One of the big downsides to having your systems in a cloud is that you have no real control over the data. Sure you can have SLAs and you can even sue, in some cases, if things do not go to plan but you are still reliant on a third party for your basic operational needs.
I remember during the recession of the 90s we were looking at the impact of our suppliers going bust and how we could mitigate against that. In many cases our suppliers were actually much bigger than us and in many cases we had no viable mitigation strategy to put in place. Anything realistic was too expensive and in the end there was only a couple of products we could mitigate for and plans were put in place. For example: How could you mitigate against Microsoft going bust and taking your server and desktop OS’s and a significant number of your key products, Excel (No 1 key product in most companies), .NET applications, Sharepoint, etc. with them. You just can’t.
So as we move to Cloud computing we discover we depend even more on third parties and even the biggest and the best get it wrong. So what can you do about the smaller players? Can you afford to have all your corporate data lost through a simple procedural error. Some companies would not be worth suing.
The solution is to keep your data inhouse and under your control and keep copies in the cloud as backup and as working data for your cloud application. To do anything else is living in cloud cuckoo land and could soon see you with cuckoo egg on your face.
Are you in cloud cuckoo land?
One of the big downsides to having your systems in a cloud is that you have no real control over the data. Sure you can have SLAs and you can even sue, in some cases, if things do not go to plan but you are still reliant on a third party for your basic operational needs.
I remember during the recession of the 90s we were looking at the impact of our suppliers going bust and how we could mitigate against that. In many cases our suppliers were actually much bigger than us and in many cases we had no viable mitigation strategy to put in place. Anything realistic was too expensive and in the end there was only a couple of products we could mitigate for and plans were put in place. For example: How could you mitigate against Microsoft going bust and taking your server and desktop OS’s and a significant number of your key products, Excel (No 1 key product in most companies), .NET applications, Sharepoint, etc. with them. You just can’t.
So as we move to Cloud computing we discover we depend even more on third parties and even the biggest and the best get it wrong. So what can you do about the smaller players? Can you afford to have all your corporate data lost through a simple procedural error. Some companies would not be worth suing.
The solution is to keep your data inhouse and under your control and keep copies in the cloud as backup and as working data for your cloud application. To do anything else is living in cloud cuckoo land and could soon see you with cuckoo egg on your face.