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Benjamin Robbins
Benjamin Robbins says you should think before jumping on to the cloud. Photograph: Brian Katz
Benjamin Robbins says you should think before jumping on to the cloud. Photograph: Brian Katz

Cloud computing: an essential guide to what could go wrong

This article is more than 9 years old
Turbulent web connections, logistical problems and the possibility of your provider going bust are all cloud service pitfalls

If your core business isn’t IT, it’s not in your interests to own or maintain hardware infrastructure like servers, routers, switches and an IT staff. Many years of failed hardware, downtime and high expenses have made the cloud an attractive option for businesses of all sizes. But before you go all in with the cloud there are some real-world challenges you should consider.

Turbulent web connections

The first challenge is that internet connectivity is nowhere near ubiquitous and no connectivity could equal no cloud service. Cloud services that rely on a continuous internet connection will do nothing but frustrate you and your end users. An unreliable experience will only serve to make people more frustrated. Make sure the cloud platform you are using has a functional way to work offline. Better yet, make sure you have an offline strategy when connectivity is down.

The logistical difficulty of migrating from one cloud system to another

One challenge that few businesses think of until it is too late is this: imagine you’ve identified a cloud platform that meets your business needs. You have users who are adding data and information to it every day. This platform works great for a time, but then your business outgrows the solution or your needs change. You find a new solution and prepare to migrate your data from one cloud service to another. What’s it going to take to export all that data you’ve placed in there? Is it even possible? I’ve known several organisations that have painstakingly moved files and data from one system to another manually. This usually means severely impacted productivity, which costs time and money.

Will your cloud provider stay afloat?

Another potential downfall is not knowing the financial viability of a cloud services provider. We are still in the early days of cloud and as such there are many great, but financially frail, services that you can subscribe to. What would happen if one of your service providers were to shut their doors? Do you have a back-up of your data? Would you be able to get by with the loss of the data all together? Make sure you look at the financial backing of any service you are going to entrust your business to.

Scattered data

In the world of a la carte cloud services there are many options to get the specific services you need. The downside to this is that your data will get distributed across many different services. What if you want to combine data sets such as sales, expenses and overheads? Do you know how you could do it, if at all? The process of drawing insights from multiple data sets will become more important in the future. Make sure you aren’t backing yourself into a corner.

The sky-high cost of going from freemium to premium

Moving from a freemium model to needing to purchase licences for each user can be an exorbitantly expensive process. Is this a cost that you can absorb into your monthly burn rate? Does it become so costly for all your services over time that you’d be better off bringing it in-house? Look cumulatively at the costs of all your services per person, and not just on a case-by-case basis.

Security

While many of the data centres these cloud services are hosted in can provide better security than you could with an on-premise solution, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t investigate the security of these services. Is your data encrypted in transit and at rest? Is physical access to the servers monitored? What is the services disaster recovery and back-up plan? The servers may not be at your location, but the onus of security should still concern you like it is.

Business of all sizes stand to gain a lot from cloud services, but make sure you think through some of the downsides as well. Get your head out of the clouds and get real about the challenges of the platform you are embracing.

Benjamin Robbins is a co-founder at Palador, a mobile consultancy located in Seattle, WA. He can be found on Twitter @PaladorBenjamin.

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