Forrester: Cloud computing is not a panacea

Opponents of cloud computing say some cloud operators have some flaws in security, data privacy, performance, and stability. The support side thinks that if the user chooses the partner at the initial stage, it can reduce the upfront cost, accelerate the deployment and adjust the computing capacity as needed and still have good enough performance.

Cloud computing is not a panacea

James Staten, chief analyst at Forrester, said:

Cloud computing is not the key and ultimate goal of all problems, as some people say. At present this technology does not apply to all users, even if the future is not.

Even so, I am still full of confidence in cloud computing. If you could keep track of Forrester's cloud market analysis, you'd be very clear about that. Forrester believes that cloud computing is one of the 15 major technological trends of the future. Cloud computing will guarantee your current investment so that you can gain the experience necessary to transform your organization in many ways that cloud computing.

For those who use these services, leasing, shared economy, virtualized deployment, and cloud services to service integration are all factors that change the game. Not only can they bring cost advantages that are more potential than field-deployed applications, but they also create opportunities for new business applications. It is not feasible for these new commercial applications to simply adopt other methods.

However, like many emerging technologies, you have to be cautious. It's not as easy as some vendors advertise. If you do something wrong, you pay more than you want to save.

In fact, if you have a highly variable workload application, cloud computing services can save you money. An application consumes only 20% of the computing power of one server at a time, but it can consume 10 of servers during peak usage times. This application is ideal for cloud computing deployments. In cloud computing services, you only pay for the virtual machines you use. However, if that application deals with credit card transactions and your cloud service provider does not allow you to audit its environment, or do not provide the records and reports you need to comply with the PCI regulations, the cost of solving the problem will outweigh the costs of running the workload in your own data center.

Cloud computing providers will be limited to providing security, management, and reporting for their services. You have to fill the gap between what they provide and what your business needs. IaaS (infrastructure as a service) one of the most recent concerns for customers is how to secure the visibility of cloud computing blocking to ensure application performance. Cloud computing providers do not provide performance assurance and will certainly not achieve the performance you specify for an application.

This is also true of usability. Most public cloud computing will remind you that they will not monitor your application when the service is interrupted (you will be refunded on the basis of the lost time). You have to monitor your application yourself. If your application hangs or fails, it is your responsibility to have redundant deployments that detect failures and bypass failures. The same is true for cloud computing outages.

Another issue that most companies do not consider is the meaning of where cloud computing resources are placed. Most cloud computing services are not geographically ubiquitous. Like any other Internet service, they are serviced from a specific geographic data center. If you are doing business in multiple locations, you need to consider privacy and data protection laws everywhere.

In fact, our analysis of the IaaS field shows that 90% of providers have data centers based in the United States. If you have a European client, you must comply with European privacy laws. EU law stipulates that personal information about EU citizens must be stored in the EU. This makes many cloud computing providers unable to serve European users.

The Promise (and delivery) of geographic diversity should be one of the value principles of cloud computing. If so, providers must provide an easy way to ensure compliance with privacy laws. Now, violating these laws is simply too easy. And it's you, not your cloud provider that's going to take this responsibility.

As one IaaS provider recently said to us, most of our clients are unaware of these privacy laws and are not concerned about them, since they are rarely enforced. This is an understandable environment, but it is a very dangerous environment, because enforcing the law can become a real concern at night. All the governments involved in this matter have to do is to punish a large and illegal enterprise in order to deter everyone and make people obey the law. Claiming that ignorance of the law is not an appropriate excuse.

As you would expect, application developers are less concerned with compliance issues. Their focus is on accelerating time-to-market and increasing productivity. They use cloud computing as an important accelerator.

Although IaaS cloud computing can provide, however, the dynamic upgrades involved can put the enterprise at risk if mismanaged. This issue needs to be addressed by the IT department.

Don't try to stop your company from using cloud computing, because the application of cloud computing has started. Instead, you want to create a guardrail-like use policy that protects your company from moving forward on this new path.