Has the public cloud delivered on its promises?

The core promises of the public cloud revolve around scalability, cost efficiency, speed and accessibility of computing resources. While it could be argued that the public cloud has made significant strides in delivering on these, in turn transforming the way organisations operate and manage their IT resources, it has also brought a string of challenges and complexities with it.

Scalability is one of the fundamental perceived benefits of the public cloud. Organisations can scale their resources up or down with ease, depending on their current needs, without the need for significant capital expenditure on physical infrastructure. This elasticity allows businesses to respond quickly to market demands and maintain efficiency during fluctuating workloads. However, it should be noted that such flexibility comes with a noticeable price premium. Many companies opt to reserve resources in advance for fixed contract periods as a means of reducing that premium, which in itself reduces their ability to scale down below a pre-determined floor of capacity