Two camps exist when it comes down to SaaS and Cloud Computing.

Camp 1: The strong believers and promoters of the technology.

Camp 2: The ones that agree with the concept, but often say “Uhmmm…We will see…”

I, obviously, fall in the first category and struggle with comments like the one above. so I decided to compile a list of the most common false impressions when it comes down to Cloud Computing. The list quickly became very long, but after some research I only focused on the main ones. Here they are:

- Reliability: “Cloud Computing is a new platform and it is not reliable”.

  • Wrong! SaaS and Cloud Computing often present a very stable and more reliable environment. Especially when it comes down to recovery time for system/data restore.

- Performance: “You wont be able to achieve the same level of performance using Cloud Computing”

  • Wrong! By carefully selecting the right data centers and Internet service providers, you will not face any performance issues.

- Centralized Computing: “We have been there with mainframes, why go back?”

  • In the past we used mainframes and terminals, but they were limited to one provider which resulted in unpleasant, unreliable and slow computing experience. With Cloud Computing we get to access numerous providers, and their computing power from anywhere in the world.

- Control: “You lose control over the system with Cloud Computing”

  • The truth is that you DO NOT lose control over the system. What you lose is the tedious day to day hardware or software maintenance, which allows you to focus on the big picture and your business.

- Security: “Cloud Computing is not for my business – My files are not secure”

  • Wrong again! In most cases, especially with Small Businesses, in-house systems are la lot less secure than a system that resides in the Cloud. The Cloud provider will often have more resources to provide better security and  protect their customer’s data/information.

One can easily spend a day writing about the “Cloud” misconceptions, but I think I covered the most wide-spread ones, for now at least!

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