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15 Cloud Computing Risks & Challenges Businesses Are Facing In These Days

10 June, 2024
37 mins read

Cloud Computing Challenges by RIB Software

These days, “the cloud” is being discussed everywhere. It’s a hot topic, and as technologies continue to evolve rapidly, the scope of the cloud continues to expand.

Yes, this ambiguous term seems to encompass almost everything about us. While “the cloud” is just a metaphor for the internet, cloud computing is what people are really talking about these days. It provides better data storage, data security, flexibility, improved organizational visibility, smoother processes, extra data intelligence, increased collaboration between employees, and changes the workflow of small businesses and large enterprises to help them make better decisions while decreasing expenses.

Utilizing the cloud is a trend that continues to grow—and will continue long into the future. In fact, Grand View Research suggests that the sector’s current value is over USD 602.31 billion and is expected to expand at a rate of 15.7% (CAGR) between now and 2030.

Considering all the potential and development cloud computing has undergone in recent years, there are also many roadblocks’ businesses are facing. In this article, we have gathered the 15 most prominent challenges of cloud computing that will deliver fresh perspectives related to the market.

These challenges of cloud computing are more than just roadblocks to overcome. By understanding them and their nature in relation to the world of modern business, they present great opportunities for organizational growth and evolution.

But before we discuss the potential problems with cloud computing, let’s first explain the general characteristics and fundamental definitions.

What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the delivery of various hardware and software services over the Internet through remote servers. These servers store, manage, and process data, enabling users to expand or upgrade their infrastructure and retrieve files on demand.

The cloud’s capabilities and breadth are enormous. The IT industry divided them into three categories to help better define use cases.

a) Software as a Service (SaaS) – software is owned, delivered, and managed remotely by one or more providers. To start, Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, is a popular way of accessing and paying for software. Instead of installing software on your own servers, SaaS companies enable you to rent hosted software, which is typically the case for a monthly or yearly subscription fee. More and more CRM, marketing, and finance-related tools use SaaS technology, and even Adobe’s Creative Suite has adopted the model.

b) Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – compute resources, complemented by storage and networking capabilities, are owned and hosted by providers and available to customers on-demand.

c) Platform as a Service (PaaS) – the broad collection of application infrastructure (middleware) services. These services include application platform, integration, business process management, and database services.

All of this is a deviation from traditional on-premises computing, which is done via a local server or personal computer and is increasingly being left behind. In fact, Foundry’s recently published Cloud Computing Study (2023) found that 57% of IT decision-makers agree that their organization has accelerated migration to the cloud in the past 12 months, and 65% say that they are defaulting to cloud-based services when upgrading their technical capabilities.

Chart Showing Share Of IT Environments In The Cloud
Share Of IT Environments In The Cloud

It is evident that the cloud is expanding. Since we live in a digital age, where data discovery and big data simply surpass the traditional storage and manual implementation and manipulation of information, companies are searching for the best possible solution for handling data. Traditional spreadsheets no longer serve their purpose; there is too much data to store, manage, and analyze, and even the most traditional sectors must adjust. For example, the construction industry is known for its resistance to change. However, even the most resistant organizations in the building industry now realize the value of cloud-based construction software to boost collaboration, track progress in real time and automate tasks.

Though the opportunities for adopting the cloud are great, this explosion hasn’t come without issues. Like any innovative technology, there are challenges, concerns, and issues tied to cloud computing. Let’s explore them in detail below!

What Are The Challenges Of Cloud Computing?

Top 15 Risks & Challenges Of Cloud Computing
Top 15 Risks & Challenges Of Cloud Computing

Recently, Flexera conducted its annual State of the Cloud Survey on the latest cloud trends. They questioned 750 cloud decision-makers and users across various organizations about their cloud infrastructure adoption. Their findings were insightful, especially regarding current challenges.

Top Cloud Challenges From Flexera
Top Cloud Challenges From Flexera

One of this report’s major findings is that enterprises and small businesses cite the ability to manage cloud spending as the biggest challenge for the second year in a row, overtaking security concerns after a decade in place one. This can result from economic volatility, where organizations keep spending and innovating with multiple cloud services to keep up with the digital world in an unstable environment. Still, as seen in the image above, security remains a close second for all organizations.

Now, to answer the main question of what are the challenges for cloud computing in business, we have expanded upon the most pressing ones that businesses of all sizes may need to address below.

Let’s start with the ever-pressing subject of security risks in cloud computing.

