Abstract
This research paper will delve into the world of cloud computing. It provides a discussion on what cloud computing is how it works. Its origin will also be looked at to help understand why cloud computing is what is it today. The uses of cloud computing across different users will also be examined as well as its advantages and disadvantages and other issues that surrounds cloud computing technology. Particularly, the cost-effectiveness of its use will b discussed as well as security issues relevant to the use of the technology. This research paper will inform readers on everything they will need to know about cloud computing and what it is, its history, its advantages and disadvantages, and how it is used.
Cloud computing’s major advantages include being cost-efficient, scalability, dependability, manageability and disaster recovery. Amazon Web Services (AWS) being one of the top a cloud computing services provider implies that it is capable of providing all of these benefits to their clients. As a provider of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), it provides companies with the needed infrastructure on a pay-pay-use basis like servers, firewalls, and storage and load balancers.
Ericson benefited from utilizing the services of Amazon Web Services in term of cost reduction because they need not purchase for all of the hardware requirements they need in all of the strategic places they operated since they could just acquire their needed hardware resources and their corresponding licenses from among the resources available offered by Amazon. Ericson was able to focus on providing quality services to their clients while keeping their operating services at a minimal level. The beauty of the service is that they only pay for the services they actually need without bothering for the maintenance of such. They only need to concentrate on these can be utilized to improve their services. Maintenance of the services already includes the automated software updates, thus, Ericson need not hire personnel that would keep all of their software applications up-to-date in all of their business centers. Likewise, since the services are cloud based, concurrent updates can be achieved. In terms of remote-access, Ericson was able to capitalize on this service because AWS has hosting services available in different regions. For on-demand availability, the auto-scale feature of the services offered by AWS makes Ericson pay for only the requirements they need but also give them the freedom to avail of more services when they needed it.
Amazon’s EC2, Amazons S3 and RighScale give scalability in their services by giving the client just enough space and software features for their clients and billing them for only what they use. But at the same time, this does not prevent them from moving forward and create bigger applications with greater storage needs because whenever they need these they can readily expand. In terms of dependability several reviews have commented that indeed, Amazon is dependable and their services are up 24/7 with a helpdesk to provide support to their clients. Their interfaces are simple enough that it is very manageable. Although, it is expected that experts will be tasked by the company to man and take charge in the implementation of the services, they are still veruy manageable thus everyone could adapt to it.
Margaret Rouse wrote that “Because of the cloud's very nature as a shared resource, identity management, privacy and access control are of particular concern. With more organizations using cloud computing and associated cloud providers for data operations, proper security in these and other potentially vulnerable areas have become a priority for organizations contracting with a cloud computing provider.” (techtarget.com) Companies like Ericson who is working with confidential data are particularly concern with security and privacy as technically, they are turning over their data to another company where they have no control on how these data are stored. The company has to rely on the trust to the provider that the data they are passing to them will be safeguarded. Data security is a vital issue so on the part of the provider of cloud services, they must come up with all means of securing the data they have. Strong password and encryption techniques have to be implemented.
References
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