Risks and issues in Cloud Computing

February 2, 2009 By 6 Comments

Bernard Golden has a two-part series on the IT Drilldown Virtualization section of CIO.com that is informative and interesting.

The two-part series, titled The Case Against Cloud Computing (Part 1, Part 2), describes conversations that Golden has had with industry veterans. During these conversations, Golden picks up five main reervations that these industry veterans have against Cloud Computing.  Golden writes:

There are five key impediments to enterprise adoption of cloud computing, according to my conversations. I will discuss each in a separate posting for reasons of length. The five key impediments are:

  • Current enterprise apps can’t be migrated conveniently
  • Risk: Legal, regulatory, and business
  • Difficulty of managing cloud applications
  • Lack of SLA
  • Lack of cost advantage for cloud computing

Some interesting thoughts there…and I think they are all valid concerns.

Think about the “lack of SLA” concern….I’ve not run across a single cloud computing app that offers an SLA  guaranteeing service, reliability, data safety or security.

Jump over and read Golden’s commentary and thoughts…some interesting stuff there.

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deguzman ramirez

How is security handled in this methodology?http://bygsoft.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/cloudy-...

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Eric D. Brown

Hey Andrew,

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. Cloud computing gives a great benefit in support costs and operating costs.

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Andrew Meyer

Eric,

the article is interesting, but it misses the white elephant in the room. The main cost benefit from cloud computing is that it eliminates the need for IT staff. If you do not have to support data centers, HW, systems integration, etc., there is a huge cost savings.

In enterprises with existing IT departments, those IT departments should oppose cloud computing because it will eliminate 70 to 80% of their jobs. There are some business analyst positions that remain and a small number of desktop support positions that remain, but otherwise the rest of the staff become redundant.

As someone who sells a SaaS product, my biggest opposition in enterprises is the IT staff. While this is frustrating, it is certainly understandable. This, however, has importance for project managers, SaaS vendors and business in general.

Where the real gains will come from with SaaS, will be from small companies that can leverage SaaS, see dramatically increased productivity levels with dramatically lower fixed costs. If a company with 70 people can use SaaS ERP/CRM type systems to double or even triple their productivity without increasing their staffing/fixed costs, guess who's going to be very successful in the next 10 years?

A company that has a 20% to 30% fewer fixed costs (no IT department, no internal servers, customized processes etc) is going to eat the lunch of companies having to carry those costs.

Experienced project managers who can assist these companies achieving these very realistic goals are going to be heros.

Enterprises that have existing IT staffs, who for good reason, oppose the introduction of SaaS technologies, are going to be in trouble when these smaller businesses sort themselves out.

You're the sort of person who can help these smaller companies sort themselves out.

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  1. Eric D. Brown says:
    February 2, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    Risks and Issues in Cloud Computing – http://bit.ly/1VJK7W

  2. Dark Clouds Ahead? A Warning About Cloud Computing | SimonStapleton.com says:
    February 3, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    [...] Note: Eric Brown, fellow blogger, often reports interesting stories like this one about Cloud Computing. If you haven’t subscribed to his RSS Feed , do it today! No TweetBacks [...]

  3. www.itminddesign.com » Walking amongst the clouds : Computing that is says:
    February 5, 2009 at 11:06 pm

    [...] be addressed. Eric Brown who writes the Technology, Strategy, People and Projects blog wrote about cloud computing and issues around it.  He brought up some good points and provided some links to additional [...]