MBA Assignment: Cloud Computing Benefits and Drawbacks for Businesses

This report, submitted by an MBA student, explores the multifaceted aspects of cloud computing within the business context. It begins with an introduction highlighting the increasing adoption of cloud computing by businesses of all sizes to meet their objectives. The report defines cloud computing, emphasizing its role in accessing various internet-based services and its potential to enhance business value through innovation and cost reduction. A literature review discusses the benefits and drawbacks of cloud computing, covering aspects such as cost reduction, improved accessibility, scalability, and flexibility, as well as challenges related to internet connectivity, security, and potential cost unpredictability. The report uses Amazon's cloud services as a case study to demonstrate how cloud computing can improve business value, decrease expenses, and increase profit. The conclusion reiterates the benefits of cloud computing while acknowledging its drawbacks, emphasizing the importance of effective and efficient utilization to enhance business operations and profitability. References to relevant research papers and white papers are also included.

Advantages and disadvantages
of cloud computing for business
Submitted by: Bhaskar Khadka
Course: MBA
Student id: NPS2432
Subject: Business Research
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Introduction
It is evident in these days most of the companies
expand not only in the number of employees, but
also in the number of departments. During these
circumstances cloud computing is a tool that assists
companies meet their goal and objective. Cloud
computing can be very effective and efficient
technology for small business also. The response to
the competitive business market is to make better
utilisation of Internet services and give away more
incentives. Cloud computing can help business to
create applications that can bring business value by
bringing in innovations for its staff. Nevertheless,
these businesses should be very careful of the use
of cloud computing while providing clouds.
Project objective
The main objective of this project is to analyze
whether cloud computing can increase business
value and how important has cloud computing
become in today’s business world. And also
discussing advantages and disadvantages of cloud
computing for business.
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Project scope
This report will display the use of cloud computing
and its technologies which has been providing
value to the business. Initially, it will provide a
definition of cloud computing and it’s usage. And
then literature review will explain the benefits and
drawbacks of cloud computing. There will also be
an explanation of how Amazon’s cloud system could
decrease expenses. Moreover, this report will
conclude explaining how cloud computing can
change the business future.
Literature review
The use of cloud computing has not only been
debatable but also controversial these days. Cloud
computing is fundamentally a technology that is
used to access different assistances on the
Internet. According to Cumming (2010) “cloud
computing is a technology model in which any and
all resources-application software, processing
power, data storage, backup facility delivered as a
set of services via the Internet”. Cloud computing is
hailed as an exceptional computing which offers
better service than any other. In tern of
developments as well here are varieties of it such
as service as service and hardware as service. But
this service has to be paid in term of usage per
basis.
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Cloud computing advantages and disadvantages
In today’s world there are various ways in which
cloud computing can be used. Some use it as
virtualized computer resources, others perceives it
as vigorous advancement of software. This kind of
computing is easy as it supports interactive and
user facing applications. It is compatible for
developers as they can retrieve application
fragment as easy web service because cloud
computing is components based application
compositions.
RUN YOUR BUSINESS
There are also many beneficial factors such as
business can have inferior cost computers for
clients. Hence, users do not need high-
computerized system to run web-based application
as these applications operate in cloud not in Pc. As
applications run from cloud it improves the
functioning of the desktop.
With the use of cloud computing it enables
company to reduce the cost of infrastructure.
Resulting in not having to invest in large amount of
powerful servers as IT department can exploit the
computing power of cloud to generate or change
the computing resources.
REDUCES COST
Another benefit is that it drives lesser software
costs. Business clients, hence reducing the cost of
buying software packages, which are usually
expensive, can retrieve software from the cloud. By
providing higher storage volume, users don’t need
to worry about pc’s memory storage. This leads to
refining compatibility between operating system.
EASY TO ACCESS
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It is also evident that cloud allows multiple users to
operate and collaborate on certain projects in
cloud. This has made a huge impact on selling point
in business. Cloud computing has got a huge
backup from TV commercials and ad agencies with
a view that employees can work efficiently through
the use of cloud. As cloud provides an ease of
accessing a document from distance, this enables
clients who tend to forget a lot to retrieve from
cloud if there is an availability of Internet and a
device to access. So documents can be accessed
anywhere from cloud.
TRANSFORM AND LEAD
Due to the scope of flexibility of IT infrastructure
business requires changes. Hence, with cloud
computing one can take new projects live quickly
due to availability of documents in clouds anywhere
anytime.
SCALABILITY AND PRESENTATION
Scalability is a built-in article for cloud
implementations. Cloud demands are implemented
repeatedly when wanted and as a consequence, you
only pay for data storage and applications you
need. Likewise, also comes flexibility, since clouds
can be cleared to meet the shifting IT system
difficulties.
