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BRAIN. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience
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2020, Volume 11, Issue 4, pages: 149-167 | https://doi.org/10.18662/brain/11.4/146
Adaptation and
Effects of Cloud
Computing on Small
Businesses
Damla KARAGOZLU¹,
Janet AJAMU
2
,
Anne Bakupa MBOMBO
3
1 Assistant Professor, Near East
University, Department of Computer
Information Systems, Mersin 10, Turkey,
[email protected]
2 Near East University, Department of
Computer Information Systems, Mersin
10, Turkey,
[email protected]
3 Near East University, Department of
Computer Information Systems, Mersin
10, Turkey,
[email protected]
Abstract: One of the popular technologies in the industry today is cloud
computing and the use of cloud computing in small businesses is now
fashionable, it has a remarkable impact on them by bringing a new way
of working, accessing their data and storing it. The aim of the study is to
examine the impacts and effects of migration to cloud computing on small
businesses. The methodology used for this study is based on a review of
past studies, which explains in broad terms each research question of this
study. The results of this study shows that there are several benefits that
cloud computing has to offer small businesses if cloud computing is
adopted and that includes flexibility, cost reduction and automatic
software/hardware upgrades etc. Cloud computing has a large storage
capacity that helps small businesses store and access large amounts of
data quickly and easily, and there are a number of cloud computing data
recovery techniques that help to recover lost or damaged data in the cloud.
In the same way that security is a major concern for all technologies, it is
also a concern for data stored in the cloud; security techniques such as
encryption, cryptography are mostly used to ensure that key areas of data
security (data confidentiality, data integrity and data availability) are
protected. The results of this study helps small businesses to understand
the impact of cloud computing on their businesses and the various security
measures that need to be taken while adapting cloud computing
technology.
Keywords: Cloud computing; security in cloud computing; small
businesses; cloud computing in business; adaptation.
How to cite: Karagozlu, D., Ajamu, J., & Mbombo, A.B.
(2020). Adaptation and Effects of Cloud Computing on Small
Businesses. BRAIN. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and
Neuroscience, 11(4), 149-167.
https://doi.org/10.18662/brain/11.4/146
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Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience Volume 11, Issue 4
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1. Introduction
Cloud computing is getting more attention and becoming one of the
most suitable utility for companies, organizations and users that deal with
financial, feasible, adaptable and scalable computing services for its everyday
activities. Cloud computing operation is internet based which allows sharing of
computer resources with other devices based on user demands of the
resources (Ahmed, 2019).
The most widely used definition of cloud computing is defined by
(Mell & Grance, 2011) at National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST). Cloud computing is a model for allowing universal, easy, on-demand
network access to a common pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.,
networks, servers, storage, software, and services) that can be distributed easily
and released with minimal management effort or service provider involvement
(Mell & Grance, 2011). Cloud computing as defined by the NIST is made-up
of five (5) major characteristics, three (3) service models and four (4)
deployment models. The first characteristic is, on-demand self-service. In on-
demand self-service, the consumer can singularly make available the computing
requirements without human intervention or interaction with the service
provider. The second characteristic is the broad network access; this means
that services are reachable from anywhere via different types of devices such as
laptop, mobile device, and workstation. The third characteristic is the resource
pooling; in resource pooling, both the physical and virtual resources are pooled
so as to serve more than one consumer by using a multi-tenant model. This
multi-tenant model uses diverse physical and virtual resources, they can be
allotted and reassigned dynamically in accordance to customer request. If the
resources are assigned to customers on request, the location of the allotted
resources is unknown. Rapid elasticity is the fourth characteristic, which refers
to the ability to provide scalable resources when needed. Measured services is
the fifth characteristic. Measured services ensure the monitoring, controlling,
and optimizing of resources usage by the cloud service providers (Mell &
Grance, 2011; Rashid, & Chaturvedi, 2019). Cloud Service Providers like
Google, Microsoft, Amazon are vendors that provide their customers with
cloud computing resources and services that are used dynamically based on
customer demand in accordance with a particular business model (Rashid, &
Chaturvedi, 2019).
Cloud computing service models are: Software as a Service (SaaS),
Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The cloud
computing deployment models are: private cloud, community cloud, public
cloud and hybrid cloud (Challagidad, Dalawai, & Birje, 2017).
