There are plenty of arguments for using cloud services, which reach from system scalability to your consciousness of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But if you need to argue in the other direction, you could consult Forrester’s CEO George Colony, who considers some cloud claims as interim steps, bad ideas and “hogwash”.
“If I sat you down for coffee, here are five things I’d tell you about cloud,” Colony wrote in a blog post. Those five things are labeled as “truth about the cloud” and some may seem surprising to come from an analyst these days, while there is certainly common sense in his advice.
According to Colony, pure cloud computing is not what we will be ending up with in the end. He envisions (1) an era of an App Internet that connects to cloud services. The distinction between the two may be rather confusing. (2) The executive also considers sensitive data in the cloud as not safe, as customers cannot review the security protocols used by their service provider. (3) Cost reduction claims of up to 50% are being called “hogwash” – Colony estimates that 10 – 30% are realistic. (4) Corporations cannot just “flip a switch” to move to cloud computing – they will need a roadmap.
Perhaps most importantly, he notes that (5) cost reduction is not the primary reason to leverage the benefits cloud computing. Instead, customers should look for agility and features that make an organization more nimble.
Colony’s post was targeted at enterprise services, but a similar reasoning applies to consumer cloud products as well. Keep an eye on your most sensitive data and do not store them in the cloud. Don’t expect cheaper products when they are in the cloud and understand which cloud services will make sense in respect to your personal needs and which do not.
Ethan McKinney in Business on September 12
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