Question

Research the web for an example of a business using a cloud infrastructure. What were the main reasons for choosing a cloud infrastructure? What alternatives did the business have?

Answer 1

Cloud infrastructure is a model that allows on-demand network access to shared computing resources. Its a model for sharing, storing, managing and processing data online via internet.

iCloud by Apple is an example of the business which uses cloud infrastructure. It allows its customer to store and backup all the multimedia and other documents online, this content is seamlessly integrated into all the devices or apps for the customer to access it anytime from anywhere. Amazon web services, Facebook, Microsoft Azure are some more example of the business which uses cloud infrastructure.

The main reasons for choosing the cloud infrastructure by the business are as follows-

1) Availability of the server is very high and more reliable because chances of infrastructure are very minimal.

2) It has high scalability, on-demand provision of resource on large scale without having engineers for peak loads.

3) With the help of cloud infrastructure, multiple users and applications can work more efficiently with cost reduction.

4) It enables the users to access systems using web browser regardless of their location or what device they are using because of the infrastructure provided by the third party and user accessed via the internet.

5) Maintenance of cloud infrastructure is easier as it does not require to access from a particular PC, it can be done from anywhere and hence it reduces the maintenance cost as well.

What alternatives did the business have?

As cloud infrastructure has many advantages but on the other hand it has a lot of disadvantages as well. If the internet connection is low then we cannot access the data that we have saved in the cloud. The alternative for cloud infrastructure is on-site or local servers. These servers are easily accessible and can be back up quickly to network devices.These are managed from one location, so these are more secure as well. Setting up these servers will be single time investment and will incur minimal maintenance cost.