Cloud Computing as Cloud Computing Became More

¶ … Cloud Computing

As cloud computing became more and more popular, many major business names jumped at the chance to execute cloud strategies and services within their IT management strategies. Ericsson was one of those companies and has seen major benefits in terms of cost reduction, ease of automatic software updates, increased capabilities of remote access, and on-demand availability. Since its adoption of AWS services as provided from Amazon, it has seen vast benefits. Essentially, several cloud services provided by Amazon have helped increase the company's scalability with relatively little initial investments (Amazon, 2012). According to the research, Ericsson has benefited from cloud services ability to "lead to efficiency gains, operational flexibility, and substantial cost savings" (Ericsson, 2012, p 10). Cost reductions occur in the ability to cut loose expensive hardware and in house servers that would be needed to handle so much data without the use of cloud strategies. Rather than buying costly hardware upfront, Ericsson has been able to enjoy a more flexible per use cost strategy. This helps enormously through "reducing their total cost of ownership" (Ericsson, 2012, p 10). Moreover, the automated software updates involved with the AWS strategy has increased the efficiency of keeping software up-to-date while reducing costs of having to have personnel trained and constantly being active in updating crucial software. The expansion of remote access has continued to allow Ericsson and its teams grow within a global market. Use of remote access has helped clients, employees, and sales teams are able to access crucial information from anywhere, essentially expanding their abilities and competitive advantage. Finally, because Ericsson now can leverage its ability to provide on-demand services, "they are essentially intermediating brokers, enabling users to switch cloud vendors without worrying about network-related details" (Ericsson, 2012, p 8). This has significantly increased the ease-of-use as well as the range of services.

Amazon, who worked with Ericsson to find its success, has a range of products on the market that function within a cloud operating environment. Compared to other service providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is "the most integrated public cloud provider in the Rightscale Cloud Management Platform (Rightscale)" (Amazon, 2012). Right now on the market, Amazon is the leader in delivering scalability, manageability, and adaptability. Its services work within a wide variety of contexts, including any number of both consumer and commercial applications. First, there is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), where "the business runs its own applications on the Amazon infrastructure," (Amazon, 2012). This allows businesses to retain absolute control, increasing manageability, yet has the quick and reliable scalability ensured by the Amazon infrastructure. Secondly, there is Amazon Simple Storage Devices, or (Amazon S3). This "offers businesses cloud storage capacity without the processing power" (Amazon, 2012). The scalability is often most beneficial for developers, although some of the manageability is lost in comparison to the Amazon EC2. Yet, both are highly adaptable to individual business and consumer needs, as they are easy to adapt to almost any network or network applications. Right Scale is also a major benefit to businesses looking to achieve scalable and manageable solutions on a web-based platform. It allows for users to take full advantage of the functionality of Amazon's stellar network, without having to build and maintain their own infrastructure.

Still, there are a number of security concerns with such a new and constantly developing field. Many are worried about their sensitive data being stored and maintained by a third party. Data protection is one of the major security concerns held by companies today (Tyson, 2012). However, dealing with major reputable names within the business can ensure a greater firewall network and security strategies to protect even some of the most sensitive data. For example, Amazon prides itself on its security systems and has a stellar track record of protecting data in its cloud infrastructure. Moreover, there is the fear of what working with a cloud system would do to a company's IT governance. With the entire structure of the IT department rearranging based on a cloud service implementation, there are fears that the IT department will not mesh with the new strategy. Training can help keep employees up-to-date, but also streamlining IT strategies to match cloud computing systems helps alleviate such fears.