Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

As Cloud computing is becoming more popular its time to evaluate its cloud computing advantages and limitations. If you have any doubts about what is cloud computing all about and its real world example, you can read this cloud computing

Benefits of the cloud computing :

• Scalability : In cloud platform the biggest advantage is their scalability. It allows the user to scale up or down resources ( for example increase / decrease the hardware allocated to machine like RAM, processor of hard drive) as per the need. It also allows the user to scale in or out as well ( for example increase / decrease the number of machine allocated ) as per the requirements.

• Elasticity : It is somewhat like scalability only, however it allows the application to auto scale based on the load and other parameters. It ensures that the application will have always right amount of resources available to it.

• Low Cost : As in cloud we get resources and services on rental or pay as you go model. Hence we need to pay very minimal cost and that too only for the period of utilization. Therefore it has low capex. Moreover the various cloud provider like Microsoft Azure , AWS, GCP all has very competitive pricing model.

• High Availability : Resources and services provided by the cloud has very high availability and very minimal downtime. This high availability could vary based upon the SLA you have opted. However on an average minimum you get 99.9% availability.

• Agility : Configuring and deploying the workload is very quick hence its give high agility to the cloud users.

• Geo Distribution : Cloud providers like Microsoft Azure has their datacenter available across the word, and divided in terms of Regions. User can choose the region based upon their application user proximity. For example if end customers belong to East US, then it make sense for the organization to deploy the application in East US region itself. This will enhance the user experience due to low latency.

However all these flexibility of cloud computing brings in some concerns as well. Here are few cons of the cloud computing :

• Security : As everything in the cloud works over the internet, this could have raised the risk of unauthorized access to data and resources. However cloud providers committed to provide the various encryption and secure network but still there are few cases of security breach.

• Dependency on Internet : In case of natural calamity within specific area or any disruption of internet, until and unless internet is up, there is no other way to continue work.

Overall there is lot of advantages of the cloud computing and surely it is worth to try it out.