To: Thomas Winston, Executive Manager From: Grant Kendall, Security Analyst Date: February 21, 2016 Re: Cloud Computing Benefits and Security Concerns Cloud Computing has the potential to save a lot of money for the company. Cloud Computing is defined by NIST as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” (Mell, 2011) This means that instead of worrying about maintaining our own facilities we can pay monthly for a cloud service provider to do that for us. They will take care of all the …show more content…
(Weller, 2013) This one offers the most customization but also gives us the benefit of reducing management costs. Examples include Rackspace and, the most promising for our email, Amazon’s Web Services (AWS). Then beyond that there are a few different types of cloud these services can run on. Then there are three types of cloud. Public, Private and Hybrid. Public Clouds are for the general public and may be maintained by a business or government. (Mell, 2011) Not ideal for email or sensitive information. Private Clouds are provisioned for exclusive use. (Mell, 2011) Perfect for our email service. Hybrid clouds are defined by NIST as a mixture of the two above but Amazon has a hybrid deployment model that is slightly different and would help us to transition more easily. They define a Hybrid Cloud as a combination of existing non-cloud resources with the cloud. (Amazon) This is why I think that Amazon’s Web Services are the way to take our email to the cloud. We can slowly wean off our facilities while we are trying out the cloud and transitioning our employees. Then the cost reduction should be able to be measured and we can approximate it for the rest of our activities to see how much of a benefit it will be. The main benefit of moving email to the cloud will be reduced costs. Firstly maintenance will be cheaper for us since we don’t need to keep as many of our
Since cloud environment does not reside in a capital facility, there is a substantial saving of the time and space. Also, it provides users access only to the resources they need for a particular task. This prevents them from paying for idle computing resources. Besides, there are competing providers for this service and an organization can always shift its business to another company offering better service or lower price. In terms of statistics, we spend $6,000 per month to update software, maintain our computer lab, and pay our employees. However, implementing a cloud computing with a constructing price of $2800 will incur a cost as low as $249 per month (Hinchcliffe 2009).
Although some companies choose to embrace only a portion of cloud-based computing such as software as a service, there are other aspects of cloud-based computing that can save you money. At the top of the list is data storage. You can save money by simply storing all of your data in this manner. Your data will always be stored in more than one location, so it is always safe. In addition, the data is well secured. Even if you are using a local data center for your data storage, it is likely a better idea to have it store remotely in the form of a cloud-based computing system.
All types of business models can find benefits from cloud computing infrastructure. As for example cost and flexibility from small business viewpoint whereas total IT problems can be solved for large companies. It will add advantages for companies, their employees, consumers, distributor where the overall business solution can be provided.
Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT's existing capabilities. (Knorr, Gruman) With cloud computing, the company can save on time with the system not becoming overwhelming. I have talked to people in the IT department and every six months they have to dump old files to free space on the main server. Because of this, sometimes the system, our production tools, slows down and causes a chain of decrease work. A lot of the time, the server has to be service because of the increase of files. Due to the fact that our facility is the hub or central located facility, our server is overwhelmed with many files.
In statement, Alijabre writes “Cloud Computing can help business shift their focus to developing god business applications that will bring true business value.” To prove his point Alijabre, uses statistical data gathered from one of big leading providers in Cloud Services. “Although cloud computing has been recognized as a way to improve business, not all businesses are the same. So, is cloud computing for all businesses or is it more beneficial for a certain type of business with certain infrastructure already in place?” To make his argument, Alijabre uses Amazon Cloud Service to give us a better idea the use of cloud computing in business, and what can they do to improve it. Amazon has been one of the best providers of cloud services to individuals or to small businesses. “Also, it has more than 79 million active customer accounts around the world, along with around one and a half million active seller accounts.” Undoubtedly, Amazon is the leading source in providing cloud services. Amazon makes it easier for the consumers to access their data online, only thing needed
Cloud computing offer services that are available wherever the end user might be located. Telecommuting is becoming a popular option that employers are offering and cloud computing makes it an even better idea to implement knowing that the data is stored in a secure location. No matter where you are in the world, you can access your cloud based applications. This is also another way for businesses to save money in their budget as not all the employees are required to be in the office, so they do not need as much space or such a large building to accommodate all their employees. This allows businesses to save on rent, utility bills and office equipment.
Cloud computing is a new technology that comes with both benefits and drawbacks and like any new tech it can be used to great success when paired with steps to mitigate the security issues it raises. Cloud computing has become somewhat of an ambiguous term often having different meaning for different people. An article in InfoWorld (2013) stated, ”Cloud computing comes into focus only when you think about what IT always needs: a way to increase capacity or add capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing encompasses any
Cloud computing will cut costs on the front end; but, in the long-term, we will see other expenses. Access control is more difficult due to the external location of the system. Compliance with data storage policies can be a tremendous concern in a cloud computing system; meaning administrators will need to conduct scheduled cleanups of the network.
Also reliability is essential and any potential cloud provider would need to ensure they had distributed systems to ensure if a server failure occurred our company would not come to a standstill. Some vendors do allow options to export data and back this up, however if we were to store the data on our own servers also, this would minimise the actual cost savings and almost nullify the need for cloud computing.
Most traditional online computing services offer business services that are bundled. Accessing the Cloud, Riordan will only pay for services used while saving the company money. These three characteristics proves that cloud computing is efficient and has more benefit than traditional computing (Hartig, Dec).
Secondly, Flexibility, where with cloud computing, because you only pay for what you use, you have the flexibility to only use what you need which is very flexible to expand with your business growth. Thirdly, cloud computing is very simple, fast and easy. Any software in your business can be moved out of your shop and into the cloud that will give you the ability to focus on what you do best in your business and excel at your strengths while someone else handles the administrative functions. Fourthly, anywhere if you want you can access your cloud based applications that make more accessible. Fifth, Natural disaster or something like that can strike your business but the good news is that your computing capability resides somewhere else (Help desk llc,
Business owners use three types of cloud service, public, private, and hybrid these clouds store their data and provide them with services. The benefits of these clouds are endless, additionally, they saves businesses time and money, promoting innovation, enhancing productivity, and improving communication while cloud hosting accelerate information sharing, like email, application hosting, web-based phone, and data storage (Griffith, 2013).
Abstract. The Internet is permeating all aspects of our lives. This includes business and organizational endeavors as well as our personal lives. Businesses have become to depend on the Internet for their supply chain, advertising, and sales. E-commerce has experienced a tremendous growth in the last decade. Organizations are looking for new ways to leverage the Internet for business growth. Web Services is a growing technology in the Information Systems field. Data Management is also an ever-increasing endeavor for many organizations. The need for information is
There are some benefits which can be derived from deploying cloud computing. Firstly, organizations having the appropriate hardware and software and technology platforms will experience additional advantages which include: a reduction in IT related costs and increased business agility and the transfer of IT expenses to the cloud provider. These expenses include the developing, procuring, administrating and maintenance of the overall IT infrastructure. Another advantage is the ability of the business to lower its expenses involved in IT capital, operating and maintenance costs. This will give the business an advantage over its competition.
Now when it comes to the option of switching our business solutions from our company to a cloud based solution such as cloud based email services and servers which allow for ease of access allowing us to gain access to our work email from anyplace at any time. In doing so it would remove the added cost and other aspects such as maintaining and hosting our own mail servers providing peace of mind maintaining the main aspect we look for when talking about email accessibility. In terms of what types of cloud models there are to select from they are based off what needs that need to be satisfied. Here is a breakdown of the basic models of cloud computing models of which there are 3: infrastructure as a service(IaaS), platform as a