Cloud computing Risk or Opportunity - Research Paper Example

Since last few years, cloud computing has resulted in a number of positive impacts on the IT ecosystem, thereby giving rise to new markets and widely scattered new user communities (European Commission, 2012). Contextually, the concept of cloud computing is the outcome of the direct industrial needs to enhance resource utilization without intervening consumer requirements. In other words, the concept ensures the use of the available resources in more efficient manner (European Commission, 2012).

The paper intends to critically examine the opportunities and the risks associated with cloud computing and draws a valid conclusion on its adoption by organizations. Cloud computing was initially used in an academic perspective by Prof. Kenneth K Chellapa who illustrated it in 1997 at the Informs Conference in Dallas as “a computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits” (Petri, 2010). There are various definitions of cloud computing however the most appropriate and broadly accepted definition is being provided by North America National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).

According to NIST, “Cloud Computing is a model for enabling convenient, on demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort to service provider interaction” (Petri, 2010). Public Cloud: Public cloud model is provided by vendors and can be accessed over the internet or private network. One or more data centers are used by this model which is shared by multiple customers (Weitz, 2010). Private Cloud: Private cloud model is managed and used internally by the organizations which utilizes ‘shared services model’ and makes variable usage of virtualized computing resources.

The data stored in the model are managed within the organization (Weitz,