Benefits of Cloud Computing On the Business-Samples for Students

Question: What is Cloud Computing and how it works. Answer: Introduction: With the advancement in the technology, many organisations are implementing the new technologies in their processes. One of those technologies is cloud computing. It is the technology that is being used by most of the organisations these days. Those technologies provide many benefits to the businesses. Not only the big companies but the small companies are making more use of cloud computing services. This is because big companies have their own IT infrastructure but small companies find it very costly to develop their own IT infrastructure (Mell and Grance, 2011). Development of cloud computing has also created a new era of competition amongst the businesses to build their network and enhance the businesses. Cloud computing has become a very popular idea and service. This is the project that discusses about the concept called cloud computing. The major focus of the project is to analyse the importance and benefits of cloud computing is business efficiency and productivity. This essay describes the overall functioning of cloud computing and it infrastructure. Project Objective: This project focus on the concept cloud computing. As far as the specificity of the objectives is considered, following are some of the objectives of cloud computing: What is cloud computing and how it works What are the benefits of cloud computing on the business efficiency and productivity? Project Scope: The scope of the project is to know about the level of involvement, cloud computing has in businesses. This report focuses on cloud computing and its impact on businesses. This helps the researchers to better understand the intensity of cloud computing involvement in the businesses these days. The scope of the research is so wide. Understanding the benefits of cloud computing in businesses help them to take better decisions in order to implement the cloud computing services in the organisations (Armbrust,et al. 2010). cloud computing Information technology is the field that is experiencing great development. The use of information technology tools has allowed the users to make many changes and development in every organisational process. In context of business, most of the organisations have also started using IT tools and services to conduct some of the activities at the workplace. Now, the time has come that each and every organisation is dependent on software and hardware for their functioning. Cloud computing is the term that is given to an online data base that acts as the storage device (Qian, et al. 2009). It provides one of the facilities to the companies or the user to use internet as the medium to store and save data and use the applications online. Traditionally, suing the business applications was very expensive and complicated in nature. Whole team of experts were required to install, configure and run those applications in the company. With the invention of cloud computing, these complicated activit ies have eliminated. Now the applications are not managed by the company itself but are on shared server which is managed by experienced vendors of clouds. Cloud based application are easy to use and thus user just enhance to make their account on the particular cloud to use the applications (Buyya, Yeo and Venugopal, 2008). Even the data can be stored at the cloud and it can be shared to anyone along with having secured connections. Cloud architecture: Figure 1 The architecture of cloud computing is very complicated and involves 4 layers. The first layer is the hardware that is also called ad datacentre layer, the infrastructure layer, platform layer and the last one is application layer. The hardware layer: It is the layer of physical resources such as clouds, servers, routers, switches, power etc. A data centre is the centre that includes many servers that are organised and interconnected with switches and other associated linking devices. The infrastructure layer: It is the layer that includes virtualisation technologies that is very important for the cloud applications to run (Zhang and Zhou, 2009). The platform layer: This is the layer that includes applications and operating system that act as the platform to run the applications on it. This layer is also very important as platform helps in supporting the applications by reducing their burden. The application layers: IT is the layer that is the most important one in the whole architecture as it includes all the application that needs to be run. All the layers of the cloud architecture are loosely coupled with each other and thus every layer has its equal importance (Foster, et al. 2008). Types of cloud computing infrastructure: Infrastructure as a Service: This is the type of cloud in which the third party allow the user to use some of the infrastructure such as hardware, software, servers, storage etc. Software as a Service: IT is the capability where the providers software is being used by other user that is running on the cloud interface. The interface can be web browser or any of the program interfaces. Platform as a Service: It is the facility where the user can deploy onto cloud infrastructure. In this, user can develop and run their application on the cloud and cloud acts as the platform. Cloud computing infrastructure: Cloud computing infrastructure can be built with different level of virtual technologies. There are different models of clouds such as private, public and hybrid cloud. Private clouds: It is the cloud that is used on private basis. This means that this type of cloud is being generated by the providers for the single client that can be installed at the client data centre or at the collocation where it can be used with the permission of the client (Zhang, Cheng and Boutaba, 2010). It is developed by the provider on the order basis or by the IT infrastructure of the company itself so that it can be installed for companys own use. The major benefit of using this cloud is that it can be controlled by the company and changes can be made easily. Public clouds: Public clouds are the clouds that are made for shared use. The providers develop such clouds and install the same on different location from the client site as there are many clients of the same cloud or server (Dong, et al. 2009). This helps in reducing cost for every customer. One more benefit of using this cloud is that it is easy to handle as third party is operating all the things. Sacking can also been done easily. Hybrid clouds: It is the type of cloud that is combination of both the above discussed clouds. It is the cloud that has the capacity to distribute the application to private as well as public basis. This cloud is beneficial as it serves the clients who want their personal cloud and also the clients who want to share the cloud with other users as well (Krutz and Vines, 2010). Cloud as an emerging utility in business: Cloud computing is the most popular facility that is being used by the business these days. This is because it provides easy access to various applications. The benefits of suing cloud computing as utility are: On demand services: On demand services are provided to the user on cloud. Customization is also the option available for them. The computing environment can be customized by the user according to their demands and cloud provides this to them. The clients or the customers provide their requirements to the cloud providers or developers and the n the providers work on the applications as per the clients need and requirements (Armbrust,et al. 2009). Ther are various requirements that are important to be installed at the time of making contracts between the user of the cloud and the seller of the cloud. Some of them are procurement, account management, service installation, payment and billing etc. all these things are mechanised in a way so that the process of running and installing the clouds at the clients space can be properly managed. Pay as you go: It is the service that can be paid according to its usage per minute. The user can pay according to the time the application of the server is used by the user rather than paying on monthly basis. This provides an ease for the customers as they do not have to pay on a monthly basis. Guaranteed quality: the environment or the services that are provided by clouds are guaranteed with the quality and serve the same quality that has been claimed at the time of agreement (Marston, et al. 2011). Quality provided to the customers is very high because the companies or the third party providers that are serving the clients with cloud services are specialised in this and have great IT infrastructure as compared to individual IT infrastructures of the companies. Accessibility: It is very easy access the cloud computing services as they are light in nature and can be installed very easily and has user friendly interface. Resource pooling: It is one of the major benefits of the services by clouds. The providers of the services allow the user to use the services on pooled or shared basis. Single service can be provided to multiple users at the same time (Truong, D., 2010). This concept of resource pooling is not dependent on the location of the server or the client. Pooling does not mean sharing the data but it is just about sharing the infrastructure or the software. The major benefit for using this resource pooling is cost. It decreases the cost for the user as more than one user is using the cloud at a time. The organisations selling the cloud services have to retain the buyers and thus have to provide the effective services to them. Forecasting is the very important factor that is required in cloud computing business. This is because over capacity if the cloud results in increasing of cist and under capacity of the cloud may results in losing the customers. Cloud computing in business: Cloud computing is the convergence of two types of information technology trends. The first trend is IT efficiency. The use of cloud computing services increases the power and the efficiency of computer system. The hardware and software of the computer system can be used in more efficient manner with the association of cloud computing services. The next trend is business agility. In this the IT tools can be used by the business or the companies for the purpose of business analytics, rapid deployment, batch processing etc. that increases the productivity of the company (Gupta, Seetharaman and Raj, 2013). As competition is increasing day by day thus it is very important to inculcate IT tools in the business functions so that the companies can withstand the market competition. The major goals of businesses these days are to earn more and more profits by putting minimal inputs. For this, many of the businesses turned their way to cloud computing. Cloud computing is a booming industry in the world and many companies are providing clouds computing applications and database to their customers. Some of the big names of this industry are Google, Amazon, IBM, Yahoo; Microsoft etc. each of the companies named here have different fields and thus provide different types of clouds to the customers (Avram, 2014). When cloud computing enters the business world, it has been analysed that rapid improvement is being observed in the way the business functions, interact with the customers, perform business activities etc. it has been analysed that most of the companies are using the facilities of clouds and perform all the activities on clouds (Armbrust, et al.2010). There are many benefits of using cloud