Adaptation and Effects of Cloud Computing on Small Businesses
Damla KARAGOZLU, et al.
151
One of the primary use of cloud computing is the cloud storage (data
online storage). Cloud storage system is considered as a circulated data centers
which generally uses the technologies of cloud computing and it also offers
interface for storage and accessing of data (Venkatesh, & Eastaff, 2018).
Figure 1. Cloud computing service models and deployment models (Saini,
Upadhyaya, & Khandelwal, 2019)
Every organization is liable for dealing with their data adequately, but
just those organizations that are of considerable size are competent of suitable
resources as a powerful influence for the issue (Clarke, 2017). The Fair Work
Act 2009, in Australia defined small business as a business with less than 15
staff (Bahzad, (2010). But realistically, a small business doesn’t require a huge
amount of money to get started and it can also be part-time based. Private
company is additionally appropriate to web showcasing in light of the fact that
it can without much of a stretch serve particular specialties.
One overview of entrepreneurs indicated that 38% of the individuals
who relinquished their professions at different organizations said their
fundamental explanation behind leaving was that they needed to work for
themselves (Qing, 2012). Before adopting this technology, companies ask
themselves several questions including whether to integrate this technology will
be beneficial for them.
Cloud computing gives a business the chances of increasing their
productivity. When a business adopts cloud computing, these helps to reduce
operational stress and the maintenance costs while providing products to their
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customers (Hussainn, Hussainn, Hussainn, Damiani, & Chang, 2017). Cloud
computing is an ever-developing technology that is widely accepted in parallel
computing. It provides reasonable range of services to consumers, for
example, universal processing, dynamic and versatile scaling, access to on-
request computing resources, metered asset use, and virtualized assets that can
be provisioned and discharged without exertion (Hussainn et al., 2017;
Ramezani, Lu, Tuheni, & Zomanya, 2017).
Small businesses have to realize the significant ideas of cloud
computing, together with its space, time, costs, accessibility, privacy, and
security (Alijani, Fulk, Omar, & Tulsi, 2014).
The aim of this study is to show the impact of a cloud computing
adoption on small businesses. To be able to do this, this study is supported by
a series of questions as below:
● How can the integration of cloud computing impact a small
business?
● What effect can the migration to cloud computing have on the
smooth running of a company?
● How are data backup and recovery handled by cloud computing
applications?
● How is the security of data guaranteed on cloud computing?
Because of the need to effectively evaluate the application of cloud
computing in specific areas, several researchers have developed studies to
demonstrate its effectiveness and its many benefits. In this respect, this study
focuses on the impact of cloud computing to small businesses. The
contributions of this study includes: it proposes the benefits and importance of
migrating to cloud computing by small businesses, it proposes the various
recovery techniques and security measures to be considered when adopting to
cloud computing. This study does not only help small business owners, it also
help researchers and individuals inquisitive about the effectiveness and
reliability of cloud computing in the context of small businesses.
2. Research Methodology
The methodological technique used in carrying out this study’s
bibliometric evaluation is based on articles selection process. A search for
existing literature reviews was carried out. The articles selected were mainly
based on studies that have been published from the year 2014 to year 2020.
Articles from year 2014 to year 2020 were selected in order to discover the
current developments in cloud computing although articles published in
previous years were also used.
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2.1. Documents Selection Process
The databases used for this study are IEEEexplore, Web of science,
ScienceDirect and Scopus. Other search engines like Google scholars.com,
Ecadamian.com were also used. In carrying out the literature search, few steps
were taken. The keywords used for searching related articles to this study are
“cloud computing”, “small business”, “adaptation”, “security”, “data backup
and data recovery”. These keywords were typed in to find related articles to the
scope of this paper.
The search was done using the “AND” and “OR” Boolean operator in
order to get the relevant articles for the purpose of this study. After searching
with the keywords, type of document was specified and only articles were
selected. Articles written in English were considered and articles written in
other languages were eliminated. Articles identified with relevant information
based on the aim of this study and the formulated research questions were
considered. Figure. 2 explains the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the studies
used for this paper.
Figure 2. Inclusion and exclusion criteria of the studies.
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3. Results and discussions
This section presents the findings conducted from reviews based on
the research questions of this study.
