Cloud… The name recalls the images of a shadowy fog that is always out of reach. The reality of cloud computing can only seem mysterious. Before entering into this nebulous border in IT, it is important to separate the hype from reality.

In assessing these assumptions related to the cloud, researchers focused specifically on public clouds and made a simple question: Fact or Fiction?

Fiction – But Maybe Not For Long

While migration to the cloud is not yet universal, there is no doubt that it is a wonderful trend that will only grow with increase of its adoption and importance. According to a 2011 survey of Advanced Micro Devices, approximately 37% of companies are already using cloud. And 24% of respondents to the survey in 2011, among data center managers, retailers and engineers, said they have plans to follow or implement a cloud computing in the next 18 months. According to a recent IDC report, worldwide revenue from IT services in public clouds exceeded $ 21.5 billion in 2010 and projected to reach $ 72.9 billion in 2015.

Regardless of which one is more accurate, it is clear that the cloud market is growing – and is much higher than suggested the news a year ago.

Why The Problems And Delays?

Although providers have improved data security and privacy considerably since the beginning, persistent concerns over access to proprietary data, location and transfer continue to limit distributed adoption. The flexibility of the system in general is another concern with public clouds. Additionally, blackouts in various cloud providers are probably reason enough to discourage some businesses that depend on the availability of fixed network for survival.

Switching To Cloud Means That You No Longer Have To Worry About Downtime..

Fiction  

If your company switches to an external cloud provider, the risk of a blackout is simply transferred to their data center provider. The only change is the control. In its own data center, you control the infrastructure and availability of your network and data. This control, of course, brings many problems of ownership and responsibility with it that may have been a factor in the shift to cloud first. The control means responsibility, and the burden of responsibility for ensuring network availability is something that some IT managers prefer not to be responsible.

If your organization chooses private cloud, you can gain a measure of fault protection for a single server, but the damage caused by a total blackout in the data center continues to be destructive. To maintain a robust infrastructure, power and cooling, it is critical to support a private cloud infrastructure. The management and monitoring of data center becomes even more critical.

Finally, it is important to remember that simply switching to cloud does not eliminate the concern about downtime or damage that may cause a blackout to your business. Customers remember the  network failure – not the fact that the failure was the fault of your cloud provider.

Cloud Hosting Solutions Always Reduces Costs And Workload

Fiction

This is a common argument for the adoption of cloud, but depending on the applications you plan to support with the cloud, this may or may not be true. At least in the short term, it is likely that a transition to cloud is very laborious.

Businesses that switch to this type of work do so to meet a specific need and leverage resources previously unavailable (especially dedicated servers) that, through the cloud, are available on demand.

But cloud services adapted to the specific needs of your business require a transfer of culture that can be difficult to manage. Even when the setting is appropriate, classifying what can and can not be changed for cloud is a process that takes time. The increased operational efficiency can be light at the end of the tunnel, but it is a short tunnel.

In terms of costs, cloud customers save money only when performing on specific cloud platforms. On the other hand, the report says that maintaining a private data center continues to have the best cost benefit.