Primary and Secondary Research Questions
Cloud computing becomes a buzzword of recent years and businesses are switching every day. There are several advantages of cloud computing such as cost savings, reliability, manageability and strategic edge. Cloud computing provides improved as well as simplified IT management and maintaining capabilities by central administration of resources. However, disadvantages of cloud computing makes some issues while dealing with cloud. The issues like its downtime, security, vendor lock-in and limited control are the major disadvantages of using cloud computing. Hence, it is important to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using cloud computing. The present paper discusses project objective, project scope, literature review, research methodology and conclusion that will be helpful to conduct the research in proper way.
- To critically impact the use of cloud computing
- To find out the advantages for using cloud computing
- To evaluate the disadvantages of using cloud computing
- To recommend solutions for overcoming the disadvantages
With rapid growth and usage of cloud computing, it becomes important to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using cloud computing. Business and organizations often minimize annual operating cost through using cloud computing (Alzahrani et al. 2014). The cost of cloud storage is approximately 3 cents per gigabyte in order to store data internally. In addition, users can avail extra cost savings, as it does not need internal power in order to store information remotely. However, it is important to be careful when using to move a document into cloud folder. In addition, various cloud storage services have particular bandwidth allowance. Hence, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing, it will be helpful to highlight the features and functionality of cloud computing along with the role of cloud computing in an IT organization (Hameed et al. 2016). The study will allow the reader evaluating all possible solution for mitigating the issues related to the technology. In addition, the project will be helpful to extend the provided advantages of cloud computing for making the process more effective in future days.
Concept of cloud computing:
Cloud computing is considered as an information technology paradigm that enables access to the shared pools of configurable system resources as well as higher-level services. It is provisioned with minimal management effort over the internet (Gutierrez et al. 2015). In addition, cloud computing relies on the sharing resources in order to achieve coherence along with economies of scale. In addition, third party cloud enables the organizations focusing on core business instead of increasing the resources on infrastructure and maintaining the computer. Cloud computing organizations are consuming compute resource like virtual machine, storage on application like a utility. Cloud computing boasts various attractive advantages for business as well as end users.
Qualitative Research Proposal
Cloud computing services are private, public or hybrid. Private cloud services are generally delivered from a business data center to the internal users. The model offers versatility as well as convenience of cloud (Hashem et al. 2015). Thus, preserving the management, control as well as security are common to the local data centers. In addition, the internal users may be billed for the particular services by IT chargeback. A hybrid cloud is considered as a combination of public cloud services as well as an on-premises private cloud. It is processed with orchestration as well as automation between the processes. Organizations run on important workloads and sensitive applications (Boutaba et al. 2014). The goal of hybrid cloud is creating an automated, unified and scalable environment, which takes benefits of public cloud infrastructure.
Moreover, the organizations are embracing multi-cloud model and use as infrastructure-as-a service providers. It enables the applications migrating between several cloud providers and operates concurrently to cloud providers. The benefits of cloud computing is taking advantages of more competitive pricing from a specific provider. On the other hand, multi-cloud deployment as well as application development is a challenge as a challenge of cloud computing interface.
The use of cloud computing has changed over the years. It is divided into three broad service categories such as infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service (Girma et al. 2015). IaaS providers like AWS supply virtual server as well as storage along with APIs. It enables the users to have allocated storage capacity and configure virtual machine. In PaaS model, the cloud providers host the development tools on the infrastructures. The users can access the tools to the customized examples for workload requirements. SaaS is considered as a distribution model that can deliver software applications over internet. The applications of SaaS as well as services from anywhere can be accessed.
The advantages of using cloud computing can be described as followed.
- Easy deployment: Asghari and Navimipour (2016) stated that cloud hosting allows retaining same applications as well as business procedures with backend technologies. In addition, it is readily manageable by internet. Infrastructure of cloud is accessed by organizations easily and quickly.
- Accessibility: It is important to access data anywhere and anytime. Internet cloud infrastructure can maximize productivity as well as efficiency of an organization through ensuring the applications accessible. It also allows collaboration as well as sharing among the users in several locations.
- Cost savings:One of the most important cloud computing advantages is cost saving. Irrespective of type or size, deployment and use of cloud computing saves cost for the users.
- Reliability:With the managed platform of service, cloud computing is reliable as well as consistent compared to in-house infrastructure (Stergiou et al. 2018). Most of the cloud service providers offer service level agreement that ensures 99.99% availability.
- Manageability:The cloud computing service provides improved as well as simplified IT management along with maintenance capabilities by central administration of resources. IT infrastructure updates the process.
