What Is Cloud Computing Applications

By Author: Nick Mutt
Total Articles: 163
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Cloud computing applications are the applications available as SaaS over the internet which facilitates the user to run those applications without installing them on his own computer. This saves the cost of infrastructure and hardware maintenance. In general cloud computing customers do not own the infrastructure but use it from a third party provider as a service.

Cloud computing applications are loaded at the server of service provider and the service provider give access to these applications through an interface using internet. Every customer has its own unique account from which they log on to the cloud of the provider and access the application they have paid for. Service provider also provides space at his own server for the customer's data.

Cloud computing provides access to commercially available applications without purchasing the license or infrastructure of using it. This facility allows the companies to use applications which may require some investment in hardware and purchasing of license of the software at a very low price and they need to pay only for the part of the software which they use.

Another ...
... very important aspect of cloud computing applications is the facility of backup and recovery. Since the customers use the space of the service provider for saving the data, the backup and recovery of data is the duty of the service provider, which again saves lot of money spent on infrastructure for data security.

Regular updation of features as per client demands or according to the market trends is done by the service provider which makes it available to all the users using the application. Cloud computing applications give their users the freedom of working from locations of their own choice. They need not to worry about the regular IT support they will require to keep their IT arrangement working as they need very basic IT infrastructure to run these applications.

The size and the cost of the applications are eliminated from the picture by cloud computing and it provides easy access to latest and beneficial applications. Be it CRM or payroll or any other analytic application, cloud computing makes it possible for small business owners to access these applications at a low and affordable cost.

It is not that everything is rosy with cloud computing applications. There are few serious question marks regarding the service and one of these is the right over the data. As the service provider provides the space for saving the data in case of customer calling his contract off does the closure of account gives right to the service provider to stop the customer from accessing his own data. Another important factor in using cloud computing applications is privacy. When the data is on the third party domain, encroachment is very much on cards, if this is not checked completely than companies may lose their vital information to their competitors which may prove much costlier than installing the IT infrastructure. And last but not the least it is not possible for every application to run on a public cloud. Some fundamental applications cannot be rewritten to fit in the environment of cloud computing and may not be available as cloud computing applications.

Read about the benefits of Web Based ERP system. Read about the different Types of ERP Software. Read about the ERP Implementation Cost and timeframe.