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Challenges of Cloud Computing
Privacy
- Sensitive data (PII, financial, health) lives in the cloud
- Requires strong controls: encryption, IAM, audits
- Breaches = high impact + regulatory exposure
Compliance
- Data replication across regions can violate data residency laws
- Regulations may restrict where data is stored/processed
- Example: Google Cloud Platform (GCP) lacks mainland China regions
Data Availability
- Depends on network + provider reliability
- Major providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) offer redundancy
- Still vulnerable to outages and regional failures
Connectivity
- Internet quality directly impacts performance
- High latency or downtime affects apps and pipelines
Vendor Lock-In
- Proprietary APIs/services make migration costly
- Rewrites and data movement add friction
Data Transfer Costs
- Egress (data leaving cloud) is expensive
- Large-scale pipelines can silently drive costs up
Limited Control
- No access to underlying infrastructure
- Less flexibility for tuning, customization, and debugging