Cloud computing migration issues: What you need to know
December 30th, 2009
In an industry well-known for “the-year-of” hype around new technologies, many see the cloud computing buzz as an extension of previous “year-of” technologies, such as application service providers, software as a service (SaaS), and utility computing. In this case, the hype may be true. In an InformationWeek Analytics survey, 46% of companies surveyed say they’ll use or are likely to use cloud CPU, storage, or other infrastructure services; this is up from 31% just one year ago.
The basic questions is: What the cloud is and what benefits it offers clients; what challenges and obstacles clients might have to overcome to tap into the cloud; and how their management of IT must change to secure and control their new cloud-driven infrastructure. When you migrate a client to the cloud, the issues you’ll face fall into the following overall categories.
Security
Security is an obvious threshold question; if the cloud is not secure, enterprises won’t consider migrating their sensitive data to it, and the conversation is over. As Salesforce.com has proven, external SaaS providers can provide a level of security that will satisfy most customers. Migrating sales leads and prospect data is, however, quite different from Read the rest of this entry »
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