Despite the huge success cloud computing has become—and the enormous amount of industry attention centered around it—there still seems to be a good number of challenges. One problem companies constantly face is working with different cloud providers for data storage, app delivery, testing, and so forth. Because the enterprise practices for cloud are not mature yet, this gives rise to a situation where, say, a storage crash brings down the entire ecosystem.
What’s going wrong here? The need for today is giving priority to cloud computing as a management decision, and not just a technical one. Yes, cloud means a lot of efficient technologies to improve your business, but is also concerns:
- Security: Don’t let complacency lull you into believing that you have done enough. Security in cloud needs even greater vigilance because your data is now residing on the vendor’s servers.
- Monitoring: Apps that are put into operation need to be monitored for workloads, operating efficiency, etc. Because these apps are not installed locally, their behavior is different and needs to be streamlined.
- Strategy: Cloud fundamentally changes the way you do business. Your existing delivery models do not fit any more. That means it’s a strategy decision, and before you jump into selecting a cloud product, make sure you have a strategy that provides for future changes is in place.
- Data management: The way cloud computing works, you can’t consider all data as equal. It’s important that you put into place a useful system of classification, and work only with the data that makes most sense.
As is usually said, cloud computing starts right at the top. With the many advantages it brings, it also demands greater forethought.