computing in the business. It does not only increase the efficiency of the business but also increase the productivity of the same. Following are some the justification that describes that how cloud computing has its impact on efficiency and productivity of the business. Cost saving: cloud computing is the technique that is one of the most cost effective methods that can help in improving the IT infrastructure of the business. This is because it provides pay-as-you-go option in which the users can pay as per the usage of the service and not only monthly basis. This makes it very reasonable for the business to use cloud services. The company can have many other spending by using cloud computing such as purchase of hardware and software, spending on storage and networking, reduced operational cost. The major concern here is that use of cloud computing reduces the operational cost of the company and thus the per-unit cost of the company also reduced (Hofmann and Woods, 2010). This enhances the productivity of the company as well as allows the company to produce or provide the services in more efficient way to the end customers. It requires a great planning by the company. The company or the business becomes more efficient and implementing new things qui ckly and without much spending. Reliable: Using reliable services is very important to be efficient in operations and functioning of the business. Cloud computing is the service that is realised to be very reliable then the personal data centres. Traditionally most of the companies build their own data centres and function on the basis of those data centres. The major risk associated with using the personal datacentre is server load. The issue in the sever leads to high loss to the company thus using the servers that are available on clouds helps the company to eliminate such a risk prone activities to happen. Mobility: It is one of the benefits of using cloud computing and cloud application that there are mobile in nature. It is the most important characteristics of cloud computing that make the work at the business more efficient (Stanoevska-Slabeva, et al. 2009). This is because it is very easy to access the clouds on any of the devices. Staff can easily collaborate with each other and there are no boundations for workers to use the data at a particular point. The data can be accessed by any of the employee from anywhere in the world. Thus, unless the company spent a large amount of money on building a great IT infrastructure it cannot compete with the cloud provider services. Security: Security is another major reason why businesses are using cloud computing these days. It has been analysed that data that is uploaded on the servers of clouds are very much secured by the providers. When the data is stored on clouds, it can be accessed even when there is any issue in the system. There are many policies and procedures that are associated with the contract of having contracted of clouds with the providers thus cloud computing is much secured way (Kaufman, 2009). As the data always remains on server thus it can be deleted from every system which may be using the data for wrong means. Immediacy: It is the most important benefit of cloud computing. It has been analysed that the traditional applications of software used to take weeks or months to get installed and configured but the new applications of cloud computing can be installed in a day and can be used very easily (Hoberg, Wollersheim and Krcmar, 2012). It resolves the immediate issues of the company and thus the productivity of the company perform their tasks increases. Recovery and backup: when the data is stored o the cloud, it is comparatively very easy to restore the data rather than taking data from the physical device. Any physical harm to these devices can also rupture the data inside but clouds do not have such drawbacks. The case of data loss is also very less in case of cloud computing and storage rather than the physical storage devices. All the above discussed benefits of cloud computing in businesses provide efficiency and productivity of the company and its functions this is because all the data that has been traditionally stored in the hardware devices are now stored at the data centres which are safest place to store the same (Weinhardt,et al. 2009). The use of cloud computing has enhanced the efficiency of the businesses these days. Now, not only the big businesses but the small companies can also have access to higher technologies and also can have wider reach because of the tools of cloud computing. Earlier where only the big companies have the power to make their own infrastructure, now the small scale businesses use these clouds instead and can manage the things in their budget. Conclusion: It has been concluded from the report that advancement in technology is bringing change in many things from daily lives to business processes. Most of the businesses are using IT tools for the all the functions and the activities they perform as it is believed that IT tools helps in enhancing the productivity and efficiency of the organisations. Cloud computing is one of those services or facilities that is used by all. Cloud computing is the term that is given to an online data base that acts as the storage device. It provides one of the facilities to the companies or the user to use internet as the medium to store and save data and use the applications online. It is very beneficial to use clouds computing technology at the organisation. This is because implementing cloud computing at the workplace is very cheap as compared to the personal IT infrastructure. It has been realised that it provides the facility to aces the data easily and the data remained secured at the cloud data cen tres. 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