Integration Of Logistics And Cloud Computing: Advantages And Disadvantages Essay.

Different Types of Cloud Computing Models

Discuss about the Integration of Logistics and Cloud Computing.

The research topic that is selected is “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing for Business. This study documents the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing for business and establish its relationship to the business world. Aim of cloud computing for business is to provide a complete view of how cloud computing is related to business. This particular study is considered to be of utmost importance resulting from the current state of cloud computing and several issues that are faced in adoption of cloud computing by business. However, it is required by business to have a holistic view of the way they are getting impacted by cloud computing.

The aim of this research is to explore the understanding of advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing with a critical analysis of users and providers. Research is conducted to bridge the gap between providers and users that is business enterprises and therefore, there will be depiction of more holistic view of cloud computing. Objective of research is to come up with valuable findings and conclusions about advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing for business. It is fairly a recent trend with lots of research to be done for making the project worthwhile (Fernández et al. 2014).

The scope of study is to provide a clear understanding of cloud computing and its relevance in business by discussing advantages and disadvantages. A wide coverage in study involves the implication of cloud computing for business mainly in developed country such as Australia.

In technology, cloud computing is a relatively concept and most of properties of cloud computing is related to earlier technologies. Cloud computing is gaining ground in this competitive era and one of the considerable reason associated with this is cutting down of information technology cost (Alzahrani et al. 2014). Cloud computing can be defined as a model that enables on demand network and convenient access to a shared pool of organizing computing resources for rapidly releasing and provisioning with least interaction with service provider and minimal effort of management.

Software as a Service- Users of cloud computing are able to access the applications through several devices in Internet as they run on infrastructure of cloud providers. This does not make it necessary for users to install software on their computer. Users utilize up to date versions as provider automatically do the updates. A pay per use is applied in this model and there is no need for business to pay for license. Organization performing specific processes and functions utilizes Saas applications. However, users does not have the capability to manage and control cloud infrastructure.

Advantages of Cloud Computing

Infrastructure as a Service-  An entire virtual data center of resources such as bandwith, storage, servers and computing resources are provided by cloud service provider. One of the evolution of Saas is business process as a Service that helps in outsourcing of entire business process to their party.

Platform as a Service-  Cloud delivered services are used by customers for deploying, managing and running applications on the infrastructure of providers.

• Providing broad access to network- Cloud computing models helps in the transmission of capabilities as it has vision for ubiquitous computing. Various standardized platforms such as laptops and mobiles can be used for accessing.
• Rapid elasticity- There is a rapid elasticity of resources via cloud that is built on utility model. Computing need and requirements of consumers can be scaled up and down due to unlimited appearance of resources.
• Resource pooling- Clients are serviced simultaneously as multi-tenancy model are incorporated in cloud model and the requirements of clients are met by poling computing resources of providers. As per the demands of customers, there is a dynamic assignment and reassignment of resources (Mezgár and Rauschecker 2014). Since the resources are independent of one another, there is no need to locate them together.
• Measured service- At different level of abstraction, cloud service has metering capability as it incorporates utility model. Resources helps in aiding accountability for consumers and provider as resources are well controlled and monitored.
• Loose Coupling- The basis of building applications of cloud computing is dependent on the fact that there is a discourage of dependencies between components. Overall scalability of application is added by sum of parts.
• On demand self-service- Implementation and provisioning of cloud computing does not need any human interaction and solutions are consumed and delivered over the internet.

Cloud computing has some of the possible deployment model that are categorized as private cloud, public cloud, community cloud and hybrid cloud (Fernando et al. 2013).

Community cloud- In this type of cloud computing, sharing of cloud infrastructure is done exclusively to specific communities consisting of organizations having common concerns such as common requirement of securities sand common mission.  Infrastructure of this type of cloud computing is located either off or on premises.

Private cloud- In this type of computing, a single organization owns or lease the cloud infrastructure such that the services are used exclusively. Their location can be either outside or inside premises.

Hybrid Cloud- In this particular model, the cloud infrastructure is a combination more than two or two positioning models of separate entities and that are wrapped together by proprietary or standardized technologies (Subramanian et al. 2015).

Public Cloud- In this type of computing model, an organization is owning cloud infrastructure that are open to use as the services are offered to general public and large group of industry.

