The Network is the Problem: Barriers to cloud adoption
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Reg Research How can cloud computing be a sensible option when it makes you so dependent on the network, and often even the public internet? If the comms slow down, the user experience takes a dive. Lose the link completely, and you’re stuffed.
We have been hearing such questions and objections from nay-sayers ever since commercial hosted application services have been available. How legitimate are the concerns?
After all, many of us today rely on wide area comms and the internet for remote access and mobile computing, and that seems to work OK.
So what’s the difference? Well the latest survey of Reg readers conducted by Freeform Dynamics suggests that there really is a difference.
The needs and expectations of remote users have largely evolved around dodgy low-speed connections, and application architectures are often designed to handle intermittent periods of offline working.
An office worker relying on a pure browser-based interface to a hosted SaaS application is quite a different matter – the comms in that context become genuinely critical.
If you want to read more about this, and also see what fellow eaders think of the performance and reliability of different types of network services and service providers, then download the report put together by Freeform’s charts-meister Andrew Buss.
Click here to get your copy, it's free.
COMMENTS
God God! Common sense reasoning!
"How can cloud computing be a sensible option when it makes you so dependent on the network, and often even the public internet? If the comms slow down, the user experience takes a dive. Lose the link completely, and you’re stuffed."
Justin Fielder, CTO, Easynet Global Services
It comes as little surprise that The Register’s research into cloud adoption confirmed that in a real-life scenario connectivity could act as a barrier to the successful deployment of cloud computing technologies. In fact, in our recent survey of 800 CIOs across Europe, 43% said they would need to update their network if they were to move to the Cloud. However – this left a worrying 57% who were not considering the impact the Cloud could have on their network.
The Cloud offers the potential to greatly enhance the way in which organisations do business. The levels of efficiency and flexibility it offers are unbelievable, but only when the business has a robust, reliable network to transport data from the source to a user. The number of CIOs currently overlooking the importance of the network is alarming, but also provides a logical reason for the number of faltering Cloud deployments. To give you a parallel example, a retailer with a faulty supply chain is about as much use as a Cloud infrastructure with an out-dated, unreliable network – both have delivery issues.
Putting all your applications into the Cloud is one thing, but if the network is not up to scratch then the real benefits of the Cloud will never materialise, as end users won’t be able to access the systems, information or data. And if the users cannot benefit from the convenience and flexibility of the Cloud, the business will fail to see the benefits that it expects too.
The cloud blows with the wind (of change)
From my experience when we went to outsourced network maintenance, I would suggest that the levels of user satisfaction are likely to PLUMMET with cloud computing. Outsourcing companies are (more often than not) not really aware of user uptime requirements. It's bad enough when you are on the LAN with the support guys near enough to kick, but when they are miles away.........
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