Tuesday, 16 October 2012

Cloud Computing for Businesses

Cloud computing has been a revolutionary step in IT. Cloud computing is where the data storage is not undertaken in the hard drives of the devices, but somewhere up in the sky. If you are using email attachment, then you are using the cloud computing because you are storing data, not in your drives. The enhanced accesibility of internet also make more people relies on this facility. The implication of cloud computing has been developed for the past years where Microsoft has its SkyDrive and Apple has its iCloud. Some people are using DropBox as well as the substitute of their USB drives. Not only in the personal level, cloud computing affects businesses and society as a whole.

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The trend of cloud computing works favourably to the businesses. Imagine that the business is growing from years to years; and is getting big. Then, businesses need more storage to store their data. It will need lots of hard drives to be purchased. With cloud computing, there is unlimited space available for the business to store their data. Businesses do not have to worry about running out of memory.

However, there are still a lot of issues with cloud computing. Even though it seems that cloud computing offers great advantages to the businesses, it comes with security issues. With the nature of business data where it is normally confidential, it will not be great if the data leaks. The problem is with cloud computing, the only security tool that protects the data is only the username and password which nowadays, is very possible to be hacked; different with the physical storage where you can put it in the locked premises. Just imagine when an organisation store all its customers' data online and the data leaks. The implications of data leakage can lead to identity theft even to physical harm. Not only may it be a lot of disputes arisen from it, but also the reputation of the organisation is on the risk. The data back up is also questioned. If businesses store their data online, what will happen if the system crashes and the data is gone.

Saying so, many businesses found that the emergence of cloud computing is very beneficial. Apparently, a lot of companies are waiting for the cloud computing providers to create the program for enterprise level. However, it will be hard to assign the responsibilities. Say if the data leaks, who will be responsible for that, is it the business, or the cloud computing provider. Will the cloud computing provider take that risk, seeing even the US government and CIA sites ever got hacked.

Thus, in spite of the increasing demand for cloud computing, there are still a lot of issues regarding to cloud computing. The cloud computing provider should increase the security of its facility. For example, lately DropBox has doubled its authorisation process before logging in to the website. Law and regulation have to be developed as well as there will be parties that are benefited and disadvantaged when the unfavourable events happen.

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