1. Security issues

Like many other branches of technology, security is a pressing concern in cloud-based computing. You cannot see the exact location where your data is stored or being processed, which increases the risks that can arise during the implementation or management process.

Currently, 93% of leading companies across sectors are highly concerned about experiencing a significant data breach within their cloud-centric ecosystems.

The main concerns surrounding cyber threats across the board are:

  • Compromised credentials
  • Broken authentication
  • Human error
  • Mass sensitive data breaches
  • Hacked interfaces and APIs
  • Account hijacking

In an age where cybersecurity is expected to cost a collective $10.5 trillion by 2025, these concerns are urgent and certainly not far-fetched fallacies.

All of this makes trusting the sensitivity and proprieties of cloud computing difficult. Luckily, as suppliers and users, mature fortification capabilities are constantly improving. To ensure your organization’s privacy and cybersecurity are intact, verify that the SaaS provider has secure user identity management, authentication, and access control mechanisms in place. Also, check which database privacy and security laws they are subject to.

While you are auditing a provider’s protection and privacy laws, ensure that the third most significant issue is taken care of: compliance. Your organization needs to be able to comply with regulations and standards, no matter where your data is stored. Speaking of storage, also ensure the provider has strict data recovery policies in place. This way, in the event of a cyberattack, you’ll be able to limit the damage and recover the data stolen from you. Something that is not usually possible when working with on-premise solutions.

Even though security is no longer the biggest issue for organizations, it has been a reality and a cause for concern for over a decade and remains at the top of the list even today. While there are many innovations and technologies that cloud services offer to ensure security, privacy, and compliance across the board, it is the company’s responsibility to ensure these policies are in place before investing in a solution. As mentioned before, the consequences of poor security management can break a company from a financial and reputational perspective; that’s why it is important to implement a secure BI cloud tool that can leverage proper security measures.

By keeping your finger on the pulse of emerging trends and understanding the cybersecurity capabilities of every entity within your ecosystem, you will significantly reduce the threat of breaches or attacks.

2. Cost management and containment

The next part of our cloud computing risks list involves costs. As mentioned before, expenses have been cited as the biggest cloud-related issue for organizations of all sizes today. It is not a surprise that the cloud industry is still growing at an increasing pace, with new tools and technologies emerging every day. In that regard, respondents of the Flexera report stated that their current cloud spending was 15% over the initial budget. Still, they expect the number to increase as high as 31% in the next 12 months.

Organizational Spend On Public Cloud
Organizational Spend On Public Cloud

For the most part, modern computing can save businesses money in the long run. In the cloud, an organization can easily ramp up its processing capabilities without investing in new hardware. Businesses can instead access extra processing through pay-as-you-go models from public providers. However, cloud computing services’ on-demand and scalable nature makes it sometimes difficult to define and predict quantities and costs. That said, as the market becomes more and more competitive, suppliers are constantly offering discounts and deals as retention and acquisition strategies. Businesses are taking advantage of those deals as key cost-saving measures.

Furthermore, organizations use many other strategies to optimize their cloud spending. Flexera cites automated processes such as utilization monitoring and shutting down workloads after hours as the biggest ones. Implementing tags is another popular strategy to optimize costs. However, only 34% of respondents use them.

Luckily, there are several other ways to keep cloud costs in check, for example, optimizing costs by conducting better financial analytics and reporting, automating policies for ruling, or keeping the management reporting practice on the course so that these issues in computing could be decreased.

Another recent innovation that helps mitigate costs and tackle the most pressing issues in cloud computing is multi-cloud computing tools. Currently, 32% of businesses use multi-cloud cybersecurity tools to reduce the financially devastating risk of data breaches. In comparison, 31% of leading enterprises use direct multi-cloud cost management tools to mitigate financial efficiency across the organization. In both cases, the return on investment (ROI) is healthy. As such, we expect an increase in adoption soon.

3. Lack of resources/expertise

One of the cloud computing challenges companies and enterprises face today is a lack of resources and/or expertise. This was already an issue before the pandemic and became an even bigger one after it as cloud technologies rapidly advanced during that period. Organizations lost revenue and even market share because they lacked the technical skills to manage their demands.

Due to these factors, organizations struggle to keep up with the tools. Also, the need for expertise continues to grow. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2020, the demand for cloud computing jobs was 94% higher than in 2017. The biggest issue is that companies struggle to find the right talent as they compete with big players such as Google or Amazon. Nevertheless, these challenges can be minimized through additional training of IT and development staff. A strong CIO championing cloud adoption also helps. As Cloud Engineer Drew Firment puts it:

“The success of adoption and migrations comes down to your people — and the investments you make in a talent transformation program. Until you focus on the #1 bottleneck to the flow of cloud adoption, improvements made anywhere else are an illusion.”

