Authorea

Lisa Nelander edited untitled.html almost 8 years ago

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can both bring risks as well as opportunities depending on how it is applied and which countermeasures for the risks are taken.

Usually a contract between the provider of the Cloud Computing service and the customer is concluded. Here the duration, terms and extend of the service is recorded.

At At this point problems can occur because the company using the Cloud Computing service is now dependent on the provider.

This provider. This dependency exists because of the duration of the contract and because there can be some technical constraints concerning development tools. Those are often offered by the provider to enable the customer to develop custom cloud services. These tools often only work in the provided architecture and thereby the custom services are tied to the provider.

Risks

dependent provider. Due to the dependence on the provider a change of contractor or switching back to in-house operation means that new cloud services have to be developed matching the architecture of the new vendor and the customer has to wait until the contract expires. This procedure can be very time consuming and costly and can lead to a lock-in-effect. This means that ____. Also the possibility that the provider could go broke has to be mentioned. The customer does not know what will happen to the servers, computer center and databases - including the own data. Lissen 2014

Risks
- dependent on the provider
  - provider could go broke
  - service could be bad
  - always affected when provider has to shut down due to e.g. an update
  - long-term access to important data is reliant on the provider
- safety and data protection
  - is the cloud save?
  - who has access?
  - where are the interfaces
  - risk of loosing corporate secrets
  - abuse of personal data
- risk of renouncing own IT competence
- reliability of the cloud
  - risk of loosing important corporate data
- a working internet connection is crutial
  - reliability of the connection
  - not enough bandwidth at own or servers' location
- potential need to adapt to the providers software if own software is not offered
- data protection regulations can be violated
  - problematic when saving personal data in a location abroad (when it's a German company)
  - risk of fees due to compliance violations
Potentials
- scalable
- dynamic load distribution - on demand
  - not all IT resources have to be bought, only those that are needed
  - 10% -50% of the IT hardware is only used in load peaks
  - quick renting of additional capacity i needed (e.g. due to business growth)
- lower costs
  - no investment in own assets
  - providers have IT for many companies -> due to amount of resources individual services are cheaper than buying the IT on their own
- no investment risks (for small companies)
  - business models can be testes and quickly enter and exit the market - short time to market
  - IT resources can just be cancelled and do not have to be sold again
- easy: management of the servers is outsourced
  - no need of in-house experts (expensive)
  - not dependand on own IT employees
- Green IT
  - servers are only utilized when needed -> the power consumption is lower
- no long-term capital tie-up
  - needed service and hardware are rented as needed
- risk transfer to provider through defining a SLA (Service Level Agreement)
- technology is up to date
  - minimizing the risk of default
  - faster and more save
- using regional locations that are cheaper than storing the IT in the location of the own company