3.1. Impact of Cloud Computing Integration on Small Businesses
To demonstrate the impact of integrating cloud computing into a small
business, the concept of cloud computing must be understood. Buyya et al,
described it as follows: “The cloud is a parallel circulated computer framework
comprising of a lot of interconnected and virtualized computers, progressively
provisioned and exhibited in the form of one or multiple unified computing
resource(s) based on service-level agreements established over negotiation
between the service provider and customers” (Parikh, 2014: 110).
The benefits of cloud computing in business are flexibility, cost
reduction, automatic software/hardware upgrades, agility, and scalability (Xue,
& Xin, 2016).
● Flexibility: cloud computing is being adopted by many organizations
because of its flexibility. Most of the organizations choose to adopt cloud
computing as it increases the business flexibility. It allows every staff to be
more flexible in or out of their working environment. The only thing needed is
an internet connection. Diverse cloud computing systems help companies
cope with business demand. Cloud storage allows the workers to concurrently
exchange information and files over the Internet. And every employee will be
able to get the updated version. In addition, it helps the workers to access the
same services simultaneously due to the data and information being stored
remotely on the Internet.
● Cost reduction: a major factor that organizations consider for the
adoption of cloud computing in their businesses is that it helps in cost
reduction. Organizations only pay for the services being used when they make
use of cloud services. In figure 3, the key factor that motivates the company to
implement cloud computing is cost reduction which is 45.5 %.
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Figure 3. Reasons for the adoption of cloud computing (Xue, & Xin, 2016;
Sahandi, Alkhalil, & Opara-Martins, 2013).
● Software /hardware upgrade automatically: When an IT solution has been
introduced in organisations, it creates a dilemma that cannot be addressed
adequately due to the high cost of buying and maintaining hardware and
software. This will have a detrimental impact. These problems can be resolved
by the implementation of cloud computing. Organizations could transfer their
capital expenditures to operating expenses. Not only does it reduce costs, but it
also helps to create a stronger relationship, keep ahead of technological
developments, raise revenues, offer reliable and low cost services to customers.
● Agility: In today’s highly competitive market climate, it is important
to stay competitive. One of the ways that make the company distinct from the
others is the willingness and time it takes that adapt to customers’ rapidly
changing needs. Cloud computing can do so in a more effective way. Cloud
computing is available around the clock thanks to the availability of the
Internet. This helps organizations offer services in the shortest time possible
so that they can be used as a strategic tool for accelerated growth.
● Scalability: Cloud Computing offers services as per consumer or
company demand. It allows the upscaling or downscaling of the
administrations as indicated by interest, traffic and frequent spikes. Cloud
meets the market needs of adaptable technologies. The manner in which
companies will increase in the coming years is vital to the size of the industry
as it grows (Saini, Upadhyaya, & Khandelwal, 2019).
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Cloud computing is an additional benefit, particularly for smaller
organizations, because they can increase resources when needed. In addition,
cloud computing helps users to access a large amount of data in just a few
minutes due to its processing capacity. It has successfully attracted industry
analysts to evaluate the market and forecast consumer behaviour and
purchasing preferences (Xue, & Xin, 2016).
This new world of virtualization brings a new way of working for
businesses in general and small businesses in particular, because it simplifies
the way backup and data manipulation works in a business (Marston, Li,
Bandyopadhyay, Zhang, & Ghalsasi, 2011). For example, in the IT
infrastructure area, buying of physical servers will no longer be necessary
because its data will be automatically saved on the virtual services on which it
will be connected (Staten, 2009). Along these lines, the association that
controls the information should be possible anyplace and whenever; on the
grounds that it is never again important to utilize computers with physical
system engineering (Gutierrez, Boukrami, & Lumsden, 2015). The cloud turns
into a versatile framework that can be shared by various end clients, every one
of whom may utilize altogether in different manners. The clients are totally
isolated from one another, and the adaptability of the foundation considers
registering burdens to be adjusted on the fly as more clients join the
framework (the way toward setting up the framework has become so
institutionalized that including processing limit has become nearly as basic as
adding building squares to an existing grid (Moura, & Hutchison, 2016). The
excellence of the course of action is that as the quantity of clients goes up, the
interest load on the framework gets progressively adjusted in a stochastic
sense, even as its economies of scale grow, Cloud registering makes it simpler
for endeavours to scale their administrations which are progressively
dependent on exact data as indicated by customer request. Since the figuring
assets are overseen through programming, they can be conveyed exceptionally
quick as new necessities emerge (Hosseini, Fallon, Weerakkody, & Sivarajah,
2019). The principle potential advantage of receiving distributed computing is
to dispose of the colossal expenses related with the inward upkeep of
equipment and programming (Jones, Irani, Sivarajah, & Love, 2017). Cloud
Computing goal is to leverage increased computing power to execute millions
of instructions per second. Cloud Computing uses a large number of cloud
networks with advanced connections to facilitate data processing between the
servers (Inukollu, Arsi, & Ravuri, 2014).
