Week 7

Q12. Cloud computing is a term used to describe the method of using software as a service (SaaS) via the Internet. This means that someone can access the services through the Internet (the cloud) without control, knowledge or expertise of the technology. Google currently makes use of cloud computing with Google Apps, which provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

Google is the biggest company that seems to be behind cloud computing as its business is already based on owning a massive computer infrastructure (or cloud) that people tap into from their homes or offices. Recently Google even joined with IBM to promote cloud computing.

Microsoft has also announced a cloud computing service, called “Windows Azure”. This will allow users to create applications, which will live on the internet, rather than on their own computers.

Cloud computing could prove very beneficial to e-commerce. The online shopping company ‘Amazon’ have a cloud computing service called “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud” (Amazon EC2), which is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Developers could create applications on these clouds I have talked about and sell them on the companies website. The developer would make money and the e-commerce company would take a cut also.

There are many benefits and drawbacks to cloud computing.

The benefits are:

• Access to data from any location with an Internet connection
• No need for maintaining a physical storage device
• No upfront capital expenditures for hardware, software licenses or implementation services
• No ongoing costs of maintaining and upgrading an on-site storage system’s hardware and software
• Pay-as-you-go model allows for reduced operating expenses
• Can add and remove capacity based on real rather than projected storage needs
• Alleviates burden placed on IT teams

The drawbacks are:

• Security, data is stored and could be corrupted or accessed by hackers
• Downtime is also an issue. It could bring businesses to a halt

Advertisement