The hidden cost of cloud?

In a new paper, Symantec have published some interesting points on the state of cloud computing, and some issues that companies may not have considered.

Even if you haven’t yet widely deployed cloud services within your organisation, have you ever come across ‘rogue cloud deployments’, where employees use cloud services without organisational oversight by consulting the IT department first.

Symantec give the example of a sales manager using Salesforce.com, or marketing staff using Dropbox to share marketing materials with an outside vendor. Formalising processes, and having IT departments encourage discussion of moving to cloud services will go a great way to mitigate this.

Using cloud storage is another important, as often businesses pay for more storage than their employees actually use. However, this is not just an issue of businesses overestimating their needs, but people failing to utilise the storage.

Compliance is another issue that can sometimes be overlooked, although there is generally a high awareness of the need for data protection and security, how this is affected by using cloud services can be overlooked.

These issues can be avoided entirely with proper planning, with a cloud services provider and partner that has the expertise and experience of deploying cloud services for businesses.