Software-as-a-service (SaaS) of Cloud Computing

            The third model concerning with the cloud computing service is known as Software as a service (SaaS) model. Considering this model of service, Cloud providers provide software application at datacenters that can be installed from these datacenters with paid subscriptions. A fine example of Software as a service (SaaS) model is Office 365. In office 365, all productivity and collaboration applications are bundled with each other. Integration of all applications is the part of subscription. Users do not need to use their own emails and servers to maintain and updates. For instance, Office pro plus can be installed from the web based portal rather than buying the application and all relevant files from a store as packaged software. Web portal provide ease of access to these applications to make users enable to download and use these applications. Installing such application from the web portal comes up with additional features and functions. For example, after the completion of application or software installation other bug fixes and updates works automatically in the background. Thus in short, the key advantage of Software as a service (SaaS) model is ease of use for users. It does not require continuous efforts of users to manage and maintain these applications and software to work effectively. In fact, installed features and web portal work on maintaining and managing related tasks.    

Advantages of Cloud Computing

            One of the most major advantages of cloud computing is the reduction in the cost of businesses. The organization can reduce their IT cost significantly through cloud computing platforms. Many organization's main aims are to earn profit by keeping their operational & capital expenditures low.  Through cloud computing, the organizations get the opportunity to save their capital because with cloud computing the corporations will not have to invest in IT infrastructure such as in house storage. With could computing the corporations will not have IT infrastructure on their premises, which means that the costs associated with their operation and other costs like administration cost and power cost will be saved. With cloud services, the organization only pay for services which they have taken from the cloud services provider. Another benefit of cloud services is that the corporations can disengage whenever they want from their services provider (Wang, et al., 2011).

            Another major advantage of cloud computing is that they could computing service provider are much more reliable than the in-house IT department. The cloud computing service providers can make an agreement with the organization to provide them 24/7 availability, which means that when the organization needs the services, it can get it without any difficulty. This might not be possible with the in house IT department.  By taking services from the cloud computing service providers, the organization can minimize the risk of IT system failure. For instance, if in house system experience any major technical issue, then the organization can face a problem, but if the cloud service provider server fails, it can easily switch to another server. Through this, the organization will not have to face any major issue. Through could compute the organization gets the availability of a variety of IT resources which it can use for performing various tasks (Chandrashekhar, et al., 2015).

             The management of the IT infrastructure is eliminated when the organization takes the services of cloud computing. The cloud computing service provider is responsible for the management and maintenance of the IT infrastructure through which it provides its services. The cloud computing service providers enhance manageability through SLA backed agreements, administration of resources and vendor managed infrastructure. The major advantage which the organizations get is that they do not have to upgrade their IT systems. The organizations can enjoy the services without installation. Organizations can enjoy access to software, services, and applications without any major problem (Association & Resources, 2015).

            Another major advantage of the cloud computing services is that the organization can shift its focus from IT management to other operations of the organizations. Through this, the organization can improve its operations, which ultimately help the corporation to sustain in the long run. The organization, by lowering its costs, can compete with its competitor’s more efficiently. The organization will have the opportunity to give a tough time to its competitors through higher performance and good quality products. Although technology plays an important role in the success of the organization, other factors are as much important as the technology. So with improving performance, organizations can experience growth in the upcoming years.

            With cloud services, the corporation can not only increase their profits but can also understand the needs and preferences of their customers more efficiently. The cloud services providers provide a variety of resources to the organizations to take advantage of. It means that by utilizing these resources, the organization can understand what the customers are looking for and how their satisfaction can be increased. Ultimately though these services, the organization can create customer loyalty, which will ultimately become the reason for the high amount of sales revenue. When sales go up the profitability will also increase as a result.

            Through cloud services, the organization gets the opportunity to expand its services in different parts of the world. Sometimes when the business expands, flexibility issues occur because due to the increase in the size of the business, the current infrastructure of the company have to be changed because it cannot handle a huge amount of activities. This is not the case with the cloud infrastructure. The cloud services are flexible and can help the organization to achieve its desired goals. The IT department of the organization might need upgradation when the size increases but cloud infrastructure are designed to change according.

The disadvantage of cloud computing

            As there are many benefit or advantages of cloud computing, there are some drawbacks as well, which must be kept in mind before taking help from the cloud services providers. The first major drawback of cloud computing services regards to access to services. It is obvious that the cloud services provider can also face technical issues. Due to these technical issues, the organization might have to face temporary unavailability of services. When the organizations are not going to get the services on time than most of the organization tasks will experience a delay, and ultimately, the business might suffer loss. The cloud services heavily depend on the internet connection and if the internet connection gets unavailable than getting access to services to become impossible. The cloud service providers provide services to a lot of organizations or clients and sometimes they unable to manage their system efficiently, which cause the failure in their system (Association & Resources, 2015).

                The security concerns are the second major drawback regarding cloud computing services. The cloud computing services providers usually assure their clients that they pay special attention to their clients’ data and follow the highest standards of security. However, the risk of data breaches and frauds still remains high. As technology is becoming advance day by day, the techniques which the hackers use for stealing the data are also becoming more advanced. Today the hackers come up with various techniques through which they find loopholes in the cloud computing systems, and they take the advantages of the vulnerabilities they steal the client’s data which they then use for their own advantage. Therefore it is highly important for the cloud computing service providers to monitor their systems continuously so that the threat of hacking can be mitigated. The services providers can take the help of IT experts in this regard as well.

                As the cloud computing services providers perform the maintenance, management, and monitoring of their IT systems, they transfer the control to their customers up to a certain limit. The clients or customers of the cloud services providers cannot manage the IT infrastructure because cloud service providers do not give access to their clients to manage the IT system. It means that the organizations will only be able to control the applications and data which the Cloud services providers provide to their client. It can be said that limited control is a major drawback of cloud computing (Wang, et al., 2011).

            Switching cloud services is also a major issue in recent years. The cloud services provide the state that it is not difficult to switch, and their services are flexible, but in reality, different issues can occur. Hosting the current cloud application to another platform can raise an issue regarding support and interoperability. For example, the application which is developed on a Linux platform might not work on the Microsoft platform. Therefore such flexibility issues cause many problems for the organizations. Many businesses do not consider cloud services because they think that such issues will cause a problem in the upcoming future (Buyya, 2013).

              Another major issue is regarding the features which the cloud services providers provide to their clients. Today there are lots of could computing organizations which provide a variety of features to their clients. Different cloud service companies have their own policies and features. It means that the features which one cloud computing company is providing another cloud company might not provide similar features. In other words, some cloud services provider may provide limited features. It is recommended to the businesses that before taking service of any cloud service provider, the organization must make sure which services they are going to get.

                The bandwidth issues can also occur, which may cause inconvenience to the businesses. Forgetting the best services, the client should plan effectively. The redundancy issues also need to be considered will take the service of cloud computing (Association & Resources, 2015). The cloud services providers do not back up the data, which means that in case of any issue, the chances of losing the data remain high. The solution to this problem is to have a small data center in the organization, which would help the organization to have a backup of the data in case anything goes wrong.