In order to understand the benefits and challenges of cloud computing for organizations and business, the term is too imprecise. With the development of new technologies, tendency of organizations is to under estimate the long-term benefits and overestimate the short-term effects of cloud computing. Some of long-term and short-term benefit of cloud computing are as follows:

Cost reduction- Reduction of cost of information technology and simplification of operation of information technology is one of the most prominent advantage provided by cloud computing utility model. An organization employing such model is not required to have in house upfront of information technology investments in servers, hardware and other resources of information technology. Organization faces reduced operational expenses by reducing capital expenses. Cost of using the applications is dependent upon usage as there is no requirement of making up front investments. It is the responsibility of provider of cloud service to update their system and therefore, firms are not required to incur any cost or investment on system updation and maintenance. Services of cloud computing is very attractive in the event of rapid changes in demand of consumers as there are some of the services of cloud computing such as computing power and store of data that has comparatively reduced or lower cost (Assunção et al. 2015).

Operational Benefits to Business

The direct benefit of cloud computing is reduction of information technology costs, there are some indirect benefits resulting from cloud computing services adoption. Organization is able to focus on their core business and activities that are most relevant to them. It enables them to focus on their core and main activities. Most of technological constraints faced by business are removed as cloud computing helps in reducing the information technology constraints by freeing up resources and free time and therefore driving the agility of business by focusing on the main components of business (Garrison et al. 2015). This in turn helps in accelerating the results of business, driving the productivity gains and improving the process of business and thereby improving the performance of whole organization.

Operational benefits to business- Migration to cloud computing services results in operational benefits for any organization that helps in facilitation of day to day running of business.  Organization using cloud service has the possibility of accessing services from various platforms due to mobility and flexibility provided that helps in efficiently getting things done.  Information technology department of an organization has do it yourself approach due to provision of self-services (Oliveira et al. 2014). There are better utilizations of assets such as furniture and office area.

Eco friendly- Adoption of cloud computing services helps in reducing hardware components required by any business enterprise and thereby reducing the consumption of energy. For this reason, cloud computing is regarded as ecofriendly (Hameed et al. 2016). There is a centralized infrastructure for data centers using the cloud computing services.

Users of cloud computing services are not concerned about over provisioning due to flexibility and scalability of information technology. The reason is attributable to the fact that users can dynamically obtain resources of cloud computing according to needs and demands of consumers. This helps organization in satisfying demand of consumers at peak while just paying for the service used and using extra resources according to requirements. Cloud services enables an organization to quickly, efficiently and easily develop an application (Subramanian et al. 2014).

Some of other potential benefits of cloud computing services involved improving organization’s external capabilities, reliability, mobility and accessibility. External capabilities involves increasing collaboration with business partners and it helps business in innovating their services, process and products for meeting the market changing requirements. Telecommunication and Information technologies industries is significantly impacted by cloud computing services (Apostu et al. 2013).

Eco-Friendly

Organizations are faced with increasing challenges and concerns with every new technological advancements. There is slowdown in their adoption process for which they are required to overcome such challenges.

Security issues- One of the major concern of cloud computing is privacy and security issues and this makes most of organization hesitant to adopt such services. Organization with sensitive data are not encouraged to employ the cloud computing services because data of customers are shared among multiple shared servers. It is required by organization to make investment in hardware and software for addressing cloud service issues (González et al. 2015).

Organizations are scared of vendor lock-in and there involves difficulties in switching to different cloud service providers. It is hard for firms to move in and out of cloud services, as it is not affordable for them. Interoperability of clouds is not possible because of lack of standards. It is possible for organization to have to face institutional lock in along with lock in that is technological in nature. Consumers seeking the applications of cloud computing services is concerned about requirements of government compliance that differs from one country to another (Al-Ayyoub et al. 2015). There are different compliance requirements that an organizations is required to follow when provisioning such services. Therefore, compatibility issues is another challenge faced by organization as international and migration of cloud services is difficult.

Conclusion:

Analysis of literature review deals with evolution of cloud computing services and various models that it incorporates along with discussion of advantages and disadvantages. The research involved a general view on cloud computing services by refection several benefits and challenges faced by firms adopting to such services. It is revealed by literature review of advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing services that a lot of new fixing is required by cloud computing as it is not suitable for all types of business enterprises. Decision making of organization for adopting or migrating to cloud computing services by organization would be assisted by striking a balance between the service advantages and disadvantages. Some of the challenges that is faced while doing research is shortage of literature on cloud computing. There are lot of opportunities for improvement in the services of cloud computing. For further study on research on cloud computing is to focus on some specifics of cloud concepts aspects such as pay per use model and its long-term effect or strengthening the models of business by finding ways.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

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