Cloud Vs Legacy
- Last updated on
- April 30, 2021
- at 8:51 pm
Can Cloud Be The Answer To Legacy IT Problems?
The report is based on an analysis of more than 18,000 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) logged to NIST’s National Vulnerability Database in 2020. It reveals that well over half (57%) were rated ‘high’ or ‘critical’ severity – the highest recorded figure for any year to date.
Our analysis also looks beyond severity scores, detailing the rise of low complexity vulnerabilities as well as those which require no user interaction to exploit.
These trends highlight the need for organisations to improve their understanding of the vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild, as well as to adopt a multi-layered approach to vulnerability management.
The findings aren’t all bad news. There are also positive trends, such as a decrease in CVEs which require no privileges to exploit.
What Is Meant By Legacy IT?
Let us take a look at what the term ‘Legacy IT’ entails.
Legacy IT is the name given to self-managed systems that are deployed either within a company’s data centre (on-premises) or in a shared data centre (co-location) where the company leases space. The required equipment is generally purchased and owned by the company and is managed by its IT personnel.
What Are Some Problems With Legacy IT Solutions?
Below are some drawbacks of Legacy IT solutions.
Setup And Maintenance Costs Are High.
Establishing and maintaining a physical data centre is no meagre task and is a huge money sink for any enterprise. It brings with it a large amount of capital expenditure (CAPEX) in the form of data centre costs, equipment purchase, software licensing, maintenance contracts, staff wages and the list goes on.
Inadequacy To Adapt To Company Growth.
Legacy IT also poses a threat to the company in terms of its viability. Having a data centre is similar to putting shackles on your company’s growth. A rapidly growing company will have increasing needs and accommodating these needs can again, prove very expensive and time-consuming. Lead times for purchasing equipment often is too slow and having to deliver the extra capacity puts a huge strain on the IT operations staff.
Becomes Difficult To Maintain In Challenging Times.
So optimistically, your company is growing, so you have to only look at what is given above. But we know that growth is not the only scenario. Maintaining a data centre in an unpredictable market with unpredictable growth rates (your company may even be contracting in size) is a very risky affair. Regardless of your company’s situation, being forced to maintain the data centre even if you don’t need the same amount of storage is an unnecessary expense, no matter how you look at it.
What Is Cloud Computing?
Before we go headfirst into why cloud computing is the chosen one, let us first take a look at what cloud computing actually is.
“Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT services from a third-party provider over the Internet. That means you consume a service provided by another company (aka the “service provider”), typically on a pay-as-you-use pricing model.”
So in layman terms, you pay a third-party provider to host your data on their storage system and pay only for the data you use.
Now there are several service models as well as deployment models for cloud services. Read more about them here.
Now that we are done with introductions, let us move on to the main question.
How Is Cloud Computing Better Than Legacy IT Solutions?
The introduction of cloud computing has resulted in a significant change in the way data is stored and accessed. Users are no longer required to store their files on private servers. Companies can share infrastructure, applications, and data around the Internet by combining Cloud and legacy systems.
1. Pay Only For What You Use.
Cloud Computing is much more efficient when seen from a financial standpoint. Regardless of the size of your company, you just have to pay for whatever resource that your company makes use of and nothing more. This model avoids the wastage of resources that can be utilized elsewhere and is a lighter load on your financial team. Cloud services use an OPEX (Operational Expenditure) business model that is more favourable to most companies than shelling out a huge initial capital investment (CAPEX) on Legacy solutions.
2. Competitive Pricing.
Take advantage of larger service providers for your IT requirements. Many Fortune-500 companies like Amazon and Microsoft offer their own proprietary cloud services. Due to their mammoth size, these corporations can easily handle the cost of establishing and maintaining the necessary equipment. With thousands of customers under their belt, cloud service providers (CSPs) can offer very competitive costs, which helps businesses of all sizes.
3. Easy To Be Tailored To Changing Requirements Of The Company.
Unlike Legacy IT solutions, cloud computing is much more flexible. You can always be ensured of having your IT needs satisfied without ever having to worry about wasted resources. If your company rapidly grows, its requirement scales with it. CSPs ensure adaptability to increasing needs.
This is true in the opposite scenario as well. If hard times hit and the consumption of your organisation decreases, it is very easy to reduce the cost of cloud services as well. This will let you take care of other aspects of the business in a dire financial situation without wasting valuable resources.
4. Easier And Cheaper To Rectify Miscalculations.
The exact computing requirements of an organisation is not something that is set in stone. IT teams often miscalculate their requirements and create an overestimate to be on the safer side of things. This may result in extra resources being wasted. With the cloud, this factor becomes redundant as efficiency is ensured through on-demand services. This would free up company resources that could be used productively elsewhere.
5. Low Maintenance Cost.
By outsourcing your IT solutions to a CSP, you essentially free your company and your IT team from managing and maintaining data centres. This drastically reduces company expenditure. Moving to the cloud can thus give your firm a better chance at survival in the modern business environment.
6. Shared Responsibility Model In Security
Cloud service providers adhere to what is known as the Shared Responsibility Model when it comes to security. This method is much more feasible for consumers as they no longer have to worry about the equipment, which will be maintained by the providers themselves. Note that the consumers are still responsible for data encryption, patching operating systems and configuring firewalls.
This means better security for your company since the security in a large company with enough resources to host cloud services most assuredly will have measures and resources to protect the data as well. Most major cloud providers follow very strict security requirements, making the cloud more secure than Legacy alternatives.
SecuriCentrix ensures that your data stored in the cloud is secured with the best security practices. For a safe, secure and hassle-free business operation,