The concept of cloud computing took off due to its benefit of ‘cost saving’. This cost saving is brought about by the zero maintenance cost, low hardware requirements among many others. With cloud computing the companies could do away with maintaining their own server, large IT staff and all the cost associated with setting large IT infrastructure. Have the companies who invested in cloud computing really benefited? These are questions that are questions bothering many of us. When we attempted to find answers to this question we found that some CIOs were not very happy having shifted to cloud technology. They felt the cost increased instead of decreasing.
We tried to analyze the reasons behind these accusations in the cloud technology. We found that
1. Replicating traditional set up: Many companies were directly trying to replicate their traditional IT set up using IaaS. This would obviously prove costly as their applications have to be made cloud ready and then moved. The better way to handle this situation is use the SaaS or PaaS service of the cloud. There may be already certain services existing on the cloud which they could use instead of designing all of them. Also, some of the collaboration services like Microsoft Sharepoint do incur some costs. But these are one investment and break even in the long run.
2. Security fear: Many companies have the fear of security of having their applications and data on cloud. These companies must understand that the cloud service providers have much more resources and capacity than a standalone organization to manage the secure their environment. The cloud service providers are very transparent about their processes but the organizations fail to understand it probably it’s not presented clearly
3. Cost involved in moving to cloud: before rushing to cloud companies should check if they need to set up new monitoring systems, provide additional training to their employees and all the migrating costs. Most organizations were not aware or did not do their homework as a result felt cloud has not benefited them.
Sensing that there is lack of proper guidance and information for cloud service seeing enterprises, organizations like Cloud Security Alliance have come up. Their aim is to bridge the gap and understand the correct use of cloud.These organisation help the businesses take informed decisions regarding cloud. They can alleviate the fear of moving into unknown arena from the mind of the business enterprises and also remove the anxiety of giving control of their applications to unknown organizations. They help them with the basis on which the vendors should be evaluated. These services would help the organization make the best use of the vast potential of the cloud.
“Image courtesy of Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”
