CASE STUDY: Is It Time for Cloud Computing

5.13 What business benefits do cloud computing services provide? What problem that they solve?

Based on what we learned, cloud computing is defined as a type of computing that depends on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle the applications.

There is several benefits of cloud computing:

•       It helps company to build a large database as company have many information and data keeping.
•     It can store a large amount of data and information and this can reduce data redundancy.
•          It able for us to find the information in an efficient and effective ways.

The cloud computing had solve several problems which is:

•     It helps company with flexible computing power and data storage as well data management, messaging, payment, and other services can be used together or individually as the businesses requires.
•     It helps customers to determine the right amount of computing resources for an example, Amazon had added an automated service called Cloud Formation.
•    It improve response time for customers as Intercontinental move it core room reservation transaction system onto a private cloud within its own data center.

5.14 What is the disadvantages of cloud computing?

There is several disadvantages of by using a cloud computing which is:

•     The service fee is more expensive  compared to having our own IT department to run the cloud computing so by manage their own center there will be more cheaper.
•        There will be unexpected costs if suddenly the system down so there will be an extra charge to solve that problem.
•     Without an internet connection it will having a possible downtime as the cloud computing is depend on internet connection. If the internet in your company not strong enough we did not prefer you to use cloud computing.
•       Cloud computing services do not have a good customer service system as it is very difficult to reached the on telephone or an email and they just rely on FAQ pages.

     5-15 How do the concepts of capacity planning, scalability, and TCO apply to this case? Apply these concepts both to Amazon and to subscribers of its services.

     Capacity planning is scalability, which is defined as the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a large number of users without breaking down. Scalability is a ability of a system, network or process to handle a growing amount of work in capable manner or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth. Scalability relates to both Amazon and AWS subscribers. Amazon must be able to provide its customers with services that are scalable, as it claims to do on its website: “Take advantage of our massive compute capacity and storage to build whatever kinds of applications your business demands, no matter how fast it grows or how big it gets”.

    Total Cost Ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyer and owners determine the direct and indirect cost of a product or system. Amazon must provide hardware capacity planning and scalability. With the development of information technology, Amazon will have more and more customers. Not just Amazon, but Amazon's customer requires a large database to store a variety of data and information. This will help the company grow. Amazon must bear the total TCO of its services, while Amazon is also needed to maintain the profitability of the company. However, the services' subscribers benefit from not having to worry about these issues.

   As information technology and social development, there have been more and more companies need cloud services. First, the information Internet companies need to use cloud services, such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, Blogspot, Ebay, etc. Because the cloud computing can store large information, and share the information. Second, large multinational corporations, one of the advantages about the cloud computing is that people from around the world can get a faster connection

      5-16 What kinds of businesses are most likely to benefit from using cloud computing? Why?

      Businesses that are most likely to benefit from using cloud computing are large enterprises such as car dealers, warehouse sellers, online businesses such as Lazada, Zalora and many more business oriented companies that has large customer demands.

      The reasons are

(i)                 Data Loss Prevention

      The loss of data could be prevented as they have stored it and it could be          useful for coming future. This is especially true if data about customers and        business partners is lost, which can bring the daily grind of commerce to a halt.  Since backing up data using cloud computer is incredibly easy, and requires  fewer upfront costs, it will be the better choice for many companies and it  would save the companies reputation too.

(ii)               Tracking Employees Performance

       The cloud computing is not only used for business purposes but it can also be      used to store employees information and it is a fast tracking system to see the    employees performance for time to time. It saves time and cost.

(iii)             Online Business

      It shouldn't be surprising to say that online businesses will use cloud computing.  The primary benefit is web server space. The costs of purchasing a sever and  getting a website up and running are high, especially if a significant level of  traffic is expected. Using cloud computer for hosting is the ideal solution,  especially for smaller businesses.

    The use of cloud computing utility has increased significantly in recent years and it appears to be a natural evolution of the data centre to execute computing and storage in a more scalable way. With such a significant increase, the market is growing quickly and more companies are providing new services with better features, including isolated services. With greater flexibility, lower infrastructure cost, and lower operations overhead, there’s a lot to love about a move to a cloud architecture and with private and hybrid cloud options offering all the control and transparency an organization could want, there’s no reason to fear cloud computing anymore. We predict cloud computing will grow, so developers should take it into account.