It’s not easy to ignore the hype surrounding the cloud. Businesses all over the world are coming to realize that cloud computing offers numerous advantages, from more productivity and capabilities to lower costs. These benefits have lead to the growth of a wide variety of cloud providers, each offering its own unique take on services and products. The result has been a groundswell of support as organizations of all types look to the cloud for solutions to common and complex business problems. Research from Verizon shows that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of all companies are using some form of the cloud, and that number is only increasing. But as more and more organizations adopt cloud computing, a stern reality is also settling in -- to fully utilize the cloud, one must give up a significant degree of control. With so many businesses now employing the cloud in various ways, have we reached the point where we are giving up too much control?
The typical model most companies use when adopting the cloud is to select a cloud provider and use the service they offer. This usually results in companies doing much of their business on servers rented out from these vendors. In others words, companies are performing various business-related tasks and potentially storing valuable data and information on computers that they don’t own. For obvious reasons, this has lead to growing concerns over just how much control enterprises are actually giving up in the pursuit of cloud computing. Before the cloud, computations would simply be done on the users’ machines, but now those are all being taken care of remotely. Some experts are even saying that this threatens software freedom by taking the control of the process and putting it squarely in the hands of the cloud provider.
Another control issue involves performance and how a cloud vendor uses resources. The truth is cloud vendors have many clients, and businesses will likely be sharing a vendor’s resources with others. Good cloud providers of course try to wall off each client from the other, but situations where one customer requires more computing power from the cloud may adversely affect another company. Outages can happen from time to time, which can be detrimental to the negatively affected business. The most frustrating aspect of such issues is how cloud clients have no control over the problem or how to fix it. They must rely on the provider to find the solution while they sit on the sidelines and wait.
Equally important is the control over network security. Companies that use the cloud place a tremendous amount of trust in the cloud provider to protect and secure their data. A cloud provider that doesn’t do an adequate job protecting data places important and sensitive information at risk, even if a company has expended resources to secure that information when it is on-premise. Many cloud providers are responding to the demands of clients by increasing their security efforts and ensuring protection, but once again, this is all outside a client’s control. Businesses must rely on vendors to do the job they once did, and with so many providers with different offers and capabilities, finding one that will be able to deal with security issues proficiently can be a difficult task.
With these points in mind, it’s easy to see why some believe moving operations to the cloud simply gives up too much control that businesses should hold onto. However, cloud computing still offers many advantages, so finding a way to retain some control while still using the cloud may be the best solution. Some have argued for the use of federated clouds, where companies use their own equipment and software while forming partnerships with other organizations to retain computing control. Businesses can also take steps to secure their own data by encrypting it before sending it to the cloud in the first place while also maintaining the encryption keys. The important thing to remember is that enterprises are not without options if they want to use the cloud while still having more control over their data. Some even feel giving up control is worth the benefits of cloud computing. Whichever side is supported, it’s clear this issue is a delicate balancing act that will continue to evolve as the cloud matures.