7 Reasons Not to Go to the Cloud

Cloud services, such as Office365, Quickbooks Online and Salesforce, have been revolutionary in the past decade allowing businesses to scrap on-site server iron—including maintenance, upgrades and support costs in exchange for a subscription contract. Smaller, more specific apps, like Monday.com, Basecamp, and Push, zero in with laser focus on a set of problems that used to be the sole dominion of custom applications, and do it affordably. Even though there are many reasons to migrate applications to the cloud, the swing to cloud services is not for every business, and many are wisely holding off. Here are 7 reasons why: 

1. Security

Handing over all your data and critical business processes to a third party takes trust. Though some are more secure than others, there is always risk involved in trusting your data with an external entity. LinkedIn, Adobe, Yahoo, among others, have already had hacks. Ever receive a threatening email with one of your passwords in the subject line? It was likely due to one of these hacks: https://www.csoonline.com/article/2130877/the-biggest-data-breaches-of-the-21st-century.html

2. Control

A client of ours had their CRM provider simply shut down with only 30 days warning. All data had to be downloaded in that time—and in rough text/csv file format only. This was more than an inconvenience. Now bigger players like Intuit and Microsoft are not likely to be closing shop, but for ultimate control, local is still king. There is nothing like running your own apps, servers and having your own data on site. For example, we built a project costing app that has been in use 15 years with only 3 minor updates for operating system compatibility. Company owned, custom-built to business process needs, and an incredible return on investment considering it costs almost nothing to maintain. 

3. Performance

Your internet has to be top notch speed and reliable all the time. Not only that, but all the host’s servers and internet also need to be performing at their peak. Even the fastest internet connections are still a fraction of the speed which can be attained on a local network, and as you already know, performance fluctuates. 1000Mbps internet is considered fast as of this writing, but in terms of local network connections, it is stuck in the past. The current standard is 10,000 Mbps (10 gigabit) Ethernet.     

4. Reliability

How often does your cloud service go down? You’d be surprised that some of the more robust players have outages. Even Office 365 went down multiple times recently, and that was not the first time. An outage in the middle of the day on a busy weekday could be crippling to a business. 

5. Costs

Short term upfront costs are lower for cloud services but over time they add up. This is especially true in a multi- vendor scenario. For instance, you could have bookkeeping on Quickbooks online, use T-sheets for Timesheets, Push for staff scheduling, Office 365 for email, Squarespace for web hosting, and Basecamp for production management, and they can raise prices at any time. Consider that nearly all these functions could be replaced with a hybrid of 1-3 cloud services and a company-owned proprietary application. 

6. Vendors, vendors and more vendors

Who do you call for support for this product? Your company credit card changed—how many cloud services do you need to login and update? Ever had a payment issue, such as an expired credit card, and had a critical service go down in the middle of the work day? 

7. Lack of interoperability

You have data on Quickbooks online. You need to get that same data to Sharepoint. Now you also need it on Basecamp, Hubspot, Twilio, and Salesforce. Sure, you can often export files and do one-time imports but as time goes on the data diverges—a record updated in one system remains static in another. Cloud connector businesses and plug-ins are taking off these days but they further complicate an already complicated landscape when a business adopts an all-cloud strategy. 

Most of our clients use cloud services with success and avoid the pitfalls. This is not an argument for an all-or-nothing tact, but rather a caution to use the services sparingly and with an eye to the risks. Joshua Reynolds said “Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much.” Something to keep in mind when adding potentially too much complexity to your business. 

Copyright 2020 Darwin Grenwich. All Rights Reserved.