What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing?

The Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has now become a buzzword nearly everyone has heard, and more businesses are now making the switch of their services to the cloud for their company’s growth. Cloud-based services have led to increased efficiency, scalability, and flexibility for businesses of all sizes.

Although harnessing the power of cloud computing makes daily computing much easier, it is definitely not wise to rush into it without understanding the pros and cons of cloud computing.

In this article, I am going to discuss the major advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing and what should be done to overcome its disadvantages. However, before that let me first explain – what is cloud computing.

What is cloud computing?

In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. In cloud computing your desktop or laptop isn’t doing the actual computing. The computing happens remotely in a large data center outside your organization, and you simply see the results of it on your own screen. In more practical terms cloud computing tend to revolve around one key feature which is – storage. Now what are the benefits of cloud storage?

When you store data ‘in the cloud’, you are actually storing your data on a network of physical servers, placed in a remote location. Rather than saving your files and data locally on your computer’s hard drive, you are storing your digital stuff in these remote servers, which are secured and have practically unlimited storage space. It doesn’t need any effort on your part to maintain or manage these servers. You only pay a service charge to get access to the cloud service provider’s network of servers remotely whenever you need to work on your stored data or to access cloud-based apps and services from anywhere.

Now that it is made clear what is cloud computing and why cloud computing is important, let us look into what are the major pros and cons of cloud computing.

The pros and cons of cloud computing

Pros of Cloud Computing

1. Cost benefits of Cloud computing

While discussing the pros and cons of cloud computing perhaps one of the most significant benefits of moving to the cloud for both small and big businesses is cost savings.

Businesses, no matter what their type or size, by moving to the cloud can save substantial capital costs through a reduction in spending on equipment, infrastructure, and software. It allows you to rent additional processing power over the internet without having to use million-dollar machines as servers. Rather than spending big money on hardware, software, licensing, and renewal fees, you will cut down your both capital and operating costs by using the resources of your cloud service provider. The contract with most cloud service providers includes the costs of system upgrades, new hardware, and software, etc.

Besides, by moving to the cloud you avoid recruitment of IT staff and also save on your energy consumption for running your own data center. As the Cloud platform is utility based, you only pay the service provider just for what you use when you need it without the need for upfront investments. Thus, with a pay-as-you-go, subscription-based cost structure, cloud services require a lower initial investment and typically much lower overall costs than ‘on-premise’ models.

 2. Scalability

Scalability is also one of the key advantages of cloud computing for businesses. Your business can scale up or scale down operations and the resource storage needs of your business may require quick adjustment to suit such variations, allowing flexibility as the needs change. There may be times when your company requires hiring more employees, or your business might be on a growth path with the company expanding. Either way, the business would have to consciously buy extra technology or manpower upfront before they are truly needed. Such a purchase would block costly capital that your company could use somewhere else.

Most cloud-based service providers will allow your business to easily upscale or downscale its existing resources to accommodate business needs or changes. This will enable you to support your business growth without expensive changes to your existing systems. This is why ‘scalability’ is one of the major pros of cloud computing for business that causes companies to move over to the Cloud.

3. Disaster Recovery

Cloud backup solutions play an essential part in a comprehensive backup, recovery, and business continuity strategy.

By migrating to the cloud organizations can benefit from a massive pool of the latest IT resources, as well as redundant computer servers, without the worry of a large upfront investment or in-house tech know-how. Since all the data are stored in the cloud, it is relatively much easier to back it up and restore the same than storing them on a physical device. Whether you experience a natural calamity, power failure, or other crisis, having your companies data stored in the cloud ensures it is backed up and kept in a safe and secured location to avoid downtime, keeping data and operations running smoothly and consistently and ensuring business continuity;

4. Improved Collaboration

One of the many benefits of cloud computing for business is – it gives the business the ability to communicate and share more easily outside of the traditional methods. It allows much greater collaboration between employees allowing multiple users to share and work on data and documents at the same time. Cloud makes it easy for the company’s design and construction professionals, who spend much of their time on job sites overseas or across different locations, to access work-related information, files, and records quickly and in a secure way.

5. Anytime, anywhere access

Another major advantage of moving over to the cloud is that the Cloud technology offers access to your data, programs, or anything stored in the cloud from any web-enabled device at any time and basically from any location. Whether you are in a business meeting, at a hotel, on vacation, or working remotely cloud allows you and your staff to access your vital business information, files, and data anytime through multiple devices which can greatly benefit your organization.

6. Flexibility

Cloud computing offers more flexibility to employees in their work practices. If you need access to your files and data while you are off-site or at home, you can connect to your virtual office, quickly and easily whenever you need through any web-enabled devices.

7. Enhanced Data Security

Data Security is one of the major cloud computing benefits for business.  Cloud service providers strictly adhere to a high-level security protocol to ensure data protection. Because cloud providers offer services to a large number of businesses and companies, they stick to high-security standards to improve data security by following a layered approach that includes data encryption, key management, strong access controls, and security intelligence in addition to regular security audits. As the costs for implementing these security measures are shared across all users in the cloud, it is easier for the service providers to allocate resources to provide improved information security that many individual customers cannot afford.

Cons of Cloud Computing and what should be done to overcome these

1. Internet dependency and Bandwidth limitations

Internet dependency and Bandwidth limitations are some of the major drawbacks of cloud computing. As Cloud computing is totally dependent on the internet, the reliability of your internet connection is an essential factor for the smooth functioning of cloud service.

