Almost 5 years after the business world was introduced to the cloud in the truest sense, most of the cloud-related knowledge floating around is still based on hearsay, and thus, inaccurate. It is imperative for businesses, especially the small and medium scale (SMEs) ones to understand all the aspects of the cloud before migrating their existing software or deploying new systems to cloud hosting.
In order to achieve the above, the following myths need to be busted immediately:
- Small businesses should move to the cloud just because every other business is.
Well, even if it might seem to be the case on a superficial level, your small business should analyze the advantages of having a cloud infrastructure at the onset. It can be handy in the following cases:
- For your future expansion needs. As cloud hosting is scalable, if your user base skyrockets overnight due to any factor, the cloud can handle the load instead of system failures that may put your users off.
- Your workforce is already using cloud apps. The email apps, and other productivity tools that small business employees use to collaborate (say Gmail, MS Word, etc.) are already cloud based. It can cause no harm if you want to streamline the communication using an internal product suite hosted on the cloud.
- The Cloud does not provide the security that an on-premise system would.
Consider this: most of the on-premise systems are maintained by internal teams, which may or may not be suited to the job of maintaining the highest levels of security. Needless to say, cloud hosting is a better option for security of small businesses even if it may seem prone to data breaches because of its shared nature. If the paranoia over confidential data persists, the small businesses can opt for a hybrid infrastructure that stores non-important customer and employee data on the cloud, and confidential profile information and documents on-premises.
- Cloud hosting means an extravagant budget.
Legacy on-premise systems need regular maintenance and constant monitoring for identifying system attacks and unforeseen downtimes. Cloud hosting eliminates the need for having a full-fledged in-house operations team, and cuts down on the human resource costs. Also, cloud hosting charges are mostly subscription based – with the service provider taking care of the security factors. As the cloud capacity need increases, the charges levied decrease. Hence, cloud hosting is the exact opposite of extravagant!
- It needs extensive resources and expensive tools to manage cloud solutions.
As mentioned above, the need for resources is minimized in a cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, the suite required for cloud management is available on nominal subscription charges from the cloud services provider. It allows data analytics dashboard, cloud scaling tools, virtual machine deployment, and application development IDEs. Hence, this is perhaps the most unfounded myth about cloud management services that is prevalent among small businesses.
- Cloud does not allow control over confidential data.
As per the second point, if the small businesses are unnecessarily worried about confidentiality, they can opt for hybrid infrastructure. However, methods like two-factor authentication, in addition to mobile device management options like BYOD services, small businesses can effectively control who has access to the confidential data files. Also, geographical access limitations can be levied, if the data is such that it should not be accessed beyond office premises.
Author Bio
Chirag Thumar is a developer working at Technoligent. You can contact her in order to network engineer to avail the highly Cloud Management Services and other web service. He has several years of experience in the field of web development.
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