Despite their growing popularity, many enterprises find public clouds intimidating. There are a lot of questions: Who is ready to embrace public clouds? Who drives their adoption? How do providers address security and performance concerns? What is the role of open standards in public clouds? However, the answers to those questions are varied and often confusing. The key to succeeding in the cloud is understanding the truth of its current state and potential. In this blog post, we’ll set the record straight and uncover the key facts about the current state of public clouds.
- Enterprises are ready for cloud – While headlines and conversations still revolve around the readiness (or lack thereof) of enterprises to adopt public clouds, the truth is, enterprises may already be using some type of public cloud technology without even knowing. If an organization makes hotel reservations online, or pays for a credit card through the web, chances are, the applications used to conduct these transactions are housed in public cloud environments. Additionally, a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research showed that 54 percent of respondents claimed to have never used cloud computing, when 95 percent actually had.
- Cloud should unite the business and the IT organization – After years of resistance, IT has finally made cloud a priority. However, interest in public clouds has not always come from IT organizations. In fact, C-level executives and business units have been known to bypass IT and the procurement procedures in place to use cloud technologies. But things have changed. IT has realized the need to evolve and adapt; and increasingly IT is working with business users driving innovation.
- Public clouds can be secure – One of the biggest adoption barriers of public clouds is security. However, a survey conducted by CIO.com showed that 85 percent of IT professionals were “confident in a cloud provider’s ability to provide a secure environment.” Physical and logistical security depends on the cloud provider’s competence to build a safe infrastructure as well as processes to protect their customer’s data. In order to attain a high confidence level of your cloud provider, there is a need to do the proper due diligence and ask the right questions before signing on the dotted line or swiping the credit card.
- Performance should consistent – In the data center, IT departments have complete control over their infrastructure and performance is very predictable. With cloud, the enterprise loses some of the control over their computing and storage capacity, and performance could become an issue. In fact, some cloud providers tell clients that sacrificing performance is part of the decision to adopt cloud – it’s the cost of doing business. Actually, it doesn’t have to be that way. Performance in the cloud should match the performance obtained in traditional environments and it should be tied to a service level agreement, in the event of failure.
- A smart cloud is an open cloud – Open source development tools will help the long-term development of the key components that make-up the cloud through the growth of a powerful ecosystem. The sharing of technology will eventually standardize the market by easing the program development process and providing cost-effective solutions for companies of all sizes. By embracing open standards, enterprises can benefit from technology sharing and avoid getting locked-in with a specific vendor.
Discussions about public cloud platforms continue to evolve as success cases arise every day. Even with the widespread adoption of public clouds it is important to realize that they remain an emerging technology and their potential is yet to be fully realized. Understanding where this technology stands today could help enterprises unlock its promising future. In many cases, knowledge is power and public clouds are no different.
