Cloud computing is a process of computing that totally depends on resource sharing instead of installing its own local servers systems and personal systems or devices to manage applications. The term ‘cloud’ is another term for describing ‘Internet’. It is a type of computer based processing method that is dependent on the internet. The cloud computing process allows several organizations to take the advantage of services like applications, storage and servers without owning it. All these are available to the organizations through the internet. Cloud computing is similar to a process called grid computing. In grid computing the processing cycles of the network that are unused, are equipped to solve the problems of any other standalone machine.
This report discusses the concept of cloud computing in details. It gives a description about the several service and deployment models related to cloud computing. It also discusses about the architecture and infrastructure of cloud computing and cloud engineering in brief. The businesses at present times require cloud computing for running the business. There are several benefits as well as loopholes in cloud computing. The main aim of this study report is to critically analyse the benefits or advantages of cloud computing in business. This report also scrutinizes the disadvantages or loopholes of cloud computing.
The objectives of this project are as follows:
The scope or future opportunity of this project is to focus on the future utility of cloud computing in business. After analysing the disadvantages or loopholes in cloud computing in business, several issues such as security needs are to be reconfigured and take necessary actions to overcome the problems. It helps IT professionals or management personnel of business organizations to take appropriate actions against the challenges faced while using cloud computing in business. On the other hand, strengthening the advantage of using cloud computing found in the study would be helpful to enhance the business of the organization. Thus the project would find scopes of increasing business by exploring the benefits and limitations of cloud computing in an organization.
Cloud computing is a method of computing that is entirely dependent on the internet. The cloud refers to the entire internet, where several resources are stored for the utility of various businesses (Aljabre 2012). The concept of cloud computing allows the business to get hold of several resources without actually purchasing it. It is an IT environment that enables remote access of resources.
Cloud computing allows a way for any business to handle their computing resources online. This term has evolved with time and it describes the utilization of third party for the storage and computation purpose (Hsu, Ray and Li-Hsieh 2014). The businesses can achieve information through virtual platform via the help of cloud computing. It creates a global and flexible way for accessing information at any time and at any place.
Internet is an open platform which provides accessibility to several online based information technology resources. On the other hand, a typical cloud is private in nature. The internet is mostly based on IT resources that are content based and published through the WWW (World Wide Web). Whereas the IT resources that are given by cloud are based on providing back end support and capabilities to the users. Another main difference is that the cloud is always not based on Web even if they internet protocol and technology based (Kantarci and Mouftah 2014). Protocols mean the methodologies and standards that enable computers to interact with one another in a structured and predefined way. Any protocols can be used by cloud for allowing access to the remote resources of IT.
The framework of cloud is classified into two parts which is the front end and back end. Both the points are connected via internet (Jadeja and Modi 2012). The front end comprises of the client part and the applications interfaces that are needed for accessing the cloud platform.
The back end on the other hand is the cloud itself. It consists of the virtual machines, services, deployment models, security mechanism, data storage and servers. (Refer to Appendix 1).
There are four main deployment models (Lin and Chen 2012). They are as follows:
Private cloud: This category of cloud service is managed and maintained by the third party or the organization. This is the most secured infrastructure of cloud and is deployed when the organization needs to protect sensitive information.
Community cloud: This is a type of cloud that where multiple organizations share a private cloud. These organizations have similar type of security needs.
Public cloud: This type of cloud is accessible to the general public over the internet. This type of cloud storage is handled by an external organization like Google.
Hybrid cloud: This type of cloud utilizes the features of both the private and public cloud. This gives the benefit of both the services.
