Misconceptions and How to Get Safely on Cloud Platforms

Taken from forbes.com 's article
Five Common Misconceptions About Cloud Platforms
By Lisa M. Schwartz, Oracle

Understanding a few basic misconceptions about cloud platforms can make a difference to the bottom line of your business. Why? Simply put, cloud platforms (“platform as a service,” or PaaS) are cloud-based infrastructure and development environments that customers like you pay for o8n usage-based arrangements, and which are maintained by third-party cloud providers.

Using cloud platform technology frees your IT staff from doing repetitive maintenance work and allows them to be more responsive to pressing business needs, such as quickly developing and testing a new app for salespeople in the field or creating a new real-time inventory dashboard.

However, all cloud platforms aren’t created equal, choosing a cloud platform is an important decision you will have to live with for a while.

Misconceptions About Cloud Platforms

1: All cloud platforms offer the same set of services.
2: PaaS is a great catchall solution to providing missing capabilities not found in SaaS applications.
3: Non-standards-based cloud platforms or open source development languages can bring down costs.
4: All cloud subscriptions are more or less the same.

How to Get Safely to the Cloud

1. Use a single, well-known, standards-based cloud platform across your entire business. That will save you a lot of time and money in the long run, allow you to innovate faster, and avoid unnecessary headaches.

2. Use a provider that doesn’t lock you in to its platform by using lesser-known proprietary languages or databases.

3. Look for a cloud platform that connects easily with its own SaaS applications, and also allows you to move your SaaS applications, if you choose, to another platform.

4. Finally, choose a provider that has many prebuilt services at every layer so your business can innovate quickly while maintaining governance and standards across your entire business.

Starting with a secure cloud platform as a foundation, built on widely known standards, you can save your company time and money and position your business well into the future.

Lisa M. Schwartz is senior product marketing director for cloud applications at Oracle.