Favourite cloud Myths
Everyone is using the cloud in one way or another but there are many misconceptions. Here we are looking at a few and for these examples we are basing our information on AWS, the biggest cloud provider owned and run by Amazon.
Myth number 1 – The cloud is highly available.
No it isnt. The internet comes down a pair of wires to your premises. This connects you through a set of locations to your cloud service. For example we looked at how many hops a simple link to Ireland takes. It left our office in Ipswich and it took 15 hops to get there. That’s 30 connection points it has to go through and an error on any one means you don’t get through. DataCentres are meant to be virtually bomb-proof yet even last week one of the biggest went down, or should we say up in flames. The list of failures is endless.
Even if your phone line goes then its no interest and no-phone service, even fibre comes down to the last few meters or kilometres as copper.
Myth Number 2 – The cloud is cheap
No it isn’t. The average cloud service costs you £9 a month, that’s the price for controlling your home, using Microsoft Office, doing your accounts or crm. The real cost is not per month but over five years so if you use 3 services that’s costing you £1,620. We know of a company that added up their cloud services over five years for five employees and were staggered at the cost of £22,000. There are many free services available and you can have your own server on site for a fraction of this cost.and
Myth Number 3 – My data is safe
Well yes and no, its and extra copy stored somewhere else but if you read the cloud terms and conditions, they don’t guarantee it and they recommend that you backup your data elsewhere to be safe. Just read the T’s & C’s that every cloud provider publishes, and be shocked.
Myth Number 4 – Using someone else’s computer
No you aren’t, you are using someone else’s servers and storage, which makes even less sense. Why rent a car or a house when you can buy one. – enough said.
Myth Number 5 – cloud = datacentre
Using the “cloud” doesn’t mean you have to use someone elses data-centre. The term was thought up as a marketing gimmick. The cloud symbol was used in flow charts to symbolise “a large somewhere”. In reality it means storage that is accessible using the internet. It can be a low cost server on your premises which can do all the cloud things such as accounts, email, crm, notes, files etc for unlimited users for around £20 a week.
Myth Number 7 – cloud is better than a licence.
Cloud users defend their choice, for example Office in the cloud costs £9 a month. For that I get five licences, the latest versions, works on anything and synchronised documents. Only the last is partially true. You get the licence for five devices for one user. That means only one person can use it at any one time on five different items such as a laptop, phones and tablets.
You get all the updates with a licence copy that over five years costs 3 times less. Yes you get the latest version but with one issue every three years its no great loss when the changes are minor, besides no-one ever uses all the facilities.
Yes the cloud version of office works on everything but so does the free version of Microsoft Office online, the salesman didn’t tell you about that? Yes there is a free version of Microsoft Office that meets most users needs.
Everything is synchronised., Yeas it is but you can use all the free services to get the same synchronisation.
Conclusion
There are so many free programs, free storage and low cost servers that you don’t need to buy a cloud version, you can save a shed load of money by being a savvy buyer and not believing the cloud hype. Cloud salesmen dont give you access to any of the free or paid for alternatives, wondered why, well if I tell you we could make five times more money by selling you the cloud, would that answer it?