Do we really need the cloud? I appreciate the irony in my opening statement, as I write this from my living room using office365. Obviously, the benefit of being constantly connected is evident, and it seems priceless; however, there is a cost to relying on the cloud, and there is a lot to consider when you decide whether to make the switch.
Working for a 4-year young start-up”ish” business, we’ve adopted the “digital era” with open arms and are 100% cloud native and IaaS/ Saas based. I don’t think there’s much of an argument as to why we would build a Data Centre, but for enterprise businesses with legacy systems, surely the cost of maintaining infrastructure outweighs that of upgrading applications and then migrating?
Looking at the data from Microsoft and Azure, it would suggest that switching to the cloud is the best option, and it often makes references to being the most cost efficient. On the contrary, if we look at the popular post by Greg Deckler “Cloud vs. On-Premises – Hard Dollar Cost”, we can see that Azure works out more expensive when comparing the cost of servers (his calculation and working are stated in the blog here). Greg goes on to end his blog as I opened; wondering whether it is worth the cost of migrating to the cloud.
Personally, I think it is. Having worked for a variety of companies with different levels of technology and infrastructure, I like the freedom that cloud-based apps give me. The ability to access my files while sitting on a beach in Bali proved useful (much to my girlfriend’s annoyance) and I couldn’t imagine life without cloud connectivity.
What’s your thought? Has cloud transformed the way you work? Or are you against the hype and believe people have “their heads in the cloud”.
