Cloud computing has allowed millions of users and thousands of businesses to do things they could never have done just five years ago. Let’s take a look at what cloud computing is and its benefits and drawbacks:
A Brief Explanation of Cloud Computing
The term “cloud computing” basically refers to any service that shares computing power. Without knowing it, just about everyone online uses cloud computing. Gmail and Hotmail are examples of cloud computing, email that is hosted on someone else’s computer, rather than your own. A much more complex example of cloud computing would be Amazon’s S3 servers, a complex network of servers for high traffic websites that don’t want their own server infrastructure.
The Benefits of Cloud Computing
The benefits of cloud computing are immense. The two main benefits are cost and speed. For a new start-up company to launch a website with an email list today, all it would cost them is $10 a month in hosting and $20 a month in autoresponder costs. That’s the power of cloud computing. Without cloud computing, they would have to set up their own server, with their own dedicated T1 or T2 line, which would easily run in the thousands of dollars to set up and hundreds a month in maintenance.
Speed is another factor. Instead of having to spend months setting up your own systems, just renting someone else’s systems allows you to get up and running immediately. The term “renting” is a great analogy for cloud computing. Instead of buying the equipment and software, you are essentially renting it for much less per month. The cloud company makes money by renting to many thousands of users, and each user saves money by not having to set up their own systems from scratch.
The Drawbacks of Cloud Computing
There are several drawbacks to cloud computing, primarily for larger businesses or growing businesses. The main drawbacks are security, scalability and speed.
Security is a big issue. If all your data is stored on someone else’s servers, all it takes is one bad employee on their side for you to lose all your data. While the occurrence of cloud data being leaked isn’t common, it has happened in the past. There are steps you can take to guard yourself against leaks, but the fact still remains that your data resides on someone else’s system.
Scalability is another issue. While it might make sense to use shared hosting or a VPS server while you are getting just a few thousand visitors a month, it doesn’t make sense once you’re getting tens of thousands or a million or more hits per month. Many cloud computing systems just don’t scale. Friendster, the precursor to MySpace and Facebook, failed for that exact reason: They couldn’t scale their hosting and the service went down far too often. Shared hosting, even dedicated servers, don’t scale very well. If you have a very high traffic website, you are going to need your own infrastructure. The same applies to large email lists. You can’t use third party autoresponders; you need your own mail servers.
Finally, speed is another factor. There’s always increased latency (lag) in using a cloud service rather than a self-hosted service. That isn’t a huge concern for a small business but for a large business that slight increase in lag could mean millions of dollars lost.
Those are the fundamental pros and cons of cloud computing. There are many other reasons why you might choose to use your own systems or to outsource your systems to a third party. In the end, it is a trade-off of set-up speed and cost, versus security, scalability and increased latency.
