival. Factors responsibility for adoption of innovations in ICT. Cloud as a service can aid minimize cost and increase efficiency, productivity, profitability, recoverability, sustainability and reliability for small to medium size enterprises.

Keyword: SMEs, Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, DRaaS, Cloud ComputingIntroduction(Sullivan-Taylor & Branicki, 2011) SMEs has been defined as any business with an employee strength of one to two hundred and forty-nine. {Herbane 2010, p. 44). Argues that base on a review of key small business journals, there have been little or no publications pertaining disaster recovery, crises management and business continuity management in smaller firms or SMEs. Various research conducted shows that SMEs suffers the most impact in an event of disaster because they don’t have the preparedness to tackle such.(Sullivan-Taylor & Branicki, 2011).

Business continuity Management has been defined as thus;holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organization and the impacts to business operations those threats, if realized, might cause, and which provides a framework for building organizational resilience with the capability for an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities (ISO/IEC 22301 (clause 3.4)Business continuity management is very crucial and sacrosanct in an organization for curbing the impact of disaster when they occur. (Vargo & Seville, 2011) State that while many SMEs tends to conform to the above definition and implementation of a business continuity plan, others still tend to ignore its potential threats to the business. (Ates & Bititci, 2011). SMEs business continuity planning is often thwarted by their financial strengths due to limited resources, human capital and time and as such they lack the stamina to embark upon long term strategic planning (Ates & Bititci, 2011). However, information and communication technology has made it possible for SMEs to improve their business competitiveness and in thus doing enabling them to strive and compete the market space with the bigger organizations or firms. (Alshamaila, Papagiannidis, & Li, 2013). ICT is paramount to the survival of SMEs in the global market. (UKEssays.com, March 2019). Business Continuity Management of SMEsSMEs are exposed to divers threats ranging from external environmental threats to internal organizational threats. Business continuity management has developed a framework that aids organization to cartel such incidents and in thus ensure a seamless and sustainable business process. BCM strategy entails the following steps: Plan, do, check and act’. (Li, Coates, Johnson, & McGuinness, 2015). This guide can help an organization build a strong, reliable and sustainable system. The aim of business continuity is to ensure that services and critical business resources are always available to customers when the need of them arises. (Prakash, Mody, Wahab, Swaminathan, & Paramount, 2012). It is important to note that business continuity is not a task carried out during a disaster or when a disaster has occurred it is more of a task performed daily to ensure reliability, sustainability and recoverability of the process.(Herbane, 2010). However, various research studies has indicted the absence of business continuity planning in most small to medium size enterprises (SMEs).(Herbane, 2010). He suggested that over two million SMEs in UK don’t have a disaster recovery or business continuity management plan in place. SMEs face tremendous challenges when it comes to incorporating business continuity management in their various small budgets. Others tend to be confused on what technology and tools to incorporate in their business continuity plan. (Prakash et al., 2012). Nevertheless, be it an issue of budget or confusion, it is never an excuse for an SME to operate without a business continuity and a disaster recovery management plan. Moreover, governments of various developing countries are beginning to enact laws mandating their various SMEs to ensure that disaster recovery and business continuity management plan are in place.(Auzzir, Haigh, & Amaratunga, 2018). (Auzzir et al., 2018) suggested that financial limitations and organizational size contribute immensely to the vulnerabilities to disaster of SMEs. He stated that this vulnerabilities to disasters can be attested to inadequacy of financial experts in SMEs and their geographical location on the globe. Thailand flood of 2011 dismantled over 550,000 SMEs in the country with over 2 million jobs lost due to the disaster.(Auzzir et al., 2018). This in thus reduced the country’s GDP by 37 percent. Likewise, the state of Kelantan December 2014 flooding, which displaced over 13,000 SMEs in the region. So therefore, it is of utmost importance to provide SMEs with disaster recovery and business continuity management plan due to their fragile nature in terms of disaster tolerances. (Auzzir et al., 2018). Cloud as a Services for SMEsPlummer et al. (2008) defined cloud computing as a style of computing where massively scalable IT-related capabilities is provided as a service using Internet technologies to multiple external customers (Plummer et al., 2008, p. 3). Cloud as a service to small and medium size businesses is a vital key to their productivity and profitability maximization.