Many companies have only recently started to consider moving major systems and applications to the cloud. While cloud computing can provide many performance and cost-saving benefits, it can also lead to major problems. The key is to understand what to expect from cloud computing, communicate with service providers, and avoid the pitfalls that many companies fall into during the implementation and integration process.
Misunderstanding The Cloud
Companies do not always fully understand what to expect from a cloud service and the provider. “It comes down to a misunderstanding of what cloud is, which is dangerous,” says James Staten, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. “If you assume the cloud is just like hosting, then you assume you get a high SLA, a stable environment, a machine to yourself, and all the characteristics that might be very familiar to you as what’s running in your data center. But that’s very different than what cloud actually offers.”