SME (small and medium-sized) organizations may find adding specialists to their IT teams prohibitively costly. Luckily, many common tasks performed by these specialists can be automated. To this end, companies are turning to DevOps tools, like Chef and Puppet, to perform tasks like monitoring resource usage patterns and automated backups at predefined periods. These tools also help optimize the cloud for cost, governance, and security.

The situation might be a bit different for large enterprises, as cloud adoption is much bigger and more complex. In that sense, these corporations are focusing their efforts on training their employees and exclusively hiring professionals with the required experience and talent, for example, in cloud automation.

4. Governance/Control

Moving on with the problems of cloud computing, we have control in place four. Proper IT governance should ensure that IT assets are implemented and used according to agreed-upon policies and procedures, properly controlled, and maintained, and support your organization’s strategy and goals.

In today’s cloud-based world, IT does not always have full control over infrastructure provisioning, de-provisioning, and operations. This has increased the difficulty for IT in providing the governance, compliance, risks, and data quality management required. To mitigate the various risks and uncertainties in transitioning to the cloud, IT must adapt its traditional IT control processes to include the cloud. To this effect, the role of central IT teams in the system has been evolving over the last few years. Along with business units, central IT is increasingly playing a role in selecting, brokering, and governing cloud services. On top of this, third-party cloud computing/management providers are progressively providing support and best practices.

5. Compliance

One of the risks of cloud computing is compliance. That is an issue for anyone using backup services or storage. Every time a company moves data from internal storage to a cloud, it is faced with being compliant with official regulations and laws. For example, healthcare organizations in the USA have to comply with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), public retail companies must comply with SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), and PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).

Depending on the sector and requirements, every organization must ensure these standards are respected and carried out.

This is one of the many challenges facing cloud computing, and although the procedure can take a certain amount of time, the data must be stored appropriately.

Customers need to look for vendors that can provide compliance and check if they are regulated by the standards they need. Some vendors offer certified compliance, but in some cases, additional input is needed on both sides to ensure proper compliance regulations.

6. Network dependence

Next, we have network dependence in our list of challenges and risks in cloud computing. For businesses to successfully transfer massive volumes of data in real time to and from the cloud, internet bandwidth plays a key role. However, this is not always a given, as the internet can present problems and unexpected outages that can significantly harm the business.

For some, the solution is easy: invest in quality networks with premium bandwidth. Now, this might be an easy fix for enterprises that can assume the cost increase. However, SMBs are still struggling to keep up with the overall spending of the cloud. Therefore, this presents a limitation.

Still, this is a straightforward challenge that requires the right investment, infrastructure, and good practices to manage and avoid any potential downtime.

7. Managing multiple clouds

Cloud computing challenges haven’t just been concentrated in one single cloud.

The state of multi-cloud has grown exponentially in recent years. Companies are shifting or combining public and private clouds, and as mentioned earlier, tech giants like Alibaba and Amazon are leading the way.

The Flexera survey above shows that 89% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy, an increase from 87% last year. In the latest report, enterprises with a hybrid strategy (combining public and private clouds) reached 73%. Likewise, organizations with a strategy of multiple public clouds grew from 13% to 14%, which means we might see a shift in this direction in the coming years when it comes to multi-clouds.

Multi-cloud Embrace From Flexera
Multi-cloud Embrace From Flexera

That said, the major change appears to be a shift from using a hybrid strategy to only a single public cloud. Still, most organizations leverage an average of almost five clouds, and it is evident that the use of the cloud will continue to grow. That’s why it is important to answer the main questions organizations face today: What are the challenges for cloud computing, and how can they be overcome?

To achieve multiple management success and overcome the continual difficulties associated with systemic complexity, here are some best practices to consider:

  • Work with a multi-management specialist or partner that will help you integrate every key component of your system based on your specific needs
  • Work with hybrid operating models, if possible, as these innovations will help you manage public and private information both securely and seamlessly
  • Adopt different protocols and management styles for each component of your ecosystem rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach

8. Performance

When an organization moves to the cloud, it becomes dependent on the service providers. The next prominent challenge expands on this partnership. Nevertheless, this partnership often provides businesses with innovative technologies they wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. On the other hand, the performance of the organization’s BI and other cloud-based systems is also tied to the performance of the provider when it falters. When your provider is down, you are also down.

