5. Cloud computing — a SWOT analysis
5.1. Strengths
We covered much of the key benefits earlier in Section 2, and we
will therefore keep the discussion in this section restricted to ideas
that were not explored there. The ability to scale up services at a very
short notice obviates the need for underutilized servers in anticipation
of peak demand. When an organization has unanticipated usage
spikes in computing above its internally installed capacity, it has the
ability to request more computing resources on the fly. Cloud
computing offers organizations the ability to effectively use timedistributed
computing resources. One example is that of an internet
photo website Smugmug. The company has relatively stable computing
workloads throughout the year; however during the months of
December and January the required resources spike to five times the
usual workload. Cloud computing allows the company to meet the