| The success of a business is much often than before | | | | and availability are two major limitations of the Cloud |
| reliant on smooth operation of IT services and | | | | paradigm. |
| infrastructure. However, mounting IT costs often weigh | | | | For all the organizations, particularly ones in Finance or |
| heavily on the conscience of business owners as | | | | Healthcare sector, it is critical to have strict control |
| maintenance of hardware and software comes with | | | | over data. It's a big deal-breaker for such organizations |
| its own share of woes. | | | | as it is not known with surety where your data is at |
| However, with the introduction of Cloud Computing, | | | | any point in time. Other than this, the problem of |
| businesses have come to know of a new on-demand | | | | multi-tenancy has also fueled genuine concerns among |
| and on-rent model of IT infrastructure where you pay | | | | industry experts about security standards. |
| for IT resources as you go! Yes, it's quite like the utility | | | | The remaining issue with Cloud is linked with availability. |
| bills we pay for water, gas and electricity each month. | | | | It's an incorrect belief that on Cloud, you have greater |
| No doubt Cloud technology is sounds like a winner and | | | | availability than a data center. Web hosting companies |
| cost-efficient option, yet there are apprehensions on | | | | and other cloud vendors are equally exposed to risks |
| adopting it as all this is again in evolutionary stage. So it | | | | like congestion, hacks, outages, cyber attacks, human |
| gets necessary to evaluate the benefits and | | | | error and other problems. We all know how a service |
| implications of switching to the Cloud. | | | | disruption can spell doom for any business. Who can |
| What's So Great About the Cloud? | | | | forget the January outage of Though the outage was |
| Well, huge cost-savings is an immediate trade-off | | | | hour-long, yet it cast its shadow over 68,000 |
| when you choose the Cloud. All your conventional | | | | customers. |
| expense heads like software, hardware and labor | | | | Even in Cloud Computing model, there are scheduled |
| cease to exist being replaced by recurrent operational | | | | downtimes that might come in the way of your |
| costs based on "pay-as-you-go" pattern. It really | | | | business requirements, especially if you need a |
| makes sense when Principal Analyst with Forrester | | | | high-availability environment. Moreover in the Cloud |
| Research Inc, James Staten says, ""An application that | | | | model, data protection and backups are not automatic. |
| is only in use during the day and has peak use times, | | | | This makes the presence of business continuity plan |
| say at 9 a.m., 2 p.m. then 5 p.m., is a good fit because | | | | more than essential. In such cases, an SLA also |
| you can scale down the application outside of these | | | | becomes futile, capped as it is with "best effort" |
| times to a very small-or no-footprint and scale it as | | | | verbiage. |
| high as necessary during these peaks." | | | | You might be wearing that query look, given the |
| On the application management side, various | | | | limitations that surround the adoption of cloud |
| web-based tools/portals are provided by cloud vendor | | | | technology. I'd say the best thing would be to go for |
| for managing endusers. Functions like deployment, | | | | cloud model for non-mission critical applications. |
| asset tracking, scaling and monitoring can be nicely | | | | Companies would do real well if they keep the HIPAA |
| done by 3rd party utilities like Cloudkick, enStratus | | | | compliant and PCI compliant data and social security |
| Networks, or RightScale. | | | | information out of the Cloud. Any mass-scale adoption |
| What's Not So Great About the Cloud? | | | | of Cloud is clearly a remote possibility till the time |
| As rights come with duties, all assets also run along | | | | security vulnerabilities are sorted out and SLA terms |
| with liabilities. Like all things in Life have two sides, the | | | | are aligned towards greater accountability from a |
| Cloud Technology has also a soft underbelly. Security | | | | Cloud Provider. |