An Analysis of Costs, Benefits, and Risks of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing (CC) has taken business computing by storm. Many organizations have become highly dependent on CC to support their day-to-day computing, storage, delivery of personalized material, digital content, interactive training, and others. These organizations are progressively transitioning into CC technology to shift costs from conventional in-house (on premise) to a “renting model” often with higher availability, elasticity, and resilience. For many companies it is challenging to determine whether making the transition to CC is the right choice in comparison with hosting their IT infrastructure internally. The purpose of this paper is to examine the benefits, risks, and costs associated with CC to support the determination that the benefits and costs align to ultimately outweigh the risks when utilizing this technology within an organization. Given that this technology has now been around for a few years, there has been ample time for cloud providers to iron out the kinks associated with these services, and develop packages that meet the various needs of modern-day businesses. There are packages available for businesses of any size, given any level of complexity. The weight a company’s IT setup carries in determining the success it will find is momentous, and the data in which a company possesses is perhaps one of its most valuable assets. With that being said, it is understandable that there are many risks associated with CC that companies take into account, and play a pivotal role in the IT decisions that are made. Though security risks with data storage and data transfer have the potential to put an end to a company before it even has a chance to get started, steps can be taken to diminish these risks to a level that is equivalent to an internally hosted IT configuration. When the proper precautions are taken, CC is the next step in allowing a company financial freedom, innovativeness, and the tools necessary to sustain a competitive advantage in the pugnacious business world today