Arash Ghafouri Professor Wang MIS 220 Should Business Move to the Cloud Case Study Q1: Cloud computing can be a great asset to many companies; cloud computing can provide companies with great data storage, customizable computing power. Cloud computing has helped companies like Amazon excel in the business world. For instance, amazon has created its own IT infrastructure called AWS, which allows many other companies use as much cloud computing as they want. Instead of Amazon charging you yearly for a subscription to use their cloud computing resources, they allow you to use it as much or as little as you want, and only charging you for how you use and not paying for it in bulk. Using this strategy of the cloud has helped not only Amazon profit, but other companies, especially smaller companies. According to an article from the Huffington Post, Stephen Braat from CDW said: The cloud does for IT what companies like UPS and FedEx did for the shipping industry (Hall 1). Cloud computing is able to help the customer get their products, but on a larger scale. Not only does cloud computing benefit businesses, they also are good at solving problems. For instance, smaller companies use cloud computing to get their name out into the world. According to the book, a hotel service called InterContinental Hotels uses cloud computing to help their customers more efficiently reserve hotel rooms. It also solves problems for more well-known companies. Outback ended up selling an unexpectedly large 670,000 coupons (Laudon 205). Outback Steakhouse used cloud computing to help get their promotion out to the public, which in the end, it helped them avoid getting taxed. Q2: Even though cloud computing is good for businesses, there are some negative effects that come with it. Cloud computing is a growing industry, and many companies whether
they are big or small, are starting to use cloud computing. Since many companies use cloud computing and they purchase this from a company like Amazon. When Amazon s cloud department had a system shut down, companies that were using their cloud computing capabilities had been shut down as well. When Amazon has a system shut down in 2012, companies like Zynga, were not able to do anything that involved the cloud. Cloud computing has other disadvantages, such as privacy/security, there is less control. When using the cloud, comes with risk like privacy and security. For many companies, privacy is a big deal, they want to storage a customer s personal information and know that a hacker won t try and steal information. That s not the only disadvantage to cloud computing. According to Javacodegeeks.com companies and users have limited control over the function and execution of the hardware and software (Tsagklis,1). The reason why companies have limited control over the cloud is because it is ran off of a remote software, which ultimately means that companies don t have total control over the cloud. Q3: Cloud computing relate to capacity planning, scalability, and TCO in many ways. TCO stands for total cost ownership, which is used to analyze the direct and indirect costs to help firms determine the actual cost of specific technology implementations. TCO is used by many companies, they try to find the actual cost of a product or service they are using. Amazon on the other hand uses more of a scalability approach to do things. For example, the meaning of scalability is the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a larger number of users without breaking down. Amazon allows millions of people to use their services, from customers purchasing products from their online store to companies buy cloud computing access. Amazon is allowed to have its system go to a larger server to accommodate the millions of customers they have.
Q4: Business that are mostly likely to benefit from using cloud computing would be businesses that need to share important data between employees, that sell products or services to individuals. A company like Amazon would benefit greatly from the use of cloud computing. For example, they use the cloud computing server to sell products to millions of other people. Other companies that benefit from cloud computing would be Google and Microsoft. Google has a program called google docs. Google docs is used to share data, projects, or ideas. Companies can use google docs to share ideas within an organization. This is great for large companies because they don t have to have their employees travel to share ideas, they can show it using google docs. Microsoft offers a cloud computing software that comes standard with their products, it s known as SkyDrive. My laptop and my father s computer have windows for an operating system. My dad and I use SkyDrive to share information between each other. Cloud computing not only helps bigger businesses but it also helps small businesses perform better. For instance, while I was working for my dad over the summer, we would use SkyDrive to share presentations, business ideas, and other important documents. Q5: Some of the major capabilities that are given with SAleforce.com is that you are able to communicate with other members of your group, you are also allowed to share information such as new leads, new clients, essential numbers needed to figure out the total income of a company. I think that the Salesforce.com website is a great tool that companies should use, and should be able to share important information. I would highly recommend this to future employers because it is easy to use, you can easily communicate with your peers.
Able to control and view the accounts you are managing. You are able to chat with other people, just like facebook.
Works Cited "Cloud Computing Advantages and Disadvantages." Managed Hosting Services. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2014. Laudon, Kenneth C., and Jane Price Laudon. Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2014. Print. Tsagklis, Llias. "Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloud Computing Cloud Computing Pros and Cons." Java Code Geeks RSS. N.p., 23 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.