Cloud Computing: Benefits and Challenges

This assignment delves into the multifaceted world of cloud computing, examining its significant benefits across diverse sectors like healthcare, education, and manufacturing. It also critically evaluates the inherent challenges associated with cloud adoption, including security concerns, data privacy issues, and vendor lock-in. The analysis draws upon a comprehensive review of scholarly literature to provide a balanced perspective on this transformative technology.

Running head: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES ON CLOUD COMPUTING
Advantages and Disadvantages on cloud computing for business
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES ON CLOUD COMPUTING
1. Introduction:
The research topic that is selected is “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud
Computing for Business. This study documents the advantages and disadvantages of cloud
computing for business and establish its relationship to the business world. Aim of cloud
computing for business is to provide a complete view of how cloud computing is related to
business. This particular study is considered to be of utmost importance resulting from the
current state of cloud computing and several issues that are faced in adoption of cloud computing
by business. However, it is required by business to have a holistic view of the way they are
getting impacted by cloud computing.
2. Project Objective:
The aim of this research is to explore the understanding of advantages and disadvantages
of cloud computing with a critical analysis of users and providers. Research is conducted to
bridge the gap between providers and users that is business enterprises and therefore, there will
be depiction of more holistic view of cloud computing. Objective of research is to come up with
valuable findings and conclusions about advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing for
business. It is fairly a recent trend with lots of research to be done for making the project
worthwhile (Fernández et al. 2014).
3. Project Scope:
The scope of study is to provide a clear understanding of cloud computing and its
relevance in business by discussing advantages and disadvantages. A wide coverage in study

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involves the implication of cloud computing for business mainly in developed country such as
Australia.
4. Literature review:
In technology, cloud computing is a relatively concept and most of properties of cloud
computing is related to earlier technologies. Cloud computing is gaining ground in this
competitive era and one of the considerable reason associated with this is cutting down of
information technology cost (Alzahrani et al. 2014). Cloud computing can be defined as a model
that enables on demand network and convenient access to a shared pool of organizing computing
resources for rapidly releasing and provisioning with least interaction with service provider and
minimal effort of management.
There are three services layers of cloud computing that involves Saas, Paas and Laas.
Software as a Service- Users of cloud computing are able to access the applications
through several devices in Internet as they run on infrastructure of cloud providers. This does not
make it necessary for users to install software on their computer. Users utilize up to date versions
as provider automatically do the updates. A pay per use is applied in this model and there is no
need for business to pay for license. Organization performing specific processes and functions
utilizes Saas applications. However, users does not have the capability to manage and control
cloud infrastructure.
Infrastructure as a Service- An entire virtual data center of resources such as bandwith,
storage, servers and computing resources are provided by cloud service provider. One of the

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evolution of Saas is business process as a Service that helps in outsourcing of entire business
process to their party.
Platform as a Service- Cloud delivered services are used by customers for deploying,
managing and running applications on the infrastructure of providers.
Some of the essential characteristics of cloud computing are as follows:
 Providing broad access to network- Cloud computing models helps in the transmission of
capabilities as it has vision for ubiquitous computing. Various standardized platforms
such as laptops and mobiles can be used for accessing.
 Rapid elasticity- There is a rapid elasticity of resources via cloud that is built on utility
model. Computing need and requirements of consumers can be scaled up and down due
to unlimited appearance of resources.
 Resource pooling- Clients are serviced simultaneously as multi-tenancy model are
incorporated in cloud model and the requirements of clients are met by poling computing
resources of providers. As per the demands of customers, there is a dynamic assignment
and reassignment of resources (Mezgár and Rauschecker 2014). Since the resources are
independent of one another, there is no need to locate them together.
 Measured service- At different level of abstraction, cloud service has metering capability
as it incorporates utility model. Resources helps in aiding accountability for consumers
and provider as resources are well controlled and monitored.
 Loose Coupling- The basis of building applications of cloud computing is dependent on
the fact that there is a discourage of dependencies between components. Overall
scalability of application is added by sum of parts.

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 On demand self-service- Implementation and provisioning of cloud computing does not
need any human interaction and solutions are consumed and delivered over the internet.
Cloud computing has some of the possible deployment model that are categorized as
private cloud, public cloud, community cloud and hybrid cloud (Fernando et al. 2013).
Types of cloud computing:
(Source: Sadiku et al. 2014)
Community cloud- In this type of cloud computing, sharing of cloud infrastructure is
done exclusively to specific communities consisting of organizations having common concerns
such as common requirement of securities sand common mission. Infrastructure of this type of
cloud computing is located either off or on premises.
Private cloud- In this type of computing, a single organization owns or lease the cloud
infrastructure such that the services are used exclusively. Their location can be either outside or
inside premises.

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ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES ON CLOUD COMPUTING
Hybrid Cloud- In this particular model, the cloud infrastructure is a combination more
than two or two positioning models of separate entities and that are wrapped together by
proprietary or standardized technologies (Subramanian et al. 2015).
Public Cloud- In this type of computing model, an organization is owning cloud
infrastructure that are open to use as the services are offered to general public and large group of
industry.
Potential advantages of cloud computing:
In order to understand the benefits and challenges of cloud computing for organizations
and business, the term is too imprecise. With the development of new technologies, tendency of
organizations is to under estimate the long-term benefits and overestimate the short-term effects
of cloud computing. Some of long-term and short-term benefit of cloud computing are as
follows:
Cost reduction- Reduction of cost of information technology and simplification of
operation of information technology is one of the most prominent advantage provided by cloud
computing utility model. An organization employing such model is not required to have in house
upfront of information technology investments in servers, hardware and other resources of
information technology. Organization faces reduced operational expenses by reducing capital
expenses. Cost of using the applications is dependent upon usage as there is no requirement of
making up front investments. It is the responsibility of provider of cloud service to update their
system and therefore, firms are not required to incur any cost or investment on system updation
and maintenance. Services of cloud computing is very attractive in the event of rapid changes in

