Cloud-based Storage Essay: Advantages And Disadvantages.

Background

Write a report on “Cloud-based Storage, advantages and disadvantages”.

The particular model for storing confidential data over the Internet is known as a cloud based storage. The cloud storage is solely controlled or managed by the hosting organization. The data is made available as well as accessible with the cloud provider (Laan 2017). One of the important advantages of any cloud based storage is that it protects the physical environment of the cloud. The providers of cloud based storage control the stored data by various storage servers.

This report will provide a significant and detailed explanation on the broad theory of various cloud storages and their advantages and disadvantages. The report covers a brief history of this topic with the section of methodology and details of the research. This report also provides relevant details about the different point of views mentioned in twelve scholarly articles. The final section is the findings, where the complete report is evaluated.  

Cloud computing was first invented during the year 1960 by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider. He wanted to interlink the data transferring with the users. The main motive was to create something that could be accessible from anywhere irrespective of the time (Null and Labor 2014). After inventing cloud computing, it was observed that an online storage is highly required for the purpose of storing the data securely and without any type of complexities. During the year 1994, AT & T was responsible for launching Persona Link Services. It is a specific online platform that is utilized for business as well as personal entrepreneurship and communication. In the beginning, it was a very small space in disk, which could be utilized for storing all files. Amongst all the bigger organizations or companies, Amazon Web Services was the first one to launch and introduce their service of cloud storage with the rest of the world. It was named as AWS S3, after the name of Amazon Web Services (Rountree and Castrillo 2013). The famous services like Dropbox, Pinterest adopted this cloud storage for their businesses.

The hypothetical as well as or methodical analysis for any particular activity or action is known as a methodology. This is utilized for executing the activity perfectly. Various articles have been viewed for understanding the concept of cloud based storage. These scholarly articles are perfectly reviewed for completing this report. Amongst all the reviewed articles, twelve specific articles were chosen and this report is written on those twelve articles.

Methodology and Research Details

The various authors have discussed the topic in their specific ways. As per Laan 2013, cloud based storage is one of the most important requirements for any small or medium enterprises.  The IT infrastructure helps to understand the complete architecture of cloud properly.

According to Lee 2014, the cloud computing can be defined as the simplified practice of data transfer through Internet and cloud storage is the storage of the data.

The most significant advantages or benefits of the cloud storage are given below:

Lack of Verification of Data Integrity: The first and the foremost advantage of the cloud based storage is the lack of verification of data integrity. The cloud storage is responsible for providing utmost data confidentiality and integrity to its users (Pfleeger and Pfleeger 2015). This type of verification is not at all required in the cloud storage. Thus, the public audit ability of the cloud storage is solely enabled so that the TPA or the third party auditor can resort the data without worrying about the integrity.

Cheaper: The second important advantage of the cloud storage is that it is extremely cheaper and does not incur huge costs (Lee 2014). Although, this particular storage helps to manage, maintain and back up the data perfectly, the maintenance cost or expense of the cloud storage is extremely less when they are compared to others. The operating costs of the business processes in any particular business or organization is diminished when they store the data in cloud storage. This reduction of the annual expense in business processes makes the storage very popular and acceptable by everyone. The lack of internal power for data storage is another important significance of cloud storage (Stefanov and Shi 2013). Google Drive is one of the most popular examples of cloud storage that help the user in understanding the advantage of cost savings perfectly.

Data Accessibility: The next advantage of the cloud storage is the data accessibility. The data that has been stored as well as manipulated or retrieved can be easily accessed from any part of the world by anyone (White 2015). The data accessibility of cloud does not need help of the cloud provider and the user can do this by their own. The only requirement for data accessibility is the connection of the Internet.

Disaster Recovery: Another significant benefit of cloud based storage is that is helps in disaster recovery. It has been often observed that the businesses or organizations, who utilize the cloud storage or cloud computing for executing the business operations, face difficult situations like loss of data and lack of data integrity (Santana 2013). Cloud storage has an in built structure of disaster recovery within itself so that there is no problem in the retrieving the lost data. It is a type of security planning, which targets in protecting the business from various negative or disasters’ activities. The two measurements in the disaster recovery are the recovery point objective and the recovery time objective. These two are present within cloud storage.

