{"id":643923,"date":"2013-02-26T09:32:51","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T14:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=614447"},"modified":"2013-02-26T09:32:51","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T14:32:51","slug":"fear-of-lock-in-dampens-cloud-adoption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/643923","title":{"rendered":"Fear of lock-in dampens cloud adoption"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s become a truism to say that data is the new gold \u2013but that doesn\u2019t mean there are easy answers about where to store this gold. For now, many corporate customers will hold back on full cloud computing adoption until they\u2019re\u00a0convinced that they can move their data off a given cloud as easily as they put it there in the first place. Face it: fear of vendor lock-in is not limited to the on-premises IT world and it\u2019s time enlightened vendors get this problem in hand.<\/p>\n

The advent of cloud computing should make it easy to mix and match services from multiple vendors within a cloud and to let data flow in and out of parts of the clouds as needed. But that\u2019s not necessarily the reality now.<\/p>\n

\"Bill<\/a><\/p>\n

Bill Gerhardt, director of Cisco\u2019s internet Business Solutions group\u2019s service provider practice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWhen you move to cloud, you should be increasing your choices, not decreasing them. You don\u2019t buy three on-premises apps but you can use three services from three vendors in the cloud,\u201d said Robert Jenkins, co-founder and CTO of Cloud Sigma<\/a>, the Zurich-based cloud provider.<\/p>\n

Bill Gerhardt, director of Cisco Systems\u2019 internet solutions group\u2019s <\/a>service provider practice, agreed. \u201cWe need to sort out data portability. Customers ask: \u2018If I give you all this data, how do I retrieve that data if I want to go somewhere else? Many cloud companies don\u2019t have a clear exit route.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a><\/p>\n

Robert Jenkins, CTO of Cloud Sigma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s a fact of life: Cloud vendors have a vested interest in making it drop-dead simple and cheap to put your data on their respective clouds. If you don\u2019t believe that just witness the price war <\/a>that Amazon, Google and Microsoft are waging on cloud storage. Those vendors obviously hope once your data is in their grasp, they can up-sell you on pricier higher-level services. And, they don\u2019t necessarily see the value in making the return trip so easy and that\u2019s what has people spooked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just privacy and security. It\u2019s also \u2014 if I change my mind or it doesn\u2019t work out, how do I move on? This is an issue that\u2019s prevalent in public cloud but in the era of big data it\u2019s becoming quite an acute big problem,\u201d Jenkins said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you put a ton of data up there, the time and expense to manually stream it out can be very painful,\u201d Jenkins added.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fairly straightforward to move things off a bare-bones infrastructure as a platform. But not so easy when higher-end services get layered atop the platform. Even Amazon fans worry that the edition of Amazon\u2019s Simple Workflow Service and other add ons <\/a>create barriers to exit.<\/p>\n

There have been the requisite attempts to build standards<\/a> to neutralize cloud lock-in but to date not much has happened on that front.<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t easy answers to this problem but Jenkins, Gerhardt and I will discuss it, along with data privacy and other concerns at GigaOM\u2019s upcoming Structure: Data conference<\/a> in New York March 20-21.<\/p>\n

Feature photo courtesy of<\/a>\u00a0Flickr user\u00a0Moyan_Brenn<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Upcoming: What’s your best route to the cloud?<\/a>, Feb. 27, 10 AM PST. More upcoming webinars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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