Weaknesses
There are many issues that need to be resolved before cloud computing can be accepted as a viable choice in
business computing. As pointed out in the previous section, organizations will be justifiably wary of the loss of physical
control of the data that is put on the cloud. Hitherto, providers have been unable to guarantee the location of a company‟s
information on specified set of servers in a specified location. However, cloud computing service providers are rapidly
adopting measures to handle this issue. For example, Amazon Web Services recently announced the Amazon Virtual
Private Cloud that allows a business to connect its existing infrastructure to a set of isolated AWS compute resources via a
VPN connection. To satisfy the European Union data regulations, AWS now allows for companies to deploy its
SimpleDB structured storage physically within the EU region. The Government Cloud product from Google that we
alluded to earlier is also a response to allay concerns from government entities over the location of their data.
Large organizations will also be wary of entrusting mission-critical applications to a cloud computing paradigm
where providers cannot commit to the high quality of service and availability guarantees that are demanded in such
environments. For example, Amazon Web Services Service Level Agreement (SLA) currently commits to an annual
uptime percentage of 99.95% over the trailing 365 days, which might be enough for most small- and medium-sized
organizations, but will be deemed insufficient for mission-critical applications for large organizations. Even though many
in-house IT services often fail to live up to such uptime standards, such failures are not held up for media scrutiny, unlike
the much-publicized failures of prominent cloud computing service providers.
Opportunities
One of the significant opportunities of cloud computing lies in its potential to help developing countries reap the
benefits of information technology without the significant upfront investments that have stymied past efforts. In fact,
cloud computing might do to computing in developing countries what mobile phones did to communications – allow the
governments and local firms to benefit from the effective use of information technology. A recent survey by the Forrester
Group indicates that SaaS is a priority for 74% of Chinese firms, with 29% planning to pilot SaaS projects in the next 12
months. In contrast, the survey found that a majority of European or American firms is interested but have no plans to
pursue SaaS [20]. An impressive example of the power of cloud computing in developing countries comes from Ethiopia,
where the government has commissioned the cloud computing provider FullArmor to remotely manage 250,000 laptops
with teachers throughout the country. The laptops will contain sensitive teacher and student data, and information like
syllabi and class material will be managed centrally. In order to prevent security breaches, if a laptop drifts outside a
virtual “fence”, its contents can be remotely „wiped‟ (i.e. made unusable) through cloud-based interfaces.
Much like developing countries, small businesses represent another huge opportunity for cloud computing. All of
a sudden, small businesses can exploit high-end applications like ERP software or business analytics that were hitherto
unavailable to them. While it can be argued that some of the more involved features of such applications might not be
available on their cloud-based counterparts, such omissions will matter very little for their intended customers [21].
Mashups represent another opportunity in cloud computing. In web development, a mashup is a web page or
application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service in originally
unintended ways. An example of a mashup is the use of cartographic data to add location information to real estate data,
thereby creating a new and distinct Web service that was not originally provided by either source. The new type of
mashup that we are beginning to see combines different cloud computing services and integrates them into a single
service or application. Amazon‟s GrepTheWeb is a good example for Cloud Computing service compositions within the
domain of a single provider.
In an age where businesses are looking to burnish their „green‟ credentials, cloud computing appeals to large IT
infrastructures that want to reduce their carbon footprint. According to a Forrester survey, over 41 percent of people in the
IT departments believe energy efficiency and equipment recycling are important factors that need to be considered. In the
same survey, 65 percent believed reduction of energy related operating costs as the driving factor for implementing Green
IT [22]. Moving to the cloud will allow organizations to not only reduce their IT infrastructure, but, since it is much
cheaper to transport computing services than energy, it will also represent a smarter use of energy.
In his much-heralded book, The Innovator‟s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen pointed to disruptive technologies as
innovations that upset the existing order of things in a particular industry [23]. Such disruptive technologies are usually
lower-functionality innovations that appeal to customers who are not served by the current industry, but which quickly
leapfrog the market incumbents in terms of functionality, innovation and price to upend the latter. Cloud computing today
shows all the characteristics of a disruptive technology. We believe that many of the innovative services that will be
developed on the cloud – such as the education applications being developed for Ethiopian schools – will soon make
many cloud computing applications functionally richer than their in-house counterparts.