Cloud Computing - Case Study Example

Cloud Computing This essay determined the impact of cloud computing on corporate IT level. The benefits of cloud computing towards organization is being discusses. Cloud computing reduces the IT cost and makes company more flexible. Some of the demerits of cloud computing is been described. Some of the Houston based companies OMNIPOTECH and Empact IT has benefited from cloud computing service. Finally, two Texas based companies Rackspace and SoftLayer that are supporting cloud computing is described. Introduction In the history of IT systems, the future is arriving at a rapid pace. Cloud computing has created a major shift in the IT industry. Cloud computing has created a huge interest among the all level of organization from C-suite level to Corporate IT level. All groups of organization from various department has viewed the probable pitfalls and potential benefits from cloud computing. Cloud computing is basically a data centre which can be specifically controlled by a vendor that can help employees in an organization to share, store, edit and open files by internet from any place worldwide. Cloud computing has created a biggest impact on traditional IT infrastructure. Users do not need to hold their own infrastructure as it permits users to prevent capital expenditure. The benefits of cloud computing is bringing unprecedented assistance to every organization. IT systems operations has been simplified by cloud computing at some extents that many roles in IT level of organization have been fundamentally been obviated. Cloud computing has created an evolution as a source of services. This essay will discuss about the effective use of cloud computing and its benefits towards companies. Discussion Cloud computing can be described as anything that involves in delivering the essential hosted services on the internet. It can also be defined as the internet based computing which provides computer to share software and information. It is referred as the services and applications that are provided over internet. It simplifies the use of computer systems and many network connections that are involved in online. Cloud computing is dynamically scalable and enables virtualized resources are provided as a service. Users who are using cloud do not need to be expertise in it. Cloud computing provides IT services a new supplement and delivery model which is based on internet protocols (IEEE, 2014). Providers of cloud computing provides application which can be accessed through mobile application and desktop. Several business data and software which are vital for organization can be stored on servers. It entrusts remote services with data and software of user’s. A cloud can be either public or private cloud. Private cloud sells hosted services to limited number of people. Public cloud sells services to anyone. Example of public cloud provider is Amazon Web Service. Whether it is public or private cloud, the main aim of cloud computing is to provide scalable and easily accessible to the IT services and other organizations. Cloud computing is divided in to three categories such as platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service. Platform-as-a-service is describes as the set of developed software and tools which are hosted on the infrastructure of provider. Best example of platform-as-a-service is GoogleApps. Infrastructure-as-a-service provides the virtual server instance which helps users to access their virtual storages and configure it according to their needs. Cloud computing enables company to pay according to the capacity needed. Example of infrastructure-as-a-service is Amazon Web Services. Finally, software-as-a-service enables vendors to supply the desired software products and hardware infrastructure and also can interact between users. Software-as-a-service provides a broad market. Cloud computing can provide companies many benefits which enables an organization to be flexible to connect anywhere and anytime. First and most important benefit is cloud computing can help to reduce IT cost. Cloud computing can be described as the most cost effective method that can be used my companies. It can help to reduce the cost of maintaining company’s IT systems. In consideration of finance of a company, desktop software used to cost a lot traditionally. The license fees of many uses can costs a lot. Cloud computing service provider enables businesses to reduce their costs rather than using expensive systems and software for company. The success of a company depends upon their revenue generated and finances. Traditionally companies used to waste huge amount of money on software but the birth of cloud computing has changed it all. Operating costs of a company can be reduced because of lower energy consumption, system upgrade costs, software upgrade cost and no wages for expert staffs. Another benefit of cloud computing is unlimited storage. Unlimited information can be stored in the cloud. Therefore, no one needs to worry about amount of space left. Cloud computing can help businesses to be scalable. It helps companies to be flexible and allows scaling down or up storage and operations. Using cloud can help to free time. Another benefit of cloud computing is backup and recovery option. It becomes much easier to store data in cloud and restore it rather than storing on physical devices. Handle of recovery of information from most of the cloud service providers are competent. Therefore, it becomes much easier for users to recovery and backup their data. Cloud computing enables workforce of company globalized in cheap. People can have the access the cloud worldwide. It also enables to reduce time spent on technology infrastructure. In work practices, Cloud computing enables employees of the organization to be more flexible. Example is when some employee is off-site and need to access their data and then they can easily connect through virtual office. Work of the companies can be completed in less time and with less people. Cloud computing also helps to increase the volume output of a company with less employee. Software integration is automatically occurs in the cloud. It means that one do not need require additional efforts to customize their application according to their preferences. Collaboration benefits companies to communicate outside more easily and efficiently. System will be updated regularly with latest technology. Finally less number of personnel training is required. It requires less number of people to work on cloud. Cloud computing can be sometimes prone to external threats and hacks. Therefore storing company’s sensitive data in cloud computing can make company vulnerable to the hackers. There are also some disadvantages of Cloud computing that can