What Will Be the Consequences of Everything Moving Into the Cloud?

Undeniably, cloud computing is one of the most booming technologies today which is increasingly inching towards becoming the most dominant method of delivering computer services. Businesses, large and small, are realizing its potential and the empowerment that comes with it. However, as the saying goes, “There is no such thing as a free lunch”, cloud computing too, comes with its own set of obstacles that often become the reason of concern for new organizations wanting to move to the cloud. In this article, we have shed some light on the pros and cons that an organization should consider when shifting to cloud computing.

Pros of Cloud Computing

1. Cost Efficient: When you move to cloud computing, you save the exorbitant costs of maintaining your own servers and hardware. You don’t have to worry about buying new software, its licensing costs, installations and constant up gradations. Moreover, cloud computing offers one-time-payment, pay-as-you-go and other scalable options which are a lot cheaper making it the preferred choice for many businesses.
2. Disaster Recovery: Since all your data is stored in the cloud, you need not have to worry about taking any backups or restoring any lost data. Cloud computing vendors ensure that your data remains safe at all times and gets backed up automatically in the cloud. Thus businesses can save a lot of time and resources to recover and manage data on their own and the IT personnel can instead focus on their main tasks.
3. Work While On The Move: Cloud computing provides various options to access your business data without having to be present inside your cramped office cubicles. Not just computers, cloud computing also offers data access through mobiles, tablets, and other such devices. Armed with a reliable internet connection, you can now access any files from anywhere with a single touch. Centralization of all the data at one place makes it easily accessible without any dependency on hardware and software.
4. Unlimited Storage: When a business organization decides to reap the benefits of cloud computing it gains access to virtually limitless storage space. This means you no longer have to spend on new machinery, servers, and other hardware to cater to your data storage requirements. Even if a computer on the cloud crashes, it does not affect the storage of your data and it is still accessible 24*7.

Cons of Cloud Computing

1. No Internet No Cloud: This is probably the biggest handicap of cloud computing that it requires an internet connection all the time to be able to access resources and services over a cloud. If you have a poor internet connection or a low bandwidth, cloud computing is not for you. Even a few hours of downtime can cost a business large sums of money. We all remember Amazon’s recent AWS outage on February 28th, 2017 for four hours which cost S&P 500 companies between $150 million to $160 million. So it’s not just your weak internet connection that poses a threat, but also the server crashes or outages of your cloud service providers.
2. Security Risks: Today, cloud computing vendors all over the world are going to great lengths to convince their potential clients about the security of their data on the cloud using the latest technology. But one needs to keep in mind that advances in technology also mean that hackers have newer and better means to cause a security breach and steal confidential information about your company. Storing information on the cloud makes you vulnerable and prone to attacks. Since your data would no longer be travelling within internal servers, there is a higher chance of it being intercepted by hackers.
3. Vendor Lock-In: Be careful when you choose your cloud computing vendor. Many of these providers have applications or data formats that do not allow easy transfer of data from their system to other systems. So if you do not gauge this risk beforehand, you may get stuck with the same provider for a long time till you decide to pay hefty fees and move on to another vendor. Check whether the vendors use industry standard APIs and if they provide easy data extraction in case you wish to switch to another provider.
4. Customer Support: Over the years, customer support from cloud computing vendors have improved considerably with fewer complaints from users, but it still cannot be totally ignored. If you have a business that needs rapid responses and has a very low threshold for outages, make sure you have access to technical support from the teams at all times who can help you out. Of course, higher levels of support could cost a little more.

If the pros outweigh the cons for you, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t opt for cloud computing.