With scary headlines about cloud computing, misconceptions are bound to occur.
Here are 6 Common Myths:
Myth 1 – Cloud computing is more expensive.
Fact: It all depends. If you have an old AS400 that is paid for (may not even have maintenance or software support), are years behind in IBM i/OS400 upgrades, backup tapes go home in your car and you are just looking at your current costs (not including the time you may spend managing the server), cloud hosting will never be cheaper than that.
On the other hand, if you are following best practices with IT infrastructure, backup, business continuity, consolidation and virtualization, and staying relatively current on software updates, the cloud is a very cost-effective operational expense. When you add the IBM i/OS400 expert support that augments your staff – particularly when your staff is small or your IBM i/OS400 talent is retiring – cloud hosting offers a big savings.
Myth 2 – Cloud computing is not safe.
Fact: Cloud hosting by reputable solution providers provides far more security, stability and redundancy. The hosting and data center teams work hard to stay current on limited access, improve hardware reliability, provide consistent backups and redundant failover systems, and deliver security protection against unauthorized access. Generally, these safety measures are way beyond what most clients can afford or implement. This is our core business. Our clients’ best practices are often their core business and IT is not their primary focus.
Myth 3 – The Cloud is not reliable.
Fact: No system has 100% uptime and neither does the Cloud. Given the scale, however, Cloud computing services are typically designed to provide high redundancy and availability. While this same level of redundancy/availability is possible to achieve in-house or with dedicated hosting, it’s generally cost prohibitive except for the most critical systems. The Cloud enables a higher level of reliability at a fraction of the cost.
Myth 4 -Cloud hosting is not fast.
Fact: IBM i/OS400 data transmission is miniscule compared to common web traffic. At most, each 5250 session transmits 2K – in most cases far less. This means most clients use less bandwidth than 1/10 of a T1 line. In many cases, our clients see improved performance as they benefit from our newest, fastest IBM i POWER servers and storage virtualization that eliminates the I/O bottle-neck common with most POWER servers.
Myth 5 – The big hosting companies like Google and Amazon can handle my environment.
Fact: Google and Amazon will not take the IBM i, iSeries or AS400 into their clouds. In fact, most cloud hosting companies do not support IBM i/OS400. It’s a very niche market. Even the very few that do support IBM i/OS400 can be very expensive and may have very limited IBM i skill on staff.
Myth 6 – My workloads don’t work in the cloud.
Fact: Almost all IBM i environments work in the cloud (I have yet to see one that doesn’t). Ideally, it makes it easier to support on a current version of IBM i because we can benefit from more performance at a lower cost. Even with that said, we have a few special cases where we support clients on unsupported OS400, such as V4R5, and many on V5R4.
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