Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing

By Paula Cai Cruz Montes

What is Cloud computing?

Cloud Computing is a combination of the use of computer technology (computing) and Internet-based development (cloud). It has now made it effortlessly easy for companies and individuals to be able to access applications, software and information from the internet.

Clearly, business and organizations are getting various benefits because of Cloud Computing. However, every coin has two faces so there are several disadvantages as well.

“Kumar, K (2019). Implementing Cloud Computing For Your Company [Figure 1] Retrieved from https://www.simplilearn.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud-computing-article”

Advantages

Cost Efficient

Cloud computing is probably the most cost-efficient method to use, maintain and upgrade due to its low cost. The cloud, is available at much cheaper price, therefore, can significantly lower the company’s expenses. Besides, there are many one-time-payment, pay-as-you-go and other payments options available.

Reliability

With the need to of meeting larger and diverse audience, comes a massive bout of responsibility as well. The cloud infrastructure has to be very efficient in catering to the needs of several clients and maintain its consistency in its functionality and services. You don’t need to worry about server maintenance and if the host server fails, the hosted files can easily be transitioned to other available servers.

Data Centralization

It is also one of the benefits of Cloud Computing that all the data store in one location so that it can access from different remote places. There are many projects which stores in a particular place and can be accessed at anytime and anywhere.

Backup and Recovery

Since all your data is stored in the cloud, backing it up and restoring the same is relatively much easier than storing the same on a physical device. Furthermore, most cloud service providers are usually competent enough to handle the recovery of information. Hence, this makes the entire process of backup and recovery much simpler than other traditional methods of data storage.

Disadvantages

Risk of data confidentiality

There is always a risk that user data can be accessed by other people. So data and cloud protection must be good enough, because if it is not, it will be dangerous for data confidentiality.

Depends on internet connection

The internet is the only way to cloud computing. When there is no internet connection in your place, or the internet path to the cloud provider is in trouble, automatically access to your cloud computing machine will be disconnected. Now this is where the biggest obstacle is happening in developing countries and remote areas that do not have good internet access. And the weakness of public cloud is where everyone accesses the same server and server and will increase the risk of attack, and down the server.

Low Connection

Does not work well if the connection is slow. The quality of cloud computing servers is one of the most important considerations before we decide get cloud computing services. When the server is down, we will be harmed because of poor server quality.

The level of security

Secrecy and security are among the most doubtful things in cloud computing. By using a cloud computing system means we are fully entrusted with the security and confidentiality of data to companies that provide cloud computing servers. When you experience a problem, you cannot sue the server for errors in the data.

Vulnerable in the event of an attack

There are lots of arguments against it, one of them is that the system works online, each component that is on Cloud Computing can be exposed to a wide range, this is a wide open opportunity for attacks on data or activities stored on the server. When an attack is carried out by hackers, the problems that occur are related to data security, and data privacy.

Technical problems

Besides that, the use of Cloud Computing makes you unable to manage it yourself when there is a problem or a problem, you must contact customer support who is not necessarily ready 24/7. This is a problem because for some support you also have to pay additional money.

As a conclusion

On the whole, we can observe that Cloud Computing is a great system to use, its success its shown in the way a lot of business has grown thanks to it, also individuals got a lot of daily benefits from it. Technology has always its pros and cons, nothing can be 100% perfect. Personally, in my opinion the drawbacks are not as relevant as the benefits given, however, its needed to improve and try to minimize the effect of these drawbacks.

Bibliography

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Emani, K. K. (2019, October 16). Implementing Cloud Computing For Your Company. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://www.simplilearn.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud-computing-article.

Team, D. F. (2019, January 30). Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing - You Must Know. Retrieved October 31, 2019, from https://data-flair.training/blogs/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud-computing/.

Larkin, A. (2019, September 9). Disadvantages of Cloud Computing - Cloud Academy Blog. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://cloudacademy.com/blog/disadvantages-of-cloud-computing/.

Viswanathan, P. (2019, June 24). Cloud Computing: Know the Pros and Cons. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.lifewire.com/cloud-computing-explained-2373125.