Page 27 - DCAP609_CLOUD_COMPUTING

Cloud Computing

Notes 2.2.1 Needs Constant Internet Connection

Cloud computing is not possible without an Internet connection. Without an internet connection
you cannot access your documents and applications. No Internet connection means no work, in
areas with low or no internet connection or an unreliable one, could affect the business in a big
way.

If you are working on a document when you are at a restaurant for lunch, or in your car,
accessing cloud based documents and applications will be hard if you don’t have a strong
Internet connection at the all those locations. When you are depending on Web-based application
a lot of what is nice about portable computing becomes challenging.

2.2.2 Outages

While choosing a company for hosting make sure that the company has a strong and reliable
cloud server system. Additionally, your Internet connection will determine whether or not you
and your business have access to your network.

2.2.3 Does not Work Well with Low-speed Connections

A low-speed Internet connection, such as that found with dial-up services, makes cloud computing
difficult and often impossible. Web-based applications and other large documents need lots of
bandwidth to download. If you are struggling with a low-speed dial-up connection, it might
take a lot of time to just switch between pages in a document, forget about introducing a feature-
rich cloud service. Cloud computing is not for the slow or broadband-impaired.

2.2.4 Less Control

Even utilising the public cloud in business has an obvious disadvantage. By using this technology
you risk losing a level of control over your organisation. While many IT managers are
experimenting with various ways of implementing an in-house cloud system that runs on
delivered metered services, this is not always the most lucrative business move.

2.2.5 Can Be Slow

Even on a fast connection, there is a possibility that Web-based applications maybe slower than
opening a similar software program on your desktop PC. That happens because everything
about the program and other information, right from the interface to the document you are
working on, is sent back and forth from your personal computer to the computers in the cloud.
Also you might not get the instant access you are used to with desktop applications, if the cloud
servers happen to be backed up at that time or if the Internet connection is slower than usual.

2.2.6 Futures might be Limited

This disadvantage might change in the near future but today many Web-based applications are
not complete with all the features their desktop-based associates may have. For instance, if we
compare the features of Microsoft PowerPoint to that of Google Presentations; you realise that
lots more can be done with PowerPoint than with Google’s Web-based contribution. With
basics being the alike, the cloud application is still incapable of performing many tasks as it still
lacks many of PowerPoint’s advanced features.
We must, however, remember that many Web-based applications add keep adding more
advanced features from time to time. For instance, Google Docs and Spread sheets, which started

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