Savvy reasons not to use public cloud platforms

Tony Arcadi is the associate CIO for enterprise infrastructure at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He’s contemplating a move to Microsoft’s cloud productivity software Office 365, which includes email. Still, he said, “I stay awake at night worrying about the availability aspects of that.”

The cloud ecosystem is complicated and getting more so, with transport segments between the cloud-subscribing customer and the provider, between IT and the user and then the PC or mobile device the user is on.

“You go back a couple of years ago, and you had the server in the basement and the work station on the fourth floor and the wire between — and that was your ecosystem,” he said. Today, with email in the cloud, “you’re traversing maybe four, five, six different carriers to get there. Maybe you leave on ATT, but you arrive on Sprint, and Verizon carried you halfway through the middle.”

The U.S. government declares itself cloud first, which means departments and agencies need to pick public cloud platforms for new initiatives unless there’s a compelling reason not to. Considering the promised benefits of cost savings, speed and flexibility, it’s a reasonable policy, and Arcadi agrees.

“I’m a proponent of the notion that we should give cloud the strongest consideration,” he said. Speaking for himself and not for his employer, he stressed, “Cloud first can also morph into, ‘Well, why haven’t you done cloud?’ And I’m worried that, in fact, there are many places where cloud doesn’t work as well as it could.”