The growth of Cloud computing has been one of the most rapidly-unfolding technological advances of the 21st Century. Where an individual or an organization’s computer processing and data storage capabilities were once limited by their on-site hardware, today they have access to almost unlimited off-site computing resources.
The spread of high-speed, high-capacity networks and the falling price of processing and storage capabilities have made the Cloud a commodity, accessible to everyone. From anywhere-anytime application access to fully automatic recovery from catastrophic systems failure, the Cloud’s potential use reaches as far as our imagination can go.
Not a ‘Set It and Forget It’ Deal
But while Cloud-based services can deliver great value to your organization, it needs to be remembered that the Cloud is not a “set it and forget it” proposition. The Cloud provider is a “new age” type of business, that is responsible for managing your information assets, “out-of-sight and out-of-mind”. But in the final analysis it is simply another key supplier for your organization. And as such, it is up to you to understand (and manage) the ins and outs of, and gaps in, the service they provide.
The MBA texts call this “supplier relationship management.” It means spelling out to the Cloud-based service provider what your exact expectations are of the service. It means that all aspects of your Cloud service are known, well documented and signed-off on. You need to know what you’re buying.
Know the Fine Print
Even with giant Cloud services such as Sungard, IBM, Microsoft, Google or Salesforce.com, you need to know the fine print in order to understand things like where and how your data is stored or encrypted, when the software or services will be updated, how much notice you will receive for maintenance outages or upgrades, and how redundancy will be handled within the cloud.
Any organization that uses Cloud-based services needs to understand where the lines of responsibility are drawn when problems arise, as they inevitably do. For example, your Cloud provider may tell you they schedule an outage once a year that lasts a weekend, during which they upgrade and expand their infrastructure.
You will need to know in advance whether you can accommodate the risk for your business shutting down for that weekend. Either way, it’s a cost your organization will have to bear.
A Cloud-based service may not always spell out these kinds of “gaps” in their service. And there may be other kinds of gaps, too, like not having support on hand when you really need them (e.g. during an off-hours test), or not processing uploads at a given time. Cloud service users need to understand that the onus is on them to identify and deal with the risks and costs of these service gaps.
