Preparing for a legacy system modernization plan requires businesses to think seriously about which applications are most valuable and the best way to access important information. Writing for ComputerWorld, Charles King recently gave his views on working with a public cloud rather than a private one. Although he doesn't warn against using them outright, he does say that enterprises need to think about public clouds as another legacy system of its own rather than a technological cure-all.
King writes that IT professionals need to understand the rules of this environment and decide ahead of time whether or not this is a good fit for them. At the same time, he comments on the lack of "control and oversight" that public clouds tend to display.
"Public clouds are anything but 'one size fits all' propositions and neither are clients' needs," he writes. "Do you require basic managed services, more complex IaaS, dedicated bare metal systems and/or support for developing next gen applications?" He also criticizes the public cloud industry as a whole, saying that these clouds are "in such a constant state of change that thinking one or another service has won the race is, quite frankly, nuts."
Of course, one of the concerns with public clouds is the increased potential for security breaches and hazards as well. The New York Times recently reported on both private and public clouds, and quoted IBM Security System's Marc van Zadelhof, who calls the traditional security measures "fundamentally irrelevant" to the age of cloud computing.
Feel more secure when you take part in a cloud-hosted service by addressing legacy applications modernization with a reliable emulator tool for common web-based browsers. Public or no, your business should be able to operate confidently and have full access to all the necessary systems.