5 myths of the public cloud

2022 01 26 · 2 min read

Public cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft constantly educate users with publicly available practices. In our previous blog post, we have also discussed such aspects you need to consider designing your cloud solution more widely.  

However, available recommendations do not eliminate several false facts around the community. Examining what a true myth is crucial when considering public cloud services. 

For this reason, this blog post introduces the most famous public cloud misconceptions you need to be aware of. 

Myth #1: Public cloud is cheaper than on-premises  

It is a common myth that public cloud services are cheaper than maintaining your own data center or using local data center (hosting) providers’ services. In this case, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Sometimes public cloud services can be less expensive than your existing data center but not always. Each case is different and depends on many factors.   

First, you should evaluate:   

After evaluating all the factors, you need to select the appropriate cloud services, calculate the required services number and service plans in the public cloud. Then decide WHAT is cheaper and WHEN. If your company invests money into the existing on-premises data center or purchase some expensive licenses for data center components, you need to evaluate the ROI.  

Public cloud services are typically more affordable in such cases as: 

Then it is more reasonable to use the public cloud than investing in the new infrastructure, virtualization platform, software licenses, data center colocation, assessing electricity, physical security costs, various risks, and other aspects. It is essential to estimate the total costs of ownership (TCO) before deciding. 

Myth #2: Public cloud is not secure 

Public cloud data centers are like on-premises data centers. The only difference – most prominent public cloud providers have many data centers worldwide and invest much money to make them modern, reliable, and secure.  

We often hear opinions that storing data in the public cloud is risky because public cloud vendor employees or other public cloud users can access the data. We must deny such a myth. Here are a few reasons why: 

It is necessary to know that the customer is also responsible for its data security. Remember to maintain your systems compliance, security, configure access, and other service settings correctly. 

Myth #3: No need for disaster recovery in the public cloud 

One more massive myth people tend to believe – you do not worry about disaster recovery when migrating an existing or developing a new system in the public cloud. 

Disaster recovery is a high availability assurance element. The high reliability of the service, as specified in the public cloud service description and contracts, means that the public cloud provider ensures that the services and systems used by its customers in its data centers have high hardware availability.  

However, this does not mean that your system will also have high reliability by default if you build your custom system based on these cloud services. If a cloud provider’s data center fails, all customers’ systems inside the data center will become unavailable. For this reason, planning disaster recovery is crucial.  

It is recommended not to rely on the primary site alone, even though the data centers of public cloud providers are modern and have high hardware availability. If your system is critical and you have responsibilities to system customers, a disaster recovery plan, DR site existence, and automatic or manual recovery can save you in an emergency. Though keep in mind that you have to take care of that yourself. 

Myth #4: The public cloud solves your IT issues  

Another well-known myth is that the public cloud will solve all of your IT infrastructure problems.  

Suppose your application is in one of the local country hosting providers or currently running on-premises, and there are issues with communication between architectural layers, application crashes during seasonal peaks, or you face other problems. In such cases, moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud will not solve your IT issues by default.  

Public cloud services can help solve hardware and hosting issues but not solve bugs or processes problems. For this reason, it is essential to troubleshoot all the possible infrastructure issues before moving to the public cloud. 

Moreover, it is necessary to implement backup, disaster recovery, monitoring, and maintenance processes in the public cloud environment.  

For example, the public cloud can offer various supporting, alerting, maintenance services, but those services must be configured and used. By default, such services do not get any data or send alerts. That is why you should solve critical issues before moving your solution to the public cloud. Consider the deployment process, extensions and libraries updates, and other required processes on-premises. 

Myth #5: Forget about the public cloud after setting it up 

Another well-known myth – you should forget about the public cloud after setting it up. 

Commonly, cloud users develop a system or migrate an existing system to the cloud services and simply forget about it while it is successfully running. Knowing that systems must be upgraded and maintained, such “set up and forget” practice creates a problem. It is crucial to perform active monitoring and frequently run penetration and other tests while using native cloud services.  

Cloud services constantly update – new versions of services are released, some services are replaced over time. Also, some technologies become no longer supported, applications can become outdated and vulnerable, or sometimes, your application can stop working.   

Cost optimization is another reason you should keep the services you use under review. By monitoring your system and its services thresholds, you can see usage trends select appropriate service plans accordingly. It also allows you to reduce your cloud hosting costs significantly.   

If you consider moving your IT infrastructure to the public cloud and do not know where to start, the Baltic Amadeus team is more than happy to help you within your public cloud journey.