Cloud computing is one of the components of Industry 4.0. Cloud computing allows us to share and use applications, resources and get access to servers, storages, databases over the Internet, independent of location (Smith, 2009). Nowadays, cloud computing is just another utility that companies can purchase on-demand. It contains all the software and applications needed for business.
The cloud is available at inexpensive quotes and hence, can substantially decrease the organization’s IT costs. Companies that implement cloud computing have benefits of cost and time, enabling them to focus on their operations. This advantage is significant for small businesses, as they usually do not have large budgets for IT infrastructure (Truong, 2010).
Cloud computing also enables organizations to meet their goals and objectives through the development of cloud business frameworks and models. These models are rather innovative and provide a competitive advantage to the companies. In addition, cloud computing also enables organizations to be able to analyze the highly-complex business data.
Cloud consulting is another competitive advantage that companies can obtain from cloud computing. Organizations and their workers get the necessary tools to conduct business operations. Their tools are not only effective but also efficient. With the emergence of cloud computing, small businesses can access IT services without investing in their servers. Smaller organizations, bound by their scarce resources, never had enough capacity to invest in IT services. However, cloud computing has become noteworthy to small businesses. Quittner suggests that the cloud computing services availed by smaller organizations not only save them money and time but also contribute to their business operations (Smith, 2009).
Cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) have observed rapid growth over the past decade. Cloud computing enables the collection and interpretation of large datasets. The ability of cloud computing to deal with massive sets of data has led to the expansion of IoT. Numerous ways have been devised through which cloud computing handles the emergence of IoT. Fog computing is a way by which IoT devices have become capable of storing and analyzing data, without having to feed data into the cloud for dissemination and analytics.
One example is of the self-driving cars that function appropriately after receiving signals from the sensors. The self-driving cars make use of fog computing, also known as the edge computing, to make decisions instantly.
