Answers To Some Common Misconceptions About Cloud Solutions
#ICYMI - I published an article this week for Forbes.com, in which I address common misconceptions about cloud solutions. Check it out:
The pandemic has made businesses more dependent on cloud computing than ever before, but we still encounter many organizations that are reluctant to make the transition due to concerns around cost, security, implementation complexity and their current business landscape.
Transitioning to the cloud does come with a unique set of challenges, but there are many misconceptions about migrating and managing cloud applications, which we come across as a partner to AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Here are some of the most common, debunked.
1. Cloud is less secure.
Historically, cloud providers would be shrugged off by chief security officers (CSOs), who believed that suppliers which knew nothing about the business could not provide security for it. But this mindset is starting to change.
Cloud solution providers themselves haven’t had any major security incidents. Big players like AWS are pushing into the security space, with even their newest services already achieving FedRAMP compliance — a U.S. government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and monitoring for cloud products and services. These measures are helping CSOs gain confidence in cloud providers.
At the same time, moving to the cloud does not absolve a company of security responsibilities. While Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) have incredibly high security standards and offer a wide range of security tools, the security and maintenance of the data being stored or processed in the cloud is ultimately the responsibility of the firm it belongs to.
2. Legacy applications won’t work in the cloud.
Many businesses yet to adopt cloud technology worry that their legacy software systems will increase migration complexity. Fortunately, CSP support for legacy applications has continued to grow in recent years, lowering this barrier to adoption.
Additionally, all the CSPs have an increasingly strong answer to those tricky workloads that can’t move to the cloud for regulatory reasons: Google Anthos, Azure Arc and AWS Outposts/EKS Anywhere have all benefitted from recent releases and provide great alternatives for organizations to connect their existing IT infrastructure to modern systems and technologies.
As the hybrid cloud story has become stronger and enabled organizations to move their more complex portfolios into public cloud services in a piecemeal fashion, CSPs have also continued to lower the barrier to refactoring legacy applications to leverage cloud native services. New product and development tools and methodologies with no- or low-code platforms have enabled an uptick of “citizen development” within organizations, effectively allowing non-professional development teams to also develop and deploy functional, modernized replacements to these incumbent systems.
3. Multiple cloud providers makes life complicated.
Some organizations believe that if they use multiple providers, they have to use them in completely the same way — which is simply not true.
IT teams should use the right cloud providers for the right solutions, rather than adopt services that aren’t fit for purpose for the sake of consistency. There are different ways to set up systems to avoid vendor lock-in and to take advantage of best-of-breed solutions.
For organizations that want a multi-cloud strategy and to be cloud native, the important proponent is making sure they have consistent principles and patterns. And when it comes close to execution, using specific technology sets that make sense within that cloud.
4. Lack of familiarity is a barrier to adoption.
Cloud technology is a relatively recent phenomenon — it only really took off in 2014. While used by many enterprises, there is a concern among corporations that haven’t transitioned that their lack of knowledge and familiarity of cloud presets is a barrier to entry.
The reality, however, is that cloud services are becoming easier to use, and background knowledge for developers is not required to get started. AWS, for example, is launching Amazon Honeycode, a fully-managed service that gives users the power to build powerful mobile and web applications without writing any code. It uses the familiar spreadsheet model, making it accessible to most people within an organization. Comparable services include Microsoft Azure’s Power Apps and Google App Maker.
5. Cloud is only for technologists.
IT can be made available to everyone across the business — not just the technologist. Anyone in a company can be an innovator; it’s important to educate and empower from the bottom up, not just the top down. Transformation is not a big bang approach — it’s a continuous evolution.
Cloud native, by virtue of the fact that it’s really just about configuring something to work for you, makes it a lot easier for team members who are not technical to showcase where there might be some value to unlock in the business.
As cloud becomes more ubiquitous, the ability to provide solutions to other departments has helped create buy in and pull the rest of the business along. As an example, the rapid adoption of business-focused analytics solutions like Azure PowerBI and Google Data Studio broaden the reach of cloud data services by making it simple for finance, product and marketing teams to drive decision making within their day-to-day.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.