Is the cloud the right choice for me?

The past few years have given rise to the trend of cloud adoption and migration, not just for technology sector, but for every industry. Many modern organizations choice to conduct their operations via cloud services, either fully or partially. While cloud migration seems to be the right choice in going forward with regards to increasing productivity and reduced cost of ownership, some organizations still remain sceptical.

The cloud migration race is on, while some are left behind

The 2021 State of the Cloud report revealed that 84% of surveyed enterprises have adopted a multi-cloud strategy with 60% opting for a hybrid cloud strategy. Statista forecasted that the cloud services revenues are expected to reach $332 billion by the end of this year, with an impressive 83% of enterprise workload stored and processed in the cloud. At the same time, a survey by Gartner shows that 70% of enterprises already using cloud services plan to increase their cloud spending as a result of the COVID-19 effects on markets and the way we now conduct business because of it.

However, despite the upward trend in cloud migration, some organizations are still conflicted about the value and relevance of the cloud for their business, mainly due to the security and privacy concerns.

What are the main benefits of the cloud?

Cost effectiveness

Organizations migrating to the cloud benefit from the cloud’s pay-as-you-go model. Where in the past they would have to predict their storage needs and opt in for the highest, and therefore, most expensive plan, now they pay according to their changing needs. This means that they pay for exactly what they need, without unnecessary costs. The reduced cost of ownership, not only deflates ongoing overheads, but it also minimizes initial investments. In addition, cloud computing utilizes remote resources that save organizations the cost of servers or other equipment.

Elasticity

Cloud services offer flexible payment plans, allowing for full budget controls by providing ease of scaling up or down at any given moment. This kind of flexibility also allows organizations to focus on other aspects of their core business competencies. By outsourcing their IT hosting and infrastructures to the cloud, they are unburdened of the hassle of managing them. The cloud’s inherent scalability provides organizations with flexible cloud infrastructure, bandwidth and services, and allows them to scale on demand to cater to their fluctuating workloads, this way avoiding the costly and complicated process of upgrading or downgrading the whole IT infrastructure.

Extended control options

Cloud computing provides organizations with the ability to determine the level of control they want over the cloud. With as-a-service options, they can decide on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (SaaS), or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers, this way selecting the level of control they desire across the cloud environment, as well as customization to their specific requirements.

Accessibility and productivity

Cloud migration extends an organization’s accessibility beyond its premises. Cloud-based environment and data can be accessed from any place and any device, provided they are connected to the internet. This unlimited accessibility and mobility of cloud computing offers simplified and deeper collaboration. On the cloud, staff can share and communicate information easily and securely across their environment, with the potential to drastically improve productivity, as well as quality or work. Additionally, staff take advantage of cloud collaborative social spaces, contributing to forming strong workplace relationships.

Disaster Recovery

One of the most important benefits of cloud computing is the provision of online data storage space as part of a disaster plan strategy. Cloud services provide quick data recovery for emergencies, such as natural disasters, power outages and attacks, when in an explosively on-premises environment, data recovery could take months.

Why is information security a challenge for cloud adoption?

Despite the obvious benefits of cloud services, organizations are still concerned about information security in the cloud. The cybersecurity expertise gap means that there is a shortage of security experts required to deal with increasing demand for their services. Even cloud providers sometimes lack the security expertise to inspire confidence in their customer who are after peace of mind knowing that their data are safe.

The same applies to most organizations whose core specialty is not technology, let alone information security. Without in-house security expertise, organizations lack the confidence to securely make the step towards migrating their business operations to the cloud.

In addition, misconfiguration during the deployment of cloud infrastructures expose networks to potential attacks due to inherent vulnerabilities. Inadequate security controls, monitoring and management of cloud services may lead to disastrous data breaches and information leaks that most organizations are not prepared to face.

The verdict

Migrating business operations to the could can offer organizations true strategic value through resilience, flexibility, elasticity and reduction in total cost of ownership. While understanding cloud benefits, it is also crucial that organizations include cloud and information security in their overall business strategy, so as to reap the benefits of the cloud while mitigating digital risk. A comprehensive Cloud Security Strategy is necessary so as to minimize risk and to support organizations’ efforts towards achieving Cyber Resilience.