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SaaS: Is the Cloud Just Hot Air?
Many are predicting that Cloud computing is poised to blow away traditional on-premise computing. There’s a lot of hype and a lot of expectations. Ten years ago ASP (Application Service Providers) were also riding high on the hype. SaaS and cloud computing has had some great successes, but will cloud computing run into barriers?
One of those potential barriers to the technology is Compliance. Companies are subject to SOX, SAS70, HIPAA, GLBA to name a few. Adding cloud computing to a mix where compliance is important will be hard. Being able to create and maintain audit trails, and to be able to systematically search over all documents and records such as in situations of eDiscovery may reduce the attractiveness of cloud computing.
The economics behind cloud computing also add to its ‘iffyness’. Cloud computing provide data centers that can shrink and grow capacity based on the demand of their users. But data centers are expensive to build and expensive to run. New servers are expensive and are quickly obsoleted. To be able to scale to demand becomes a tricky proposition in predicting future usage. If your vendor doesn’t predict large growth, you may see down time. And likewise, cloud vendor profitability is greatly affected if the vendor scales up too quickly with much wasted unused capacity.
