Is Cloud Computing Beneficial to Organizations - Research Paper Example

Vast potentials for improving monetary revenues, performances and environmental concerns in these organizations were identified. Businesses, libraries and universities can substantially grow by using strategies to overcome cloud computing challenges identified in this study. 1. Introduction 1.1 History and Development of “Cloud” Development of “cloud” can be considered as an inevitable trend which began in 1950s as hardware time-sharing (Earnst and Young, 2012) and “Utility computing” and “Grid computing” in late 1980s (Global Technology Industry, 2011).

Thus aggregating assets had been beneficial over on-premise computing since the beginning of IT industry. “Utility computing” allowed consumers to pay for computer software based on the amount they utilized as opposed to the traditional method of purchasing the entire software. “Grid computing” aggregated the processing power of several idle computers, decreased the time taken for operations of large software and provided multiple accesses to the data bases stored in remote computer labs, libraries and other offices in the universities (Educause, 2006).

Moreover, Utility computing and Grid computing decreased the cost of purchasing license for software, increased convenience in monitoring the information systems in universities, aggregated the processors and decreased the time consumption on detailed-software such the 3D graphic designing. But these concepts were restricted to small scale operations in these organizations. Development of cloud enabled large scales businesses reaping benefits from resource aggregation and virtualization. It contains similar characteristics to Utility computing, Grid computing, High Speed Computers and clusters.

But cloud computing essentially defers from Utility and Grid computing, due to many attributes. Example: services, deployment, associated issues and scope for development. These are described in detail in the proceeding chapters. Furthermore, public used remotely hosted servers for connecting to the internet and obtaining web services such as Gmail, chat, e-banking and social-networking in large scale for a considerable time period in the history. But resource virtualization was not recognized as a possible venture involving vast economic benefits until the development of cloud in recent history.

Cloud computing involves large scale aggregating and vitalizing of IT assets. It delivers a number of economic and operational benefits to all the consumer segments (Gong, Liu, Zhang, Chen and Gong, 2010). It has a growing potential to decrease the firms’ production costs, create virtual business firms and market business process as a service in modern economies (Earnst and Young, 2012). As opposed to Grid computing which mainly involved academic and government institutions cloud computing service providers involve commercial IT giants such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, IBM and Oracle (Gong et. al, 2010).

And also private, cooperate and contract software developers and venders also market in clouds. Consumers of cloud computing services vary from small to large scale business firms, universities federal to individuals. Thus cloud computing provides benefits to many layers in the internet based market. Critical drawbacks had been identified related to operations of contemporary cloud computing. Building of cloud involves technologies and human creativity. Latter component also innovate methods for software piracy, hacking, frauds