Why are businesses disillusioned with the cloud - and is there a way out?
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Cloud computing has brought many benefits to businesses, including increased flexibility, reduced infrastructure costs, and improved access to data and applications.
We hear these benefits all the time. At the same time, many companies did not experience any of this during the transition to the cloud. How is it possible?
Companies that jumped on the bandwagon with the advent of cloud technologies had certain expectations. But maybe it wasn’t realistic or maybe it didn’t exactly include the functioning of their particular company, even if it would be so elsewhere.
There are many reasons for these negative feelings about the cloud, but we’ll look at the most common ones. And what is more important, we will also look at what to do with them – if the cloud has already become a trap for a company, how to get out of it.
Reasons for cloud disappointment
While every business is unique, there are certain areas where this disillusionment has occurred for more than one business. We will look at these reasons: lack of planning and strategy, security issues, compliance, scalability and performance, high costs, complexity and lack of knowledge, integration issues, provider dependency and personal data.
Although we will talk about the cloud, we will rather focus on cloud infrastructure than applications – so goodbye SaaS.
Inadequate planning and strategy
Some businesses have moved to the cloud without sufficient planning and understanding of what it means for their operations and security. This led to performance, security and cost issues. This reason is purely the company’s result.
The wave of enthusiasm that the cloud will save everything has quickly turned into a nightmare for many businesses. Costs grew even more than under the previous solution, and operations did not become the expected salvation. It is not possible to simply integrate IT and everything will run. It must be adapted to the functioning of the company, its structure, direction and internal processes. The cloud is not a universal solution, and that was precisely the trap that companies fell into.
Security issues
The cloud is not impenetrable and, as many of the Big Three’s customers have already discovered, data breaches and attacks on the smooth running architecture can be a fairly regular occurrence. Cloud security is dependent on several factors, and one of them is, of course, security on the provider’s side. This needs to be investigated in detail.
But perhaps an even greater burden falls on the customer himself – internal policies and processes and the personal approach of individual employees are an important part of cloud security. So what to look out for? We prepared this in the article “What actually affects cloud security?“
Following the regulations
The cloud has also brought unpleasant surprises with regard to data security. Many companies have strict internal and external requirements for the location, backup and security of the content of individual applications and software. But the cloud is no longer located in the company, and the providers themselves – the global ones – cannot tell you where the data is located at a certain moment. And they don’t all have to be in one place.
Scalability and performance
The cloud offers theoretically unlimited resources. But, for example, when choosing a virtual private server, the configuration and subsequent scalability is not completely simple and effective if the company needs to frequently update and change resources.
High costs
Although the cloud can offer cost savings compared to traditional data centers or in-house server rooms, some businesses may find that the cost of cloud services is higher than they expected, especially if they don’t optimize their use of resources.
And here we come across four important words – expected and do not optimize. The cloud is not a physical server, and migration does not simply mean transferring one to another. It is necessary to ensure the optimization of really necessary resources.
Complexity and lack of expertise
Moving to the cloud and managing cloud services can be complex and can require new skills and know-how. Businesses that don’t have the expertise in-house or can’t hire the right talent may struggle to take full advantage of the cloud.
At that moment, the strategic question is whether, for example, not to outsource the infrastructure and its management. IT offers many possibilities today, but companies are quite often afraid to use them. Not always rightfully so.
Integration issues
Integrating cloud services with existing systems and applications can be a challenge. This problem mainly occurs in companies that still use legacy systems in their IT.
Vendor dependency
When using cloud services, businesses become dependent on their cloud providers, which can be a risk if there is a service outage or if the provider changes its pricing terms.
This problem appears more and more often, because companies are no longer willing to accept the terms of global providers. Because of this, companies are using cloud repatriation options, which enable operations to be maintained in the cloud, but under better conditions, for example with a local provider or by using hybrid or private solutions.
A good step that can prevent this addiction is the appropriate selection and subsequent setting of an exit strategy.
Questions related to the protection of personal data
In some cases, data may be stored in the cloud subject to the laws of another country, which may raise privacy and data protection concerns. In Europe, we are haunted by the GDPR, which of course is also related to the storage of our customers’ data in the cloud. Here, too, the possibility of choosing a local provider is offered, who understands GDPR compliance and must adhere to it as well.
What’s next?
We have now taken a very pessimistic view of what is ruining businesses with regard to the cloud. But when we think about it, we actually end up with one simple thing – the solution is the right approach to the selection itself.
IT is a field that needs deep analytics to function well. This also applies to the choice of IT infrastructure. If a company takes care of good research, then it can find the right cloud solution that meets the needs and strategy – very quickly and efficiently in advance.
Conclusion
Many reasons, one simple solution. Diligence when choosing a cloud pays off, and choosing the right partner even more so. Otherwise, you’re headed for at least one of these reasons for disappointment.
