Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

This article is the last of a series of blogs on Cloud Computing I have written. Since I have written this in continuation with my other blogs, you will be able to better understand this article after you read my previous blogs on "Living on Clouds, an Office Away From Office!", "Why is Everyone Raving About Cloud Computing?", "How Cloud Computing Works?", and "Cloud Computing Deployment Models".
  
By now, my blogs should have helped you get a better understanding of Cloud Computing. You might have even started appreciating the technology. After reading through my articles on cloud computing, you must have got an idea of its mighty potential and how it can take even small businesses to the next level. See the following video if you don't agree with me.

While writing this article, I realized that cloud computing has been one of the best evolution of technology and every organization wants to adopt it. Technology experts even claim that cloud computing is the best way to grow as an organization. Here's a video about how cloud is the answer to growing business.

Like all great things have a negative side to them, even cloud computing has both advantages and disadvantages, and it is important for all organizations to consider them before migrating to cloud.

Advantages

• Cost Efficiency: One of the prime advantages of cloud computing is gained in terms of substantial IT cost saving to an organization, by eliminating investments on in-house servers, storage and application requirements. Such an elimination of infrastructural investments also helps to reduce operational and maintenance costs in terms of hardware or software upgrades, utility costs, and system administration. You only pay for what is used and as long as you need it. There is no capital investment involved and hence, even small-sized organizations benefit from cloud use.
• Scalability: One of the inherent features of cloud deployment is scalability and elasticity since clouds can be easily scaled to meet your changing business and IT needs. The cloud service provider ensures your applications are run on up-to-date hardwares and other resources, thereby providing high processing and computational speed to customers using the cloud.
• Disaster recovery: Cloud computing provides several solutions for automatic data backup and recovery. In several instances, cloud itself is used as a backup repository. This is a very useful feature in the event of a disaster or hardware compromise. Retrieving data is easier and less expensive when the data is residing in the cloud instead on a physical device.
• Reliability: When compared to on-premise IT infrastructure, cloud computing is far more reliable and consistent. Most of the cloud service providers offer 24/7, 365 days and 99.99% availability of the cloud services. In case of a server or resource failure, the hosted applications and services can be made available through other running servers.
• Mobility: With the benefit of having access to cloud services round the cloud and throughout the year, you can also access it from any part of the world located in any time-zone and from any device such as smartphone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Globally run organizations have been hugely benefiting from this feature since it helps their employees continue working in all situations and collaborate easily with co-workers situated in different time-zones. 

Disadvantages

• Control: The third-party cloud service provider completely owns the cloud infrastructure and provides only limited control to clients and customers. An organization using the cloud service can only control and manage their applications, data and services, without the access to the underlying softwares and hardwares, and will require the vendor’s support to resolve issues. 
• Security and data privacy: Cloud is implemented with the best security standards yet there is always a risk of exposing your business data to external service providers. In case of public clouds, there is also a risk of hackers gaining illegal access to the cloud by exploiting the security vulnerabilities.
  Similarly, privacy in the cloud is yet another issue. Organizations and end-users need to entrust their data to cloud vendors for protection from unauthorized users. Recently, media reported data and password leaks from a noted website and concerned several users. 
• Downtime: Cloud service providers often handle several applications serving multiple customers or clients and the load on their servers keep varying based on the number of users accessing the cloud, sometimes resulting in dysfunctional servers and outages.  This means temporary suspension of access to some crucial applications leading to business losses.

Now that you are aware about the benefits and risks of cloud computing, do you think cloud computing is the way to go for all organizations? If your organization is yet to start using cloud, do you think it is high time they move to the cloud? Share your thoughts.

References

• Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing. Retrieved from http://www.stratospherenetworks.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud.html 
• Alton, Larry. (2015, April 24). The Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing. Retrieved from http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/biztools/the-pros-and-cons-of-cloud-computing.html
• Tsagklis, Ilias. (2013, April 23). Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing – Cloud computing pros and cons. Retrieved from https://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/04/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud-computing-cloud-computing-pros-and-cons.html
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing. Retrieved from http://www.levelcloud.net/why-levelcloud/cloud-education-center/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud-computing/
• Grant, J. Steven. (2014, December 3). Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing. Retrieved from http://www.cloudvirtualizationspecialist.com/advantages-disadvantages-cloud-computing/