Challenges in Cloud Computing

No longer is the idea of being serverless or accessing remote servers a figment of fiction. Today, most businesses have a cloud-first strategy to scale faster and showcase high-performance. 

The total revenue generated by the cloud computing market is $400 billion in 2021 alone. With the onset of the Pandemic, most companies have increased the budget for cloud services. 

In 2021, 56% of the companies were using PaaS cloud services. These numbers show how businesses have embraced digital transformation. However, with every responsibility comes a considerable challenge. Cloud computing services are no different. 

Here, we will take you through the recent cloud computing challenges you may face with adopting cloud computing and how you can overcome them. 

What Are the Challenges of Cloud Computing?

The first step towards a cloud-first strategy is identifying cloud computing challenges and solutions. We will take you through the top difficulties you are likely to face. 

1. Data Security and Privacy

When you move your applications and data to the cloud, privacy and cloud security are your two biggest concerns. The data you store in the cloud is private and crucial to your business. Vulnerability and data breaches can pull your business down. Eventually, you may lose out on revenue and profits, which is why this proves to be one of the biggest challenges in adopting cloud computing. 

While the cloud service provider may offer multiple control points for better security, you may have to identify ways to encrypt and secure the data. You should include two-factor authentication, role-based control, and data encryption to facilitate security.

2. Cost Management

We have heard of the numerous ways cloud computing can budget your business overhead. However, if you are not careful, you might lose many of your profits in managing and maintaining the cloud infrastructure.

The pay-as-you-go model does define the quantities and costs for the business. However, when you begin scaling your business, you may notice that you may not be able to determine the exact resources you need. This can ramp up the costs for you.

You may want to deduce the data periodically, read into insights, and make the right decisions to manage this. 

3. Lack of Knowledge and Expertise

When you move to the cloud, it should be responsible and managed. However, most businesses lack the competency and knowledge needed to make a move. Organizations keep expanding the workloads sent to the cloud, making managing and using the tools slightly tricky.

At the same time, they need to ensure that the cloud integration between the infrastructure and their legacy systems is intact. This calls for someone who is a cloud champion. However, adding new talent comes with issues like adding costs.

That is why many companies are looking at cost-efficient DevOps tools that can help identify and manage the workloads to overcome the biggest challenges in adopting cloud computing

4. Control or Governance

IT policies and regulations are necessary when implementing the infrastructure for your business. You need to have a set of procedures in place for implementation. However, with cloud solutions, you are not in complete control of the deployment or operations of the digital assets.

As a result, the IT team is challenged with compliance risks and managing quality data. To avoid these cloud issues and better governance, IT teams should collaborate with cloud service providers to identify best implementation practices. 

5. Compliance

Data compliances are an essential aspect when you are thinking cloud-first. For example, you should ensure that your cloud solutions are HIPAA compliant when in the healthcare domain. Similarly, the data should be SOX compliant if you are in the retail industry. 

These compliances play a pivotal role in securing and managing the data. When building the cloud strategy, you should ensure you have determined the data standards and how you will store them. 

It would help if you collaborated with responsible vendors and had undergone a compliance check.

6. Multiple Cloud Management

Imagine handling different types of cloud computing deployment models and services simultaneously. If you have not identified the best methods, this can be resource-consuming and cost-inefficient for your business.

With the rise in multi-cloud scenarios and the need to handle both private and public clouds, it has become impertinent for businesses to identify

• How do they want to store the data?
• Which model will be most efficient for them?

It is also essential to look at data security and compliance before opting for the multi-cloud solution. 

7. Migration

Cloud Migration is when you move your legacy systems to the cloud. This comes with cloud migration challenges. The number one issue is data migration. Your legacy systems have data on the premise stored in a particular format.

You will need to move it to one of the cloud servers and access them via the Internet. It will require expert resources and the budget to make a move efficiently. 

A well-defined plan and determining the best practices can help you make a move efficiently. Troubleshoot before you deploy so that you can create frictionless experiences and avoid cloud computing failures.

8. Performance Challenges

When you are dependent on cloud infrastructure and network servers to access your software, applications, and data, you may experience limited availability, network latency, and processing delays. This could hinder user experience and cause significant performance obstructions. 

You should use reports and cloud monitoring tools to analyse and detect any data issues that can occur. When implementing a hybrid cloud, you should ensure that your data is appropriately managed and monitored. It is equally important to adhere to compliances when collecting cloud data.

Lastly, you should design the cloud data keeping the latency and availability issues in mind to overcome the challenges of cloud computing.

9. Service Provider Reliability

One of the biggest challenges you may face when adopting a cloud-first strategy is vendor reliability. It is possible that the vendor does not adhere to compliances or offer cloud security. This could put your data and applications at risk.

If there is a vendor lock-in period, you cannot move out before the period ends without losing your money. It can also put your profits and revenue at risk.

It is essential to research your vendors and analyse their performance before partnering with them for your cloud requirements. 

Conclusion

A defined plan and customized design can make moving to the cloud quickly. Determining the possible challenges and having a plan to overcome them can help you prevent the obstructions and reduce the difficulties.

Always have a plan for compliance and governance to control data security and privacy. Make sure you plan for cost-efficient usage so that you can reduce overhead. Choose a cloud service provider after thorough research. It would help if you had an expert vendor who could offer requisite support to bolster your cloud strategy.