Myth 5: The Cloud is always less expensive than on-premise systems.
There are many reasons why running applications on the cloud should be less expensive than running these applications in-house. However, one needs to consider the nature of the application, any special hardware or software requirements as well as bandwidth requirements. Often overlooked, some things to consider when comparing cloud costs to on-premise or hosted costs are administration and IT staffing needs, power and cooling for hardware, and the costs per square feet of data center space.
Myth 4: My Data won’t be secure and the cloud isn’t reliable
This myth stems from the belief that if the data is not on a computer that you physically own then it can’t be secure and if the computer resides somewhere else then you don’t have control over its reliability. Conversely, the fact that you don’t own the computer and don’t have to manage it means that the highest levels of disaster recovery and redundancy can be achieved on a scale that would be too expensive to replicate for more than 99% of the companies out there. This myth is an old one, security isn’t the concern it once was, as demonstrated by a new survey of 785 companies that found that only 3% of them find cloud computing to be too risky.
Myth 3: The Cloud will eliminate the need for IT.
The cloud can in fact help eliminate many of the repetitive and maintenance oriented tasks that add little value to an organization. Conversely, these cloud based applications can enable IT resources to be redeployed towards taking on a strategic role in the growth and success of an organization. A Gartner study showed that 91% of IT resources were dedicated towards maintaining systems. Imagine if those resources could be redeployed to using more of the software that companies have available to them but don’t have the resources to put this software to work.
Myth 2: The Cloud is for small companies and not for large enterprises.
It’s a fact that many small companies have been able to benefit from enterprise level applications by subscribing to SaaS (Software as a Service) as opposed to having to buy expensive hardware and software applications. Large enterprises are moving to the cloud for many of the same reasons that small companies have embraced it. These are scalability, availability, costs, speed of deployment as well as the fact that 84% of all new software will be SaaS based.
Myth 1: Cloud Computing is primarily about reducing your total cost of ownership.
Reducing costs is definitely one of the benefits associated with moving applications to the cloud. However, one should not overlook some other key benefits. Among these are scalability and availability, which are the ability to easily and rapidly increase or decrease your computing requirements in conjunction with your organization’s internal demands. Another benefit is the faster deployment that has become inherent with cloud applications. One additional benefit that is overlooked is the virtual nature of cloud applications which gives employees, customers and vendors the ability to access the applications anytime and anywhere from a browser or mobile device. All of these benefits do in fact reduce the total cost of ownership but they also individually make a significant contribution.
Written by Lou Balla, President, Nuage Consulting Group, Inc.
louballa
nuagecg
vandanaayyar
louballa
/ June 26, 2012This article addresses Myth 4, about cloud security. Take a look! http://cloudtimes.org/2012/06/22/security/
globalnest
/ July 9, 2012Cloud Computing is becoming more attractive to medical organizations predominately due to the benefits that the technology offers including reduced enterprise IT infrastructure and power consumption costs, scalability, flexibility, and accessibility.
louballa
/ July 9, 2012There’s no doubt that the Healthcare industry is feeling the pressure to do more with less and one sure way to do that is to reduce IT costs by replacing on-premise systems with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)/Cloud Computing.