Is Your Head In The Cloud?

Cloud computing is undoubtedly one of the most powerful trends in enterprise IT today. According to IDC, public cloud spending will grow from $229 billion in 2019 to nearly $500 billion in 2023.

"Adoption of public (shared) cloud services continues to grow rapidly as enterprises, especially in professional services, telecommunications, and retail, continue to shift from traditional application software to software as a service (SaaS) and from traditional infrastructure to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to empower customer experience and operational-led digital transformation (DX) initiatives," said Eileen Smith, program director, Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC.

Furthermore, Bloomberg reported that four of the top five spenders on R&D are also public cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple) and the latest statistics from Synergy Research Group show that 2019 was the first time that enterprises spend more on cloud services (IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud) than they do on data center equipment.

No wonder some industry experts believe there’s a “forced march to the cloud" going on. Here are a few key things that every enterprise needs to consider as they embrace cloud-based solutions:

Cloud HR Skills

Many organizations are migrating to the cloud without developing the employee skills and company culture that are necessary to support cloud computing. Companies need their staff to have the right technical skills to fully utilize cloud-based solutions and their culture should encourage and nurture the immense innovation potential these solutions present or else they risk falling behind the competition.

Cloud Security

Many businesses have no clue on how to secure cloud-based solutions. Every company embracing cloud computing should have a cybersecurity strategy that comprehensively covers their key sources of weakness in the cloud such as misconfiguration, cloud-native breaches, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) technology and insider threats. It should also ensure full visibility over data and disaster recovery. 

Cloud Compliance

Using cloud computing brings a new angle to regulatory and internal compliance because moving data from internal to external storage necessitates that the company closely examines how that data will be stored so that it stays fully compliant with industry laws and regulations. These include HIPAA, PCI and Sarbanes-Oxley, as well as other legal requirements from internal teams, partners and customers.

The key questions to consider when it comes to compliance are:

• Where is the data going to reside?
• Who is going to be responsible for it?
• Who is going to be able to see it?
• How is it going to be sent to the cloud?
• How is it going to be secured on that cloud?

Cloud Legal Matters

This is closely related to the previous point. A service-level agreement (SLA) is critical for any company looking to adopt cloud computing because cloud storage is a remotely delivered service, and this naturally comes with security, privacy and data loss risks to be accounted for in the vendor contract.

SLAs are used between companies in various industries such as telecommunications to define the level of service expected by a customer from a supplier, describing the specific metrics by which that service is measured, plus the compensations/penalties applicable if the agreed-on service levels are not met.

In the particular context of cloud storage solutions, a typical SLA should include detailed information on the critical elements of the service provider's cloud storage infrastructure, such as:

• operations
• backup
• maintenance and fault tolerance claims
• maximum provisioned storage capacity
• programmatic read/write (R/W) operations
• information security (IS)
• data governance policies
• service availability

Don’t Trip and Fall on Your Way to The Cloud

All in all, companies should make sure they understand all their application requirements in detail before selecting a cloud partner and signing a contract. The cost of selecting the wrong cloud storage solution can be very costly and waste valuable time and resources.

Let the specialists at ASB Resources help you make the right choice. As one of the top IT solutions providers in the country we are equipped with the necessary knowledge, experience and expertise to guide you in choosing the right cloud storage provider for your company. Schedule a chat with one of our experts today!