It’s been said that hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age. In a business context, truer words were never spoken. Businesses that hesitate end up playing catch-up with their bolder (and often younger and thus less set in their ways) peers. Those who fail to recover that ground fade into oblivion.
Ask any skittish CEO or CIO why he or she is hesitating to move their organization into some variant of the cloud and they will give you any number of answers. Most of these reasons, however, are overblown — much more dangerous in their minds than in real life. A few examples of the myths around cloud:
- “If we move our data into the cloud, we’ll lose control.”Fact or Myth: Largely myth. When a company moves into the cloud, they no longer have much or any of the burden of maintaining hardware and upgrading software. With this comes a dramatic reduction in headaches. Suddenly, you have more time to dedicate to your business operations and agile, customer-centric initiatives as opposed to operating as a repair service. And it’s not like your cloud solution provider is operating independently of you; rather, they are doing your bidding — fully under your control as far as your data and the technology around it is concerned.
- “I have to move everything to the cloud; it’s all or nothing.”Fact or Myth: Total myth. Cloud is anything you need it to be, when you need it to be. Hybrid cloud provides a consistent platform that bridges data centers and the cloud, making IT less complex and delivering apps and data to end users regardless of where they are or what device(s) they’re using. This puts companies in the driver’s seat with regards to delivering the computing power and capabilities that users and clients demand. The ability to scale up and down as the rhythms of business dictate is an added bonus.
- “Bad actors will be able to access my data if it’s up in the cloud.”Fact or Myth: Myth, provided the appropriate security is in place. The fact is you cannot outsource the burden of responsibility for cyber-security. Businesses moving to cloud still must ensure their critical data is protected. As to what’s safer: cloud is not inherently less secure than legacy infrastructure.
Join ITWC CIO Jim Love and special guests Arturo Perez and Khurram Raja for “Are You Ready to Move Into the Cloud?” In this webinar, the secrets of successfully mixing public and private cloud structures will be discussed, as will connectivity, security, and strategy. Love and guests will also endeavour to help you develop your clear business case and communicate it to business executives and end users.
