Some things that were unthinkable just a few years ago – like a near paperless office and offsite data storage — are almost commonplace today. Many business have migrated to the cloud. Data storage is very secure and almost immune to disasters, and furthermore, office space once designated for server storage can be used for other purposes.
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But cloud data storage is not as easy as the software vendors make it out to be. There are significant management issues, which is why managed hosting is so critical for your business.
1) Security Issues
Different organizations usually have different levels of data. For example, the bulk of law office data, in many cases, consists mainly of letters and legal forms. While such data needs to be protected, a leak would not be the end of the world. But this same office probably also has access to financial information and sensitive legal information. A breach in these areas could lead to a massive liability lawsuit.
Much of cloud management, like all other management, involves finding a balance between ironclad security and ease of use, because these two goals are often incompatible.
2) Specialized Knowledge
Many staff members simply lack the expertise or tools to effectively work in a cloud environment. This issue is even more acute if the organization has large amounts of data which must be secured almost in a lockdown environment. In other cases, business owners leap before they look. They sometimes require cloud migration without fully laying out the steps involved in such a process or clearly defining the goals of such a move.
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In these instances, management’s job is not to find a balance but to empower both staff and owners. Before the migration, IT engineers and other such professionals should advise ownership as to the proper migration elements, whether or not such advice is welcome. After the move, staff should be fully empowered to do their jobs without running afoul of cloud protocols.
3) Vendor Issues
All these problems often overlap. In terms of data security, third-party vendors are responsible for between a third and two-thirds of such instances. Domino’s and Home Depot both pointed to third-party vendors in the wakes of their high-profile data breaches. Such a strategy may be successful in court, but customers are usually less forgiving, and they will take their business elsewhere if they believe that a company does not adequately vet the vendors that it trusts.
“Lock-in” is another common issue. Some vendors intentionally make it almost impossible to separate from a particular service or product, typically because the inner workings of such software programs are closely-guarded secrets.
IT must do more than IT. Proper vendor screening means not only assessing the technical capacity of the product, but also the reliability of the company that sells it. Furthermore, the IT department must assume that no vendor relationship will last forever, and for whatever reason, one or both parties will eventually move on. What will happen then? This question needs to be addressed now, and not later.
Cloud migration holds significant advantages for your business, but poor management can adversely affect the results. 🙂
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