CLOUD COMPUTING: THINGS BUSINESSES NEED TO KNOW

Today, when cloud computing plays an important role in the operations of more than 90% of businesses globally, it is surprising that many startups and technology-focused small and medium-sized companies do not take advantage of cloud computing.

According to research, up to 90% of startups fail and only 40% of startups make a profit. Many startups are born from cloud computing – born in the cloud. This is mainly because cloud computing helps startups save a lot of costs when using cloud services instead of having to invest in their own IT infrastructure. In addition, cloud computing also brings flexibility and the ability to expand resources whenever the business needs to use them.

However, many startups and small and medium-sized enterprises make mistakes when applying cloud computing to their business operations. Many companies do not even know that they have made these mistakes.

 

In 2018, tech giant Adobe lost $80,000 a day in cloud costs on Microsoft Azure due to a bug by its development team – which was only discovered more than a week later. Pinterest also overspent its cloud budget on AWS by $20 million in 2018 due to an unexpected spike in traffic.

These are just two examples of many cases where a small oversight in cloud computing strategy can have a major impact on a business’s finances and growth potential.

This happens even to established companies like Adobe and Pinterest – tech giants. And how likely is it that your business will make similar mistakes when using cloud computing? It’s very likely, but it can also create a lot of business opportunities for you if you avoid some of the following mistakes:

1. No specific cloud computing strategy:

Having a good and specific cloud computing strategy is the key to success when applying cloud computing in business operations. Many startups get so caught up in the web when implementing applications or solutions that they forget to evaluate the role of cloud computing for their company.

According to  Gartner , cloud computing strategy plays a central role when an organization wants to participate in this game. Many startups also do not include other departments unrelated to the business when building their strategy, and they end up making wrong decisions. Many times, businesses use cloud computing without knowing its role in their organization. This can reduce the benefits that businesses receive from using cloud computing.

How to fix:

Always try to involve all departments within the company when coming up with cloud computing strategies.

Don’t forget to have a backup plan in your strategy, things don’t always go as we expect.

It’s never too late to implement a cloud computing strategy for your business.

It’s best to use your own team to execute your strategy rather than relying on outsourced experts.

2. Choosing the wrong cloud computing service provider:

Each cloud computing service provider has a different business model and therefore offers different services. Most companies, especially startups, do not do enough research to see what is and is not suitable for them. For example, when looking for cloud infrastructure providers, businesses do not take the necessary steps to find the right provider that can help achieve their ultimate goals.

This can be a problem, especially when the cloud provider has a complex billing process and does not have a stable, robust platform to serve the business’s resource upgrading needs as needed.

How to fix:

Conduct due diligence before selecting a cloud provider. It may be a good idea to hire an outside expert to conduct the due diligence if your business does not have someone to do it for you.

Choose a supplier based on your business needs, not its popularity.

Try out different cloud service providers before making a decision.

3. Not taking a security-first approach:

Data security is one of the main concerns when businesses adopt cloud computing. Although cloud computing has a very complex security architecture, it is important for businesses to have a strategy to control and handle the security of their data on the cloud. Many businesses have lacked a security-first approach when integrating cloud computing into their workflow.

According to statistics, in 2020, 49% of businesses had not encrypted their databases, while 33.3% of businesses reported that cloud security was the biggest obstacle to cloud computing adoption.

Data breaches are costly and can kill a business’s ability to scale. In 2020, $1.52 million was lost due to data breaches, up slightly from $1.42 million in 2019.

Therefore, it is important for businesses to lay the foundation to keep cloud security at the forefront.

How to fix:

The best solution to ensure your business has the data security it deserves is to consider all  safety measures –  cloud data security.

Investigate how the cloud provider handles legal compliance and the security measures they have in place.

4. Not performing business analysis:

Many small and medium-sized businesses and startups fail to understand their needs by asking the question: what benefits will my organization receive from using cloud computing? It doesn’t matter if you are using cloud computing to increase the performance of an application and reduce operating costs or using cloud computing to increase operational productivity. You should try to answer this question, not just answer it but document it as a guide in making decisions.

Otherwise, you’ll jump right into choosing a cloud provider without analyzing your business goals, and end up with an expensive mess.

How to fix:

Make data-driven decisions and use your business goals as your guide.

5. Jump into cloud computing:

Jumping headfirst into cloud computing is a trap that many businesses fall into when moving their data to the cloud, especially for some startups and businesses with very complex solutions or applications, running tens of millions of lines of code.

Moving all application components to the cloud at once can cause maintenance issues or result in poor performance.

How to fix:

Move your business applications to the cloud in phases.

6. Ignoring the basic requirements:

Basic requirements such as bandwidth, CPU performance, storage technology… Many startups and small and medium-sized enterprises tend to ignore the importance of these factors. Especially bandwidth, if the bandwidth is high and stable, it will help to maximize the use of cloud computing, otherwise it will reduce the efficiency of the business.

How to fix:

Find a reliable internet service provider that has a backup plan in case of downtime.

7. Being too optimistic to design for failure:

Cloud computing is also hardware-based and like traditional IT infrastructure, it sometimes fails. Design for failures and they won’t.

How to fix:

Implement a failure-tolerant cloud architecture: allowing the system to continue operating normally without interruption when one or more components in the system fail.

Find a cloud service provider with a reliable data recovery mechanism.

8. No growth forecast:

This is a mistake that most businesses make, even those that have been around for a long time and are stable. As the Pinterest case above illustrates, they lost $20 million on cloud infrastructure because they didn’t forecast their growth well.

How to fix:

Always keep an eye on your business numbers and look for trends that could lead to changes in your cloud computing needs.

Find a cloud service provider that can scale with your business growth.

In general, businesses can easily avoid most of the above mistakes and can save a lot of operating costs. Have a specific “cloud” plan and find a reliable cloud service provider partner to accompany you.