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3.2. The Effect of Migrating to Cloud Computing on the Smooth
Running of a Company
Cloud computing application does not disrupt the smooth running of
the business because by using cloud computing, small businesses can support
the costs related to skilled labour, deployment, service, repair, update and
troubleshooting (Tsao, Venkatsubramanyan, Parikh, & Sarkar, 2011), as cloud
computing offers infrastructure, applications and software costumes on a
subscription-based pay-per-use model (Armbrust et al,. 2010). Mell & Grance
(2011) characterized Cloud Computing as a model for ubiquitous and helpful
on-demand access to a common pool of configurable processing assets
(systems, servers, storage, applications and administration) that can be
delivered and discharged without delay with effort or with insignificant
administration. Neighborhood PCs won’t need to take the whole weight of
running applications again. Cloud computing innovation is being utilized to
reduce the use cost of processing assets (Amanatullah, Lim, Ipung, & Juliandri,
2013). The entire cloud, consisting of a PC system, manages the stack. The
cost of programming and purchasing facilities at the end of the customer
service reduces. The main thing that the client has to do is run the application
interface programming to communicate with the server. Cloud computing
consists of the front and back ends. The front end includes the user’s
computer and the programming needed to get to the cloud. Back-end is made
up of different PCs, servers and database frameworks that make up the cloud.
The client can access cloud-based applications from anywhere by connecting
to the cloud through the Internet. Cloud computing is a trend setting
innovation that just has the potential for organization coordinated effort, yet
the innovation likewise enables organizations to remotely control their assets
since their topographical appearance. For example, organizations can stack
their site pages by downloading limited data to a pre-doled Internet-based
system (Sivarajah, Irani, & Weerakkody, 2015). Subsequently, distributed
computing empowers associations to profit by a powerful situation in which
private ventures can for all intents and purposes design their business on an
adaptable framework (Armbrust et al., 2010).
When adopting to cloud services there are three phases of adoption
strategy (Attaran, 2017). The phases are described below:
● Elementary phase: Companies begin to learn about cloud technologies
and carry out a thorough review of their applications and the resources they
need. Cloud computing relies mainly on services, not technology. The services
provided vary from automated IT jobs, IT services and digital business
processes. The availability of cloud computing services to users is based on
their needs. Consumers of the service place requests for service through self-
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service and are billed for what they use. The most powerful deployments
begins with users actually understanding the intended business outcomes and
then identifying the services that will be offered through the private and/or
public cloud. Questions such as what services consumers need, how much of
the service should be used, when the service is usually used, which consumers
consume the service and what is a fair price for the service should be
explained.
● Phase 2 (intermediate phase): Users must document and analyze the
internal processes that the chosen cloud services will affect. The users will
examine the internal IT processes involved in providing the services during
this research. This can reinforce the need to flatten, reconfigure, realign,
optimize or remove inefficient processes and aim repetitive manual processes
to be automated. It also needs to discuss the type(s) of security that will be
applied to cloud deployment.
● Phase 3 (Final phase): Users should link applications and related
workloads to their cloud services. Each workloads should: Review the internal
IT processes involved in the delivery of services, analyze every workload for
both its relevance to cloud computing and its location environment, decide the
general workload architecture of the applications, and decide the security
profile for each workload. After the user analyzes the workload, decisions
should be taken as to what cloud-based deployment model is best suited to the
organization’s applications and workloads.
3.3. Data Backup and Recovery in Cloud Computing
Backups have two main purposes: Backups main purpose is to recover
loss data that may occur due to corruption, damage, or deletion. Backups other
purpose is to restore stored data from an earlier period of time (Laxmi,
Deepika, Pranay, & Supriya, 2018). Data backup is a way of restoring disaster.