(Alshamaila et al., 2013) thereby giving them a notch in the market space.SMEs often have lower level of knowledge about the importance and benefit of cloud computing which amongst many includes cost savings, scalability, data availability, flexibility and agility (Abdollahzadehgan & Hussin, n.d.). Adoption of clouding computing in SMEs will free up time normally put into IT infrastructure maintenances. This time can be implored into the core aspect of maximizing the business profit.(Gupta, Seetharaman, & Raj, 2013). Cloud deployment models in an organization.Cloud computing consist of four model which can be deployed in an organization. This are: Private cloud, community cloud, public cloud and hybrid cloud. Public cloud is cost effective and efficient for SMEs. This can be made available via SLA service level agreement which is being leased and accessed via the internet. (Gupta et al., 2013). Cloud computing offers services such as platform as a service(PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).Experts argued that most of the business that fold up due to data lost cost by disaster seldom recover back to operation. Downtime hours can vary from 300 to 1200 yearly, which equates to about 16% annual revenue lost incurred to the business.(Prakash et al., 2012). SMEs can take advantage of disaster recovery as a service to ensure business continuity since client can only pay for the services being offered to them which makes it cost effective for SMEs to subscribe to. (Prakash et al., 2012).Small and medium size enterprises can run disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) on the cloud using the scale of preference scenarios.(Prakash et al., 2012). Thereby stating which of its services should be restored back quicker in an event of disaster to ensure business continuity is enforced. Information technology innovation adoption. (Damanpour, 1991). Defined innovation as the generation, development, and adaptation of novel ideas on the part of the firm. (Alshamaila et al., 2013). Expressed that various studies have been conducted, both empirical studies and theoretical studies to ascertain ICT innovation adaptation. Couple of model were being provided for user adoption of innovation in ICT with the aim of finding the factor that motivate user adoption and usage in organizations.(Stieninger & Nedbal, 2014) Added that two factors play an important role in the process of adoption to an innovation in information technology, this are Image and voluntariness of use. He stated that image is the scenario of which a said innovation is assumed to improve social system status or one’s image’ while voluntariness of use is the scenario to which the use of a said innovation is assumed as being from freewill or voluntary’. Based on his findings, he suggested that the factors themselves are not mandatory, there assumptions and perception are what is essential for the adoption of an innovation in information technology. Choosing cloud storage for DRaaSSmall and medium sized enterprises need to put into consideration the foloowing views when opting for a cloud storage for disaster recovery. There are public cloud storage and private cloud storage just as in the case of clouding computing. (Jun & Sha-sha, 2011). Public storage will store the SMEs data and access the applications via the internet while private storage has more security, control and flexibility attributes in conjuction with the public storage attributes earlierly stated. Virtualization is the technology behind cloud storage and cloud computing in general.(Jun & Sha-sha, 2011). Conclusion Small and medium size enterprises are vital to the economy of many countries, they play a key role in innovation, social inclusion and employment. Despite their usefulness to the economy of a nation, small and medium sized enterprises are often exposed to risk and uncertainties in their operational environments. Business continuity management has been proposed by numerous study as an antidote of minimizing the impact of disaster to SMEs. However, the impact of business continuity management over the years is seldom felt in SMEs as most of its implementations are being carried out by multinational organization or large size firms. Nevertheless, cloud as a service seek to bridge that gap between the bigger firms and the SMEs that desire to implement disaster recovery as a service to ensure business continuity, sustainability and resilience of service and operations in an event of disaster. ReferencesAbdollahzadehgan, A., & Hussin, A. R. C. (n.d.). The Organizational Critical Success Factors for Adopting Cloud Computing in SMEs, 8.Alshamaila, Y., Papagiannidis, S., & Li, F. (2013). Cloud computing adoption by SMEs in the north east of England: A multiperspective framework. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 26(3), 250″275. A., & Bititci, U. (2011). Change process: a key enabler for building resilient SMEs. International Journal of Production Research, 49(18), 5601″5618. Z., Haigh, R., & Amaratunga, D. (2018). Impacts of Disaster to SMEs in Malaysia. Procedia Engineering, 212, 1131″1138. P., Seetharaman, A., & Raj, J. R. (2013). The usage and adoption of cloud computing by small and medium businesses. 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