E-Commerce Cloud Computing: Advantages, Disadvantages & Factors

This report examines the use of cloud computing in the e-commerce sector, focusing on its advantages, disadvantages, and key implementation factors. It defines cloud computing as the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet and highlights its scalability, speed, and cost-effectiveness...Read More

Running head: CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud Computing in E-Commerce
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Abstract
The main objective of this report is to know about the broad concept of cloud computing for
the industry sector of electronic commerce. Cloud computing is the easiest mode of transfer
of the delivery service models. Moreover, it is extremely safe and secured and thus could be
easily utilized by all clients. For the industry sector of e commerce, cloud computing could be
easily implemented by all clients. There are various important and significant advantages and
disadvantages of cloud computing within the electronic commerce web sites. This report has
properly outlined all the major factors of cloud computing in electronic commerce.

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Table of Contents
Introduction/ Background..........................................................................................................3
Terminology Definition.............................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................4
Critical Analysis.........................................................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction/ Background
Cloud computing is the hypothesis of IT or information technology, which enables the
access to the shared pool of several system resources and high level services (Dinh et al.
2013). All the clouds help in enabling organizations in focusing over the major companies
and not on spending several resources on computer maintenance and infrastructure. Cloud
computing also helps in avoiding or reducing the upfront infrastructure costs (Arora, Parashar
and Transforming 2013). There are various advantages and disadvantages of cloud
computing.
The following report will be outlining a brief discussion on the broad topic of cloud
computing. The several merits and demerits of cloud computing for any business will also be
provided in this report. The industry sector selected in the report is e commerce sites. The
major factors for the implementation of cloud computing for management of information or
data in those e commerce sites would also be mentioned here.
Terminology Definition
Cloud computing can be defined as the on demand delivery of the database storage,
computing power, IT resources and applications by the platform of cloud services over
Internet connectivity with the pay as you pricing approach (Fernando, Loke and Rahayu
2013). Cloud computing in the electronic commerce or e commerce web sites is responsible
for allowing buying or selling various products and services on the connection of Internet.
The several technologies that help e commerce sites to become successful like mobile
technologies, supply chain management, online transaction processing, transfer of electronic
funds, inventory management system, data collection system and many more (Hashem et al.

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2015). Cloud computing comprises of various important and significant advantages and
disadvantages within the industry sector of e commerce.
Discussion
Cloud computing helps in providing the simplest way for accessing servers,
databases, storage, and broader set of application services over the connectivity of Internet.
The major operations of the business are well executed with the help of this cloud computing
approach (Li et al. 2013). The information technology resources are extremely flexible and
scalable when they are utilized in cloud computing. The cost of these specific resources are
extremely lower and thus the cloud services platform help in providing rapid access to the
information technology resources. The larger upfront investments are made on the hardware
and software. The size as well as the type of the computing resources for the purpose of
operating in the department of information technology in the business is provisioned by cloud
computing. E commerce is the action of buying as well as selling of the products or services
on the Internet (Garg, Versteeg and Buyya 2013). Cloud computing can be extremely
effective for the electronic commerce web sites and thus makes the services much active and
popular for each and every client of any business.
There are various important and vital advantages and disadvantages of cloud
computing that makes the industry sector of electronic commerce extremely popular, efficient
and effective (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). The major reasons for implementing cloud
computing technology in the electronic commerce web sites are given below:
i) Highly Scalable: The first and the foremost reason for the successful
implementation of cloud computing is that it is highly scalable. Due to the higher scalability,
this particular approach becomes extremely popular and even easy to handle. The cloud
computing helps in enabling the electronic commerce application for catering to the altering

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demand as well as the scenarios (Xiao, Song and Chen 2013). This approach even allows in
up scaling or downscaling these services as per the demands. The scalable architecture in the
electronic commerce is provided by the cloud computing. The incoming time is increased by
the approach of cloud computing within the e commerce web sites.
ii) Higher Speed: The second important reason for the implementation of cloud
computing in the e commerce web sites is the higher speed of the approach (Hashizume et al.
2013). Speed plays the most important role for making the clients extremely attracted to this
particular web site of e commerce. If the client can shop or sell his or her products easily and
promptly, he or she would be happier with the web site to greater extent and thus is termed as
popular and efficient (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). Cloud computing is responsible for
making the bandwidth greater and the storage and computational power much more.
iii) Reduction of Expenses: The third reason is that cloud computing helps in
reducing the overall expenses of the electronic commerce web sites. This is mainly because it
comprises of the facility of pay per use. It helps in enabling the consumption of all services as
per the requirements (Jain and Paul 2013). Since the business grows in electronic commerce,
the hardware and software infrastructure is not required to be invested. The expenses of the
maintenance and the development of the information technology infrastructure are reduced to
a greater extent.
iv) Redundancy in the Cloud Services: The cloud-based architectures are extremely
disaster tolerant. This cloud-based platform with the built in redundancy could be saved from
the loss of data or information. The data is kept secured with the help of cloud computing and
could be easily accessed as well (Yang and Jia 2013). Moreover, data backups are much
easier with cloud computing and thus redundancy in the cloud services is possible within the
electronic commerce web sites.

