What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing?
Tags: cloudcomputing
Published: 2020-10-20 15:03:06

**The advantages: -**

**1- Capital costs / expenses: -**

If cloud computing is right for your business, significant savings can be achieved by purchasing and maintaining the necessary infrastructure, support team, and communication costs. Vendors and/or the service provider, who charge users a fee for public services or per user type, are responsible for those costs.

**2- Scalability: -**

One of the biggest challenges in IT is the constant need to add more equipment to meet the growing demand for information access, storage and analysis from internal and external users. An example is in the data centre, where adding more servers is a major cost issue (the actual power of the data centre is issue number one, but it's related to the growing need for things like servers). Since cloud computing is virtual, it is possible to expand or hire equipment/infrastructures according to the evolution of demand.

**3- Start: -**

Since the cloud contains (in theory) the infrastructure and applications, all you need to do is "connect" to the cloud. You can start using applications immediately compared to a typical installation, test, and then provide access to the appropriate user community. (The training is supposed to be constant).

**4- Commercial applications: -**

Again, the cloud (actually providers and/or service providers) through service level agreements (SLAs) provides many business applications for any user who is your customer. Again, like the ladder, businesses only need to know what applications they need to run their business and understand what is actually provided to gain access to various business applications. (Training is assumed to be a constant).

**5- Flexibility: -**

As [cloud computing](https://www.cloudanalogy.com/) is a virtual offering, a user has the possibility to choose, on a regular basis, the applications, the amount of bandwidth or the number of users, essentially modifying their user contract and increasing or decreasing costs for a known rate or factor.

**The disadvantages: -**

**1-SLA Agreements: -**

This is the most delicate and the most important. SLAs can be very complicated and it really leaves the responsibility of the user to understand and define all the requirements with specific details, and most importantly to understand what you get in terms of support, performance, security, etc. A good example is the quality of the service; you have to understand what is being offered and what are the resources if the specified quality is not maintained.

**2-Performance: -**

Performance guarantees are often part of the SLA document, but I chose this one because it is essential to maintain the performance (availability) required by internal and external users. Understand whether performance assurance is defined as an average or only during peak periods versus "consistent" performance. If performance is compromised, it can affect many factors, including your company's revenue and goodwill.

**3-Sellers: -**

Not all providers are the same! Many providers claim to provide [cloud computing,](https://www.cloudanalogy.com/) but in reality, they only provide a specific service or a specific application, or worse still, they are a middleman and do not provide any added value. As I said in my previous article, you need to understand the difference between cloud computing and hosted services or managed services or apparently some form of virtualization. My best advice is to reach out to referral clients and see if they model what you want in the cloud.

**4-Security: -**

We all know that the Internet has security issues, and since the cloud uses the Internet in conjunction with infrastructure and application support, users must be aware of the potential for new threats and increased exposure to risk. It's important to include your company's risk tolerance in any decision to move to cloud computing, as not all security concerns are understood and new ones will arise.