Common Cloud Computing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

18 Sep Common Cloud Computing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Posted at 07:00h in Cloud Computing by Simon Spencer

The power of cloud computing cannot be overstated. With lots of businesses looking towards the cloud as the future of the business world, cloud-based infrastructure is an important consideration for any business to make.

However, failing to set your cloud infrastructure up correctly can lead to many issues in the future. Your infrastructure is the backbone of your organisation, and so many problems can arise when mistakes are made in your implementation.

By knowing these problems, you can avoid issues in the future and make sure that you have success with your cloud setup. In this article, we’re going to go over some of the top mistakes that businesses make in their cloud implementations, so you can avoid making the same mistakes.

Mistake 1: Neglecting Security Measures in Cloud Computing

Cloud security is a vital part of any setup. It can be easy to assume that you’re simply covered by your cloud provider when it comes to security — but that’s far from the case.

Cloud providers work on a ‘shared responsibility’ model, which means that the different security responsibilities fall upon different parties. For example, your cloud provider will protect and maintain the physical servers, but the onus is on your organisation to handle client-side security.

Failing to consider this could lead to catastrophe in the long run. This is why investing time and resources into good security — such as multi-factor authentication, security monitoring, and regular audits — is vital to ensuring that your organisation’s security posture isn’t left vulnerable.

Mistake 2: Ignoring Cost Management in Cloud Computing

Like anything, the cloud does have costs that you’ll need to consider. While being far cheaper than the other alternatives, these costs are still a part of your organisation’s expenditure — and failing to ensure that they’re managed properly can lead to costs spiralling out of control.

The best cost management consideration is utilising a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model — which will only charge you for the resources that you use. This means that you’ll only ever be charged for what you use, and nothing more. While this is usually more expensive as a base rate, the savings that you can make by doing so will usually outweigh this extra cost.

By monitoring your organisation’s costs, you can easily ensure that costs don’t spiral out of control. Doing this is vital, as it’ll help you strategise for the future and make data-driven decisions.

Mistake 3: Overlooking Data Backup and Recovery in Cloud Computing

Data backup and recovery are simply vital. Data loss can be catastrophic for your organisation, and ensuring that you’re protected can be the difference between recovering effectively and not — especially in the cloud environment, where data recovery could be incredibly difficult to undergo.

There are many different types of data recovery options available — from cloud-based backups and offsite storage to more thorough disaster recovery plans, making sure that all of the options that you have are heavily considered is vital.

By developing your organisation’s data recovery strategy and ensuring that it’s both stringent and can be relied upon in a dire situation, you’ll further ensure that your cloud setup doesn’t suffer massive blows.

Mistake 4: Lacking a Continuous Improvement Strategy in Cloud Computing

Stratification is important for any part of your business, and this includes cloud computing. The cloud is constantly evolving, as are the needs of your organisation — and failing to adapt could leave your organisation falling behind the competition.

By ensuring to strategise and advance both the technology used and your business’ implementation of said technology, you’ll be able to achieve growth in the long term while also accommodating that growth with the technological resources that would be required.

Establishing a culture of constant innovation will help your organisation here — the aim is to stay ahead of the curve and not fall behind the times, and always striving to push ahead can make a massive difference. Education is also vital, as staying knowledgeable about current trends and happenings in the industry will let you make educated decisions.

Mistake 5: Inadequate Performance Monitoring in Cloud Computing

Ensuring that your cloud setup is working properly and performing well is essential to having a successful cloud setup — which is why ensuring that you’re monitoring your cloud setup’s performance is vital.

Without monitoring and keeping your cloud implementation at peak performance, your whole business will slow down — from simple day-to-day tasks to major business operations and customer experience. Slipping up on this could cause major delays and have lots of consequences for your business, so being on top of it is vital.

Real-time monitoring will allow you to keep track of your cloud setup’s performance, as well as give you a quick alert that something is not how it should be — meaning that you can fix it very quickly. Setting up these alerts and monitoring regularly will help you work out exactly what capacity you need and boost your resources if you need to.

By proactively planning the resources allocated to your cloud implementation, you can ensure that there is enough capacity for the systems that you’re running while also not overspending on capacity where you don’t need to — leading to more long-term cost benefits for your organisation.

How We Can Help

The cloud is an important part of modern business, and knowing how to ensure success from your cloud setup is part of this. By educating yourself on the issues that you could face within your own cloud implementation, you can easily prepare and ensure that your organisation doesn’t face problems down the road.

These mistakes are all very common, and can be very easy to make — but ensuring that you don’t make them can make a huge difference in the future.

If you’re looking to get started with the cloud, or need a helping hand, reach out to us now. Our experts are here to help throughout the whole process and will be able to ensure that your cloud infrastructure is set up optimally.