Speaking at a conference for federal chief information officers, David Cearley said there are “plenty of cases” where cloud solutions from external service providers are more expensive than in-house solutions, CIO.com reported.
“Don’t just assume cloud is cheaper. You’ve got to have mechanisms to evaluate the life cycle cost over time, and sometimes even if it isn’t cheaper, it makes sense to do it anyway, because the number one issue with cloud is agility,” CIO.com quoted Cearley as saying. On security, Cearley said that “it is sometimes offered as a red herring from a corner of an IT organization reluctant to give up oversight of certain processes and fearful of the disruption that the cloud could bring,” the CIO.com article reported.
Cearley offered this zinger: “Security is important, but I’ve got to tell you, at least 50 percent of the time when people raise security as an issue what it really means is job security.”
Also, Cearley offered some tips to keep in mind when procuring cloud services, according to FCW.com. Among them: Develop mechanisms to determine the cost of the cloud solutions over time, and develop a simple benefits-versus-challenges model to help figure out what kind of cloud services are needed.