Issues, Various Points of View

In spite of giving such vast and extra ordinary advantages, various disadvantages are also present within the cloud based storage and they are given below:

Lack of Privacy and Security: The most devastating disadvantage of the cloud storage is that there is almost no security and privacy for the data. This lack of security is often considered as the main down point for any cloud storage (Kurose and Ross 2016). Although it recent days, few cloud storages like Google Drive, Google cloud have taken this into consideration and thus provided utmost security for their users. The security of the cloud storage should be maintained properly so that the users do not move away from it.

Speed: The second most important disadvantage of the cloud storage is its speed. The data transfer or data storing is comparatively slower. This is mainly due to the fact that cloud storage has a huge infrastructure and when bulk amount of data is tried to be stored, the process gets slower with the heavier amount of data.

Dependency on Internet: The third most significant disadvantage of the cloud based storage is the dependency on the connection of Internet. Cloud based storage cannot work if the Internet connection is weak or if there is not Internet connectivity (Burd 2016). This dependency often becomes a major problem for the all of its users, who want to store their confidential data within the cloud based storage.

Need of Software Downloading: The fifth most significant disadvantage of the cloud based storage is the need or requirement of the download of software. The cloud based storage comprises of various software and services within it. If a user wants to store the data within the cloud storage, it is extremely required to download all the software and services.

Bandwidth Allowance: Another significant disadvantage of any particular cloud based storage is the limited bandwidth allowance (Stallings and Case 2013). Each cloud storage has its own limited bandwidth and if that specific bandwidth is surpassed by the client, huge cost is incurred with that.

This particular report has provided a complete evaluation of the cloud storage with its advantages and disadvantages. These benefits and the demerits of this cloud storage help to understand the importance of cloud storage in terms of various scholarly articles. These twelve articles are discussed by various authors and thus it is easily utilized by the clients. The main advantages of the cloud storage are lack of data integrity, cheaper, disaster recovery and data accessibility. The main disadvantages of cloud storage include lack of privacy and security, slower, limited bandwidth allowance, dependency on Internet and requirement of software downloading.

Advantages

Conclusion

Thus, from the above provided report, conclusion can be drawn that any cloud based storage is the significant storage for storing the data remotely and thus enjoying high quality of on demand services as well as applications. The most significant advantage of this type of storage is that there is no such burden and complexity of maintenance and storage of local data. The cloud storage is responsible for any type of data storing irrespective of its size. The services and the applications are utilized from the shared resources pool and these resources are of completely configurable computation. The users of the cloud storage do not comprise of any type of outsourcing data for making the integrity if data protection. Another important advantage of this cloud storage is that the users do not have to worry about the integrity of data. This type of verification is not at all required. This above report has properly provided a detailed description on cloud storage and its advantages as well as disadvantages. The methodology of completing this report was extremely easy and this was done by researching various articles. The benefits and the disadvantages are properly explained in this report. Furthermore, the evaluation of the entire report is done in the section of findings.

References

Burd, S., 2016. Systems architecture. 7th edn, Course Technology, Boston, MA. 

Kurose, J.F., and Ross, K.W., 2016. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach.7th edn, Addison Wesley, New Jersey. 

Laan, S., 2013. IT Infrastructure Architecture-Infrastructure Building Blocks and Concepts Second Edition. Lulu. press.

Laan, S., 2017. IT Infrastructure Architecture-Infrastructure Building Blocks and Concepts Third Edition. Lulu. com.

Lee, G., 2014. Cloud networking: understanding cloud-based data center networks. Morgan Kaufmann.

Null, L., and Labor, J., 2014. The essentials of computer organization and architecture. 4th edn, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, MA. 

Pfleeger, C., and Pfleeger, S., 2015. Security in Computing. 5th edn, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. 

Rountree, D. and Castrillo, I., 2013. The basics of cloud computing: Understanding the fundamentals of cloud computing in theory and practice. Newnes.

Santana, G.A., 2013. Data center virtualization fundamentals: understanding techniques and designs for highly efficient data centers with Cisco Nexus, UCS, MDS, and beyond. Cisco Press.

Stallings, W., and Case, T., 2013. Business data communications: Infrastructure, networking and security, 7th edn, Pearson, Boston. 

Stefanov, E. and Shi, E., 2013, May. Oblivistore: High performance oblivious cloud storage. In Security and Privacy (SP), 2013 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 253-267). IEEE.

White, C., 2015. Data communications and computer networks: a business user's approach. Cengage Learning.