E-commerce and Cloud Computing
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E-commerce and Cloud Computing
The current information age has led to the emergence of various technological trends. This is significant through various web applications, whereby there has been a significant migration to web-based transactions. Additionally, there has been a significant progress in among virtual businesses, which led to the innovation of electronic commerce. Establishing e-commerce applications, especially in in-house environments require IT experts to assess the needs that needs to be addressed and how the innovation can be used to the business’ online requirements.
The cloud is an essential element for modern innovative strategies. Experts have speculated that enterprises seeking to create new business models and adopt emerging technologies will have to consider cloud computing to have a scalable foundation. Significantly, enterprises are shifting to the cloud as reflected through the cloud infrastructure services market, which is rapidly growing. For example, Amazon Web Service (AWS), which is one of the leading cloud service vendors, has been making significant gains in dollars in the recent years.
Among the many reasons why companies are moving their operations to the cloud is to ensure they can use emerging innovations that are rapidly changing the customer environment. Cloud drives innovation, helps in achieving low-cost operations, and standardizing security management. Enterprises are however, selective on the workloads that they move to the cloud. The workload moved to the cloud depends on the stage on the type of technology that an organization is adopting and the stage of innovation. Therefore, service providers should develop strategies that ensure there is continued relevance as new technology trends keep emerging. Efficient strategies will help organizations to integrate cloud technologies with on-premises environment as they adopt new technologies.
Cloud computing plays a significant role in facilitating the transformation the innovations that modern industries adopt. Cloud computing is not a new technology because it is based on the traditional concept of distributed and grid computing. Cloud computing involves the distribution of computing power across computing resources via a network. With cloud computing, organizations can achieve multiple IT operations, including data hosting and adopt new technological trends.
Cloud computing offers significant solutions to companies by reducing or eliminating the need to have in-house hardware, software, and network infrastructure that is costly. Additionally, the infrastructure require organizations to hire technical professions to conduct frequent updates and maintenance, which come at an extra cost, thus increasing the overall running cost (Hanna, Mohamed, & Al-Jaroodi, 2012). Therefore, clouding computing is emerging as a computing paradigm that that enables businesses to keep up with technological trends and to meet consumer needs at lower costs.
Cloud computing has helped enhance efficiency in the use of e-commerce application. When companies adopt a technological innovation like e-commerce, the process involves multiple phases in the technology innovation lifecycle. One of the essential phases is experimentation, whereby IT experts have to assess the effectiveness of the technology in solving existing organizational needs (Shen & Shao, 2011). Cloud computing plays a significant role in technology experimentation because of its mobility and unlimited storage aspect. Additionally, experimenting new applications can be complex because it involves risk assessment of the applications. During this phase, the IT department can create disaster recovery plans through cloud computing.
Additionally, cloud computing has created a lot of opportunities for emerging technology trends. For instance, cloud computing has significantly the cost and effort that ecommerce enterprises incurred in the past. Before adoption of cloud computing, e-commerce companies required a lot of resources in terms of finances, manpower, and infrastructure to shift their business online. Cloud computing has solved this by reducing and eliminating the costs of services, implementation of an e-commerce infrastructure, and maintenance. Additionally, cloud computing reduces development time when starting an electronic business system. On contrary to building in-house e-commerce systems, companies have realized that outsourcing provides a cheaper option to manage e-commerce operations and transactions. However, outsourcing does is not favorable, especially to small enterprises because the company providing services might charge a lot to provide required solutions.
Cloud computing ensures that all enterprises, despite size can engage in business through a collaborative environment where participants share the costs. Additionally, enterprises using the cloud only pay based on usage. Features in the cloud are favorable to small and medium enterprises because they allow them access advanced IT infrastructure and services without high development costs. Therefore, small businesses can improve the efficiency of their e-commerce applications, thus achieving improved economic efficiency and competitive advantage.
Emerging technology trends like e-commerce are able to achieve high computational power through cloud computing. The cloud provides powerful computational capabilities with significant computational resources that business enterprises use. E-commerce applications can achieve optimum efficiency if organizations can move most of its services to the cloud. This is because with cloud computing, the applications will have most of their computational services over the internet and spread allover an equipment. Therefore, customers will receive improved services due to increased speeds and computational capabilities.
Cloud computing also improves the safety and security of tools and mechanisms emerging from technological innovations. Data security and integrity is vital in business, especially in the digital era where data has become a critical asset. Organizations can enhance the security of their e-commerce applications through cloud computing. The cloud provides a secure environments that is not exposed to attacks like in-house equipment. Therefore, using cloud computing technologies provides e-commerce enterprises with an opportunity to safely conduct their operations and expand their businesses as they can guarantee customers of secure transactions in a virtual environment.
