Benefits of cloud computing for the enterprise
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services such as servers, storage, database, networking, and application over the internet. By using a cloud service, you can access these services instead of owning proprietary hardware resources. There are so many cloud service providers in the world and a client or a company can choose a cloud provider according to their needs. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft are some of the biggest cloud service providers.
There are different types of cloud services and IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are the main 3 types of cloud services. IaaS is Infrastructure as a Service, PaaS is Platform as a Service and SaaS is Software as a Service. Since the availability of these services, you don’t want to worry about the specification of your computer anymore as cloud services enable you to deploy your application no matter what kind of resources they consume.
Cloud computing has been increasingly employed in recent years for enterprises as it serves a lot of benefits to companies including scalability, cost saving, flexibility, security, and agility. This allows businesses to leave the IT infrastructure to the cloud service provider. Now let’s see the advantages that enterprises could have in detail.
Scalability is the major benefit an enterprise will acquire by employing cloud computing in their business. Enterprises can quickly and easily scale up or down the computing resources according to the changing demand or workload. If an enterprise experiences a sudden rise in demand for website traffic, it can quickly increase its computing resources to handle the increased demand. In the same way, they can deduct the computing resources which are not in use to reduce unnecessary costs. This is very much important for startups and small enterprises to control expenses on computational resources.
Cloud computing eliminates businesses having their servers, storages, and other IT infrastructures by allowing them to use shared resources as needed. This saves a lot of wasteful costs because most of the time, all the resources that a company owns do not utilize for computational activities at all the time. Therefore, it is an intelligent choice to have a cloud computing service to obtain only related computational facilities as needed. It also saves operational costs by having its hardware resources and also human resources that are needed to operate those owned computing devices.
Another advantage of having cloud computing service is the easy access to the data and information of the company anytime anywhere in the world. If the company data or information is stored in a physical hard disk or some other storage device, it is difficult to access the data whenever needed because it is mandatory to have a computer or a laptop to access the data on a hard drive or in a flash drive. But when you store data in a cloud, you can access those data even with your smartphone or tab enabling you to have flexible access to the enterprise data making it easier to handle if any problem occurred with the data. This also helps to have a flexible working schedule when an outside contractor is working with the enterprise far away from the business location or abroad. Therefore, that flexibility can be incorporated into your business only if you have a cloud computing service.
No matter what kind of resources a business use for its computing purposes, the whole company is in big danger if all the information got suddenly lost and cannot be recovered. When someone stores data in a flash drive, DVD drive, or a portable hard disk, they are very much likely to damage and lost at any instance. If you don’t have a separate copy of the data and information, once the storage device is lost, there is no guarantee that you would be able to recover the lost data and even it may lead to legal trouble as well. Cloud computing services completely stay away from this risk. No malicious software or hacker or natural disaster can harm your data if you have stored them in cloud storage. Cloud service providers have a backup of your data at a separate data center which guarantees no data loss at any cause.
With all these facilities, cloud computing offers agility to enterprises allowing them to try out new applications and services trending in the future to keep track of the competitive business world. Additionally, cloud service helps to reduce time-to-market which is a critical factor for an enterprise to achieve its goals in the market. By considering all these benefits, cloud computing can be undoubtedly recognized as a huge supporting service for the enterprise.
Kalhara Batangala
Faculty of Engineering
University of Sri Jayewardenepura
