Analyzing the Impact of Cloud Computing on Business Productivity

This report examines the impact of cloud computing on business productivity and efficiency, focusing on BHP, a mining company. It discusses cloud computing as the delivery of IT services via the internet, analyzing its positive effects like increased efficiency, reduced IT workload, and cost savings, as well as negative effects like downtime and security concerns. The report also touches upon various cloud computing layers, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), highlighting the importance of data security and vendor lock-in issues. The research identifies gaps in available data and emphasizes the need for official reports for future studies, concluding that cloud computing significantly influences a company's development and growth.

Impact of cloud computing on productivity and efficiency in business
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Table of Contents
Executive summary....................................................................................................................3
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Project scope:.............................................................................................................................3
Project objective:........................................................................................................................3
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................4
Research Gap.............................................................................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10
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Executive summary
There is a description made about the impact of cloud computing on efficiency and
productivity in business. Cloud computing is delivering information technology services in
that resources are collected from the internet by web-based tools and methods as opposed to a
direct link to the server. With the help of cloud computing what positive and negative effects
on the business and operations of BHP are analysed.
Introduction:
Cloud computing plays an important role in the today’s business environment which is of
very competitive nature. BHP limited is an Anglo Australian multinational company which
deals in mining, this is the petroleum and metals dual listed public company which
headquarters established in Melbourne, Australia. According to the market capitalization this
is the largest mining company. The revenue of the company is US$38.285 billion in 2017.
The description is given about the impact of cloud computing which increases the
productivity and efficiency of company in several manners.
Project scope:
The scope of this topic to get an understanding of the cloud computing in business operations
of BHP which is a mining based company. The new innovative technology is really effective
to increases the level of production and efficiency in marketplace or in a competitive area.
Project objective:
 The objective of this project is to analyse the role of cloud computing in business
operations and functions of BHP.
 The detailed analysis is prepared on the positive and negative impact of cloud
computing.
 It helps in the determination of cloud computing role whether how much it is
beneficial for the company and its effectiveness.
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Literature Review
The cloud computing is a basic term for the supply of hosted services on the internet. IT
enables BHP to consume the computing resources like a Virtual machine, application,
storage, as a utility like electricity rather than to maintain and build computing infrastructure
in homes. The important benefits of the cloud computing are as follows such as self-service
provision which eliminates the requirement of IT administrators people. It reduces the
workload of employees of the BHP; by shifts the workload to other cloud computing
platforms. Clod computing increases the efficiency and productivity of company:
Cloud computing is one of the best things to increase the level of production in this modern
world and competitive environment. Many of the people in the world have not heard about
cloud computing and few of them understand the concept of cloud computing at large.
Companies which don’t take benefits of cloud computing will be a minority (Gangwar, et. al.,
2015). With the help of cloud computing IT problems are reduced by providing the ability to
necessary operational IT work with an external company. This shifts the workload and
associated risk to maintain the IT people. A good service provider of cloud computing will
take care of the money and time of the company and such saved money can be invested in
other areas. This is very safe and secure which protects the records and documentation of
company in a safe manner so no any unauthorised person can access it. Oracle is a very solid
provider that provides more security rules and gives assurance of the safety records and
manages the data properly. It directly increases the productivity of BHP by maintaining the
proper records and accounts.
Cloud computing permits to company o adopt the marketing conditions in a more flexible
way which provides better solutions to company. The virtual solution enables to give fast
response to internal needs, when demands of customers are increases then cloud services may
rise to fulfill the demands and it can be decreased with the dropping demand. It eliminates the
issues of over-provisioning of IT administrators and systems burden (Khanagha, et. al.,
2014). As per the research report, it is determined that 74%of the business gives a better
competitive advantage in this environment. The cloud computing enables to capitalize the
opportunities in a fast manner than competitors of market. It allows companies to grow a
speed that directly affects the ability to make the products and give a response to customer
needs. The cloud works as a facilitator to improve the position of company and to bring the
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products into market very fast. With the help of cloud computing, old storage methods of data
collection are reduced because it was very difficult to maintain (Bayramusta and Nasir,
2016). In large business forms, data collection and analysis takes more time and requires
skilled IT administrators and specialists.
