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According to the Cloud Industry Forum, 80% of UK companies are adopting cloud technology as a key part of their overall IT and business strategy. However, one of the perceived barriers to cloud adoption continues to be concerns around security and compliance, which was the key topic of discussion at a recent techUK panel in which iland took part. During this discussion, we talked about the fact that nine out of ten security professionals worry about cloud security.

One of the key aspects that we’ve certainly found here at iland and which was borne out in a survey around cloud security that we conducted earlier in the year with independent analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), is that companies actually now consider cloud security to be superior to on-premise environments, but often expose themselves to risk by blindly relying on a glut of technology they are unable to actively manage. 

Our survey found that nearly half (47%) of security personnel admitted to simply trusting their cloud providers to meet security agreements without further verification.  This highlighted that transparency continues to be a key issue, as many providers do not offer detailed insights into the cloud environment.  Or, if they do, this is certainly not up to the same levels customers are accustomed to in their own data centre operations.  At the same time, we also found thatteams tend to throw technology at the problem, however tech alone will not solve the problem. Again, the survey showed that 48% more security technologies are deployed in the cloud than on-premise.

Further, security features now top the list of priorities companies consider when selecting a cloud provider ahead of performance, reliability, management tools and cost.  Therefore, our advice to companies is that it is really important firstly to verify your cloud provider’s claims and, secondly, to ensure that you can properly leverage the technology that you are deploying. 

Interestingly, our survey showed that there appears to be much more alignment between IT and the business. Asrespondents indicated IT would rather delay a new application deployment due to security concerns than deploy it in a potentially insecure environment, and the business agreed in an almost 3 to 1 margin. To my mind, this represents a fundamental shift in organisational dynamics, where business should no longer view security personnel as naysayers, but allies who are committed to fighting threats alongside the business.

One of the key problems that accentuate security issues appears to be around skills and staffing shortages.  Infact over two thirds (68%) of organisations EMA admitted that they have staffing shortages and 34 % have skills shortages, which directly correlate to flaws and opposing perceptions uncovered in our study.  While IT has made monumental progress in identifying and adopting necessary security technologies, cloud providers must do more to ensure teams can easily validate claims, manage disparate tools, anticipate threats and take action when needed.

Further, we can see there is a lack of understanding of compliance among IT personnel. While 96% of security professionals acknowledge that their organisations have compliance related workloads in the cloud, only 69% of IT teams identified the same. This gap could lead to exposures for the organisation if IT were to place a compliance-related workload into a non-compliant cloud provider.  

And, finally, clearly defined responsibilities are needed both with your cloud service provider and within your own company, as clearly in the end, where security is concerned, the buck stops with you. There is no point claiming that you thought someone else had it covered.  This is where DevSecOps comes in as the next evolution of DevOps whereby you make security the responsibility of every member of the team, at every step of the way, right from dev through to ops. 

Right now and for the forecastable future cloud adoption sees no sign of abating. Therefore, it is critical that we get security and compliance right. Otherwise it will continue to be a blocker for organisations and could hinder innovation and competitive advantage.

Read more: A warning shot: Why cloud security remains more important than ever 

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IBM has announced that financial and HR cloud app provider Workday has signed up for its cloud services in what has been described as a “multi-year strategic partnership.”

The deal, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, means IBM’s cloud will become the primary platform for Workday’s development and testing projects – with the latter intending to expand their use ‘over time’. The two companies already partner on various initiatives; IBM uses Workday’s human capital management program for its own workforce, while Big Blue acquired Meteorix, a Workday services partner, in 2015.

“IBM and Workday are both delivering transformative applications and services in the cloud,” said Aneel Bhusri, Workday CEO and co-founder in a statement. “Workday will use IBM Cloud to continue accelerating Workday’s internal development and testing efforts to support our ongoing global expansion.” “Leading enterprises like Workday continue to turn to IBM Cloud for its global reach, flexibility, and resiliency,” added Robert LeBlanc, IBM cloud senior vice president. “Though a preferred cloud partnership with IBM, Workday can accelerate its innovation efforts to better serve clients around the world.”

According to recent industry research, IBM is firmly entrenched in the top five cloud infrastructure services players. The most recent quarterly analysis from Synergy Research argues that IBM is ranked third, ahead of Google but behind Microsoft and, unsurprisingly, AWS. IBM’s 57% year over year growth puts it behind Microsoft (100%) and Google (162%), but ahead of Amazon (53%).

On a slightly different note, analysis from IHS Markit put the same four companies in the leaders’ section for off-premises cloud IT infrastructure service leadership, but put AWS in fourth place based on market momentum and presence.

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The world of business is changing. Disruptive shifts in power are forcing everyone to question the established status quo. In particular, savvy chief executives are tasking IT organizations to help create compelling customer experiences, support new business models and adopt agile operational processes.

That’s why the vast majority of IT and business leaders are joining forces on the organizations’ most pressing commercial needs and wants. They seek an open and flexible business technology foundation that’s an enabler, rather than an inhibitor, to meaningful and substantive workflow progress.

Forward-thinking executives believe cloud services can empower them to achieve their strategic business outcomes. Moreover, they want their whole leadership team to collaborate across the business, developing a comprehensive IT strategy that utilises existing infrastructure investments and the elasticity of cloud services.