As far as performance, is concerned the systems
operate distributed architectures, which deals with
outstanding speed of computations. Furthermore, it
is the provider’s obligation to guarantee that your
services run on authentically. Illustrations can be
added instantly for better presentation and
customers have access to the total means of the
cloud’s core hardware though their dashboards.
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REDUCED LEARNING CURVE
Applications in clouds frequently require smaller
learning curves because people are calmly used to
them. Clients find it easier to embrace them and
come up to speed much quicker. Some of the
examples of this are applications like Google Docs
and Gmail.
Likewise there are also many disadvantages of
cloud computing as well.
INTERNET CONNECTIVITY PROBLEMS
Firstly, the use of cloud does require an Internet
connection, also for the document to be stored in
the cloud needs an internet connection and it needs
to be strong. For instance, a large bandwidth is
required in order to download large document from
web-based application. And also high-speed
connection is necessary to download the document
in desired time.
LIMITED FEATURES TO ACCESS
With limited features in cloud application it might
not be feasible to do presentation as the features
might lack the consistency of the presentation
when used in cloud. One of the most disadvantages
that cloud users should take into account is that
the storage could be difficult in cloud. In addition,
data stored in cloud could also be unsafe. If there
came a situation where cloud breaks down and
users did not store their document well, then he or
she could easily lose the document.
SECURITY PROBLEMS
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As far as confidential documents are concerned
there are many people who are skeptic about
whether to trust cloud or not as it is possible for
the cloud to be hacked. This could put companies
into huge threat therefore one should make sure
that they pick most trustworthy service provider
which can keep the documents secure.
LACK OF PROVISION
Cloud always does not provide appropriate support
to the clients. The suppliers are not always
available when customers want the to talk about
the service that they provide.
UNPREDICTABLE COST
Although cloud computing is comparatively cheap
to start, depending on the needs, an in-house
answer may cost less in the long run. Purchasing an
in-house server is absolutely an enormous, initial
capital investment, and there might be a need to
reflect current IT maintenance costs.
Cloud computing makes client pay the same
amount each month to uphold not only the server,
but also all the data. It also depend upon choice
you make whether to have a lot of initial capital to
capitalize in a remote network. It is necessary to
relate all the costs for supporting both cloud-based
server and in hour service to witness which decision
works the best for each condition.
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Improving business value through cloud
computing
We can go on with the advantages and
disadvantages of cloud computing for business, but
this report is also to lay down how cloud computing
can be used to improve the value of business. When
it comes to deciding cloud-computing usage in
business then we should also think about not
having to discuss about its benefits and
disadvantages because all businesses are not same.
So question arises, Is cloud computing beneficial for
all types of business? To answer this we can have a
look at Amazon in order to have a clear picture of
this assessment I’ve taken Amazon ‘s cloud
computing services. Amazon has various branches
around the world with half million seller around the
globe. It provides its clients and sellers with web
services that is user friendly to access and store
their documents in cloud. Amazon has elastic
compute cloud wed services to allocate funds and
store information within the business. It also has an
ability to decrease cost an also to increase profit.
It’s cloud-computing service can decrease cost of
cooling and power and administration. As energy
needed to run business is reduced it enables
business to provide standardized and lower service
cost.
The service that amazon provides to it’s customers
is elastic as the company can increase or decrease
the hardware requirement for its customers.
Amazon also saves time for buyers and sellers as it
uses parallelization, which decreases administering
time. Moreover Amazon’s system only needs less
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capital to invest resulting inexpensive services.
Users can only pay for the services used so the
amount of service purchased in not exceeded. So
cloud-computing services like Amazon can
potentially be used by business of all types.
However, it still is vague as to which businesses will
it fit.
Conclusion
To recapitulate, the demonstration that I’ve
presented above is an indication that clouds
computing have various benefits. At the same time
it has many drawbacks as well, there is no denying
that cloud computing offers more of the benefits
than its drawback. Effective and efficient use of
cloud computing in business can increase profit by
remotely allowing its employees to work at the
same time increasing its efficiency. Employees can
easily commute to cloud through Internet to work
from whenever and wherever without having to
wait for long period. There still is a question like
what would cloud computing do if there were more
competitors like them in the market. In order to
decrease budget and layoff services of cloud
computing seem to be increasing over period to
come as it provides services to the customers that
needs to be prosperous and inventive.
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References
Staten, J. (2008). Is Cloud Computing Ready For The Enterprise?
Forrester.
Varia, J. (2008a). Cloud Architectures. In White Paper of
Amazon,jineshvaria.s3.amazonaws.com/public/cloudarchitectu
res-varia.pdf.
Etro, F. (2009). The Economic Impact of Cloud Computing on
Business Creation, Employment and Output in Europe: An
application of the Endogenous Market Structures Approach to a
GPT innovation. Review of Business and Economics. 54(2), 179–
208.
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