Published on the 18/06/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Amanda White answers the question thousands are asking with these highlights from her MBA thesis on the subject of businesses moving to public cloud technologies…
The decision on whether to move your company’s ICT services to the public cloud is a daunting task for any business. The decision shouldn’t be; should we or shouldn’t we? It should be based around the risks your business is going to be exposed to if you do or don’t move to services offered via the public cloud. It’s about doing a risk assessment for your business.
Assessing the risk factors
Five benefits of the public cloud
1. Capital expenditure on ICT hardware is reduced or eliminated
The costs that would have been incurred for setting up the ICT system in-house are non-existent, due to no requirement for hardware purchases or labour to setup and install.
2. Easily scalable
The technology that drives the public cloud is that of a data centre. Due to the nature of cloud environments, clients only pay for what they require and can scale up or down if and when their business requires.
3. Convenience of accessing resources
Cloud applications and services can be accessed from anywhere there is an internet connection. This adds a layer of manageability for collaboration between team members who are in different geographic locations.
4. Backup and business continuity
Due to the nature of the cloud being in another location, if a natural disaster or localised event took place that destroyed a place of business, the ICT systems can still be accessed from a location that has internet access.
5. Little or no technical expertise required
Clients of cloud services do not require or obtain an expert in ICT. This means that upgrades to the latest software version, fixes or patches are all taken care of by the chosen cloud vendor, which takes this pain point away for clients.
Five areas of the public cloud to consider
1. Data ownership and data exchange
When data is placed into the public cloud there is uncertainly around what country/international laws or cloud provider terms and conditions the data is subject to. For example; data placed in the Google Drive cloud is deemed the property of Google (Google, 2012). In addition, there are concerns about how easy it will be to change cloud provider or to transfer data out of the cloud if termination of contract was required.
2. Security risks
Moving to the public cloud means placing potentially sensitive company data in the hands of someone else. When company data is stored externally to the company, access and controls of who can view that data become an unknown.
3. Apprehension of the unknown
Some would argue that cloud computing is still in its infancy. Thus, some vendors are still in a start-up phase and it is hard to determine if they will be around for the long term and what public cloud providers are liable for. In addition, there is an uncertainty around corporate takeovers or buyouts which could adversely affect the availability of services provided by cloud vendors.
4. Control
Clients of public cloud providers have little or no control on the way their data will be managed. This is where the fine print of service level agreements (SLAs) or contracts needs to be assessed with careful consideration.
5. Availability and reliability of the public cloud and other dependant services
Moving to the public cloud creates a total reliance on an internet connection, not only the uptime of an internet connection, but also the performance, speed and usage. Additionally, a business becomes completely dependent on the reliability of the cloud provider.
