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It’s a relatively new model with lots of benefits and a fewdrawbacks — hence the strong interest. A Forrester Ressearch survey ofsmall- to medium-size businesses found that 40% of businesses with 2 to 19employees said using cloud service offerings was a “very high” or “highpriority.” For medium-size businesses (20 to 1,000 employees), the figure was25%.

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1. it’s easy to adjust your computing needs. Mostcloud-computing is billed at a monthly rate, like a utility. (Though there areoften discounts for “reserving” space on a yearly basis to cut costs.) So, ifyour business grows, you can just order more server space

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2. You don’t have to set up a server and spend allthe man-hours it takes to get one up and running.

3. The process of backing up and recovering data issimplified since those now reside on the cloud and not on a physical device.The various cloud providers offer reliable and flexible backup/recoverysolutions. In some cases, the cloud itself is used solely as a backuprepository of the data located in local computers.

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4. With cloud computing, you don't need to hire atech team, and a smaller team will save you money on payroll, benefits andmore.

5. The cloud is in general more efficient than the typicalIT infrastructure and It takes fewer resources to compute, thus saving energy.For example, when servers are not used, the infrastructure normally scalesdown, freeing up resources and consuming less power. At any moment, only theresources that are truly needed are consumed by the system.

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6. Cloud applications usually entail smaller learning curvessince people are quietly used to them. Users find it easier to adopt them andcome up to speed much faster. Main examples of this are applications like GMailand Google Docs.

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Draw Backs

1. Security is the biggest concern when it comes to cloudcomputing. By leveraging a remote cloud based infrastructure, a companyessentially gives away private data and information, things that might besensitive and confidential. It is then up to the cloud service provider tomanage, protect and retain them, thus the provider’s reliability is verycritical. A company’s existence might be put in jeopardy, so all possiblealternatives should be explored before a decision. On the same note, even endusers might feel uncomfortable surrendering their data to a third party.

Similarly, privacy in the cloud is another huge issue.Companies and users have to trust their cloud service vendors that they willprotect their data from unauthorized users. The various stories of data lossand password leakage in the media does not help to reassure some of the mostconcerned users

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2. Certainly the smaller business will enjoy not having todeal with the daily technical issues and will prefer handing those to anestablished IT company, however you should keep in mind that all systems mightface dysfunctions from time to time. Outage and downtime is possible even tothe best cloud service providers, as the past has shown.

Additionally, you should remember that the whole setup isdependent on internet access, thus any network or connectivity problems willrender the setup useless. As a minor detail, also keep in mind that it mighttake several minutes for the cloud to detect a server fault and launch a newinstance from an image snapshot

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3. Since the applications and services run on remote, thirdparty virtual environments, companies and users have limited control over thefunction and execution of the hardware and software. Moreover, since remotesoftware is being used, it usually lacks the features of an application runninglocally

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4. Relatedto the security and privacy mentioned before, note that cloud based solutionsare exposed on the public internet and are thus a more vulnerable target formalicious users and hackers. Nothing on the Internet is completely secure andeven the biggest players suffer from serious attacks and security breaches. Dueto the interdependency of the system, If there is a compromise one of themachines that data is stored, there might be a leakage of personal informationto the world

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How does this Help/Conclusion

Cloud Computing has become a hot topic over the lastseveral years. With every type of business aspect being performed ‘in thecloud’ lots of different size companies are utilizing cloud-basedservices. Enterprise businesses have greatly benefited from cloud computing, from cloud storage, email, web applications to document management andoffsite backups. For small and medium businesses, the importance ofproductivity, organization, and most of all, cost savings is a factor whenimplementing new services. There is no need to break the bank when it comes tocloud based solutions.

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Cloud computing can improve business agility, and help moreestablished businesses with relatively small IT budgets to rapidly move intonew territory or alter their business model.

Asbusinesses grow and succeed, they need more storage space or additionalsoftware. These enterprises need to upgrade their servers, buy new software,and train their employees on new processes. Such moves can entailadditional costs, time, and effort. However, with cloud computing, a growingcompany can just buy additional services and space from its cloud computingservice provider. Training the staff is also a breeze because most providersoffer intuitive online interfaces.

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Cloudcomputing also allows SMEs to use high quality software which they may notafford had they chosen to buy the software themselves. SMEs can an inexpensiveyet professional-looking website by accessing WordPress. They need not maintaina server to host their websites. Sales and customer management is alsoeffortless with SalesForce. Files can be shared among employees through Boxand can be accessed anywhere in the world as long as there is internetconnection. Costly solutions are now available even to the smallest businesses.

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Conclusion

SMEscan save up to 70% of IT costs if they move to the clouds because they arecharged only for what they have consumed monthly but the best infrastructure,platforms, and software are offered for their use. With the increasedpopularity of Software as a Service, buying data storage is very much the sameas buying electricity from a grid. With internet bandwidth becoming more and moreaffordable, there is no need to spend a lot of money on infrastructure. Anotherbenefit of cloud computing is SMEs can use it quickly. A business can be up andabout at the shortest possible time. Also, it is much greener when companiestake advantage of cloud computing because IT equipment is utilized to thefullest. Electricity consumption can also go down because each SME need notmaintain its server on site.

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