In the complex world of IT, there are many misconceptions about migrating to the public cloud. Some of these portray the public cloud as the panacea for every IT issue, whereas others consider migration to cause more problems than it’s worth. In reality, neither is correct and, in this post, we’re going to take a closer look at five commonly held misconceptions and explain what the truth actually is.
Adoption means moving all services to the cloud
Some executives believe that a move to the cloud requires you to migrate your entire IT operations. The truth, however, is that you don’t. As with any task undertaken by an organisation, you use the best tools for the job and when it comes to IT, you need to choose the best platform for each of your apps.
What constitutes the best platform depends upon criteria such as reliability, availability, agility, security and, of course, cost. The ideal solution for one application, might not be the right choice for another, so it is important that you consider a range of appropriate solutions perhaps using the cloud for some and retaining others at your data centre.
The main use for public cloud is as a storage solution
Many believe that the main reason for using the public cloud is that it offers a cheap way to store large volumes of data on a pay as you use basis. While it is certainly true that the cloud enables flexible and cost-effective data storage, perhaps the most important reason for adopting it is the technological benefits it brings.
Moving to the public cloud is essential if enterprises are going to take advantage of all the new technological advancements which are taking place. With the widespread and rapid development of open-source cloud applications (and their savings in software licencing) and technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, fog and edge computing and the Internet of Things, migration to the public cloud opens up an exciting world of opportunities.
Public cloud is less expensive and performs better
High performance and lower prices are often dangled like carrots in front of executives when persuading them of the benefits of public cloud adoption. In the right circumstances, this is true, the cloud can provide substantial cost reductions and performance improvements when compared to existing data centres but this depends on the workloads you are wanting to carry out. Also true, however, is that for many enterprise apps, private cloud networks can also bring substantial savings.
Public cloud is the only option for on-demand IT solutions
Developments in cloud technology move at a pace and while public cloud was once the only solution for on-demand services, there are now alternative options available. Today, it is possible to have on-demand, pay-as-you-go private cloud and multi-cloud services. Working with a variety of solutions can enable organisations to maintain control over their IT infrastructure, ensuring it is configured to provide the optimum in performance, reliability, flexibility and security while operating at its most cost-effective.
In-house data centre investment will be wasted
While moving some of your services to the public cloud will reduce the pressure on existing data centres and cut down on the need for expensive hardware investment in the future, it does not necessarily mean that an existing data centre will become obsolete.
Using the right solution for the right applications means organisations can benefit from public cloud services while ensuring that the investment they have put into their data centre is used wisely. Indeed, moving to the cloud in stages can be a way of ensuring that IT resources are utilised effectively. In-house servers can be kept in use until they come to the end of their useful life and then, instead of replacing them, the apps they run can be migrated to a public or private cloud or moved to colocation. Of course, it may be in the organisation’s best interests to keep a data centre of some form in operation.
Understanding which apps run the most cost-efficiently on which platforms will help ensure that the right solutions are found.
Conclusion
The public cloud is not the answer to every IT problem and there are alternatives, such as private, hybrid and multi-cloud options, as well as traditional data centres. The key for any organisation is to use the best hosting solution for each of the applications they need to run. However, the public cloud does have many benefits, it is a field where constant innovation is taking place, where considerable savings can be made and where organisations can improve productivity, speed to market and cost-effectiveness.
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