I'll try to use carefully chosen examples to explain the advantages/disadvantages of induction as a method of proof. My answer will go roughly as follows:
Advantages: Sometimes the only obvious method of proof; Sometimes direct proof is also available, but its trickier; To answer the question, until it's proved we don't "know" the answer, we only thing think we know.
Disadvantages: Need to have a guess for what the answer is; Induction is kind of uninformative - it doesn't give us much mathematical intuition about the result.