Cloud computing has much to offer enterprises, not just for large-scale permanent projects but also for short-term and temporary projects.
It eliminates the need for capital investment in new infrastructure, or the deployment of IT staff to set up and manage those facilities. The organization only pays for what it uses. Most importantly, it can be set up quickly to meet urgent deadlines, accommodate bursts in demand and terminated when the project ends.
Unlike traditional infrastructure, cloud computing allows companies to provision servers, configure application environments and amend the resources assigned to the project very quickly, near to real time.
Yet, there are also drawbacks.
The ease of setting up a short-term project in the public cloud can mean that fundamental questions are overlooked. Project managers are often the driving force behind using the public cloud for short-term projects and the CIO may not be involved in the decision. This could lead to duplication, wasted effort and expense if there is no proper communication between both parties.
Should the trial project be successful and need to become permanent, the lack of longer-term funding can also lead to problems. In fact, we have seen developers use company credit cards to purchase cloud services for test and development, and subsequently face funding issues when the project takes on greater and more costly proportions.
There is also the question of how closely the public cloud can conform to an organization's corporate policy. Most networks serving the public cloud are outside of the organization's WAN, and therefore, unlikely to be protected by enterprise-level security. They may also fail to provide consistent reliability and accessibility, or offer suitable Service Level Agreements.