Cloud Adoption Now Common, but Not Always Smart
February 9, 2012
Cloud computing has grown from buzzword to a range of real-world applications over the last four years, and many midsized businesses are now using at least one cloud service in their day-to-day IT admin. But while surveys show that clouds are on the rise both in already virtualized First World countries and developing nations, cloud adoption doesn’t always take the smartest route.
Survey Says…
A recent InformationWeek article talks about the site’s 2012 State of the Cloud Computing Survey, where they asked 511 IT pros about their cloud use. Currently, one-third of companies are using the cloud in some form and 40 percent are considering a move. Only 27 percent of those surveyed weren’t interested in putting their heads in the cloud–a significant improvement over a similar survey conducted four years ago, when there was no agreement on what the term cloud computing even meant; 21 percent of those asked in 2008 said that "the cloud" was "pretty much a marketing term used haphazardly."…
Now, software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud options are rolling out to cover everything from basic IT admin tasks to mission-critical applications. Uptime is up, downtime is almost nonexistent, and many security concerns are no longer an issue. The problem? According to InformationWeek, only 28 percent of IT organizations assess the impact of a new cloud deployment on their current infrastructure; 24 percent have no way to monitor cloud performance; and a measly 9 percent take advantage of cloud integration providers. The cloud is clearly on the rise, but adoption is haphazard at best.
Up and Coming
It’s not just countries like the United States, Canada, and the UK experiencing this kind of cloud growth–a recent Your Story press release discusses the cloud’s future in countries all across Africa as seen by Abby Wakama, editor of ITNewsAfrica.com. According to Wakama, the cloud will have "a major impact on everything from agriculture to education." He says he is "very bullish about the uptake of cloud technologies across the continent because of the rapid spread of broadband infrastructure." Submarine fibre optic cables run over the last few years have brought down the price of speedy Internet connections, and companies are beginning to see the benefit of delivered instead of in-house technologies.
The Cloud Computing World Forum Africa, scheduled for May 2012 in Johannesburg shores up the potential African countries and SMBs seen in this technology. To some extent, they are in a better place to transition to the cloud than many American companies–options already exist for viable SaaS, and much of its hype is gone. Nonetheless, the sudden upswing of cloud adoption in Africa presents the same potential problems as in the First World: deployment isn’t smart just because it’s in the cloud.
In order for any midsized business to maximize their IT spending in the cloud, assessment, monitoring, and budget must all be concerns. Before installing any cloud service, a company must examine its effects on legacy systems, ensure a practical way to monitor the service, and if considering a custom coding order, decide if an integrated provider, rather than expensive re-imagining, is a better choice. Cloud deployment is on the rise, but the efficacy of that deployment lies firmly in the hands of IT admins and managers, not cloud promoters.