Migrating to the cloud is close to a no-brainer at this point, given how many ways the move can bring value to a business. Cloud computing has introduced real benefits, from reduced costs to improved versatility and efficiency, but cloud computing challenges still affect development and adoption in real ways. Understanding those challenges is the first step to working around them.
Identifying the Biggest Cloud Computing Challenges
Cloud computing is not perfect yet. Like most technologies, it still runs into issues that shape adoption rates and development. Overcoming the biggest cloud computing challenges starts with properly identifying them. A concerted effort between businesses, customers, and providers is what actually moves the industry forward.
Security and Privacy
Even outside of cloud computing, keeping data safe is a top priority for most businesses. Since many companies are used to keeping their most sensitive data behind a corporate firewall, moving that data into the cloud understandably makes them cautious.
Cloud providers have to keep reassuring clients about the measures they take against hacking and other malicious activity. Security applications, data loss prevention software, and encrypted file systems are among the tools working to keep cloud infrastructure safe.
Reliability and Availability
Even as cloud providers keep improving uptime, service disruptions are still common enough to make some businesses hesitant about the technology.
Many providers have responded by building multiple levels of redundancy into their systems, along with backup plans and disaster recovery setups designed to limit the damage from an outage.
Interoperability
Avoiding vendor lock-in is one of the bigger cloud computing challenges businesses face when committing to a provider. Just as individual users value the freedom to switch services, businesses value the same flexibility. Lock-in periods and other barriers to switching can discourage a business from working with a given cloud provider in the first place.
Providers also need the ability to integrate a client’s cloud environment with their existing on-premise operations, since many businesses cannot afford to run the two as separate, disconnected systems.
A Common Thread
A lack of shared standards runs through most of these cloud computing challenges, largely because the industry developed in a fragmented way over the years. Organizations such as the NIST Cloud Computing Program continue working to close that gap.
The future of cloud computing depends on continuing to build and adopt industry-wide standards that address technology, management, and regulatory concerns together. Providers can help by developing common definitions along with clearly defined guidelines and best practices.
To learn more about how Vault Networks addresses these cloud computing challenges for our clients, reach out to us at sales@vaultnetworks.com or by calling (305) 735-8098 option 2.