This isn’t uncommon; over the past couple of years, all the big players have experienced outages. Ensure your provider has the right processes in place and will alert you if there is ever an issue.

Real-time data is imperative for an organization’s data driven decision-making process. Accessing data stored on the cloud in real-time is one of the imperative solutions an organization must consider while selecting the right partner.

With an inherent lack of control that comes with cloud computing, companies may run into real-time monitoring problems. Make sure your SaaS provider has real-time monitoring policies in place to help mitigate these potential difficulties.

9. Data loss and recovery

Expanding on the previous point, data loss is one of the biggest concerns regarding cloud provider performance issues or downtime. Some of the most common reasons for data loss in the cloud are accidental deletion, hardware failures, or software errors. The consequences of losing data for a business can be highly negative. Therefore, many organizations fear transitioning to the cloud due to this potential issue.

The truth is that data loss can happen. It is how the provider responds to that loss that matters. To eliminate this concern, you should choose a provider offering continuous data backups to recover any lost information easily. Effective recovery plans like data replication or disaster recovery systems are great measures to restore lost data.

10. Building a private cloud

Although building a private ecosystem isn’t a top priority for many organizations, for those who are likely to implement such a solution, it quickly becomes one of the main challenges facing cloud computing – private solutions should be carefully addressed.

Creating an internal or private cloud will have a significant benefit: having all the data in-house. However, IT managers and departments will need to build and glue it all together themselves, which can make one of the challenges of moving to cloud computing extremely difficult.

It is important to keep in mind also the steps that are needed to ensure the smooth operation of the cloud:

  • Automating as many manual tasks as possible with the help of modern BI software (which would require an inventory management system)
  • Orchestration of tasks must ensure that each is executed in the right order.

As this article stated, the software layer has to grab an IP address, set up a virtual local area network (VLAN), put the server in the load balancing queue, set the firewall rule for the IP address, load the correct version of RHEL, patch the server software when needed, and place the server in the nightly backup queue.

That being said, it is evident that developing a private cloud is no easy task, but nevertheless, some organizations still manage and plan to do so in the next years.

11. Segmented usage and adoption

Most organizations did not have a robust cloud adoption strategy when they started moving to the cloud. Instead, ad-hoc strategies sprouted, fueled by several components. One of them was the speed of adoption. Another was the staggered expiration of data center contracts/equipment, leading to intermittent cloud migration. Finally, individual development teams were also using the public cloud for specific applications or projects. These bootstrap environments have fostered full integration and maturation problems, including:

  • Isolated projects lacking shared standards
  • Ad hoc security configurations
  • Lack of cross-team shared resources and learnings

In fact, a survey by IDC of 6,159 executives found that just 3% of respondents define their cloud strategies as “optimized.” Luckily, centralized IT, strong governance and control policies, and some heavy lifting can align usage, adoption, and cloud computing strategies.

Nearly half of decision-makers believe that their IT workforce is not completely prepared to address the cloud computing industry challenges and manage their cloud resources over the next five years. Since businesses are adopting the strategy more often than ever, it is eminent that the workforce keeps up and carefully addresses the potential difficulties.

12. Migration

Migration is one of the main problems in the cloud computing sector in recent years. This is the process of moving an application to the cloud. Although moving a new application is straightforward, many cloud difficulties arise when moving an existing application to a new environment.

Many leading companies are currently migrating their applications to the cloud, and over half of them find it more difficult than expected projects are over budget and deadlines.

What are the problems faced during storing data in a cloud-centric ecosystem? The most commonly cited were:

  • Extensive troubleshooting
  • Cybersecurity challenges
  • Slow data migrations
  • Migration agents
  • Cutover complexity
  • Application downtime
  • Dependency mapping
  • Assessing technical feasibility
  • Understanding application dependencies
  • Cost-optimization after migration

In a recent sector report from Flexera, 51% of businesses confirm that understanding app dependencies is a significant roadblock to successful migration, while 49% state that assessing technical feasibility is their primary issue.

But while this is the case, a greater understanding of migration concepts and frameworks and an evolution of tools or platforms within the sector have driven down these difficulties from 2021, with slightly fewer organizations struggling with these types of cloud computing issues today.

13. Portability and interoperability

The next of our cloud computing problems is a decidedly operational roadblock. When organizations scale or expand their intangible IT ecosystems, one of the biggest problems with cloud computing from a logistical standpoint is moving from one provider or platform to another.