Besides e-commerce that has significantly benefited from cloud computing, there are numerous technology trends that are continuously emerging. These technologies include artificial intelligence and robotics. The emerging technology trends are beneficial; however, they have significant risks associated with them. For instance, the emergence of robotics has stirred up a debate regarding whether the technology will deprive people of their jobs. This is because of the capabilities that robots have portrayed in various industries where they have been adopted. Additionally, there is a concern about artificial intelligence powered equipment and machines. These machines are designed to make decisions based on what they learn from their environment; however, the effectiveness of these decisions has been questioned because unlike human beings, machines cannot differentiate between ethical and unethical decisions.
Despite the challenges and risk concerns associated with artificial intelligence and robotics, the technology has greatly impacted business operations. Artificial intelligence is the basis of automation in industries. Companies in different sectors are increasingly adopting machine learning and deep learning technologies. The technologies reduce workload for humans, thus minimizing operational costs. Additionally, AL has automated many processes that were considered tedious. This is beneficial in terms of productivity because it ensures that the human workforce can focus on tasks that they do well by incorporating their creativity and skills (Raj & Seamans, 2019). Al is also improving customer service in the service industry, such as banking. Automation makes the banking process quicker, therefore, customers take a shorter time doing transactions.
Similarly, robots are used in industries to perform high-precision tasks that need a lot of manpower. Robotics can also be used in situations that could pose risks to humans like in jobs that involve toxic waste cleaning. Generally, robotics is a technology with a potential to improve safety and efficiency both at home and workplaces.
Another emerging technology is the internet of things, which is purposely designed to make various processes easier. For instance, the internet of things enables people to monitor assets remotely, thus improving their security. IoT is all about connecting all things existing globally and connecting them to the internet. Therefore, the internet of things makes life easier through the concepts of using things that gather information and send it and those that receive the information and take necessary action (Brous & Janssen, 2015). This means that with IoT, all sorts of information, including weather, census, and business information can be collected and places where it is valuable. IoT will help organizations and individuals accomplish tasks on time as they will have access to real-time information.
However, IoT exposes people and vital information to cybercriminals. The connections used in IoT can be used to acquire personally identifiable data, such as social numbers that can be linked to a particular identity. Keeping the connections secure is still a challenge despite the increasing adoption of the technology in different fields.
Blockchain is another emerging technology with multiple benefits and risks. Blockchain is a decentralized ledger system, which means that no single entity has control over information like centralized systems. A decentralized systems is beneficial to users because it keeps a record of all transactions and they can be made available to the public for verification. Additionally, the decentralized ledger system in blockchain reduces overall operational costs. Like other emerging technologies, blockchain improves efficiency and safety in business. The technology eliminates middlemen, thus allowing companies to keep track of their transactions and trace product sources. Transactions are also secure because all data blocks are encrypted; therefore no third- parties can access it because the blocks are linked.
Blockchain is not completely secure because it is possible to compromise the network. Blockchain technology relies in cryptography; therefore, users risk losing their data through cryptographic cracking. The technology can also be efficient in some cases, which is considered a major disadvantage of the technology. Most blockchain technologies have hardly satisfied user needs, especially in data storage. Inefficiencies can lead to security issues, which remain a major risk in technology.
Although cloud computing has multiple solutions to the risks associated with new technology trends, the technology has its challenges. Despite its unlimited storage aspect, there is an issue with data storage, whereby organizations shifting their operations to the cloud lack control of where the data is stored. This means that they cannot replicate it when need arises. Cloud computing deprives companies of control of their data. Additionally, there is a challenge in achieving data privacy. Since the cloud is a shared environment for several users, company-owned and customer information is at risk of being exposed to third parties.
References
Brous, P. & Janssen, M. (2015). Effects of the Internet of Things (IoT): A systematic review of
the benefits and risks.
Hanna, E.M., Mohamed, N., & Al-Jaroodi, J. (2012). The Cloud: Requirements for a Better
Service. In 2012 12th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid
Computing (CCGrid), 787-792, IEEE.
Raj, M., & Seamans, R. (2019). Primer on artificial intelligence and robotics. Journal of
Organization Design 8(11). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-019-0050-0
Shen, J. & Shao, Q. (2011). Based on Cloud Computing E-commerce Models and its Security.
International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning, 1(2),
175-179.