Top Cloud Computing Myths Debunked

Cloud is a key enabler to transformation and growth. In the recent years, Cloud is a much talked about technology. Businesses and enterprises are adopting cloud not only to simplify the infrastructure provisioning process but also to stay ahead of the competition.

Traditional and legacy organizations however at times are skeptical of moving to cloud thinking about the perils (generally myths) associated with Cloud. This article will walk you through some of the prevailing myths about cloud computing and also debunk those with right logic.

On-Premise Storage is more secure than cloud storage

Companies have started migrating their infrastructure and applications to the cloud environment. However, the security level of cloud infrastructure is a matter of great concern to them. They consider the inverse proportionality between the control of data and its security in the cloud. Cloud Storage offers protection both against digital and physical attacks. While the on-premise storage is more prone to physical attacks, the cloud storage is being replicated to different other locations. The reality is that companies have to hire a team of skilled security professionals to manage the security of their on-site infrastructure. The cloud providers have certifications from different security practices so that you need not worry about hiring security professionals. Cloud not only reduces the overall cost but also provides a more secure platform. The myth will diminish once the corporations start migrating to the cloud.  

Moving to the cloud means wasting the money spent on setting up private data centers

One of the biggest myths among the companies is that migrating to the cloud means losing the money invested in setting up the data centers. In fact, Moving to the cloud is providing them with more opportunities. Companies can make use of the hybrid cloud concept wherein they can combine the power of private data centers and public cloud. Public cloud could be utilized during peak traffic or as and when required. It will not only save the cost but also increase the flexibility of the application deployed.

Moving to the cloud means migrating everything

Companies hesitate in adopting the cloud as they think moving to the cloud means migrating all their existing infrastructure to the cloud, leaving no resources behind at private data centers. However, it depends upon the requirements. You can simply make use of the hybrid cloud, and migrate only those applications which are compatible. Moreover, it is also observed that some companies decide to move to Cloud before making it more complete and modifying it resulting in errors. This generates a false belief.

Moving to cloud helps the application to perform better

It is considered that the application would perform better on migrating it to the cloud infrastructure. The portability of the application is not taken into account before migration which causes the application performance to deteriorate. It would not be advisable to migrate legacy applications running on dedicated servers to cloud in most cases. This is mainly because moving to the cloud may also increase latency if you want your application to communicate with the pre-existing private data centers. The latency is low in private data centers as compared to the cloud since there is minimum data transfer that takes place. Hence, such a migration could hamper the performance on account of latency.

Moving to cloud always saves money

Moving to the cloud does not immediately save money. It is advisable to consult DevOps architects before taking any decision related to cloud. The total cost of ownership certainly decreases as there is no upfront investment. Moreover, cloud also instills business agility and efficiency. However, optimizing compute resources is crucial failing which businesses might incur huge costs on account of over-provisioning of resources.  Architects play a significant role in reducing the cost by automating the scripts to ensure the optimized utilization of the existing resources. They also help you to understand TCO and guide you provision the resources. While considering cost savings, also consider license fees as these fees vary with different cloud providers.

Cloud should be used everywhere for everything

Migrating a small application to the cloud that is currently running on a small server and handles a less amount of traffic is not an excellent idea. The cloud may not benefit all workloads equally. Companies should consider migrating only portable apps to Cloud. The careful way to utilize it is to research about the application portability and the resources on which it needs to be hosted. The decision to migrate to the cloud comes later.

Cloud providers provide 100% uptime

No technology is foolproof but, many think that the cloud platform will be able to provide 100% uptime. Some major cloud providers although face some hiccups but always intent to provide 100% uptime. Most companies don’t prepare for the downtime and rely on cloud provider’s availability. It is advisable to be ready with a fault tolerance architecture and does not always rely on the provider’s availability. For example, the critical servers or hosts must always run under AutoScaling Group, and all the availability zones must be configured under that AutoScaling Group. This ensures break free experience even when one of the availability zones is down. These days people are also looking for cross-cloud backups. In this backup strategy, the backups are copied to different cloud providers. For an instance, companies might want to copy the data present in AWS S3 bucket to the storage service offered by another cloud provider.  This facilitates fault tolerance and enables migration when required.

Moving to the cloud means automatic backups

The cloud infrastructure can take automated backups and place it at different locations to provide the high availability. However, this doesn’t happen automatically. It is a common myth that the backup starts as soon as we move our data to the cloud. The backups need to be enabled, and the automation scripts play an important role in initiating the backup strategy. Different backup strategies can be prepared using scripts and automation tools. These strategies include taking backups and storing them in same or different cloud providers. The restore strategies must also be prepared to restore the backed up data in case of some disaster or tragedy. These must be properly tested and well-planned in advance. For example, taking the example of a production system running on Mongo database. The backup of Mongo database should be taken at a regular interval and stored on one of the cloud storages. Companies can restore the backup and update the database to the latest recovery point. Technical leads must correctly follow the two primary parameters, Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO).

Cloud comes with multiple benefits such as reduced cost of ownership, real-time provisioning, easy scalability and much more. However, companies need to start leveraging it the right way. They need to understand the difference between myths, challenges, and mistakes. Hope the above myths are debunked and if you are not on the cloud, you would consider leveraging it now on!