Cloud computing is all the rage. Everyone’s talking about it. Every day there’s a new story about the cloud and all the economic and operational benefits it will bring:
• Reduced infrastructure costs
• Increased deployment flexibility and speed
• Decreased overhead
Early adopter companies are placing some of their IT services in the cloud: mail, accounting, backup, collaboration systems like SharePoint, and e-commerce.
BUT…
In a recent industry wide survey, 45% of IT pros believe the risks of cloud computing do not outweigh the benefits today due to concerns in three crucial areas:
1. Security
2. Reliability
3. Availability
Is cloud ready for companies to go “all-in”, in the words of Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer? We aren’t ready to bet the farm on cloud computing just yet because frankly, with cybercriminals finding new ways to compromise PC security on local networks every day, what’s going to stop them from setting their sights on stealing the vast quantities of data in untested cloud servers? And as for being constantly reliable and available, going all-in on the cloud means putting the day to day operations of your business into the hands of a technology only a matter of months old and placing your data on a server that could be down the street or halfway around the world.
Bottom line: moving services to the cloud makes sense for some applications, but still involves risk. It may represent the future of IT, but it may be a dangerous fad. If you are interested in experimenting with the cloud, your Responza IT Manager will be happy to brief you on the cloud and help explore what it can and can’t do.