Under or overestimating capacity requirements could mean the cloud doesn’t work the way it should.
Using the cloud is a great way of ensuring data can be stored and accessed easily and safely, but organisations may find it does not work effectively for them if they do not have the right capacity.
This is the warning of Morgan Stanley executive director for IT strategy Evangelos Kotsovinos, who told Computer Weekly maximum IT efficiency can only be achieved with good capacity planning and management.
"Many enterprises move to cloud computing without a detailed capacity management strategy because cloud platform is seen as infinitely elastic," he explained.
However, this may not be the case – and add-on packages needed when storage is exceeded could prove to be expensive.
Mr Kotsovinos recommended avoiding this by working out how much space is needed beforehand and then making sure over or under-provisioning is not a problem.
"It is all OK when you are doing cloud on a small scale, but when you do it at a high level for applications that are disparate and mission-critical, it is important to think about storage requirements," the expert added.
Mr Kotsovinos also advised against using the cloud as just an extended system for HR paperwork and emails, as it has so much more to offer businesses of all sizes.
"It is important to have clarity on what can go on the cloud and what cannot," he remarked.
This comes after Home Office IT director Denise McDonagh told the same news provider she thinks that anything that can be commoditised should be in the cloud.
"Why develop your own secure email if there is a secure email cloud service?" she pointed out.
Outsourcing requirements to a company like Dajon could be an easy way of skipping all these issues and having everything managed securely and within easy reach, as well as ensuring thorough data protection.