- Strategic edge: Increasing computing resources provide competitive benefits over the competitors and need for IT procurement (Fernández et al. 2014). Cloud computing also allows forgetting the technology as well as the key business activities along with focusing on the key business activities and objectives.
Storing information in cloud is considered as one of the most-efficient methods to use in the organizations. Strong data in cloud provides unlimited storage capacity. Since all the data is stored in cloud, it becomes easier compared to storing the process. Moreover, the cloud service providers are generally competent for handling the information. However, it is evident that the information on cloud is accessed. It is required to be aware that there are times where the technology has outages as well as technical issues. The other major issue in cloud is security issue. Thus, before adoption of the technology, it is required to understand sensitive information to third party cloud service information. Thus, it is required to ensure that the reliable service provider will be helpful to keep information secured.
Quantitative Research Proposal
Although there are several advantages of cloud computing, disadvantages of cloud computing are required to evaluate.
Downtime: de Bruin and Floridi (2017) mentioned that as cloud service providers has to take care of several clients, it becomes overwhelmed as well as come up against the technical outages. It leads to the business procedure that is temporarily suspended.
Security: Cloud service providers deploy the best standard of security as well as industry certifications, storing data as well as vital files on the external service providers (Sookhak et al. 2015). Thus, using cloud-powered technologies need to provide accesses significant and confidential data. For an example, the users can provide adequate benefits for this.
Vendor lock-in: The cloud service providers give promise that it is flexible for use as well as integration and switching the cloud services. Hosting as well as integrating the present services from a vendor to different vendor is processed (Shameli-Sendi et al. 2015). For an example, the applications are developed on Microsoft development framework may work efficiently on the Linux platform.
Considering the aim of the study, it is required analyzing the relationship between brand equity as well as purchase behavior of a consumer. The research is a descriptive as well as co-relational in terms of collecting data and based on the structural equations. In addition, structural equation model is considered as a statistical comprehensive approach that is helpful to test the hypothesis associated with the relationship between observed as well as latent variables (Ding and Tseng 2015). With the help of this approach, acceptability of theoretical models in the communities is tested and as most of the variables in the field of management, research is latent.
Research philosophy:
In the study, positivism philosophy will be used. Selection of positivism philosophy will be helpful to analyze highly structured, large samples of the research in easy and effective way.
Research design:
Descriptive research will be used in the study. It will be helpful to explore the particular aspects of the research area. In addition, with the help of descriptive research design, the research will have expected and accurate outcome.
Research approach:
Inductive and deductive approach is the type of approaches followed in the academic research (Taylor et al. 2016). Deductive research approach will be used in the research as the research will analyze the existing theories and models related to the topic.
Sample and sampling:
In the research, simple random probability sampling technique will be selected for the research. 75 numbers of cloud computing users across Australia will be selected for the research.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing
Data collection tools: Tools utilized consist of reliable questionnaire, library studies and online surveys. Each process will be used in the research for complication of particular data.
Validity and reliability: Validity of content will be used for reviewing the research as well as evaluate reliability of the research (Lewis 2015). Cronbach’s alpha test will be used to test the variables. The questionnaire will accept reliability. On the other hand, based on the analysis, the research findings will be generated.
Inferential analysis: In the study, the statistical inference associate with the data analysis and hypothesis testing will be used. In the first stage, normality of data will be analyzed. After completion of the process, the structural validity of the variables as well as indicators derived from the examined process will confirm factor analysis (Flick 2015). At the final stage, the research hypothesis will be tested utilizing structural equation modeling along with correlation coefficient.
- Like different studies regarding behavioral sciences, present study also includes some limitations. One of the most significant limitations is qualitative factors, which need to be converted to quantitative variable in order to measure particular factors.
- The purpose of the research is analyzing the impact of cloud computing. As there are several products and services in the field of IT industry, the researcher may be forced to limit the area of research. As the limitations, extension of the results of the research to different brands as well needs to be achieved with caution.
- Utilizing the questionnaires for having some, causes consisting of personal respondents and variables will have major limitation for human scientists.
Conclusion
The above study concludes that cloud computing has made an effortless change for all access applications as well as software from internet. In past days, software as well as applications was physically installed. It results several issues. However, the current evolution of technology as well as feasibility for accessing the applications of cloud computing are become reaping advantages. On the contrary, the disadvantages of cloud computing are evident and concerning point for the users. Thus, the study will be helpful to gather opinion of cloud computing users regarding the issues and challenges faced while using cloud computing. It will be helpful to recommend solutions in order to overcome the issues and obtain potential advantages.
Reference List
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