affect the business. One of the disadvantage of cloud computing is possible downtime. Smaller businesses always needed to dependent on the internet connection. Many reliable cloud computing service providers can often suffer server breakdown. All the feature of the cloud service may not be available. Every cloud service provider does not provide every feature that can be accessible. Cloud computing can be inflexible. Another problem of Cloud computing is technical issues. It is true than data and information that are stored in cloud server can be assessed at any time and place. But sometimes system can haves serious dysfunction. Every people should be aware the fact that cloud computing server can sometimes be prone to outrages. Security in the cloud is one of the major issues. Every company needs to choose most reliable cloud server provider before submitting all company’s sensitive information. Therefore potentially it can be huge risk. Not always enough space when a business initiate a cloud system. It is a painstaking process to update the storage capacity (Sosinsky, 210). Utilizing Cloud computing has downside as this technology enables less control over company. Another biggest issue is data ownership (Sen, 2013). It can be major issue especially when company deals with lot of data. For some people no hard drive can be advantage as it reduces costs. But for some users that uses software which requires hard drive attached. When cloud computing is done by small scale business then it can expensive. Connecting peripherals can be another issue. Many companies have dedicated network which is mainly for peripherals (Miller, 2008). But companies that do not have can face problems. Connecting with the wireless devices can be a problematic issue for personal devices. Another problem is software incompatibilities. Some companies of Houston using cloud computing and it benefited in their businesses. Company named OMNIPOTECH was founded in the year 2011. OMNIPOTECH is a training school which is Microsoft-based technology. Cloud services used by OMNIPOTECH enable users to collaborate with the intranet and internet (Furht & Escalante, 2010). The use of cloud computing has made more users are using their services. As cloud computing can be reliable and cost effective for users. It is scalable and it can be customized. OMNIPOTECH significantly had increase in revenue and market share. Another Houston based company Empact IT formerly Channel Dynamix. Empact IT doubled their growth rate to 18.75 percent. Empact IT was named as the fastest growing technology company in Houston in the year 2013. This is mainly due the benefit of cloud computing (Jamsa, 2013). As it made companies cost effective. Cloud computing has enabled to implement the employees in other segments. Eventually, cloud computing made Empact IT to increase their local employment. 93 more people were employed than that of previous years. More people in Houston got employed due to the implementation of cloud computing. CITOC Inc. is regarded as the successful cloud service provider company in Houston. Most reliable cloud computing made this CITOC Inc. a top service provider. SoftLayer is the innovative cloud infrastructure service provider. It allows clients to buy cloud services which are enterprise class on dedicated servers. Clients are being offered a choice to deploy their selective applications. The cloud service of SoftLayer is flexible and fast (Power, 2013). Cloud computing is enabling SoftLayer to grow their businesses. SoftLayer provides performance intensive applications that are mainly in the area of gaming, mobile and social media. Cloud computing has made SoftLayer superior in technical capabilities and reliable. SoftLayer provides hundreds of network and hardware configurations and programmable interfaces. Supporting cloud computing made SoftLayer leading innovative company is dedicated, cloud and managing hosting. Rackspace is the cloud hosting Service Company in Texas, USA. Critical applications service program of Rackspace allows clients fully productized operations mainly for the high level performance applications. Rackspace supporting cloud computing effectively as it made the company more secure, affordable for customers and flexible. The service of Rackspace allows it infrastructure to be outsourced. Rackspace is not leading provider of managed hosting and second largest in public cloud services. Cloud computing is becoming popular day by day so it is vital for company like Rackspace who are evaluating and upgrading their cloud servers to sustain in the market. Rackspace is supporting cloud computing my making more innovative products. Business application has been made more mobile and collaborative. Today’s business is much more dynamic and Rackspace cloud service provider can quickly change the capacity from up to down according to the business needs. The supporting of cloud computing has made Rackspace to revolutionizing the fundamental area of IT. Conclusion Therefore, it can be concluded that cloud computing has made users to access their application anywhere in the globe. Cloud computing has revolutionized the concept of computing and it increase the flexibility of using computer in near future. For many big IT businesses, cloud computing has become a strategic model that enables to outsource some of their IT services. Every company wants which has dreams of computing as a utility and lowers their costs then cloud computing technology can make it happen. Cloud computing made the managers and clients to accesses their resources in the cloud via internet. Cloud computing can reduce the cost of capital for companies who used to spend large amount of money on software and hardware. People all over the world can now accesses the cloud via internet. This cloud computing technology can prove to be a huge asset for companies nevertheless of its pros and cons. References Furht, B., & Escalante, A. (2010). Handbook of Cloud Computing. New York: Springer. IEEE. (2014). Web Service Micro-Container for Service-based Applications in Cloud Environments. Retrieved from: . Jamsa, K. (2013). Cloud Computing. New York: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Miller, M. (2008). Cloud Computing: Web-Based Applications That Change the Way You Work and Collaborate. New York: Que Publishing. Power. (2013). IBM to acquire SoftLayer to accelerate adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise. Retrieved from: < https://www.power.org/media-coverage/ibm-to-acquire-softlayer-to-accelerate-adoption-of-cloud-computing-in-the-enterprise/>. Sen, J. (2013). Security and Privacy Issues in Cloud Computing. Retrieved from: . Sosinsky, B. (2010). Cloud Computing Bible. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Read More