Nice breakout by Gartner of the major myths when it comes to Cloud Computing to keep in mind.
Myth 1: Cloud Is Always About Money
IaaS prices fall, but SaaS applications typically don’t follow the same cost-cutting trends. For example, you know Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure will deliver price cuts every few months — similar to the classic Moore’s Law in the chip market. But SaaS applications like Salesforce.com, WorkDay and others don’t deliver such price cuts.
Myth 2: You Have to Be Cloud to Be Good
As IT organizations deploy next-generation applications, sometimes it just makes more sense to keep things on-premises — especially if your on-premises project involves existing hardware and infrastructure that requires no upgrading for new application deployments.
Myth 3: Cloud Should Be Used for Everything
Cloud is a tool for on-demand computing. But sometimes, that tool isn’t right for every job. For instance, hosted desktops aren’t always as responsive as local software running on PCs.
Myth 4: “The CEO Said So” Is a Cloud Strategy
Instead of simply doing “what the CEO wants,” cloud strategies must be tied to business goals. While your business may have a “cloud-first” mandate, don’t confuse that with an “everything cloud” mandate.
Myth 5: We Need One Cloud Strategy or Vendor
Instead of standardizing on one cloud application platform, sometimes best-of-breed, multi-vendor approaches make the most sense. That’s especially true as customers juggle DevOps projects with everyday applications like ERP, CRM, and email moving to the cloud.
Myth 6: Cloud Is Less Secure Than On-Premises Capabilities
Cloud computing is perceived as less secure. But most breaches involve on-premises data center environments. Generally speaking, major cloud providers have security budgets and information protection staffs that midsize and small companies can’t afford to employ.
Myth 7: Cloud Is Not for Mission-Critical Use
Many born-in-the-cloud businesses are pure cloud — which means their mission-critical apps are not running on-premises. And increasingly, companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are running their own enterprises on cloud-oriented configurations
Myth 8: Cloud = Data Center
In general, data center outsourcing, data center modernization and data center strategies are not synonymous with the cloud. Just because you outsource to a third-party data center, that doesn’t mean your compute resources will scale up or down on demand. In fact, you may own the services in an off-site data center, rather than “renting” compute power from the data center provider.
Myth 9: Clouds Are Complete Platforms
Don’t assume that “migrating to the cloud” means that the characteristics of the cloud are automatically inherited from lower levels (like IaaS). For instance, if you run an email application in the cloud (SaaS), it may not share the same architecture and underlying services provided by the same company’s IaaS offering.
Myth 10: Virtualization = Private Cloud
Virtualization is a commonly used enabling technology for cloud computing. However, it is not the only way to implement cloud computing. Even with virtualization in place, businesses may need user self-procurement, business unit chargeback and other capabilities that are far more common in the public cloud.
