Too good to be true? Lets see…
A recent Goldman Sachs survey suggests that only 2% of CIOs think cloud computing is a priority. While lack of understanding of what cloud computing can offer may be one of the factors in the lack of interest by CIOs, there are other factors. Key concerns have been voiced by enterprise users that may dampen the adoption of cloud computing for everyday IT computing needs. The table below lists these concerns.
|
Concerns |
Description |
Comments |
|
Data Ownership & Portability |
The ownership and portability of the data that is generated during the use of applications deployed in the cloud is a concern when a user wants to switch clouds. |
Users asserted in a June, 2008 panel discussion that “cloud users can take their data and leave at a moment’s notice” |
|
Data Security |
Enterprise IT is worried the cloud computing infrastructure is not good enough to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the data used by applications. |
“If we give this data to a cloud computing company, and there is a security breach or if that company gets sold, how do we address that? I am accountable,” says Carolyn Lawson, CIO of California Public Utilities Commission. |
|
Reliability Concerns |
Whether the cloud computing infrastructure will be able to provide and honor a Service level Agreement (SLA) |
At the moment only Amazon S3 offers an SLA against its service. Loss of data due to computational failures is quite possible. |
|
Vendor-lockin |
There are currently no standardized ways to plug into the cloud, and this makes it hard to switch to a new vendor |
As cloud computing matures, we can expect to see standards emerge. It will take another 2-5 years, assuming vendors haven’t locked in by then and just stepped over any need for user driven standards. |
|
Legal Compliance |
Whether the data in the cloud will be able to comply with legal requirements pertaining to the locale of storage, and other legal compliance standards. |
Concerns over the US Patriot Act has generated guidelines that prohibit storing data outside their sovereign territory by some nations. SOX, GLBA, HIPPA, PCI are some of the legal compliance standards in the US, and the cloud vendors do not provide support for auditing for compliance. |
|
Support for ISVs |
The cloud infrastructure is unique for each vendor, and do not support all software environments. |
RedHat is the only Linux vendor providing a version that is certified for cloud. |
|
New Technologies |
The technologies are not yet proven, and there are only a few developers who can hack it. |
Force.com offers a certification program for their Apex platform. |
The above concerns do limit the use of cloud computing in the main stream of IT for now. We will look at enterprise applications that can use cloud computing resources right away in another post.
Meanwhile, I will certainly welcome your addition to this list!
February 17th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Found your site on Google and I thought that I would drop by and take a look. Nice work!
March 19th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Good Site on Cloud Computing and SaaS – We are periodically looking for good blog articles
related to Cloud Computing. Will be back to review more information on your blog.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks