Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is becoming increasingly important in the IT world.  Cloud Computing Services can provide applications and develop platforms.

Advantages

• Cost efficiency- elimination of investment in standalone software/servers/ save on licensing costs

• Convenience and continuous availability – services are available wherever the end user is located/server uptime better

• Backup and Recovery – process is simplified as not on a physical local device

• Environmentally friendly – takes fewer resources to compute hence saving energy and local machine not on all the time

• Resiliency and Redundancy – built on robust architecture and automatic fall-over between hardware platforms

• Scalability and Performance – scalability is built in to cloud deployments and customer only pays for what they use instead of having to buy a lot of extra not being used

• Increased Storage Capacity – Can store much more data compared to a PC

• Device Diversity and Location Independence – can access the data at a variety of devices and from a lot of different locations i.e. multiple access points

• Smaller learning curve

• Collaborative working

Disadvantages

• Security and Privacy – could argue that a company is giving away private data that might be sensitive and confidential

• Dependency – hard to migrate from one provider to another

• Technical difficulties and Downtime – If something goes wrong it is out of the user’s control

• Increased vulnerability – exposed on the public internet

• Increasing cost of storage

• More complex systems administration of data and services

• Need for a fast reliable broadband

• Online versions of software may not have the same functionality as the full client.