Technology, Money & Questions

Though cloud computing promises a lot of meaningful cost savings, most businesses are not adopting cloud computing even though they recognize it as a viable option to reduce up-front and ongoing costs. The basic idea behind the cloud is not having to care who, where or how the service is provided. This totally contradicts to what large enterprises are used to for a long time now, total control over everything. The CIOs of the enterprises are used to ensuring that everything is done properly. The fear over security and loss of control over data and systems is the main reason which hinders the adoption of clouds at enterprise level.

Data Security

Data security seems to be the first and foremost concern for the cloud users. But then, data security in the cloud is no different than data security at a remote data center. We need to think about one important thing, Do you really think Amazon is more vulnerable and in-secured?

The main reason why clouds seems to be more practical than ever before is because of the giant players we have in the market now. For instance, Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud - EC2 offering allows customers to provision hardware infrastructure on need basis and it allows them to configure the security restrictions on their own terms.

The big cloud players - Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems, Salesforce.com - practically know a lot more about maintaining the online security and, considered their effectiveness, worries about outsiders knocking off the security firewalls and having their way with users data indeed seems to be a over kill.

Another major worry across enterprises when it comes to adopting public cloud is "control over the data uploaded to the cloud". This is indeed a legitimate worry. What if the company's strategic plan is accessible in a public cloud? Catastrophic. All that we need is clear policies, and then we have to educate employees about the proper usage.

Directly attack the concerns and that's the way to vanish them.

Secured Log-on

Currently, with many of the cloud providers - log-ons are way-too-primitive. It will be very difficult for large enterprises to embrace cloud with out significant improvement in this end. This is something every cloud provider should take into serious consideration. And from the enterprises end point, they should only permit data to migrate to the cloud where two-factor, strong authentication is in use. When enough of the cloud users cry for safeguards the cloud companies will have to respond.

Durability of the cloud provider

Another main concerns for the cloud users is the trust over the cloud providers and also, durability of the cloud provider. What if my cloud provider vanishes from the market without any prior intimation? How easy it is for me get back all of my data? Most importantly, is is possible for me to port all of my cloud resource to some other provider? These are some of the lingering questions. Of course, this needs to be answered right away. If you are giving up your IT infrastructure, you need a reliable service provider.

It is better not to deal with such questions in such a early stage. Go with cloud providers who have the financial means to be in the game for a long time.

As a final note, it is not all or nothing. It doesn't have to be. Just consider whatever you can move to the cloud without compromising your security needs. That's the first step towards adopting and preparing for a big change. We are still in an era of experimentation. But understand one important thing, cloud computing is not a buzz word anymore, its happening and learn to harness its benefits.

The answer for the following question explains everything:

How will you eat an elephant? Just one bite at a time. Start your little steps.