What about security and control?!

Of course, corporate IT – and often other departments too – will howl at the mere suggestion of switching to cloud-based SaaS solutions (please note that I use the term SaaS-based to encompass IaaS/Paas/SaaS for sake of simplicity) and bring up scores of reasons why this is a bad idea.

Topping the list will be “security” – I put this in quotes since it means so many different things to different people – and “control” (again, a nebulous term), closely followed by things like the ability to integrate other systems, customized solutions and workflows, and the loss of competitive advantage. Let’s look at these in turn.

Security can mean anything from maintaining control of critical client or corporate data to preventing unauthorized access and transactional integrity.

This is a red herring, of course, since cloud-based or SaaS solutions are in no way inherently less secure than those hosted by a business. Where a solution is deployed – provided it is with a reputable partner – has little or no bearing on the application or data security.

After all, all modern systems today are accessible from the outside in order to facilitate online access by customers and partners alike. Proper architecture, hardening, intrusion detection, and policies and procedures play a far greater role than hosting in ensuring security.

And having control over the hardware or network infrastructure is similarly not relevant. Reputable hosting companies offering cloud services, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Rackspace, are far more adept at maintaining secure hosting environments than most companies.

And reliable SaaS vendors not only work closely with these hosting partners, but they also ensure that their own applications – which they know intimately, having built them – are always up-to-date on relevant updates and patches. After all, this is what they do; their very existence depends on it.

If you need further convincing, then just consider that Equifax – recently in the news for the biggest loss of control and security breach ever – had full “control” over their custom-built solution that left 143 million consumers exposed.

And integrating with SaaS-based solutions hosted in the cloud using contemporary methods and interfaces is no more difficult than doing so for traditional systems hosted in-house.