There are three main or major service models (Gibson et al. 2012). They are as follows:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This is a service model which provides access to important infrastructural resources like virtual storage, physical machines and virtual machines. The IaaS also provides services like disk storage and load balancing. Server virtualization is used for making the above resources available to the end users. (Refer to Appendix 2)
Platform as a Service (PaaS): This is a type of service that provides an environment for running applications. This type of infrastructure allows the non-developers and users to create a web application. There is an in-built API that allows creating web application. (Refer to Appendix 3)
Software as a Service (SaaS): This type of cloud infrastructure enables the users to take the utility of software application. This type of software is accessible through the internet. The invoicing and billing software is an example of SaaS. These types of softwares are based on open source language and service oriented architecture (SOA). (Refer to Appendix 4)
Cloud computing provides every business with several benefits. It enables the organizations to set up and build what is known to be a virtual or online office. It gives the organizations the flexibility and feasibility of connecting or interacting within themselves from any location and at any time (Avram 2014). With this era of growing number of devices that are web-enabled devices and are used in present business environment just like tablets and smartphones, it has become very easy for the businesses to access their data. There are several advantages of moving businesses and organizations to the cloud environment. Few of them are as follows:
Minimization of the cost of information technology: Moving the business to cloud computing environment will decrease the cost and expense of maintaining and managing the IT systems and applications of the business. Instead of buying and installing expensive or costly equipments and systems for the business purpose, the businesses can decrease their expenses by utilizing the resources which the service provider of cloud computing provides (Jamsa 2012). The businesses can reduce their cost of operations because of the following reasons:
The contract that the service provider will give the business will include the expense of upgrading the systems, software and new hardware. Hence the business will not have to spend any extra money from their pockets.
The business will not need any expert staff. This will reduce the cost of hiring and retaining such experts.
The cost of consuming energy will be reduced to a great extent.
The chance of delay in time is less.
Scalability of the business is improved: The businesses can easily and quickly change their storage needs and operations depending on the present situation of the business. If a business needs more work to be done then it can increase its operations and if they need less work then they can reduce its scale of operations (Ghazizadeh 2012). Cloud allows the business to flexibly change their needs. Instead of buying and installing costly upgrades, the cloud provider can tackle these kinds of upgrades for the business. The businesses can get more spare time to spend on their actual work by taking the services of cloud.
Continuity of the business: The planning of business continuity includes a part of protecting the important or sensitive official information and systems. The information stored in the cloud environment is always safe even in situations of a power failure, natural disaster or other type of crisis (Garrison, Kim and Wakefield 2012). The information stored in the cloud is protected and backed up in a safe and secure location. The use of cloud allows the businesses to reduce downtime, productivity loss. It enables the organization to get a quick accessibility to the information and run the business in an effective and efficient manner.
Efficiency of collaboration: When a business involves itself in an environment of cloud computing, it allows the business to interact and share with the external environment very easily. It enables the business to move out of their traditional barrier and methods. Suppose a business is operating in several locations, and then the supervisor can take the help of cloud computing to share the same documents with the employees, third parties as well as the contractors (Jula, Sundararajan and Othman 2014). A business can use a suitable model of cloud computing for the purpose of sharing accounting records with a financial adviser and guide in different locations.
Flexible work practices: The employees are able to use flexible work practices by using the cloud computing environment. The concept of work from home is possible because of the deployment of cloud computing service models (Kim 2013). Employees are able to work from their home during holidays by logging into their portals. This only needs the connection of internet.
Automatic updates are accessible: When an organization takes the service of cloud computing from a service provider then the fee of automatically updating the software is included in the contract (Lin and Chen 2012). Depending on the business’s service provider of the cloud computing system, the business’s system will be regularly updated by using the latest type of technologies. This will include the up-to-date software versions and also the up gradation to the servers and power of computer processing.
The limitation of cloud computing are mainly in twofold. Firstly, when a business implements any type of new technology, then this will need a change in the business culture. This will include training the employees and developing an effective system of troubleshooting at the time of launching the technology and even after the launch (Sadiku, Musa and Momoh 2014). This normally leads to hesitation among the employees of the organization, especially in case of those who are not familiar with the technology of cloud computing. This becomes a headache for the business.
Another serious concern regarding cloud computing is the security and risks (Almorsy, Grundy and Muller 2016). Cyber attacks are something that are increasing at a fast pace and no business is completely safe. Businesses and organizations mainly worry about the sensitive information in the cloud environment and their vulnerable conditions to the unauthorized users (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). An organization’s cloud environment is generally accessed by the employees who are given designated usernames along with passwords that verify the identity of the user but still unauthorized access remains the top concern of the business.
In measuring the risks of the cloud computing concept against its benefits, the business owners are mainly worried about the safety of their information. The key is of the business is to find the correct service provider of cloud and understand the contingency plans that are applicable in situations of any security breach.
