For all the available facts and figures around Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), and its widespread adoption by Companies, Missions, networks and SME businesses, there is still a lot of confusion and misunderstanding within the business community concerning the value it can bring to a business. The reason for this confusion is the amount of fallacy and falsehood accidentally spread by ‘experts’, that have seen, or even experienced a little of what HCI can bring and have decided against it – usually for Financial reasons. They then try to justify this decision to not look forward to their businesses future in favour of saving capital expenses now.

Here are the top six Myths and misunderstandings about ‘the Cloud’, and how your thinking may not be 100% accurate concerning future IT upgrades:

1: My current means of working with very large sets of data will be the same — if not better — in the cloud.

Not true. The speed of the connection between where you access your data and where it is stored in your cloud might not be as fast as the high speeds you may be used to with an on-site server. Always check these speeds prior to making the decision.

2: For my organization, the cloud is an ‘either-or’ proposition: I can either be in the cloud or I can keep my current setup with physical servers.

Really, the most effective way for an organization to see the benefits of the cloud is to use both setups simultaneously as they slowly transition to the cloud.

3: Virtualizing my servers is all I need for my company to succeed in the cloud.

Virtualization is the process of taking a given task into the cloud, where a physical server creates a ‘virtual machine’ to help you complete it more quickly than you could on your own. But a virtualized server by itself is not enough to succeed. Success in the cloud relies on the automated management infrastructure around the server working well.

4: The only way to keep hackers from breaking into my cloud is to build my own.

Not true! In fact, the variety of attacks a cloud sustains can make it more secure. The engineers protecting the network can identify and correct more weaknesses. But that doesn’t mean you need to build your own cloud. As your security needs grow, any increase in resources directed towards securing your cloud can provide an advantage, whether in money saved or attacks defeated.

5: All I need is a cloud to save money on my IT needs.

Not so fast. The cloud can easily adjust the amount of computing power you’re using, giving a lot of flexibility to your budget. Focusing on cost alone, though, and not investigating how you might achieve significant efficiencies with new cloud technologies after you migrate could diminish your return on the cloud investment.

6: I’m worried that my cloud provider is spying on my activity in their cloud.

With privacy on many minds these days, the multi-billion-dollar cloud computing industry could collapse if even one major cloud provider was caught snooping on their user’s data — or helping others do so. These providers are building security mechanisms to guarantee they themselves cannot access the data.

The opportunities in using Technology to grow your businesses’ productivity and top-line revenue while saving money and maximizing your operations have never been better. However, listening to those with no – or limited – experience in your business requirements, or the tools required to attain your goals, and making decisions based on these falsehoods could have the opposite effect: Land you with more expenditure than you were expecting, and getting a HCI package that slows your operations down.

Always get a couple of opinions and make sure your first steps are the best for you. Ensure that your ‘Cloud’ environment is scalable and delivers on what you want – not what someone else erroneously says.