Shareef Shareef
• Location independence: The user usually has no knowledge or control over the exact location of the provided resources, this is due to the independence location of the provider.
• Reliability: This feature improves through the use of multiple redundant sites, which makes cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery.
• Cost effectiveness: Cloud computing is a cost effective in which organisations can eliminate ICT capital expenditures and decrease ongoing operating expenditures by paying only for the services they use and, potentially, by reducing or redeploying their ICT staffs.
• Sustainability: Cloud service providers, by using economies of scale and their capacity to manage computing assets more efficiently, can consume far less energy and other resources than traditional data center operators. This is due to the efficient and carbon neutrality system.
• Security: Cloud computing implementations commonly deployed advanced security technologies, which are mostly available due to the centralisation of data and widespread architecture. The homogenous, and resource‐pooled nature of the cloud, facilitates cloud providers to concentrate on securing the cloud construction.
2.3 The key challenges of cloud computing
Cloud computing refers to the provision of computing resources over the internet. Instead of possession of data on your own hard drive or updating applications on demand. You use services over the internet, at different locations to store your information and use its applications. In other words, although you may find all you need with certain services. Achieving these will require consideration of various issues and challenges such as Security and Privacy, Connectivity, reliability, technology assumption and implementation.
Security and Privacy:
One of the major concerns of cloud computing is the security and privacy( Paquette, et. al., 2011). Users might not be convinced by handling their data to a third party. Particularly for those organisations that want to keep their important information on cloud services. In which most cloud service providers would guarantee that its servers are kept free from viral infection and malware. Most of the cloud types are shared services with other people and companies. Hence, people fear that anyone can access its information, especially if it’ s not a private cloud. It is also great concern for government authorities to keep citizen’ s information on cloud services. This is because citizen files are stored on the cloud, which means the information might be at unauthorised access risk( Borko & Armando, 2010).
Privacy guarantees that a data is not accessed by unauthorised users is of paramount importance of any cloud computing services. It is not a barrier but should be taken into account. Privacy is another concern that the cloud computing technology is suffering from. Despite the cloud service providers( CSP) trying to secure the services by developing a password to protect account, security servers via which all data being transferred must satisfy proper data encryption techniques. However, still there is a great concern about security and privacy of the data and information stored in the cloud, even though there is a small possibility that hackers accessing the cloud services( Honan, 2012), but however the security and privacy should be taken into great consideration.
Connectivity:
Connectivity is another disadvantage that impact the implementation of cloud computing. The Internet is necessary for it to function and cannot be accessed without it. In some developing counties the quality of the internet is not as possible to implement cloud services( Shareef & Johnnes 2012). Not everyone has Internet access at their fingertips and WiFi isn’ t available everywhere so Internet access can become a big issue.
Technology assumption and implementation:
Organisations are seeking for direction in developing technology strategies. In order to identify which applications are suitable for moving to the cloud. For example, how applications are allocated between inhouse and on the cloud? In addition, how the changes of technology can be implemented in the least
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