In order to overcome the risks and problems of cloud computing, the business should carry out a process of risk assessment before selecting a service provider. The Australian government has regulated a guide for considering security of cloud computing. The business must have a correct agreement with the service provider before commencing the services. The business must consider a proper way of storing and securing data (Wang et al. 2012). The service contract must contain the detailed information of the storage and security (Chang et al. 2016). Before making any contracts with the service provider, the business must investigate the location of storing the data. The business must get a proper idea about the security and privacy laws that will be required to protect the data (Zissis and Lekkas 2012). These types of steps if taken by the business, will help them to overcome the risks of using cloud computing.
Conclusion:
This project report concludes that cloud computing is a computing technology, which is web based or internet based and allows organizations and businesses to share resources without actually own them. There are several models of cloud computing. The architecture of cloud computing is also described in brief. The broad categories of the models are deployment and service models. The deployment model consists of private, public, community and hybrid cloud. The service model includes Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. This report also concludes that there are several benefits and limitations of cloud computing, but the drawbacks can be taken care of by following certain procedures. The cloud computing architecture benefits a business in several ways. Most of the business deploys the cloud computing models to modernize their working. This report also says that security is the main issue of cloud computing and must be taken care of before deploying the model.
References:
Aljabre, A., 2012. Cloud computing for increased business value. International Journal of Business and social science, 3(1).
Almorsy, M., Grundy, J. and Müller, I., 2016. An analysis of the cloud computing security problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.
Avram, M.G., 2014. Advantages and challenges of adopting cloud computing from an enterprise perspective. Procedia Technology, 12, pp.529-534.
Chang, V., Kuo, Y.H. and Ramachandran, M., 2016. Cloud computing adoption framework: A security framework for business clouds. Future Generation Computer Systems, 57, pp.24-41.
Garrison, G., Kim, S. and Wakefield, R.L., 2012. Success factors for deploying cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 55(9), pp.62-68.
Ghazizadeh, A., 2012, March. Cloud computing benefits and architecture in e-learning. In Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technology in Education (WMUTE), 2012 IEEE Seventh International Conference on (pp. 199-201). IEEE.
Gibson, J., Rondeau, R., Eveleigh, D. and Tan, Q., 2012, November. Benefits and challenges of three cloud computing service models. In Computational Aspects of Social Networks (CASoN), 2012 Fourth International Conference on (pp. 198-205). IEEE.
Hsu, P.F., Ray, S. and Li-Hsieh, Y.Y., 2014. Examining cloud computing adoption intention, pricing mechanism, and deployment model. International Journal of Information Management, 34(4), pp.474-488.
Jadeja, Y. and Modi, K., 2012, March. Cloud computing-concepts, architecture and challenges. In Computing, Electronics and Electrical Technologies (ICCEET), 2012 International Conference on (pp. 877-880). IEEE.
Jamsa, K., 2012. Cloud computing. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Jula, A., Sundararajan, E. and Othman, Z., 2014. Cloud computing service composition: A systematic literature review. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(8), pp.3809-3824.
Kantarci, B. and Mouftah, H.T., 2014. Trustworthy sensing for public safety in cloud-centric internet of things. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 1(4), pp.360-368.
Kim, W., 2013. Cloud computing architecture. International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 9(3), pp.287-303.
Lin, A. and Chen, N.C., 2012. Cloud computing as an innovation: Percepetion, attitude, and adoption. International Journal of Information Management, 32(6), pp.533-540.
Rittinghouse, J.W. and Ransome, J.F., 2016. Cloud computing: implementation, management, and security. CRC press.
Sadiku, M.N., Musa, S.M. and Momoh, O.D., 2014. Cloud computing: opportunities and challenges. IEEE potentials, 33(1), pp.34-36.
Wang, C., Wang, Q., Ren, K., Cao, N. and Lou, W., 2012. Toward secure and dependable storage services in cloud computing. IEEE transactions on Services Computing, 5(2), pp.220-232.
Zissis, D. and Lekkas, D., 2012. Addressing cloud computing security issues. Future Generation computer systems, 28(3), pp.583-592.
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download