To Cloud or not to Cloud
There’s quite a bit of talk going on about the whether the cloud deployment model is the way to go for enterprises. (For our purposes, let’s say “cloud” refers to hosted or SaaS deployment.) I fall into the camp that says, “it depends.”
According to Gartner:
“Organizations potentially can gain a competitive or cost advantage through selective adoption of cloud computing, but not without first taking a comprehensive look at the associated risks, ensuring that they are consistent with business goals, along with the expectations of regulators, auditors, shareholders and partners.“
– Gartner, Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing Jay Heiser, Mark Nicolett, 3 June 2008.
I think that makes a lot of sense. Deployment models should align with your business goals.
But when it comes to social media isn’t it true that publicly-available content is, well, public? Can’t public posts be seen and read by anyone? So why any concerns at all about risks when using the cloud for social media analytics?
For many companies there probably aren’t any. However for certain enterprises when it comes to harvesting and analyzing persistently-stored posts, there could be very good reasons to maintain control and storage inside your firewall.
Perhaps you’re in an industry such as pharmaceuticals, financial services or others, where storing historical social web content in-house might be important for regulatory, audit or other reasons. Or maybe your IT team requires all systems be deployed in a behind-the-firewall deployment, including social media analytics.
It’s best to have choice so you can make sure your social media analytics deployment supports your business goals. Maybe you start with one deployment model and migrate to another. For example you might want to start with SaaS, then bring the system in-house. After all you can’t always anticipate how regulatory, compliance, etc. requirements will change tomorrow, next month or next year. Not to mention how your own business needs will change over time.