Week 7

Q.12 Carry out web research to find out what is meant by the term ‘Cloud Computing’. Describe in your own words what is meant by this term. Explain in your own words the impact that cloud computing might have in e-commerce. Ensure that you describe potential benefits and problems.

Cloud computing is a computing paradigm in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network. All this colectively together is called “the cloud”. Using a thin client or other access point allows computing at the scale of the cloud allows users to access supercomputer level power. An iPhone, BlackBerry or laptop allows users to reach into the cloud for resources as they need them. Cloud computing is often used to sort through enormous amounts of data and  Google has an initial edge in cloud computing precisely because of its need to produce instant, accurate results for millions of incoming search inquries every day.

Picture of how cloud computing works. source http://communication.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing.htm/printable

Advantages of using cloud computing.

Clients would be able to access their applications and data from anywhere at any time. They could access the cloud computing system using any computer linked to the internet. Cloud computing systems would bring down the costs on hardware and clients would not have to buy the fastest computers with the most memory.

Disadvantages of using cloud computing.

The biggest concerns about cloud computing are privacy and security and the idea of handing over important data to another company worries some people.