With less speed, the benefits of cloud computing cannot be fully realized. This issue is especially more prevalent when dealing with uploading and downloading large files. Further, the amount of data that can be backed up into the cloud storage each day depends on your bandwidth availability. If you are trying to back up large amounts of data with a very little amount of available bandwidth, some of your data may not be backed up. This can lead to data loss in the event of a disaster.

Therefore, if consistent internet access, connection speed, or bandwidths are problems for your organization cloud computing may not be suitable for your business.

2. Downtime

The unforeseen outage of cloud service is one of the biggest disadvantages of cloud computing. How dependent your business would be on cloud reliability is, therefore, an important consideration before switching over to the cloud. No cloud service provider, even the most reliable one, would claim immunity to service outages. If your business cannot absorb a prolonged bout of frequent outages or slowdowns, cloud solutions may not be right for you. You should plan for downtime to try to minimize the impact.

Therefore, to minimize planned downtime you need to have a service level agreement (SLA) with your cloud provider which would guarantee maximum uptimes in a month.

3. Data Security issue

The data security issue is also one of the cons of cloud computing. Storing a company’s sensitive data and business information remotely on the cloud opens up a greater risk of data theft. It opens you up to risks like external hack attacks, data loss, or data leakage. Established cloud service providers implement relevant security standards and industry certifications to ensure that their cloud environment remains safe.

Therefore, you need to make absolutely sure that you choose the most reliable service provider, who will keep your information totally secure.

4. Cloud provider going out of Business

Sometimes, a cloud vendor may go out of business or radically change its service. Such an unexpected change in service might not be too harmful if you were only using the service for a one-time project, but it could be disastrous if you were using it for your entire database. Hence, this is considered one of the major risks of cloud computing.

Therefore, when evaluating cloud providers make sure that the cloud vendor provides options for backing up and extracting your data, and does so regularly as part of your backup schedule. This also makes a good case for backing up all your data on a physical device before working on it in the cloud.

5. Difficulty in switching cloud service provider

Individuals or enterprises already utilizing cloud services may find it hard to move services from their current provider to another. This is also one of the big drawbacks of cloud computing.

Though cloud service providers commit to assure that the cloud has the standard flexibility and is easy to integrate, switching cloud services is a challenge that has not been entirely resolved. Hosting and integrating existing cloud applications on another server platform may throw up interoperability and support issues. For instance, applications developed on Microsoft Development Framework (.Net) might not work properly on the Linux platform.

Many cloud providers provide great-looking proprietary software/hardware, that reduces the amount of code or work that you have to do. You should avoid them at all costs. This is nothing more than a simple ploy to get you locked into their ecosystem while making it extremely hard to move your application to another provider or to your own data center running in-house.

To avoid this, stick with tried-and-true technology stacks across your application, including the database tier, storage tier, and any micro-service endpoints that you might want to create. While the up-front investment can be a bit higher than using a proprietary solution out of the box, your technical debt is greatly reduced, which can save you money and time in the long run.

6. High initial costs

The high initial cost is also one of the cons of cloud computing. While cloud computing on the whole is affordable and cheaper than installing software in-house, the initial investment required to purchase the necessary software can be quite high.

If a company seeks to make the switch to the cloud with every program, the cost per program can add up. In addition, any monthly payments per program should also be taken into consideration. Further, sometimes unexpected costs may come up when businesses end up having to pay for additional features they don’t need.

Frequently asked questions

Before concluding the discussion on the pros and cons of cloud computing let me also address a few related queries you may often hear.

What are the main types of cloud computing?

There are 4 main types of cloud computing which are,

1. Private clouds;

2. Public clouds;

3. Hybrid clouds;

4. Multi clouds;

What are the advantages of cloud computing in education?

The key benefits of Cloud Computing in education are,

1. Cost Savings;

2. Better Collaboration among educators, students, and parents;

3. Easy physical and digital access to learning resources;

4. Innovative learning environments;

What are the key benefits of cloud computing?

The major benefits of Cloud Computing are,

1. Accessibility with any device from anywhere;

2. Data security;

3. Scalability and flexibility;

4. Cost savings;

5. Better collaboration;

You may also like to read: How to backup iPhone to iCloud

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it should be clear that it is highly important to consider the pros and cons of cloud computing before making an informed decision to switch over to cloud-based services.

When looking at the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing, there is no doubt that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Nevertheless, if the potential risks of cloud computing are not understood and taken care of properly this could also cause harm to your business. The following points, therefore, need to be considered before moving to the cloud:

1. Is your provider fully committed to understanding your business and the specific objectives you hope to achieve with the Cloud?

You should opt for a provider that can speak to the business advantages you would gain through their service, such as higher customer retention or streamlined product delivery;

2. Will the provider remain in business several years down the road?

It is very important to check that your cloud provider is financially stable and your data is not in danger of being locked out if the vendor shuts its door and his equipment is repossessed;

3. Is the cloud provider compliant with modern security requirements to maintain the customer’s data security and privacy and compliance with necessary regulations?

From a security perspective, it is very important to know about your provider’s security environments in order to have a better insight into how robust his security is;

4. Is there an SLA (Service Level Agreement) to ensure your up-time and availability of data in the event of a disaster?

To minimize planned downtime you need to have an agreement with your cloud provider which would guarantee maximum up-times in a month;

5. Are the provider’s data centers close to where your users are?

You also need to consider the location of your cloud provider’s data centers. If your application is very sensitive, you want it to be close to where your users are so as to get them the best user experience;