As fears of security, stability and migrations problems in cloud computing, Amazon took the time at the recent 5th Annual International Cloud Computing Conference and Expo. Amazon Wes Services (AWS) a leader in the cloud computing space is stepping up to ease the mind of not only Chicago based cloud customers but cloud customers across the board.
Their message was clear and concise and consisted of demystifying the following five concerns:
1. The Cloud is Not Reliable: Amazon began this argument by acknowledging that CIO's are on the hook for application reliability and data security. AWS stated they constructed their core cloud architecture with 11 9's of reliability and the ability to encrypt data while at rest on their servers or in motion. AWS emphasized that they customers owns the data while AWS will ensure reliability standards which are greater than what contemporary CIO's can build out with current budget cut and shifting resource allocations.
2. Privacy and Security Have Not Yet Scaled: AWS addressed this concern by explaining security is an end to end process that needs to be fit into all layers of the stack. It's a new paradigm of computing but that doesn't mean that it is any less secure in fact in many cases more security can be added to the clients cloud once again because they can purchase better and more robust security features than they could with their own cap-ex.
I've written on the topic of security extensively and I still remember the first lesson I learned in IT - "if someone really wants to get in, they will. So you have to be smarter." that holds true weather it is cloud computing or in-house.
3. I Can Get All the Benefits of Cloud Computing by Building it Myself - In-House: Um, I can even believe this was a myth which AWS felt they needed to address. Nonetheless, AWS has a much wider view of the landscape and they have heard from businesses and concluded that there is a big misnomer when it comes to the phrase "Private Clouds".
The meat of the matter is this: cap-ex will be eliminated via a cloud provider and costs shift to operations where the finance people are happy. Company real-estate shrinks as the need for under utilized space, gear, bandwidth, power, back-up and so on now shifts to the cloud provider who know how to manage those aspects far better than an in-house solution. Gartner believes that only 10% of in-house data center capacity is currently being used.
4. If I Can't Move Everything at Once the Cloud isn't for us: AWS stated that moving everything at once is unrealistic and ill advised. They continued by reiterating a Best Practice approach to IT whereby you try a few application until you gain the comfort and confidence and then create the migration path. I would to add that not every application is going to be right for the cloud and an all-or-none attitude has no place in the cloud.
5. Cost is the Biggest Driver of Cloud Adoption: AWS certainly sells on cost savings but their are equal if not more important issues to think about. Time to market to new ideas is huge since you can focus resources on engineering and not IT.
AWS's address of these issues couldn't come at a better time. The hype machine was starting to overheat and rumors of negative cloud implementations were begining to surface. Cloud Computing has a place in the enterprise and just like any other decision made make sure the analysis is done, test, trial, then ask the experts to assist with a migration.
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