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demand of consumers as there are some of the services of cloud computing such as computing
power and store of data that has comparatively reduced or lower cost (Assunção et al. 2015).
Cloud computing requirement in different business:
(Source: Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016)
The direct benefit of cloud computing is reduction of information technology costs, there
are some indirect benefits resulting from cloud computing services adoption. Organization is
able to focus on their core business and activities that are most relevant to them. It enables them
to focus on their core and main activities. Most of technological constraints faced by business are
removed as cloud computing helps in reducing the information technology constraints by freeing
up resources and free time and therefore driving the agility of business by focusing on the main
components of business (Garrison et al. 2015). This in turn helps in accelerating the results of
business, driving the productivity gains and improving the process of business and thereby
improving the performance of whole organization.
Operational benefits to business- Migration to cloud computing services results in
operational benefits for any organization that helps in facilitation of day to day running of

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business. Organization using cloud service has the possibility of accessing services from various
platforms due to mobility and flexibility provided that helps in efficiently getting things done.
Information technology department of an organization has do it yourself approach due to
provision of self-services (Oliveira et al. 2014). There are better utilizations of assets such as
furniture and office area.
Eco friendly- Adoption of cloud computing services helps in reducing hardware
components required by any business enterprise and thereby reducing the consumption of
energy. For this reason, cloud computing is regarded as ecofriendly (Hameed et al. 2016). There
is a centralized infrastructure for data centers using the cloud computing services.
Users of cloud computing services are not concerned about over provisioning due to
flexibility and scalability of information technology. The reason is attributable to the fact that
users can dynamically obtain resources of cloud computing according to needs and demands of
consumers. This helps organization in satisfying demand of consumers at peak while just paying
for the service used and using extra resources according to requirements. Cloud services enables
an organization to quickly, efficiently and easily develop an application (Subramanian et al.
2014).
Some of other potential benefits of cloud computing services involved improving
organization’s external capabilities, reliability, mobility and accessibility. External capabilities
involves increasing collaboration with business partners and it helps business in innovating their
services, process and products for meeting the market changing requirements.
Telecommunication and Information technologies industries is significantly impacted by cloud
computing services (Apostu et al. 2013).

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Disadvantages of Cloud computing:
Organizations are faced with increasing challenges and concerns with every new
technological advancements. There is slowdown in their adoption process for which they are
required to overcome such challenges.
Security issues- One of the major concern of cloud computing is privacy and security
issues and this makes most of organization hesitant to adopt such services. Organization with
sensitive data are not encouraged to employ the cloud computing services because data of
customers are shared among multiple shared servers. It is required by organization to make
investment in hardware and software for addressing cloud service issues (González et al. 2015).
Organizations are scared of vendor lock-in and there involves difficulties in switching to
different cloud service providers. It is hard for firms to move in and out of cloud services, as it is
not affordable for them. Interoperability of clouds is not possible because of lack of standards. It
is possible for organization to have to face institutional lock in along with lock in that is
technological in nature. Consumers seeking the applications of cloud computing services is
concerned about requirements of government compliance that differs from one country to
another (Al-Ayyoub et al. 2015). There are different compliance requirements that an
organizations is required to follow when provisioning such services. Therefore, compatibility
issues is another challenge faced by organization as international and migration of cloud services
is difficult.
Licensing and data transfer issue- Various complex license are involved in software
utilization of cloud programs and huge sizes of data leads to data transfer bottlenecks.
5. Conclusion:

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ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES ON CLOUD COMPUTING
Analysis of literature review deals with evolution of cloud computing services and
various models that it incorporates along with discussion of advantages and disadvantages. The
research involved a general view on cloud computing services by refection several benefits and
challenges faced by firms adopting to such services. It is revealed by literature review of
advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing services that a lot of new fixing is required by
cloud computing as it is not suitable for all types of business enterprises. Decision making of
organization for adopting or migrating to cloud computing services by organization would be
assisted by striking a balance between the service advantages and disadvantages. Some of the
challenges that is faced while doing research is shortage of literature on cloud computing. There
are lot of opportunities for improvement in the services of cloud computing. For further study on
research on cloud computing is to focus on some specifics of cloud concepts aspects such as pay
per use model and its long-term effect or strengthening the models of business by finding ways.

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ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES ON CLOUD COMPUTING
6. Reference list:
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based dynamic resource provisioning and monitoring for cloud computing systems
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Alzahrani, A., Alalwan, N. and Sarrab, M., 2014, April. Mobile cloud computing:
advantage, disadvantage and open challenge. In Proceedings of the 7th Euro American
Conference on Telematics and Information Systems (p. 21). ACM.
Apostu, A., Puican, F., Ularu, G.E.A.N.I.N.A., Suciu, G. and Todoran, G., 2013. Study
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Assunção, M.D., Calheiros, R.N., Bianchi, S., Netto, M.A. and Buyya, R., 2015. Big
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Distributed Computing, 79, pp.3-15.
Fernández, A., del Río, S., López, V., Bawakid, A., del Jesus, M.J., Benítez, J.M. and
Herrera, F., 2014. Big Data with Cloud Computing: an insight on the computing
environment, MapReduce, and programming frameworks. Wiley Interdisciplinary
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Fernando, N., Loke, S.W. and Rahayu, W., 2013. Mobile cloud computing: A
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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

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processes and operations. International Journal of Information Management, 35(4),
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