Issues relating to data recovery process are (Venkatesh, & Eastaff, 2018):
Data storage: in order to provide security to data stored in the cloud,
computing is distributed while storage is centralized and due to this, storing
data in the cloud is correlated with single point failure and data loss.
Data security: It is essential to provide data protection, since certain
data can be confidential and sensitive.
Lack of redundancy: when the cloud is damaged for whatever cause,
and the primary storage fails to provide the data, the secondary site will be
enabled to provide the data to the customer.
Dependency: Customer has no control over their system and their
data. Backup service is provided to address this drawback.
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Over the years, a lot of techniques for cloud backup service have been
discovered.
A. Remote data backup server: Remote data backup server is a type of
server that represents the main cloud. It contains the copy of the main clouds
entire data. Remote data backup server is kept far away from the main cloud.
The central repository is known as the main server, while the remote backup
system is known as the secondary repository (Sambrani, & Rajashekarappa,
2016). If any occurrence happens like data loss, security breach, natural disaster
etc. from the main cloud, then it makes use of the data stored in the remote
repository. This also lets customers to access data from the remote server in a
situation where network availability is not available or where the main cloud
cannot provide customers with the required data (Sharma, & Singh, 2012).
Remote repository services should address consecutive concerns, including:
privacy and ownership, server-to-cloud transfer, data security, reliability, and
cost effectiveness (Monisha, & Venkateshkumar, 2018).
B. Data recovery: The reason why clients would want to recover data is
mostly due to disaster. Disaster is an unexpected event caused by environment,
software or hardware failures. Challenges of disaster recovery includes: cost,
dependency, failure detection, and security. Disaster recovery solutions: Local
backup, inter-private cloud storage (Monisha, & Venkateshkumar, 2018). Until
now, various methods have been proposed in cloud computing for data
backup and recovery. Some of these approaches include:
Seed block algorithm (SBA): The architecture of the seed block algorithm
comprise of the central repository, its clients and the remote data backup
server (also known as the remote repository). SBA makes use of remote
repository. Remote repository is a server that stores the entire data of the main
cloud and it’s located far from the main cloud. SBA ensures the simplicity of
data backup and its recovery procedure. It uses the idea of the logic exclusive
OR (XOR) operation. The advantages of SBA are: takes less time to recover
data from the remote server, it ensures data integrity, and it doesn’t require
network connectivity to recover data from the remote location. The
disadvantage is that the remote repository uses the same storage space as the
central repository (Gharde, & Ghaormare, 2016).
Parity cloud service (PCS): PCS uses a novel cloud infrastructure data
recovery service framework, and also offers a privacy-protected personal data
recovery service. PCS does not require the uploading of user data to the server
for data recovery. All the resources required by the server are within
reasonable limits (Badhel, & Chole, 2015). The advantage of PCS is that it is
reliable and it is less in terms of cost for data recovery. The disadvantage is that
it has a high implementation complexity.
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High security distribution and rake technology (HSDRT): HSDRT uses a
wide-spread data transfer strategy and high-speed encryption technology. The
system has both the back-up and recovery sequences. The backup sequence is
used when data is saved for back up purpose while the recovery sequence is
used when there’s loss of data and the data needs to be retrieved. Advantage of
HSDRT is that it can work efficiently for movable clients like laptops and
smart phones. The disadvantage is that it is costly and data redundancy
(Jayalakshmi, & Mathuramgbigai, 2017).
Other recovery techniques include:
Linux Box- advantages: it’s simple and low cost. Disadvantages: high
rate of bandwidth and complete server backup is done at a time.
Efficient rounding grounded on taxonomy (ERGOT) – Advantages includes:
privacy, performs exact match retrieval of data. Disadvantages: increased
complexity and cost increases as data becomes larger.
Cold/hot backup service- advantage: immediate availability. Disadvantages:
expensive and cost increases as data become larger (Tamimi, Dawood, &
Sadaqa, 2019).
All this techniques try as much as possible to solve the limitations of an
already existing technique but none of these techniques have been able to
resolve the issues regarding the high storage space for remote data back-up.
3.4. Data Security in Cloud Computing
Data security ensures the protection of the data in terms of
confidentiality, integrity and availability (Zardari, Jung, & Zakaria, 2014; Chen,
& Zhao, 2012).
● Data confidentiality: Confidentiality means that the information is kept
hidden from unauthorized users. Only an …