Typically, when a company switches to a new platform, there is a lockdown period that puts a kink in the network, driving down productivity in the process. This significant lack of flexibility results in a raft of issues:

  • Safe and fluent data migration and management
  • Establishing secure and compliant networks, essentially from scratch
  • Restricted user or customer access

These glaring roadblocks have become more prevalent in recent years due to the increasing complexity of tools, platforms, and systems.

One of the most effective ways to counteract these tricky risks of cloud computing is to go through relevant data and service laws in your region to understand your portability rights while working out concrete terms with potential providers to prevent lockdown periods or service restrictions in advance.

14. Reliability and availability

Next, our definitive rundown of performance challenges in cloud computing is a question of reliability and availability.

As we migrate towards an age where 94% of organizations use cloud-based service providers (CSPs) or platforms in some way, shape, or form, being able to ensure the right data is available at any given point in time while retaining system functionality has emerged as one of the modern age’s most significant issues with cloud computing.

Due to the broadening of modern platforms and computing-centric ecosystems, an increasing number of companies rely on third-party management platforms. The problem with this is that many suppliers offer round-the-clock service that results in system outages that can cause momentary devastation or monetary losses.

To ensure that your system is always available and reliable, stringent plans must be in place to monitor key performance and operational aspects, including system robustness, core functionality, SLAs, data quality, and overall performance. Armed with a solid strategic framework, you can ensure that your providers are held fully accountable while preventing any outages or availability problems.

15. Environmental impact

As you’ve learned by now, cloud computing relies on large data centers that store, process, and protect massive amounts of data. While the cloud has significantly decreased organizations’ paper use, it shifts the environmental impact to other areas. Data centers require massive amounts of energy to keep them functioning efficiently, leaving a big negative environmental footprint. In fact, it is believed that cloud providers are currently leaving a bigger carbon footprint than every airline combined, with providers offering features like scalable systems requiring even more energy to function.

Surprisingly, most data centers use only 6 to 12% of their total energy consumption to keep computers running. The rest is used to cool and power other systems to prevent data loss. The cooling process uses a lot of energy and massive amounts of water, which can also impact the communities where the centers are located. Luckily, this issue has already been discussed, and alternatives for change are available. Green energy and technologies to optimize energy consumption are being implemented to mitigate the environmental impact of the cloud. For example, some providers have started to implement underwater data centers that rely on the cool nature of the ocean to keep systems from overheating and eliminate the need for traditional cooling systems, which require massive amounts of energy and water to function.

In The End, The Cloud Still Wins: Benefits Of Cloud Computing

It is no secret; that cloud computing is revolutionizing the IT industry. It is also shaking up the business intelligence (BI) landscape and, well, pretty much everything else it touches. As adoption grows, organizations of all sizes realize the benefits. For startups and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), that can’t afford costly server maintenance but also may have to scale overnight, the benefits of utilizing the cloud are especially great.

While cloud computing challenges exist, if properly addressed, these 15 don’t mean your IT roadmap must remain anchored on-premises. Business intelligence (BI) and the cloud are an ideal match, as the first one provides the right information to the right people, while the latter is an agile way to access BI solutions and applications.

To make the most of this new age of IT facilitation and overcome any potential roadblocks, you should take a strategic iterative approach to implementing your system. Explore hybrid cloud solutions, involve business and IT teams, invest in a CIO, and choose the right SaaS partner. All these strategic measures will ensure that the benefits of cloud business intelligence far outweigh the risks.

Speaking of the innate value of migrating to a new flexible IT-centric system, here are the key advantages of cloud computing in business:

  • Saving costs: By adopting modern CSPs and methods, you will drive down the costs associated with business operations and IT infrastructure. While it may bear a notable cost to set everything up, the ROI you will enjoy as a result of safety, fluency, efficiency, and operational vision will pay back tenfold over the years.
  • Safety: As we mentioned earlier, cybersecurity is on the rise. But if you can overcome any roadblocks related to data breaches, you will create a network that will fortify every sensitive area of your business, protecting yourself from the threat of devastating cyberattacks.
  • System mobility: Another key benefit of using modern CSP functionality is the ability to access key data and system functionality from multiple devices wherever you are in the world, 24/7. Gaining this increased mobility will increase productivity, make your organization more responsive, and boost employee satisfaction by giving them the tools to perform better at their jobs.
  • Improved insight: In the modern age, knowledge equals power, and data equals money. By working with CSP-based technologies, you can gain improved access to data-driven insights in a way that is centralized, efficient, and digestible. As such, with CSPs and modern IT-based capabilities, it’s possible to drive innovation by achieving greater business intelligence (BI).
  • Boost collaboration: Collaboration is a big part of an organization’s success. After all, the different departments and teams are all working towards the same general company goals. Cloud computing can help boost collaboration through more innovative and engaging channels. This way, they’ll avoid tedious in-person meetings and develop joint strategies in an online environment.
  • Quality control: If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you must be aware of the consequences bad quality data and reporting can bring to an organization’s growth efforts. Cloud-based services store all relevant data in one secure location with a unique format. This way, you can ensure consistency, avoid manual errors, and keep close control of any access or manipulation of critical business data.
  • Loss & recovery: No matter how efficient your company is at managing all its data-related processes, accidents and issues can still happen. On-premises solutions often require long recovery processes, and even then, it is not a given that you’ll be able to recover what you lost. On the other hand, cloud-based solutions offer quick data recovery processes for multiple emergency situations, such as server cyberattacks or regular outages.
  • Faster time to market: Last but not least, cloud computing sets the perfect environment for innovation at a faster and more efficient pace. You can think of a new idea, develop it, test it, and launch it, or retire it immediately if it doesn’t work. There is no need to design complex applications or go through tedious processes.

The Future Of Cloud Computing

There’s no denying it: We’ve reached a new, more innovative age where organizations are taking charge of their technological destinies.

But while the prospective benefits and challenges of cloud computing do exist, with greater adoption comes an increased challenge. As technology evolves within enterprise IT, it’s vital that senior decision-makers take measures to understand these risks in detail to mitigate them if they materialize.

As for the future, experts predict that leading CSPs will operate at an almost ATM-style capacity to offer various subsets of their services. This flexible approach will indeed make it easier for organizations to ‘self-serve’ as and when they need to without adopting these services with strategic caution (while understanding the risks).

Another notable evolution of the CSP landscape will be the increased need for specialist skills to support mass system upgrades and migration. To remain robust and scale seamlessly, organizations will need internal talent to improve or expand their CSP infrastructures with pinpoint accuracy and complete confidence. To thrive in tomorrow’s world, it’s important to adopt a data-driven organizational culture while upskilling relevant technical personnel in the art of cloud-centric management and migration.

For the coming years, providers are expected to make big investments in machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to boost their products and services with more advanced functionalities. However, as we’ve seen in other industries, the use of AI and ML comes with security concerns that need to be addressed. Therefore, we can also expect to see an even bigger focus on security in the cloud computing environment and more regulations from the governmental side as the market continues to grow.

As these new technologies and innovations are introduced and new providers enter the market, we can expect a more competitive environment in terms of prices. In that sense, providers will need to come up with smart strategies to compete with bigger players in the industry, such as offering discounts and special packages or subscriptions to consumers as retention and acquisition strategies.

Clearly, organizations have some demanding work ahead of them, especially since the adoption of the cloud has now emerged as a business standard. CSP infrastructures aren’t something to roll out in the blink of an eye—care, caution, and an understanding of prospective issues and opportunities are vital for long-term innovation and success.

A strategic approach that encompasses management details and professionals’ involvement can help reduce potential risks, costs, and flaws in the implementation process. The future of the cloud lies in introducing industry standards that will help in addressing regulatory, management, and technological matters.

Key Takeaways

As we reach the end of this insightful guide, we hope you have a clear understanding of the pros and cons of cloud computing and how this industry will continue to mutate and grow in the coming years. We went through 15 challenges and some solutions that you can apply to limit the risks. Being aware of these potential issues is a great way to start on the right foot and migrate your business to a cloud environment.

To summarize, here are the top limitations or issues in cloud computing:

  1. Cybersecurity issues
  2. Cost management and containment
  3. Lack of resources/expertise
  4. Governance/Control
  5. Compliance
  6. Network dependence
  7. Managing multiple clouds
  8. Performance
  9. Data loss and recovery
  10. Building a private cloud
  11. Segmented usage and adoption
  12. Migration
  13. Portability and interoperability
  14. Reliability and availability
  15. Environmental impact

To start your own cloud research and utilize the potential it can provide to your construction business, explore the RIB Software toolkit. We offer a range of products to optimize several processes in the building sector. Book a demo today and experience the power of the cloud for yourself!