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What You Should Really Know About Cloud Computing

by Scott Lewis

Iwas just teaching at a conference and one of the topics was cloud computing. I was really surprised at how companies are using cloud computing without really understanding the overall risks and exposure that might be tagging along for the ride. The group I was speaking to was made up of CFO’s, controllers and technology professionals, and from top to bottom it seemed like companies are utilizing a wide range of products and services for the simple reason of because it is easy. Easy and risk seem to go together, and if you don’t investigate the risks and exposure, then you might be putting at risk your Intellectual ownership of the data you have worked so hard to gain over the years.
I know it always sounds like I am beating up on cloud computing, but I am not. I own a cloud computing company, which specifically designs its systems to meet the individual needs and requirements of our clients. No one cloud fits all. I try to teach my clients the different types of cloud computing models, I teach them how to evaluate and investigate the different options so they understand the risks and can make an informed decision around what is best for their business. I was also shocked by how many upper or senior managers including owners did not understand what the IT person was doing and the amount of exposure and risk they were accepting on their company’s behalf. I could literally see panic in their faces as I questioned the strategies of some of the models the attendees were implementing in their businesses.
There are many types of cloud products to examine, one of which are the major differences in hosting companies. Don’t get comfortable or let your guard down just because it says Microsoft, Google or Amazon on the label. There are basically three types of cloud products: public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. All three have advantages and disadvantages.  There are ASP providers (Application Service Providers) or SAAS providers (Software as a Service Providers). Each one of these providers brings a different methodology for cloud computing to your business. Then there are hosting companies, and collocation companies and manage cloud providers. There are huge differences in these providers and you should investigate them all.

Why is all this important to you? Because each one of these has a different type of service level provided, different security issues, different management options and different backup options.  As confusing as it might be, if you want to have a successful cloud based strategy, you should be able to identify the differences and know which one is going to better serve your business.

Some other things you should know about cloud computing:

Ownership. This always comes as a shock to company owners, but you may not be the only owner of the data! Many public and private cloud providers have clauses in their contracts that data stored is the property of the provider, not the client, and many at least have shared ownership of the data. Most cloud providers like or want to own the data because it gives them a higher level of legal protection if something goes wrong such as a hack attack, virus or malware attack. Another reason that providers want to own the data is for data mining or business intelligence mining for trends, or client information, so it is important not to just click the box but to actually read the agreement and know for sure who owns the data.

Availability. This one always kind of makes me giggle because in this connected world we all want that 100% availability and we all think that if we go to the cloud we are getting that.  The fact is that if cloud providers had in place enough redundancy and fault tolerance to reach that 100% level and never ever have an outage than it would be so expensive nobody would move to the cloud. Phone lines get cut, servers fail, data bases get corrupted regardless of where they are housed. Murphy’s Law will at some point get you, even the largest providers such as Microsoft have experienced outages that lasted hours, so set your expectation accordingly that outages will happen, it is just part of the connected world.  

Consolidation of cloud products. One of the most amazing things was how end users were using cloud based products with the blessing of IT and ownership. Companies had data in Dropbox, Microsoft 365, ICloud and Google doc, the lists seemed endless. Some companies had a few products, some had data all over the place and no accountability for a consistent and sustainable strategy on what services or products they were going to use. There was no accountability to who had access, how they were backing up the data, or if an employee leaves, how you recover the data. It was all over the map. Being a business owner myself this type of strategy would scare me to death if I had to track all these different cloud based solutions to insure that my data was protected and that I maintained my intellectual rights.

It might seem like I am afraid of cloud computing or am down on it, but I am not. As I stated earlier, I own my own cloud based company and have clients all over the world. However, I do feel that each business is different and there is not one size that fits all and owners need to know what they are buying, what the risks are, and work through the options to ensure that you are buying the right cloud product for your business. It seems that we are starting to take for granted how easy it is to sign up and migrate without a full discovery on what we are actually buying or needing out of a cloud strategy. It is easy and convenient and on the surface seems to be a good fit, but as always better to do the research on the frontend than pay the price on the backend.         

Scott Lewis is the President and CEO of Winning Technologies Group of Companies.  The Winning Technologies Group of companies is an international technology management company. Scott has more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry, is a nationally recognized speaker on technology subjects such as Collocation, Security, CIO level Management, Data and Voice Communications and Best Practices related to the management of technology resources.  Learn more about Winning Technologies at www.winningtech.com or call 877-379-8279.            
Submitted 8 years 306 days ago
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