Innovation: Opportunities vs challenges

Meanwhile, CIOs are still compelled to manage the legacy IT infrastructure, while supporting new demands for flexible systems that enable digital innovation. Leading organisations are already blending traditional IT and cloud infrastructures to achieve better business outcomes.

They’re planning to adopt more new technology, such as cloud-enabled video services, enterprise mobility apps, social business, IoT and big data analytics. They’re very busy efficiently supporting current business objectives with existing infrastructure, and yet they must ensure that IT drives strategic value for the company.

What’s more, they’re using hybrid cloud to springboard to next generation activities that allow them to capture new markets. But there are many others that are still assessing their immediate needs, while considering all the options. Embracing cloud is a work-in-progress. The journey begins with an understanding of the basics.

Cloud services: Enabler of disruption

Cloud is now viewed as an impetus for innovation and collaboration. CEOs identify business technology as the number-one factor they see impacting the success of their organization. For these forward-thinking leaders, technology isn’t just part of the infrastructure needed to implement a business strategy. It’s what makes entirely new disruptive strategies possible.

And without that technology in place to spark continual innovation, CEOs fear being left behind. As a result, CIOs foresee a huge shift in their own roles and responsibilities, as they evolve from an IT service provider to a business innovation enabler.

Often, the private versus public cloud question is not viewed as an either/or decision. Informed organizations are frequently opting to utilise both platforms – what’s typically called an Open Hybrid Cloud services environment.

Hybrid cloud: Pathway to the future

Hybrid cloud computing dramatically increases your ability to create, deploy and integrate new digital services quickly – allowing your organization to keep pace with a shifting economic landscape and increasingly competitive marketplace.

We define hybrid cloud as the secure consumption and integration of services from two or more sources, including private cloud, public cloud and/or traditional IT infrastructure.

A hybrid cloud allows access to data, applications and services where they are most optimally placed – whether on a public cloud, private cloud or on-premise within an existing IT infrastructure, such as the traditional enterprise data center.

A hybrid cloud approach typically encompasses a wide range of choices including service providers, delivery configurations and billing models. It’s designed with the flexibility to change and integrate environments, data storage and services as needed.

Once implemented, a hybrid cloud offers many benefits, including the ability to compose, orchestrate and manage diverse IT workloads, thereby exploiting the portability of stored data assets and associated software applications.

Hybrid storage: Data in motion and at rest

The growing adoption of cloud computing is having a corresponding impact on IT storage evolution. Today’s digital business imperatives rely upon easy access to data insights. Next generation enterprise storage solutions support the need to capture, manage and perform real-time analysis on exponentially expanding pools of unstructured data.

That being said, most current enterprise IT environments already include some combination of on-premise block, file and object storage technologies. Over time, utilisation of the diverse mix of storage platforms can become sub-optimal.

Data is grouped into three common categories: frequently accessed data (hot data), infrequently accessed data (warm data), and rarely accessed data (cold data) that’s stored on slow, less-expensive storage. As hot data cools down and is accessed less frequently, it can be dynamically moved to the optimal storage platform(s).

An adaptive, modular hybrid cloud storage model can increase your flexibility and enable you to choose from all the best-fit solutions. So, how do you deploy a storage model that supports the fluid movement of data? Russ Kennedy describes an evolved approach to proactively securing and moving data to the most appropriate platform, in his insightful editorial entitled «Hybrid cloud storage: Past, present and future.»

The world of business is changing. Disruptive shifts in power are forcing everyone to question the established status quo. In particular, savvy chief executives are tasking IT organizations to help create compelling customer experiences, support new business models and adopt agile operational processes.
That’s why the vast majority of IT and business leaders are joining forces on the organizations’ most pressing commercial needs and wants. They seek an open and flexible business technology foundation that’s an enabler, rather than an inhibitor, to meaningful and substantive workflow progress.

read more

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Small to medium businesses in ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) are certainly on the cloud bandwagon – but it’s a stretch to say they are confident about its capabilities.

That was the overall finding from research conducted by Data & Storage Asean and commissioned by Barracuda Networks. The survey, which polled 130 IT professionals from small businesses in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, found 73% of respondents argued their data was safer under their own control rather than in the cloud. A similar percentage (71%) said they would not be likely to adopt a cloud-first strategy.

Where there was near certainty in some aspects, there was indecision in others. 42%, a majority, said they believe cloud providers adequately protect and secure their data, compared to 26% for no and 36% for ‘don’t know’, while more than two thirds (68%) say they had no defined preference over the type of cloud they were looking to implement. For those who did know what they wanted, backup and DR (9%) was the most popular.

Despite this, in terms of security backup and DR was perceived as the major concern, cited by 28% of respondents. Security in general (26%) had similar figures, while more than a quarter of respondents said they were unsure.

The survey results may indicate a certain lack of cloud maturity in south east Asia, although the most recent figures from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) found Singapore to be the second most cloud-enabled major Asia Pacific nation, only behind Hong Kong. Indonesia (#11), Malaysia (#8), and the Philippines (#9) fared less well out of the 14 countries analysed.

“Our key conclusion is that IT professionals from SME companies around ASEAN have made first steps into cloud, but are doing so in [a] tactical rather than [a] strategic manner,” the report notes. “There is still uncertainty about which cloud use case to adopt, and also a significant uncertainty around data security and protection as IT is moved to cloud.

“We see a need for more education and guidance to help assist SMEs in this region truly harness the full potential of incorporating cloud into their IT strategy,” the researchers added.

You can read the full report here.