CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud Computing
Issues
S.B.Vadivelrajan

(Also available at www.mavisb2b.com)

The latest buzzword or jargon in the IT / ITES industry is cloud computing. Every major IT enabler is seriously into providing cloud services. This article is to elucidate to our readers as to what is Cloud computing and what may be the issues related to cloud computing.

As an organization or as an individual currently we buy the hardware and software ( be it operating systems or platforms or applications) with licenses and use it. The main income for the software developers is through renewing the licenses for the applications and also they regularly upgrade their products with versions and service packs.

Cloud computing is an alternative to this kind of software usage where in the IT services including products, platforms and infrastructure are provided as metered services. The cloud service provider has a large set of infrastructure with servers loaded with operating systems and applications. The user needs to have only a terminal loaded with an interface connecting to the cloud service provide. The user can access the cloud and use the services which will be charges on hourly basis or on data transfer basis.

Issues:
Interruption in the services provided:
As users organisations want uninterrupted services to run businesses. Any interruption in the availability of the services will lead to break in the continuity of the business. The business becomes dependable on the cloud service provider.
The interruption in the services may happen due to many reasons including interruption of power, local area climate and culture of the service provider, data transfer media failure, ISP interruption etc.,
This is one of the major issues needed to be addressed.



Security of data transferred:
What is the level of security of the data being transferred? Is the encryption and decryption of data secure enough to safe guard data? Can we transact confidential and proprietory information through cloud. This is the next issue which comes into one’s mind.

Data Base:
It is clear that the data base of the organization using the cloud service is entirely loaded in the servers of the service provider. So the security of the data is entirely outside the control of the user. One may ask for weekly backups of the data and store them in their premises.

Eventhough there is an advantage of reducing cost due to removal of maintenance of the systems and the ownership costs, one has to weighdown the same against the issues those are arising out of usage of the cloud services.

Cloud computing is in the evolutionary stage and with addressing of complexity of security and continuity issues this may become one the revolutions of the age.