Cloud computing creates team collaboration in a simple way and allows the organisation to
be work at anytime or anywhere. It is possible to share the information in a best effective
manner on projects and such information in required manner (Dimitrijevic, 2018). With the
innovation of cloud computing employees of company becomes more advanced and more
productive, demonstrating the products of company and manage the working methods
becomes easy.
It helps in the situation when a company suffers any disaster the cloud computing provides
data backup service. Oracle is the best leading provider who provides data services and
makes more focus on security and innovation that means clouds software is made to resist in
a disaster situation. The virtualization technology able the incorporation of cloud recovery
model that keeps a version of the clone to prevent something from going wrong (Rouse,
2018).The goal of the company is to take large profits by cutting down the cost which makes
a great impact on profitability of company in a fast manner. Cloud computing gives a large
financial support to the company.
There is a certain drawback of the adoption of cloud computing. One of the major drawbacks
of cloud computing is downtime. As the system of cloud computing is based on the internet
i.e. everything depends on the internet connection, there is a certain time when internet
doesn’t work. Even the provider of best cloud services is unable to provide assurance for no
outage of the cloud services during times when the internet is down. During this time, the
platform of cloud computing automatically fails (Krutz and Vines, 2010). Another issue with
cloud computing is privacy, confidentiality, and security. It is essential for the organisation to
keep the certain information a secret as it is the reason for the growth of the organisation.
Leaking such trade secret affects the organisation as its competitors may misuse such secret
against the organisation. This involves the question of safety of confidential or sensitive data.
Hacking the cloud is possible and such practices may result in deleting the data, sharing the
data or misusing of the data or the information. This results in loss of trade secrets or the
processes due to which company was able to maintain its advantage over its competitors or
reduction in the productivity of the company, etc. As it is well-established that security and
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managing the data is the responsibility of the service provider of cloud, however as no system
is completely secure, the responsibility of such safety comes on the organisation itself
(Rittinghouse and Ransome, 2016). As the every element of cloud computing is accessible
with the help of Internet, the chances of attack is high. This means cloud computing is too
vulnerable to suffer serious attacks. There are various ways of breaching the security of the
cloud computing system and accessing the data on it. Moreover, as cloud computing have
become public, the authorities controlling the cloud computing system and allowing the users
with an official account with basic information have raised the chances of suffering cyber
attacks. There are certain limitations on the use of system of cloud computing by which
organisation is unable to exercise full use of such system. Various service providers of cloud
computing system such as EULAs may impose the limitations on the user of the system and
can keep a check on what a customer can do or cannot do in the system. Customers also
suffer lack of control over the applications, services, data, etc. some of which are paid
exclusive of the charges incurred for the getting an official cloud system. It must also be
noted that cloud computing system is suitable for the large-scale organisations, not for small-
scale organisations. The cost of getting cloud computing system will be expensive for the
small-scale organisation as it includes installing required hardware and software that cost of
which ends up being higher than the expectation. Continuous change in policies or laws
applicable on the use of the internet or the cybersecurity also affects the cloud computing
system which makes it difficult for the organisation for making changes as such changes
results in incurring a high cost (Laudon and Laudon, 2016). Last issue involved in cloud
computing system is vendor’s lock-in i.e. the cloud computing system of one vendor cannot
be used or accessed on the system of another vendor. Companies face issues in passing the
services from one vendor to another vendor. There are various which may not work on a
particular computing system such as Microsoft Development Framework (MDF) doesn’t
work on the Linux platform. Such drawbacks affects also affects the working or the
operations of the organisations as happening of such events demotivates the workforce of the
organisation and results in decline in the productivity. The impact of such events result in
damaging the goodwill of the company in the market and it suffer losses due to non-
competitiveness of the company in the market due to a breach of security of trade secrets.
