Disadvantages of Cloud Computing: The Definitive Guide

You’ll need to estimate all kinds of resources, including memory, CPU, network connection, and storage if you wish to offer digital services of any kind. It’s entirely up to the individual to decide between cloud-based or local resources for distribution. I would always advise the necessary due diligence is done.

They will need to know the benefits and of course disadvantages of cloud computing, as well as how to contextualize any current demerits. Many businesses have benefitted from cloud computing since it lowers expenses and allows them to concentrate on their core competencies rather than IT and infrastructure problems.

Despite the widespread buzz about cloud computing in the IT industry, there are certain disadvantages to it, particularly in smaller businesses.

Let me dive into some merits and demerits of cloud computing, including how to interpret them. We’ll go over some of the major disadvantages in this article, as well as some suggestions and best practices that you and your team may use to solve them.

In-depth Study of the Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

It is good to open up by stating that I am a huge advocate of cloud computing tech, and pointing some flaws is my way of offering positive criticism to a technology we all love.

None of the demerits I will speak on is a deal-breaker and only make the news because of how huge platforms like AWS are. That said, they are noteworthy if an objective criticism is to be made.

1. Privacy and Security

Despite the highest industry certifications and security standards implemented by cloud service providers, storing data and critical files on external service providers always poses a risk. Any discussion of data must include security and privacy considerations, particularly when dealing with sensitive data.

We must not forget what occurred at Code Space with the hacking of their AWS EC2 interface, which resulted in the loss of data and the company’s ultimate closure. They had to accept the dangers of outsourcing everything since they relied on distant cloud-based technology.

Obviously, any cloud service provider should be responsible for managing and safeguarding the deployment’s underlying hardware infrastructure. Your duties, on the other hand, are in the area of user access control, and it is up to you to carefully consider all risk situations.

Though recent data breaches involving credit card information and user login passwords are still fresh in the public’s memory, measures have been made to guarantee data security.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which was only recently adopted by the EU to provide users with greater control over their data, is an example. It is however important to know your roles strive to maintain industry best practices.

Before getting scared away, please note:-

Customers are migrating to the cloud to “improve” their security; a trend noticed since 2015. With the existing controls surrounding auditing (Cloudtrail), encryption (AWS KMS), AAA (AD Premium and IAM),  network isolation (VPC), as well as the appropriate design, there is a strong case contrary to what it seems by just scratching the surface, that cloud deployment offers a security benefit over on-premise implementation.

How to Minimize Privacy and Security Concerns Using Best Practices

1. This is crucial: Recognize your cloud provider’s shared responsibility approach. You’ll still be responsible for everything that happens in your network and in your product.
2. Prioritize security through every deployment stage.
3. Keep tabs on who has what authority and assign them the least privileges possible to carry out the role. If an employee goes rogue and gets access to your deployment, you’d want their effect to be limited to the smallest feasible region.
4. Check to see whether your team’s abilities are up to the job.
5. Consider using a risk-based approach to protecting cloud assets and extending security to devices.
6. Encryption, encryption, encryption is the name of the game. Encrypt your data everywhere you can – simple wins include object storage like Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage, where client data is often stored. The simple act of enabling encryption on S3 may have averted the Capital One data breach, which exposed the personal information of 100 million customers in July 2019.

2. Downtime

A very common criticism of cloud computing has to do with downtime. This stems from the fact that a setup must be built on the internet infrastructure and may be prone to service interruptions that occur for varying reasons; making it one of the disadvantages of cloud computing.

Can your company afford the consequences of downtime or outage? In 2017 for example, a power cut affecting (AWS) Amazon Web Services cost as much as $150 million to publicly listed businesses.

Sadly, there is no company that is immune to this especially in cases where critical business duties cannot be disrupted. Cloudflare (a major online services provider), Amazon, Amazon, Shopify, Verizon, Reddit, and Spectrum were among the businesses and services that had disruptions in June and July of 2019.

Before getting scared away, please note:-

With this in mind, I must point that there is no such thing as a flawless service provider. However, with the size of (AWS) Amazon Web Services (AWS) goes down, even the smallest downtimes would make the headlines.

The distinction is that AWS’ “downtime” represents just a minute percentage of its total capacity.

How to Minimize Downtime Concerns Using Best Practices:-

1. Create services that are high-availability and disaster-recovery ready. Make use of cloud providers’ multi-availability zones in your infrastructure.
2. Consideration should be given to multi-region deployments with provisions for an emergency failover in cases where the services have low failure tolerance. This will guarantee the greatest possible business continuity.
3. Define and execute a disaster recovery strategy that is aligned with your company goals and provides the shortest recovery time (RTO) and recovery point targets feasible (RPO).
4. Consideration should be given to the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect, Google Cloud’s Dedicated Interconnect or Partner Interconnect, or Azure ExpressRoute to provide dedicated connection. This may minimize the danger of a company disruption caused by the internet.
5. Check your Service Level Agreement’s small print (SLA). Is there a guarantee of 99.9% or greater uptime? That 0.1 percent downtime equates to roughly 45 minutes each month or about 8 hours per year.

