Several organizations are switching to cloud services as it offers them numerous benefits in terms of effectiveness and price. Cloud services also tend to cut the downtime cost, which is why companies prefer them over others.
Downtime negatively impacts the finances of a company. Thus no serious business owner can really afford it. Downtime has its costs, and every IT professional is aware of this fact.
SLAs
When it comes to cloud services, people believe that third-party providers can deploy several continuity technologies to ensure the maximum outcome. The majority of the SLAs (Service Level Agreements) produced by the cloud service providers guarantee minimum downtime because of unscheduled interruptions.
Thus, the flexibility, as well as the service level agreements provided by the cloud service companies, encourage companies to switch to the cloud and, at the same time, restores a sense of security.
Is downtime really minimized?
Even after all this, the primary question that still lingers is whether cloud computing really reduces downtime or not. What’s the strategy followed in case of downtime? What are the costs to the organization because of the downtime?
People often overlook the costs associated with downtime, and they believe that it would be solved by the cloud strategy that has already been prepared. However, if you really want to find out the actual downtime cost, you will have to carry out a few complex calculations.
Cloud presents a very dynamic environment, and pricing structure (pay-as-you-go) makes it even more complex to consider every operational cost on the cloud. Thus, you will never be able to calculate the exact costs of downtime.
Some of the operational costs associated with cloud services are fees charged and other incidentals like connectivity and staff. Any calculation you do can change because of the changes in the scale, changes in the contractual prices, etc.
Downtime costs of cloud services can be huge, and companies will have to protect themselves from losing money when the cloud services go down bring them down as well. Some of the steps that organizations can do to handle potential cloud downtime are as follows:
SLA with the cloud service provider:
Companies that host their services on the cloud need to get into a service level agreement with the cloud service providers, this is a standard practice followed by most companies.
The service providers guarantee at some up-time, and in case you identify any violation of the agreement, you can demand compensation for the loss your company had to suffer.
Carry out a risk analysis:
Cloud outages and related risk analysis will lead you to understand the critical assets of the company. It would help if you found out the chances of an outage that your company might suffer.
You also will have to find out whether the outages will affect the company’s bottom line or not. You will also have to design or find out the mitigation strategies that would diminish downtime. You will have to be ready with all these if you wish to enjoy uninterrupted cloud services.
Find out the exact costs associated with an outage:
You will have to determine the exact cost or losses your company has to bear for every outage. Once you can determine the costs of downtime, you will become aware of the investment you will make for the IT resources and business infrastructure.
Get the on-premise system along with the cloud services
Downtime can be avoided if you host some of the services in the on-premise system. Do not outsource everything as cloud providers do not offer custom services, and if you require any special services, you might not get them. Get the on-premise system to run some of your customized services so that you are not entirely dependent on the cloud.
Image Source: Cloud Computing Data Security