There are various layers of cloud computing system which are divided on the basis of its
work or nature of work handled by these layers. Such layers of the cloud computing system
are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service
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(SaaS). The foundation of the cloud computing system is IaaS which includes or provides the
services of storage, security, and backup. This will be understood with the help of an example
i.e. Amazon Web Services which provides the services of database, support services or the
virtual server, etc which are made available on an hourly basis or by the size of the system
i.e. in MBs or GBs (Lynch, J., 2016). PaaS is the second layer of the cloud computing system
which includes the framework and the basic functions which are provided by the vendor or
are put as default. Such framework or functions can be changed or modified by the user as
per its requirements. SaaS is a software service which is supported by the internet which is
received by the user on the basis of per user or per month. These are the software which are
used by the organisation in the day to day activities such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce,
etc.
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Research Gap
While conducting research in regards to the cloud computing system and its impact on the
efficiency and the productivity of the business, certain issues were faced by the researcher.
The main issue faced by the researcher is that certain difficulties were suffered by the
researcher while gathering the relevant data and information on the cloud computing system
and the chosen organisation i.e. BHP. While conducting the research, data available are
related to the past times and due to continuous change in technology and the laws, the
question of reliability of data arises. Most of the data is collected from published sources
which may or may not be authentic. For further conducting the research, official and
authentic report or data will be used. Due to the absence of official data, it took time in
conducting the research. However, the researcher was able to complete the research on time.
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Conclusion
It is concluded from the above description that Cloud computing plays a significant role in
the development and growth of company. The companies that adopt the cloud computing is
very advanced and fast to attain the desired objectives in best effective manner. With the help
of cloud computing company enhances the level of production with greater business
competitiveness, efficiency, functionality, and flexibility in methods and adopted tools. It
helps in the reduction of IT disaster problems such as unauthorised access to information by
third party. This also includes the certain drawbacks such as issues related to the security of
data and information of the company, BHP. Such data can be used by the competitors of the
company for getting an advantage over it. However, there are certain layers included in the
cloud computing system which ensure the management and security of data.
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References
 Bayramusta, M. and Nasir, V.A., 2016. A fad or future of IT?: A comprehensive
literature review on the cloud computing research. International Journal of
Information Management, 36(4), pp.635-644.
 Dimitrijevic, I., 2018. 4 Ways Cloud Computing Can Increase Productivity and
Profits. [Online] toolbox.com. Available at:
https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/ivandimitrijevic/4-ways-cloud-computing-can-increase-
productivity-and-profits-102617. [Accessed on 25 April, 2018]
 Gangwar, H., Date, H. and Ramaswamy, R., 2015. Understanding determinants of
cloud computing adoption using an integrated TAM-TOE model. Journal of
Enterprise Information Management, 28(1), pp.107-130.
 Khanagha, S., Volberda, H. and Oshri, I., 2014. Business model renewal and
ambidexterity: structural alteration and strategy formation process during transition to
a Cloud business model. R&D Management, 44(3), pp.322-340.
 Krutz, R.L. and Vines, R.D., 2010. Cloud security: A comprehensive guide to secure
cloud computing. Wiley Publishing.
 Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson
Education India.
 Lynch, J., 2016. What are the benefits and Drawback of Cloud Computing?
Techsoup. Available at: https://www.techsoup.org/support/articles-and-how-tos/what-
are-the-benefits-and-drawbacks-of-cloud-computing. [Accessed on 25 April, 2018]
 Rittinghouse, J.W. and Ransome, J.F., 2016. Cloud computing: implementation,
management, and security. CRC press.
 Rouse, M., 2018. cloud computing, [Online] searchcloudcomputing. Available at:
https://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-computing. [Accessed on
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