THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS IS IN THE HAND OF CLOUD

“Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently and scale as your business needs change.” (Source: Microsoft)

The loss of business and downturn of economics almost occurs every day. As a result, technology is required in every business. Cloud computing has played a significant role in solving inefficiencies and develop the businesses, allowing the companies to remain competitive. The old means of doing business must be improved and automated. Cloud computing has been recognized as a cutting-edge method of boosting productivity. Overall, cloud computing helps businesses to run the operations more effectively. Using cloud computing, firms may eliminate unnecessary procedural, administrative, hardware, and software expenditures.

Important characteristics of cloud computing are –

• By utilising standard techniques, cloud computing offers a platform that can successfully handle many connections and network access via cell phones, laptops, or personal digital assistants at the same time.
• The computing resources can be accessed anywhere, anytime with any standard device which can access the web.
• The multi-tenant feature of the cloud computing system allows several users to share cloud-based resources by pooling computer resources. Furthermore, cloud computing may work in the background to allocate and reassign resources as needed to satisfy the needs of the user.
• The Cloud computing system is adaptable enough to scale up and down in order to deliver important services to customers, such as data processing.
• The user can effectively use cloud-based resources and services without having to contact with a vendor that is responsible for supplying the cloud-based services thanks to cloud computing.
• Cloud computing systems are adaptive systems. Cloud computing system contains a leverage mechanism that allows it to track how much cloud resources are being used at any one time. The built-in monitoring and control mechanisms improve the transparency of the vendor's and client's use of cloud-based resources.
• High reliability makes the cloud a perfect solution for disaster recovery and business critical tasks.
• Cloud computing infrastructure is extremely scalable. With small changes to the cloud architecture and software, cloud providers may add new nodes and servers to the cloud.

Cloud Technology Service Models:

• SaaS: Cloud service providers are responsible for running and maintaining application software, operating systems, and other resources under this system. The consumer experiences the SaaS model as a web-based application interface in which the internet is utilised to offer services that are accessible using a web browser.

Benefits of SaaS are - Faster scalability, Access to the Internet from any location eliminates infrastructure problems, Service levels are customized, Maintenance and support services are bundled together.

• PaaS: This is a higher-level cloud computing service. A cloud service provider provides, executes, and maintains both system software (such as the operating system) and other computer resources in PaaS. Design, development, and hosting of apps are all included in PaaS services. Collaboration, database integration, security, web service integration, and scaling are some of the other services available.

Benefits of PaaS are - PaaS provider handles all upgrades, patches and routine software maintenance instead of manual upgrade, Companies are at a lesser risk since they do not have to invest in hardware or software up front, without having to worry about testing and deployment infrastructure, the development team can focus on designing the cloud application.

• IaaS: The cloud service provider delivers a set of virtualized computing resources in the cloud, such as CPU, memory, operating system, and application software. Virtualization technology is used in IaaS to turn physical resources into logical resources that customers may dynamically supply and release as required.

Cloud Deployment Models:

1. Public Cloud: It is accessible through the Internet via a third-party service provider and is a highly cost-effective way for SMBs to install IT solutions. Public clouds are easily available from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.
2. Private Cloud: It is administered within a company and is appropriate for large businesses.
3. Community Cloud: In a community cloud the services and infrastructure is provided to organizations with similar interests
4. Hybrid Cloud: This cloud combines the benefits of both private and public clouds. Despite the fact that the clouds are jumbled up, each has its own identity, which helps numerous deployments.

When a company's business expands, it becomes necessary to employ cloud-based ERP. Managing software, human resources, payroll, and other tasks becomes costly and difficult. To address these issues, service providers might install ERP on the cloud. This way cloud services can assist firms in increasing their value and improving their industry.

Optimizers, innovators, and disruptors are the three distinct company archetypes that may maximise the benefits of cloud computing. Optimizers enable the cloud to enhance an organization's productivity while also increasing consumer/customer value. This is beneficial in terms of assisting the company in becoming more sustainable and profitable. Through the use of cloud computing, innovators may bring value to their organizations while also generating new revenue streams. Disruptors leverage Cloud computing services and technology to develop new and unique value propositions, enabling for the establishment of new industry value chains and client requirements.

Though cloud computing does have many benefits. However, there are challenges that exist –

• One of these difficulties is security, which is particularly important in today's modern information technology era, where hackers have hacked into several systems and created significant problems for businesses. Services are typically outsourced to a third party when cloud computing is employed. This makes maintaining data security, privacy, and demonstrating compliance with existing technological requirements and standards more complex.
• Data Privacy is another challenge in cloud computing. Different businesses will have unencrypted access to data through cloud computing. Different views, such as poor user control and regulatory compliance, can be used to show data privacy problems. Data leakage will result from the failure of security access permissions across various domains. Because all cloud procedures are automated, customers have no idea where their data is kept or what has been done with it. Because cloud computing is used all over the globe and various laws apply in different countries, it might be difficult to ensure that the data is in accordance with the law which can be considered as regulatory and compliance restrictions issue. As a result, storing data on the cloud may have an impact on privacy and accountability.
• Data replication, system monitoring, disaster recovery, capacity and performance management, runtime governance - if these mentioned services are under-served by a cloud provider, the damage & impact could lead to a data disaster.

Enterprise applications and solutions will be based on cloud computing in the future. We rely on distant servers for our technical infrastructure with cloud-based services. Cloud computing is very cost-effective, and businesses may utilize it to expand. Cloud computing offers a variety of advantages, including infrastructure and platform setup as well as software and other services. Given that it is a new digital technology, it has the potential to be critical in unleashing creativity, innovation, and digital transformation.