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Gartner Explodes 10 Cloud Myths

One popular myth is that the cloud should be used for everything.

• By Keith Ward
• 10/29/2014

"From a consumer perspective, 'in the cloud' means where the magic happens, where the implementation details are supposed to be hidden," said David Mitchell Smith, a vice president and fellow in Gartner Research. "So it should be no surprise that such an environment is rife with myths and misunderstandings."

The danger in such perceptions, Gartner says in a press release, is, "These myths slow things down, impede innovation and induce fear, thus distracting from real progress, innovation and outcomes."

The No. 1 myth identified by Gartner is that the "Cloud Is Always About Money." Although cloud pricing is getting cheaper, Gartner warns that IT administrators should avoid promising that moving to the cloud will save cash. Such assumptions can lead to "career-limiting" situations.

The No. 10 myth on the list is that "Virtualization = Private Cloud." They are not synonymous: "Even if virtualization is used (and used well), the result is not cloud computing," the report states. Although virtualization is often used for cloud computing, it's not the only way to set up a cloud infrastructure. This is especially true of private clouds, Gartner says.

Several other prevalent myths the report addresses are that cloud environments shouldn't be used for mission-critical applications, and that the cloud is inherently less secure than on-premises computing. "To date, there have been very few security breaches in the public cloud -- most breaches continue to involve on-premises datacenter environments," Gartner says.

One myth not mentioned by Gartner, but still being perpetuated, is that cloud computing is exploding in usage. As reported in the October 2014 Virtualization Review cover story, Forrester Research Inc. Analyst Lauren Nelson estimated that private cloud adoption by companies is just 33 percent, and only 13 percent use public clouds.