Six possible reasons not to transition to the cloud.
I was reading this zdnet.net article, that discussed important points to consider before moving to the cloud. I felt like they missed a couple of points. Here is my list.
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Training cost - When I used to manage Oracle Maintenance Wizard product, I had opportunities to engage with various C-Level executives. One topic that used come up was why they didn’t patch their Oracle E-Business suite as often as they should. One take away from those conversations was the cost of re-training employees on changes to E-Business UI. Often when Oracle releases Ebiz patches, new features were introduced. Most of their end users followed a predefined pattern of behavior. If a single input box moved or named changed, people used to get frustrated or worse make data entry mistakes. Any changes to core user systems require training and possible downtime for teams in the organization.
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Organization Skillset - I often talk about core competencies with my project managers and how they are an important component of organizational effectiveness. Who in the organization is going to manage the transition to the cloud? Who has the skill set to develop and maintain applications in the cloud? What about the changes to your DevOps processes? Both your engineering and business processes will need changes.
The other areas discussed in the article are:
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Legacy entanglements - Many organizations have legacy applications cannot be moved to the cloud.
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Cloud sticker shock - Your long term data management costs may go down, but the upfront cost can be high.
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Security - There have been many stories in the news of data exposure in the cloud. Your company’s risk posture will change and new security policies need to be developed.
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Need for speed - Moving to the cloud doesn’t mean immediate data transmission efficiency. Large data-intensive applications are going to be faster when they physically closer source of data.