Cloud Computing and IT Solutions: Challenges

Public cloud computing, offered by companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud with their provisioning of resources like data and storage on demand, in real-time has undoubtedly revolutionized the industry in several ways. Cloud computing services are certainly more efficient and cheaper for IT companies to store and process data. However, cloud computing has many challenges. Although there are several benefits of cloud services, cost, security, and performance are some of the major concerns for companies using cloud.

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Due to lack of visibility into cloud costs (a direct comparison of all types of cloud services) and the complexity of cloud pricing models, it is hard for IT companies to make the best, most economic decision for using cloud services. Extreme care and alertness are needed in Cloud computing management otherwise companies end up paying more to the cloud providers than how much of service they use. Careful management of cloud services includes making crisp decisions about when to use which cloud service and for what duration. It is important for IT companies, therefore, to choose the right cloud pricing model from the variety available in the market. For instance, spot instances, pay-as-you-go, and reserved instances. Optimizing their cloud usage by using cloud monitoring tools and services can help IT solution providers to identify and eliminate waste for them.

Cyber-attacks are on the rise and the more businesses become digital the more is the threat to data security. IT solution providers that offer healthcare or financial services may need to comply with additional security and compliance regulations. There have been several instances of PI data being compromised in cloud-based healthcare companies. Defining roles for access to health data is crucial but with thousands of employees on board, working on several levels, it is hard for even the most experienced admins to secure data from hundreds of other employees while they are granted access to a chosen few. Cloud computing providers offer a variety of security features and services, but it is still important for IT solution providers to take steps to protect their data and applications by carefully defining the roles and grant of access to data in accordance with it. This requires continuous review of the company’s security policies and procedures and using encryption to protect sensitive data. Increasing security and resilience budget is imperative because as companies are migrating to the cloud, they are exposed to a new range of cyber security threats.

Moreover, it is said that the biggest barriers to the adoption of emerging cloud technologies even ahead of implementation costs and security risks is the dearth of qualified talent. The increased pace of IT industry’s demands of cloud services has created a need for talent that can build and maintain these services. As the market is still looking for highly skilled cloud experts. The onus falls on the companies to launch frequent training sessions for their employees and make sure they have the skills and expertise necessary to deploy cloud-based IT solutions. IT Companies are adopting new and innovative internal training programs such as coding boot camps or creating training universities. This must be scaled up.

Apart from these above-mentioned challenges, there is a lot of risk involved in the performance and reliability of cloud services. Often there is the possibility of outages or performance degradation due to high traffic. If IT solution-oriented companies are using a combination of these services, managing multiple cloud environments can be complex and challenging.

In addition to these general challenges, IT solution providers based on cloud computing may also face specific challenges depending on their industry and the types of IT solutions they offer. Despite the challenges, cloud computing has taken the world by storm. By carefully managing the challenges and taking advantage of the benefits, IT solution providers can use cloud computing to improve their operations and services, and to grow their businesses.

Having a well-defined cloud migration plan, being clear about the needs of the company, meeting all security challenges, and investing in the employee’s training in the cloud are some ways IT companies can optimize their use of cloud services.