The cloud has become an abstract but revolutionary concept for the enterprise, empowering end users with software and widespread access to the tools and information they need to do their jobs, and more productively at that.  But implementing cloud services at the enterprise level can be a frustrating maze of infrastructure requirements, interface demands and compliance.  To explore some of these obstacles, research firm Wikibon’s Scott Lowe outlined the top issues that keep organizations from making the cloud a part of their technology infrastructure in his most recent article.

Downtime is the first item on his list: Amazon and Microsoft, two of the biggest public cloud providers today, have suffered several outages in the past few months alone.  These widely-covered incidents undermine CIOs’ confidence in the cloud, and for good reason, but there are ways to avoid the impact of service provider outages on day to day operations.

Lowe writes that that the key to circumventing downtime is having strong talent pool. But herein lies problem number two: employer demand for IT professionals who possess the skills to manage and troubleshooting cloud services far exceeds supply.

“Cloud uptake – or lack thereof – is following a similar pattern for other upheavals that have occurred in earlier technology paradigm shifts. As these shifts happen, technology pros need to retool and change their thinking to accommodate the new technology and the way it works. We’re still very early in this migration and a lack of skills is creating some trepidation about the opportunity.”

The third issue Lowe names is the quality of SLAs. Cloud providers’ service level agreements don’t offer nearly enough compensation for losses caused by downtime and technical difficulties, which can result in millions going down the drain for large enterprise users.

The fourth and final barrier that Lowe mentions is cost uncertainty: the pay-as-you-go model makes it almost impossible to accurately predict costs. This is especially true for Amazon, which is known for its overly complicated price plans.

Cloud service vendors are well aware of cost uncertainty that can block a sale, prompting frequent price cuts to storage and other services. Just last week Rackspace slashed its rates by a third in an effort to attract customers that want more control over their public cloud expenses. The absence effective cost analysis is a problem, but the industry is headed in the right direction.

The solution

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Lowe recommends that those CIOs looking to resolve each of the four above mentioned issues should do heavy research and testing prior to installing a cloud solution.  A great way to learn about a potential cloud service is through a free trial offering, which most providers extend.

“I highly recommend that CIOs charge someone with some deep testing to determine potential fit for solutions and begin to understand what it takes to keep cloud-based services available and how the services are charged,” says Lowe.