Moving to Cloud Computing - Concerns

Many organizations are currently using or seriously considering on adopting Cloud Computing as part of their infrastructure. The major advantages of cloud such as its scalability, rapid deployment and cost savings are attracting more customers from enterprise as well as in the SMB segment.

There are few concerns of Cloud Computing circling around the industry that the potential customers need to be aware of before making a business decision. This article discusses those concerns briefly:

• Availability – Any possible service interruption from the provider could severely impact the business. Users of Gmail for business have experienced this twice this year on March and September 09 for couple of hours. So know your cloud provider and their SLAs well before moving your business critical applications to cloud.
• Security – This is a huge concern for many in the IT industry considering the dynamic nature of the cloud. The area of concerns lies around the following :
o Confidentiality – Who has access to your data and application in the Cloud?
o Compliance - Where do your data and applications stored in the cloud?
o Liability – Who is liable in case of a security breach in your cloud infrastructure?
o E-discovery - Are the data and application immediately retrievable in case of a disaster at one data center?
o Perimeter/Host security – What type of security is implemented by the cloud provider on traditional DoS and other type of malicious attacks launched against the applications?

To overcome these concerns, there are best practices and solutions being developed by various vendors and non-profits in the Cloud Computing arena. They key one to be noted is Cloud Security Alliance.

HP, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft recently joined Cloud Computing Consortium to address the concerns. The article on this can be found here.

There are interesting articles in this area and few of them are listed below:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4614.html
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/gartner-seven-cloud-computing-security-risks-853
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/11/09/235782/Top-five-cloud-computing-security-issues.htm