Cloud Computing has numerous advantages. Some of them are listed below:
- One can access applications as utilities, over the Internet.
- Manipulate and configure the application online at any time.
- It does not require to install a specific piece of software to access or manipulate cloud application.
- Cloud Computing offers online development and deployment tools, programming runtime environment through Platform as a Service model.
- Cloud resources are available over the network in a manner that provides platform independent access to any type of clients.
- Cloud Computing offers on-demand self-service. The resources can be used without interaction with cloud service provider.
- Cloud Computing is highly cost effective because it operates at higher efficiencies with greater utilization. It just requires an Internet connection.
- Cloud Computing offers load balancing that makes it more reliable.
Although Cloud Computing is a great innovation in the world of computing, there also exist downsides of cloud computing. Some of them are discussed below:
SECURITY & PRIVACY
It is the biggest concern about cloud computing. Since data management and infrastructure management in cloud is provided by third-party, it is always a risk to handover the sensitive information to such providers.
Although the cloud computing vendors ensure more secure password protected accounts, any sign of security breach would result in loss of clients and businesses.
LOCK-IN
It is very difficult for the customers to switch from one Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to another. It results in dependency on a particular CSP for service.
ISOLATION FAILURE
This risk involves the failure of isolation mechanism that separates storage, memory, routing between the different tenants.
MANAGEMENT INTERFACE COMPROMISE
In case of public cloud provider, the customer management interfaces are accessible through the Internet.
INSECURE OR INCOMPLETE DATA DELETION
It is possible that the data requested for deletion may not get deleted. It happens either because extra copies of data are stored but are not available or disk destroyed also stores data from other tenants.