Cloud Computing Benefits and Disadvantages

Benefits Of Cloud Computing:

a. You receive secure, managed hosting at very inexpensive costs globally.
b. You don’t need to purchase additional hardware for your space requirements if it grows.
c. Your server will have offsite backup in case something goes wrong.
d. If something does goes wrong, you can get the support of your service providers anytime.
e. No need to install anti viruses and additional software.

Disadvantages of Cloud Computing:-

1.Security & Privacy
The biggest concerns about cloud computing are security and privacy. Users might not be comfortable handing over their data to a third party. This is an even greater concern when it comes to companies that wish to keep their sensitive information on cloud servers. While most service vendors would ensure that their servers are kept free from viral infection and malware, it Is still a concern considering the fact that a number of users from around the world are accessing the server. Privacy is another issue with cloud servers. Ensuring that a client’s data is not accessed by any unauthorized users is of great importance for any cloud service. To make their servers more secure, cloud service vendors have developed password protected accounts, security servers through which all data being transferred must pass and data encryption techniques. After all, the success of a cloud service depends on its reputation, and any sign of a security breach would result in a loss of clients and business.

2.Dependency (loss of control):
Quality problems with CSP(Cloud Service Providers).No influence on maintenance levels and fix frequency when using cloud services from a CSP.
No or little insight in CSP contingency procedures. Especially backup, restore and disaster recovery.
No easy migration to an other CSP.
Measurement of resource usage and end user activities lies in the hands of the CSP
Tied to the financial health of another Company.

3.Cost
Higher costs. While in the long run, cloud hosting is a lot cheaper than traditional technologies, the fact that it’s currently new and has to be researched and improved actually makes it more expensive. Data centers have to buy or develop the software that’ll run the cloud, rewire the machines and fix unforeseen problems (which are always there). This makes their initial cloud offers more expensive. Like in all other industries, the first customers pay a higher price and have to deal with more issues than those who switch later (although it would be very hard to create and improve new technologies without these initial adopters).

4.Data Stored is not secure
All the data in Cloud Computing is stored on Cloud. It will be your duty to make sure how secure your Cloud is? Whether only authorized persons are slowed to access to your confidential data. Concept of cloud computing is new and even if hosting companies say that the data is secured it can’t be a 100% truth. If you will see theoretically data on cloud computing is unsafe as it is replicated along multiple machines. In any case if your data goes missing you don’t have any chance of local or physical backup. Simply depending on cloud can let you down and there is always a risk of failure. In order to save the data only solution is downloading all cloud documents on your machines. However this is a lengthy process and every time your documents upgrades you will have to download a new copy of the application.

5.Decreased flexibility
This is only a temporary problem (as the others on this list), but current technologies are still in the testing stages, so they don’t really offer the flexibility they promise. Of course, that’ll change in the future, but some of the current users might have to deal with the facts that their cloud server is difficult or impossible to upgrade without losing some data, for example.

6.Knowledge And Integration.
Knowledge:
More and deeper knowledge is required for implementing and managing SLA contracts with CSP’s ,Since all knowledge about the working of the cloud (e.g. hardware, software, virtualization, deployment) is concentrated at the CSP, it is hard to get grip on the CSP.
Integration:
Integration with equipment hosted in other data centers is difficult to achieve. Peripherals integration. (Bulk)Printers and local security IT equipment (e.g. access systems) is difficult to integrate. But also (personal) USB devices or smart phones or groupware and email systems are difficult to integrate.

7.High Speed & Constant Internet Connection
Cloud Computing’s performance in slow speed internet connections is absurd. Slow connections like dial-up make is Cloud computing a pain for the user or it can be say it is impossible for the users to enjoy cloud computing on slow connections. Large documents and web-base applications need a lot of bandwidth to download. Is you are using a low speed internet connection then you may feel Cloud Computing will take more than a lifetime to be operational on that type of connection. In simple words Cloud Computing is not for slow connections.
Cloud Computing without good internet connection is just like deadbody.