Cloud computing amongst other technologies gets our attention at most. Especially for businesses, cloud has seized the attention of many executives owing to its various benefits and easy-to-access program. A survey by Workday revealed that half of large companies begin to shift their financial data to the cloud. More than 30 percent of respondents cited that they will move finance systems to the cloud. In Singapore, about 18.8 percent of finance professionals have already used more than six different systems for their data, representing the highest percentage of cloud adoption in the region.

Chika Terada, CEO of Sansan Inc., said that public cloud services in APAC are increasing from year to year. In 2018, for example, cloud services have doubled to US$7.1bn from US$3.2bn in 2014. Cloud-based contact management will prove to be a game-changer, said Terada, as it allows companies of all sizes the flexibility of doing business without making large capital investments and being highly scalable and accessible at the same time. As a result, companies can gain their potential to be more efficient in generating success.

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Cloud is seen to be so beneficial for businesses but what does cloud computing mean?

Cloud computing is a model of network computing where a program or application runs on connected servers rather than on a local computing device such as PC, tablet, or smartphone. Additionally, cloud service allows individuals and businesses to communicate or access information and computer resources from anywhere that a network is available. The example of cloud computing is IBM cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google cloud platform, Adobe, and many others.

How cloud affects HR

As cloud computing allows accessible information and data while human resources are interested in adopting easier information and simpler technology, it becomes easy to connect both.

The changing role of human resources towards technology and automation has shaped HR to change their policies with technology. Cloud computing, in this regard, has combined HR and technology to be successful in terms of scalability and flexibility. Cloud allows HR to be more agile, affordable, and more importantly efficient, resulting in tremendous savings to organisations. Cloud is also revitalising HR processes, allowing managers to respond to critical issues with far greater accuracy.

Various researches on cloud computing have revealed that the cloud computing marketplace has taken off in the last few years, expanding options for IT and HR to support HR services. Cloud computing has also benefited HR with its cost-less and faster to implement options. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), following cloud benefits, has also transformed HR at the most critical point of change, allowing interaction of end-users with HR services in terms of recruitment, screening, predictive analytics, performance management, payroll, time, and other workforce management.

“Cloud computing is empowering, as anyone in any part of the world with an internet connection and a credit card can run and manage applications in the state of the art global data centres; companies leveraging cloud will be able to innovate cheaper and faster.” – Jamal Mazhar

Nonetheless, in terms of security and privacy, cloud is unclear as all information and data saved to the cloud are handled by a third party (the service providers), resulting to a higher risk of a data breach. Owing to this reason, managing cloud security and privacy is far more challenging with high sensitivity in terms of data access, data segregation, privacy, bug exploitation, recovery, accountability, malicious insiders, management console security, account control, and multi-tenancy issues. Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, for example, had harvested the personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent and used it for political advertising purposes. Albeit the scandal was handled swiftly, we should still be aware of any other malicious problems spying around us. Therefore, businesses and HR that use cloud computing should rethink their data safety.

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