Cloud computing refers to the act of using online applications which are hosted on servers in data centers to manage and process data. As such, cloud computing is made up of the user of the online applications, the application itself and the server in the data centers from which the applications are hosted. This concept of making available the applications for the users has come to be known as Software as a service (SaaS). The cloud refers to the hardware components and software’s running them at the data centers.
Clouds could be divided in two segments. Private clouds and public clouds. Public clouds are the cloud services made available to the public by the various cloud providers and the services being offered are referred to as utility computing. Private clouds on the other hand are clouds set up by a private company or organization for its own use. The recent popularity of cloud computing could be attributed to three key characteristics, unlimited capacity when needed, services can be acquired in short periods as required, and cloud computing requires no costs upfront. Cloud computing has been made possible through the utilization of economies of scale. Enormous data centers are setup in cheap environments with only the necessary requirements for their operations. In return, various factors like low cost of power, bandwidth, hardware and software availability have enabled cloud computing providers to offer services at a cheaper prices and still make significant profits at the same time. In this sense, it is clear that private clouds do maximize the full potential that comes along with cloud computing (Siegele, 2008).
The flexibility that comes with cloud computing is a big stride in the information technology sector. The ability to pay only for what you have used vividly shows the benefits of cloud computing. People may argue that the cost of purchasing a server is cheaper than acquiring cloud services but this cost is overshadowed by the financial advantages of elasticity and risk transference that come with cloud computing. In addition, the time, effort and absence of advance costs allows the same to be channeled to other sectors (McCalpin, 2009).
Cloud computing still faces various challenges. One of the challenges making companies withhold from adopting cloud computing is reliability. Organizations are not sure whether utility computing services will always be available. In addition, major SaaS providers like google have set the bar quite high such that cloud providers are expected to be 100% reliable, which is difficult. Even though data centers may be distributed in different locations the may share on infrastructure such that a minor failure affects the whole system. The application program interfaces for data storage in cloud computing is yet to be fully standardized which makes it relatively hard for users to extract their programs and information from one site to the other with ease. This is only advantageous to cloud providers but customers are exposed to different inconveniences like price fluctuations and reliability issues. Security is another major issue facing cloud computing, organizations as expected, may not be fully willing to entrust vital information to cloud providers although many steps have been taken to counter this. Additionally, there is the complication of regulations and audit requirements that corporate data must go through before it can be legally allowed to be transferred to the cloud. Large corporations at times require to transfer huge capacities of data, despite the technology advancements, this data which is mostly in terabytes is quite large and may take a lot of time to transfer. Cloud providers also charge per quantity of data transferred which may prove to be quite costly. One method that is recently being adopted is the shipping of physical disks to the required destination. It has proved to be quite efficient. Another drawback of cloud computing is their unpredictability which makes reliability more of a problem (Armbrust, Fox, Griffith, Joseph, Katz, Konwinski, Zaharia, 2010)
It is clear that cloud computing continues to grow. The challenges that present themselves also have ways of countering them and there is hardly any challenge that can be singled out as completely impossible to counter. Organizations of different sizes are set to benefit from it due to the efficiency that comes with the cloud computing model.
References
Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A.D., Katz, R., Konwinski, A., Zaharia, M. (2010, April). Aa view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4), PP 50-58
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