I have stumbled on an interesting article on Forbes, titled The Cloud Diagnosed By IT. And It Isn’t Pretty, written by Brad Peters, the CEO of Birst, Inc. – San Francisco-based business delivering business analytics on SaaS platform. The article is interesting as Brad makes a case against cloud naysayer, Frank J. Ohlhorst, a technology journalist and IT consultant.
In his article, Brad outlines some anti-cloud points Frank has made and argues over them. It is insightful – here’s the recap of the interesting cloud computing vs. conventional IT arguments:
1. Going to the cloud can do much more harm than good
Brad considers Frank as a representative of corporate IT, consisting of the people with the most to lose from the rising cloud computing trends. The real question should be: Is cloud computing really better than IT? Businesses going cloud has already answered that question.
2. Cloud computing is slow
Brad acknowledged this, with a huge asterisk. Compared to local storage, storing data in the cloud is indeed slower because it’s done via the existing broadband; an unfair comparison. To compare apple to apple, should a business use cloud computing and invest in the same amount of investment as the traditional IT spent for infrastructure, the cloud is nearly as fast as the old-skool IT.
3. The cloud is not as secure as IT
This statement is made based on the fact that your company data is stored in the cloud, entrusted them to others. However, Brad argues that the cloud is well taken care of by hiring the best data security experts – something business IT department can match only if the IT department can also hire such experts – which are very expensive to tap on their expertise in-house.
4. Less control over the data in the cloud
According to Brad, this is just ridiculous. Non-IT executives were hardly have access to their companies’ data – with or without the cloud; so, nothing new here. Sure IT people in a company’s IT department can’t “touch” the data in the cloud; but for the rest of us, it’s a perk, not a drawback.
5. Cloud storage is not as reliable as advertised
Brad agreeing Frank on the fact that some cloud providers are misleading people by claiming their service to be 99.999 percent reliable. But again, can corporate IT even guarantee “just” 99.9 percent reliability? Brad doesn’t think so.
6. The negatives of cloud storage quickly add up
Agreed – but with proper planning cloud storage can be one of the valuable assets for businesses. Even Frank agrees that cloud computing is here to stay.
To end his article, Brad Peters make a statement that I myself have no other choices but to agree:
“In the end, (we have to) admit that the corporate IT department’s best hope is for a slow retreat to surrender.”
What do you think? Will conventional IT can withstand the “invasion” of cloud computing?
