Challenges IT Managers face when moving to cloud computing Research Paper

Challenges IT Managers face when moving to cloud computing - Research Paper Example As a result, many IT managers are cautious in adopting and moving to the cloud because of the challenges thereon including potential vendor lock-in and security concerns. These challenges are mostly non-technical since they are concerned with how existing management, policies, processes and employees are affected by a move to the cloud (Beheshti, 2011). For IT managers, a move to the cloud is potentially a disruptive process to the current workplace. For instance, an IT manager for an organization who in the past decade has been patching OSs, locking down data center hardware, securing applications and developing disaster recovery plans would be in rush of moving on to the cloud (Holtsnider & Jaffe, 2012). They will be faced with the question of SLAs-Service Level Agreements; this is because, if proper care is not taken, some SLAs may lock them into remaining with a cloud provider that does not meet expectations. IT managers need to understand what level of services they can rely on when moving to the cloud. Secondly, there is the question of application security; protection of clients and organizations data is on top of any IT manager’s priority list. IT managers, therefore, have the responsibility of checking the security standard of any cloud service they intend to employ. Cloud computing offers very many choices with reg ards to applications or software the company needs to use, as a result, a choice dilemma arises. IT managers, when moving to the cloud are faced with the issue of loss of control and reliability issues. Other challenges include the need of creating cost-reflective charging and metering of service consumption; managing service brownouts and blackouts; architecting frictionless, pure virtualized services and applications that are easily scalable (Molen, 2010). Despite these challenges, there are several benefits that IT managers derive from