Forrester Defines Three Cloud Storage Use Cases: Page 2 of 2

There are a couple of scenarios in which cloud storage would not be the answer. The cloud would not work as well for data warehousing in which one database is accessed by several different applications. He also advises against running an application in the customer's data center but the storage in the cloud because of concerns about latency.

It's not that cloud vendors are pushing cloud services that are inappropriate, it's that cloud marketing is so pervasive. "It's kind of maddening how much cloud hype there is," said Reichman, who's heard pitches that the traditional data center is disappearing, that everything will be available in the cloud and that customers won't need to buy storage technology themselves anymore. "Anything's possible in 10 [or] 15 years, but for what we've got going now, those are the types of claims that just don't seem that likely," he said.

It's critical for customers to craft well-defined service level agreements (SLAs) in contract negotiations with cloud vendors to guarantee what level of availability, performance and security the vendor will provide, Reichman added. It may be one thing for the vendor to deliver high performance and availability to one of its first customers and quite another matter when it adds 100 more over time.

Lastly, Reichman advises companies to ask for discounts from cloud vendors for being early adopters. The vendor may easily agree to a discount if that means that company can be a reference customer for it to market to other prospects.