There has been a significant move among data centers and IT departments in the past few years. There was a time when public cloud computing solutions were considered an experiment, at best. Few organizations were using public cloud solutions, even as the experts and pundits praised the new way of providing solutions.

Fast forward a couple of years, and senior IT personnel and data center managers are realizing that public cloud solutions really are a viable option. Perhaps more than that, they’re realizing that internal solutions are increasingly unsustainable. There are situations where using a service provider just makes sense.

Yet, there are also some challenges that come with using public cloud solutions. Here are three major challenges IT leadership needs to consider when looking at public cloud solutions:

1. Infrastructure compatibility. Many organizations that have implemented private cloud or virtualized solutions rely very significantly on VMware, for example. However, if those organizations are going to rely on the public cloud, they might have to deal with a different infrastructure. Amazon Web Services, for example, uses a unique Xen model. That means you’re likely looking at crossing paths in terms of infrastructure.
2. The long view. There’s another challenge when looking at public cloud solutions. An organization needs to be able to look at their applications and decide how they should be deployed over the long term – either in public or a private environment. Yet, applications tend to be much shorter-lived, and a product may reach the end of its life cycle, forcing an organization to go the other direction. Application release has to be an ongoing process for public cloud solutions to work for an organization.
3. Update challenges. One benefit of using a public cloud solution in the fact that applications will stay current with vendor offerings. This can make for something of an interesting challenge for organizations, though, because they’ll have to get used to a much more regular pattern of application versioning upgrades than in the past.

Public cloud solutions can save money, increase scalability, and improve reliability and security. They also bring with them some challenges, which need to be considered when deciding what applications to move to the public cloud.