Analysis of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing and its Benefits:

Cloud Computing is a technique in which the data is hosted by the parent company and it is saved in a host server that is not in the purview of the company at all. Through that host server, the data is saved, managed and processed. It is a demand based system in which all the data can be processed and attained on demand by the parent company from the service provider. Usually it is done, so that the capabilities of managing the data are not maintained in house. This also turns analytical and computing capabilities to become faster and more effective, the entire onus of the data is not to be

The main benefit of cloud computing is the cost saving angel in which companies don’t have to invest in their in house server cost and maintenance and rather use the hosted server of a service provider, which makes it more economical for the company. Secondly, the elasticity that cloud computing provides to the parent company is huge, the scaling up and down of the operations is at the discretion of the company and hence the scaling is very simple and easy (Coles, 2014).

The payment terms are also simplified which is on pay per use basis which ensures that there is no extra cost linked with unnecessary lean phase of the working and the payment is thoroughly on the basis of the usage. The final benefit of the cloud computing is that it is always available on need basis and hence needed to ensure that work is never stopped and the system is always up and running.

Benefits and Challenges of Migrating the Data in SaaS:

The benefits of SaaS are as follows (McLellan, 2013):

1. Cost Saving: It moves from the server based heavy input cost system to a service based model in which the software is being given as a service and the ownership of maintenance and functioning lies with the service provider.
2. Easy to Upgrade: The upgrading is pretty easy with SaaS and hence it reduces a huge pile of work from the in house IT department of the company. This ensures that there is a saving of substantial in house capabilities.
3. Safety: This is the most important aspect in which the data and the server is saved from all the natural disasters and calamities, which hence ensures that all the onus of the maintenance and the safety of the data lies with the service provider. This is a thorough capability that is able to ensure that work can be done and managed easily.

Disadvantages of SaaS (Sylos, 2013):

1. Security Concerns: This is the primary concerns for all the company as the sensitivity of the data is huge and companies cannot afford to lose that sensitivity at any cost. The passing of onus to a service provider is a convenient but an extremely risky affair.
2. Outages: This is a huge set back in the system as the system are meant to be maintained and the upgrades also happen in tandem, this leads to a situation when outages of a very serious level occurs then the consistency in the service is a questionable thing.
3. Inconsistency: Since there are a lot of newbie’s service providers in the market and if they host their data, there are changes that they might fail in the coming days, during that time it will be impossible to migrate all the data to a new service provider or taking it back to the home server.

Benefits and Challenges of Migrating to the Data in IaaS:

The benefits of IaaS are as follows (Reed, 2014):

1. Load Sharing: This is a shared infrastructure capability and hence the biggest advantage of IaaS is that it helps in shifting the demand in the phase of high peak load. This is very beneficial in case there are some extra investments that are needed to build a new source and capability. This can be used as a service and ensured to build a more optimized level of operations.
2. Accessibility: Since it is hosted on cloud for the business users it provides a better management of accessibility to the critical software functionality to the business users and service providers. It is also access controlled and hence an unauthorized person cannot enter and also the authorized person will have a defined access control. This is the similar capability that can be built in the in house set up.
3. Ease of Deployment: This is a kind of readymade solution for the business problems. There is no need to go ahead with the entire waterfall model of implementation, rather a ready to deploy solution is available and that is kind of tailor-made to fit in the requirement bucket of the companies and they are able to leverage the same with ease. It is the biggest advantage of IaaS that it reduces this huge load with ease.

Disadvantages of IaaS (Hayes, 2013):

1. Security Concerns: Data is the most important thing these days and the reason why companies are going ahead with data hosting is that they don’t want to take the load of maintaining the servers. However, it is a very high end security concern that data malware can happen any time.
2. No Flexibility: This is a huge set back in the system as the system are meant to be maintained and the upgrades also happen in tandem, this leads to a situation that there is a dependency on a service provider all the time.
3. Support Team: There is a need to maintain support team from the vendor that will be able to manage and control the working and operations in a seamless fashion. The support team is an add-on cost and this can get in multi million dollars in case the assignment is of a high impact and scale.

Bibliography

Coles, C. (2014). 11 Advantages of Cloud Computing and How Your Business Can Benefit From Them. London: Skyhigh Networks.

Hayes, M. (2013). 5 Important Benefits of Infrastructure as a Service. London: StateTech.

McLellan, C. (2013). SaaS: Pros, cons and leading vendors. Houston: ZDNet Publications.

Reed, R. (2014). Infrastructure-as-a-Service: Concepts, Advantages & Disadvantages. New York: NTT Data.

Rouse, M. (2014). cloud computing. Boston: TechTarget Publications.

Sylos, M. (2013). Top five advantages of software as a service (SaaS). Paris: Thoughts On Cloud.