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Critical Analysis
There are various advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing in the electronic
commerce web sites (Wei et al. 2014). The major benefits of cloud computing are given
below:
i) Cost Efficiency: The most important and significant advantage of cloud computing
is that it is cost efficient. The overall costs or expenses of the technology are much lower than
the rest of the technologies. Cloud computing takes extremely less cost than the on premises
technology (Dinh et al. 2013). These companies should not be storing the data or information
in the disk anymore for the proper space availability and hence saving money or resources.
ii) High Speed: The higher speed is the second advantage of cloud computing in e
commerce web site. It allows to deploy the service promptly within fewer time. The easy
deployment of the technology is possible only with cloud computing.
iii) Excellent Accessibility: The information could be easily stored and hence could be
easily accessed from anywhere and at any time (Arora, Parashar and Transforming 2013).
The higher accessibility and flexibility of the data within the technology of cloud computing
for electronic commerce web sites.
iv) Back up and Data Restore: The fourth advantage of cloud computing is that it
helps to provide easy back up and data restoring. When the data is stored within cloud, easy
backup and restoration of data is possible (Fernando, Loke and Rahayu 2013). The time is
reduced and the business gets benefits.
There are some of the major disadvantages as well. The most significant
disadvantages of cloud computing within the e commerce websites are given below:

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i) Higher Security Issues: The first demerit of cloud computing in e commerce web
site is that security issues are present here and thus information could be easily stolen. This
becomes a major problem for the clients of electronic commerce web site (Hashem et al.
2015). At the time of storing data in cloud, major challenges of data theft could be issues and
thus security measures are required to be undertaken. Hence, clients are afraid to store
confidential data within cloud.
ii) Lower Bandwidth: The second demerit of cloud computing in electronic
commerce is that it comprises of lower bandwidth. Most of the users are accessing cloud at
similar time, hence causing bandwidth going down.
iii) Flexibility Issues: The next important disadvantage of cloud computing in
electronic commerce is that there are various flexibility issues and thus all organizations
could not easily utilize this technology (Rittinghouse and Ransome 2016). The hardware and
software thus could be controlled effectively.
iv) Incompatibility: For the reason of virtual infrastructure, issues of incompatibility
can rise at various times for posing important issues for running services smoothly. This
incompatibility helps the organization in dealing with various threats and vulnerabilities
efficiently and effectively.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, conclusion can be drawn that cloud computing
is the easiest delivery mode of various hosted services on the Internet. It enables the
organizations for consuming compute resources like storage, application, virtual machine and
thus helping in building as well as maintaining computing infrastructures. E commerce sites
are the most significant and popular web sites that help in shopping for all the clients cost

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effectively and also by saving time. There are various deployment models of clod computing,
which are private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud and community cloud. The major goal of
the implementation of the cloud is the perfect creation of an automated, unified as well as
scalable environment for taking advantage to the public infrastructure. This report has clearly
demonstrated about the detailed discussion on cloud computing in e commerce industry
sector. The proper information and data is managed easily when cloud computing is perfectly
implemented.

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References
Arora, R., Parashar, A. and Transforming, C.C.I., 2013. Secure user data in cloud computing
using encryption algorithms. International journal of engineering research and
applications, 3(4), pp.1922-1926.
Dinh, H.T., Lee, C., Niyato, D. and Wang, P., 2013. A survey of mobile cloud computing:
architecture, applications, and approaches. Wireless communications and mobile
computing, 13(18), pp.1587-1611.
Fernando, N., Loke, S.W. and Rahayu, W., 2013. Mobile cloud computing: A survey. Future
generation computer systems, 29(1), pp.84-106.
Garg, S.K., Versteeg, S. and Buyya, R., 2013. A framework for ranking of cloud computing
services. Future Generation Computer Systems, 29(4), pp.1012-1023.
Hashem, I.A.T., Yaqoob, I., Anuar, N.B., Mokhtar, S., Gani, A. and Khan, S.U., 2015. The
rise of “big data” on cloud computing: Review and open research issues. Information
Systems, 47, pp.98-115.
Hashizume, K., Rosado, D.G., Fernández-Medina, E. and Fernandez, E.B., 2013. An analysis
of security issues for cloud computing. Journal of internet services and applications, 4(1),
p.5.
Jain, R. and Paul, S., 2013. Network virtualization and software defined networking for cloud
computing: a survey. IEEE Communications Magazine, 51(11), pp.24-31.
Li, M., Yu, S., Zheng, Y., Ren, K. and Lou, W., 2013. Scalable and secure sharing of
personal health records in cloud computing using attribute-based encryption. IEEE
transactions on parallel and distributed systems, 24(1), pp.131-143.

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Rittinghouse, J.W. and Ransome, J.F., 2016. Cloud computing: implementation,
management, and security. CRC press.
Wei, L., Zhu, H., Cao, Z., Dong, X., Jia, W., Chen, Y. and Vasilakos, A.V., 2014. Security
and privacy for storage and computation in cloud computing. Information Sciences, 258,
pp.371-386.
Xiao, Z., Song, W. and Chen, Q., 2013. Dynamic resource allocation using virtual machines
for cloud computing environment. IEEE transactions on parallel and distributed
systems, 24(6), pp.1107-1117.
Yang, K. and Jia, X., 2013. An efficient and secure dynamic auditing protocol for data
storage in cloud computing. IEEE transactions on parallel and distributed systems, 24(9),
pp.1717-1726.