Advantages and disadvantages of moving the information system to the cloud
As more and more business organisation and their information system to cloud, it has become important to analyse how the business organisations can harness this power of cloud computing for information system management and for making the everyday processes more efficient and easier. This report is compiled to present the advantages and disadvantages of the Migration of the information systems for the organisation to the cloud-based computing on the different organisational structures and the type of information systems used. It also presents the business case examples of organisations to provide the evidence for the conclusion drawn with the help of this analysis (Bhopale, 2017).
Cloud computing is completely changing the way organisations operate and carry out the day-to-day processes in the present day and its. The business organisations regardless of their structure, information systems and size are embracing the cloud computing but it is important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of this technology before adopting it. While cloud-computing technology is vastly beneficial for the organisation, there are also certain disadvantages, concerns and risks associated with its adoption. The migration of the information system to cloud involves the movement of all the business data that is relevant to the organisation including the servers, software applications and other elements of the information system to cloud so that the information can be accessed from any place and at any time with the help of the desktops, laptops and mobile devices that are connected to the cloud server.
The biggest advantage that comes with the movement of the information systems of the organisation to cloud is the increase in the scalability and flexibility of the business operations. The periodic requirement of the business organisation can be easily managed with the help of the cloud support and the resource allocation for the organisational functions can also be carried out efficiently with the help of the IT infrastructure operating on the cloud (Obrutsky, 2016). It helps significantly reducing the operating expenses for the organisation and also contributes to a reduction in the capital expense. This is because cloud computing only requires the acquisition of the resources that are necessary for the organisational functions and therefore, the company has to pay for these specific resources. Cloud also provides organisations with extremely secure data storage at a much lower price as compared to the on-premise data storage options. The data storage facilities by the organisation can also be easily expanded and reduced as per the organisational requirement that allows the companies to manage the seasonal traffic and also the overall cost of operations. The cloud solutions for the IT infrastructure of the organisation provide greater flexibility with the deployment and testing of the applications. The organisations can remotely work and install the application and it also simplifies how the applications are deployed from the backend. This provides greater stability to the organisation and results in improved efficiency in the long term. The employees of the organisation can also enjoy greater mobility with the solutions that are deployed with the help of the cloud technology as all the important applications can be accessed even on the move and it only requires the access to the internet. While doing this, the security of the applications is also maintained even during the conditions that are beyond the control of the organisation (Xue & Xin, 2016).
Even when the cloud technology has impressive statistics to prove its efficiency and effectiveness for the organisation, it cannot be denied that there are a few disadvantages that come with the movement of the information infrastructure to cloud technology. The cloud technology is still in its nascent stage and therefore there are some drawbacks and disadvantages that need to be taken into consideration when opting for this migration. Cloud computing is entirely dependent on the availability of the internet and active connection. An absence of network connectivity can render the cloud networks completely useless (Mukherji & Srivastava, 2015). Therefore, organisations need to ensure that they are able to provide a good internet connection with the required bandwidth and speed so that they can truly enjoy the benefits that come with cloud computing. Along with this, there are numerous differences between the different vendor platforms that provide cloud services. If an organisation decides to migrate from one platform to the other, there might be some serious challenges the organisation will have to encounter in this process. Because of the increased dependency on the vendors, cloud computing faces the disadvantage of vendor lock-in which becomes an even bigger challenge during migration. The lack of redundancy in the cloud servers is another disadvantage that comes with this technology. Any failure in the technology results in loss of data and valuable information for the organisation. To address this issue, organisations open purchase and additional plan for redundancy, which might increase the cost of operations for the company (Olekar & Sreekumar, 2013).
The case study analysis by Ali Khajeh-Hosseini, David Greenwood and Ian Sommerville covers the potential benefits and the disadvantages that are associated with the Migration of the IT infrastructure of the oil and gas industry tour cloud server. According to the study, the total cost of system infrastructure for 5 years is reduced by 37% with the migration to the cloud servers and making use of cloud technology also eliminates the support calls made by the organisation by 21% (Khajeh-Hosseini, Greenwood, & Sommerville, 2010).
Another interesting case of migration is that of the organisation Spotify that migrated to the Google cloud platform in the year 2015. The organisation invested 2 years for the preparation of this movement and established a dedicated team for overseeing the entire process. The plan was divided into two parts that covered the movement of services and data respectively. The on-premise database of Spotify was successfully moved to cloud network that helped in increasing the scalability of the organisations and also freed the resources for greater innovation and creativity within the organisation (Tereshko, 2016). Therefore, it can be concluded that cloud computing can anybody organisations to improve their information technology management and data management functions. Because of these advantages, more and more organisations are increasingly adopting cloud technology because of the ease with which the data can be stored, managed and access in the cloud.
References
Bhopale, S. (2017). Cloud Migration Benefits and Its Challenges Issue. OSR Journal of Computer Engineering, 40-45. Retrieved from http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jce/papers/sicete-volume1/8.pdf
Khajeh-Hosseini, A., Greenwood, D., & Sommerville, I. (2010). Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an Enterprise IT System to IaaS. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45901831_Cloud_Migration_A_Case_Study_of_Migrating_an_Enterprise_IT_System_to_IaaS
Mukherji, S., & Srivastava, S. (2015). Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing Technology. International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), 6(14), 1-4. Retrieved from https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v5i7/ART2016314.pdf
Obrutsky, S. (2016). Cloud Storage: Advantages, Disadvantages and Enterprise Solutions for Business. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305508410_Cloud_Storage_Advantages_Disadvantages_and_Enterprise_Solutions_for_Business
Olekar, G., & Sreekumar, V. (2013). Cloud Computing: Migration from Traditional Systems to the Cloud. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Engineering & Technology (IJARCET), 2(3), 1-4. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/db8f/0d6ea1ff69a6d54b88f59798fe539fb5e9c6.pdf
Tereshko, T. (2016). Spotify’s journey to cloud: why Spotify migrated its event delivery system from Kafka to Google Cloud Pub/Sub. Retrieved from https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/spotifys-journey-to-cloud-why-spotify-migrated-its-event-delivery-system-from-kafka-to-google-cloud-pubsub
Xue, C., & Xin, F. (2016). Benefits and challenges of the adoption of cloud computing in business. International Journal on Cloud Computing: Services and Architecture, 6(6), 1-15. Retrieved from http://aircconline.com/ijccsa/V6N6/6616ijccsa01.pdf