3. Attack Vulnerability

All cloud computing components are online and can be a likely point of exposure to risk. Even the finest teams may be subjected to serious assaults and security breaches on occasion.

It’s simple to run before you learn to walk since cloud computing is designed as a public service. After all, no one at a cloud provider looks over your administrative abilities before giving you an account: all you usually need is a valid payment card to get started.

Before getting scared away, please note:-

Large cloud platforms offer the architecture for deploying safe and dependable apps, and locally hosted apps can, of course, sometimes go down (Arguable more often). However, it must be noted that most of the potential attack vulnerability is linked to unskilled admin errors and connection problems, not necessarily a flaw in the architecture.

How to Minimize Attack Vulnerability Concerns Using Best Practices

1. Make security a top priority in your IT operations.
2. Maintain cloud security best practices throughout the whole organization.
3. Classify data ahead of time and implement access controls.
4. Prevent data espionage.
5. Integrate security operations with preventive and response methods.
6. Audits may help you find rogue projects.
7. Accounts that don’t need to log in to services should have their passwords removed.
8. Access keys and credentials should be reviewed and rotated on a regular basis.
9. To stay informed about known attacks, keep an eye on security blogs and announcements.
10. If you’re utilizing open source software, follow security best practices.
11. Encryption should be used whenever and wherever feasible.

4. Vendor Lock-In

Another claimed drawback of cloud computing is vendor lock-in. The ability to seamlessly switch from a cloud service to another can be improved, this could be a bottleneck for businesses transferring services between providers.

Migrating between cloud platforms may be challenging due to differences in vendor platforms, which may result in extra expenses and setup complexity. Gaps or breaches created during the transfer process may expose your data to new security and privacy risks.

How to Minimize Vendor Lock-In Concerns Using Best Practices:-

1. Consider cloud architecture best practices while creating your design. Cloud services provide the possibility of removing performance bottlenecks, decoupling layers, and increasing availability and performance. If you built your services using cloud architectural best practices, you’ll have fewer issues moving them from one cloud platform to another.
2. To prevent lock-in issues, make sure you know what your suppliers are offering.
3. To prevent vendor lock-in, use a multi-cloud approach. While this may add operational and development complexity to your installations, it isn’t a deal-breaker. Training may assist teams in architecting and selecting the most appropriate services and technology.
4. When developing applications, consider flexibility as a method to guarantee portability today and in the future.
5. Build your apps using cloud-first features like modularity and mobility of microservices and code. Consider Kubernetes and containers.

5. Limited Flexibility and Control

As you now know, the service provider manages, owns, and monitors the cloud infrastructure. This simply implies that clients will have very little influence over it.

Cloud users would realize that they have varying degrees of control over the execution and operation of services hosted on a cloud-hosted infrastructure.

A cloud provider’s management rules and EULA (end-user license agreement) may limit things the customers may do with their installations. Customers retain control over their services, applications, and data, but backend infrastructure may be less so.

Before getting scared away, please note:-

In certain instances, having a cloud-hosted service may not be the most flexible option as already noted. However, it can be argued that in most cases, and particularly in the case of the major players, such as Azure and AWS, and in particular IaaS, you have more control and freedom than on-premise.

How to Minimize Limited Flexibility and Control Concerns Using Best Practices

1. Consider enlisting the assistance of a cloud provider partner to assist with the implementation, operation, and maintenance of cloud services.
2. To minimize the risk of omission or mistake, understand your duties and the responsibilities of the cloud provider under the shared responsibility model.
3. Take the time to learn about the basic level of assistance offered by your cloud service provider. Is this service level going to satisfy your support needs? For a fee, most cloud providers give extra support levels in addition to the basic service.
4. Make sure you understand the SLAs for the infrastructure and services you’ll be using, as well as how they’ll affect your customer agreements.

6. Concerns About Costs

Cloud solutions may be viewed as costly when used on a small scale and for short-term initiatives. Cloud computing’s greatest merit is the reduction of IT costs.

Pay-as-you-go cloud services may provide more flexibility and cheaper hardware expenses, but the total cost may be higher than anticipated.

I recommend testing a variety of options to find out what works best. Making use of cost calculators from companies such as Google Cloud Platform and AWS.

Before getting scared away, please note:

While considering the costs, it is important to point that it relies on a variety of factors, including the architecture, workload, and, size. While we may observe that hosting an app on the cloud may be more costly, it is not always the rule.

How to Minimize Cost Concerns Using Best Practices

1. Instead of overprovisioning your services, consider utilizing auto-scaling services.
2. Check to see whether you can scale downwards as well as up.
3. To save money while your instances aren’t in use, automate the process of starting and stopping them.
4. To keep track of your cloud expenditures, set up notifications.

Final Thoughts on The Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Many businesses profit from cloud services’ scalability, and pay-per-use pricing. The appropriateness of cloud computing for your particular use case, like any infrastructure service, should be evaluated in a risk-based assessment.

I will always recommend that companies and individuals should make time for study and preparation so you can understand how the cloud will impact your company.

As a reminder, please note that while I have listed some demerits users of cloud computing may face, I have tried to be objective and balance this out, because sometimes, the disadvantages pointed out are a result of a lack of understanding on the part of many new users.