Cloud Computing is one of the latest trends in application deployment and web integration, which not only reduces costs but also gives many functionalities. But What are the downsides of using it?
In the Article 6 Major Benefits of Cloud Computing, we come to know that there are many advantages of using Cloud Computing not only its affordable but also managing the cloud is easier than having an on-premise data centre. But everywhere aspects have its disadvantages also and the cloud also has its downsides, which we need to consider while migrating to the cloud. Knowing them before and taking necessary actions will give the full potential of using Cloud Computing.
Challenges and Risks in Cloud Computing.
Challenges refer to the things which are hard to do in the cloud or take much effort to implement. Let's see the challenges mostly faced during cloud migration and also the solution to each challenge. Risks are the things which we will face while using Cloud computing, This can be organisation-specific and also Cloud specific.
1. Loss of Privacy And Security.
Migrating to the cloud means moving all our data to the cloud database, which not only gives us more flexibility but also gives our business information to the cloud providers which is nothing but the loss of privacy of the company's information. Before migration, we will take care of our data but we don't know much about the implementation and methodologies which the cloud service providers are using to protect our data from external data losses and stealing of information. In an on-premise data centre, we deploy the information in different locations, and hacking or stealing information is relatively hard it has only a gateway to inter, but in the case of the cloud, there are multiple ways of doing it. But the cloud takes more Security measures than on-premise but there is also always a constant fear of losing data or losing privacy.
The solution for this is deploying information that is not confidential and the rest of the information in private clouds which will be more secure and can be monitored by the organization. In the case of security, there needs to be proper network management, like Network access lists, using VPNs, etc.
2. Cost Management
One of the major reasons for moving to the cloud is to reduce expenses, but if there is no proper cloud management you might get bills much higher than your on-premise data centre. There are many reasons for this one of them is not proper monitoring of the resources used in the cloud. For example, if any instances are not being used then we need to terminate the instances, resources that are not being used need to monitor and terminated, or else it unnecessarily increases the bill.
The only solution to this is to know how many resources are needed before migrating to the cloud and implementing proper monitoring methods on the instances. The cloud allows us to deploy as many instances as we want but we need to use them efficiently. Most of the cloud services provide also provide many services for monitoring the bills.
3. Downtime and Geographical Dependencies.
Not only does on-premise have downtime, but cloud platforms also have downtime. Latency and coverage are also a challenge in migration. When the users of the application are from different geographical locations There might be latency and performance issues. One major issue of having different geographical users are when we deploy our application in different regions some services might not be available in other regions, so we need to take care of this also.
Even the Major Cloud Service Providers (CSP) like AWS, Azure, and GCP have downtimes and we can't do anything about it, but we can solve the issues of geographical dependency by the proper deployment of applications in different regions, most of the cloud also provide features to and CSP are also working on having at least of 3 datacenters in one region.
4. Lack of Knowledge and Expertise.
As this technology is being used and getting popular in recent days there are not many people who have complete knowledge of the working of the cloud and have expertise in it. So if we are migrating to the cloud then we need to hire people who have good knowledge of how to maintain the cloud. That's the reason why cloud computing Architect is a highly paid job as they are very less people who excelled in this field. Employees who are not habituated to Cloud will also face problems in the upcoming days as they need to know how it works and constantly updated themselves to learn new things.
One solution to overcome this challenge is to train the staff by doing workshops etc.
5. Data Loss, Corruption, and Compromising of Confidential Data.
When we are migrating to the cloud there are large amounts of data that need to be transferred to the cloud's database which is a hell of a tedious task and the major reason why many fear doing so. Companies and organizations have tremendous amounts of data in terabytes etc. Transferring this data may take weeks and in some cases, months and the work doesn't end here, After the transfer, it might take weeks to crosscheck whether all the data is correct or not. We also need to maintain backups of the data, There can be chances of data loss and corruption of data.
Cloud Services Providers take special care in times of cloud migrations, We also need to hire people who can migrate to the cloud without any data loss, etc. Data loss can be solved by using backups, And no data should be migrated before having its backup but using we need to again manage the backup servers.
6. Complex Cloud Architecture.
Cloud is a complex technology there are many terminologies and background knowledge required before moving to the cloud, There are different types of clouds Private, public, hybrid, etc. We need to know what type of configurations are required before migrating which is a complex task and can take days to get complete information about this. One of the important questions we need to ask is Do we really need to Migrate to the cloud?. And most of the organizations that fail to answer this and migrate to the cloud without information can have serious business issues.
We need to Audit the business infrastructure before migrations and find the needs and benefits. We need to figure out what type of cloud to use, what types of services are needed for the business, and what type of network and infrastructure configurations are required.
What we should learn from this?
Every Technology has its own advantages and disadvantages but it doesn't mean we need to stop using it or start using it. We need to be aware of why we need to use it and why we shouldn't use it. If we want to enjoy some functionalities then we need to work on things to achieve them. Moreover, the Era of cloud computing just started and there will be more functionalities and advantages which might be added in the future.
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Cloud_Computing