It cannot be denied that cloud computing has become popular more than ever in the recent years. There are tons of things for organizations and enterprises to concern about when migrating to the cloud. However, according to experts, the biggest concern for businesses is the question that who else might have access to the data.

Pursuant to a recent survey conducted by Bitglass, which is a cloud security company, potential government access to encrypted data is an issue.

Pursuant to the survey’s findings, more than one third (35%) of (information technology) IT security professionals said they had the thought that cloud app suppliers should be forced to provide government the access to encrypted data. In the meantime, more than haft (55%) of respondents are opposed. The survey also figured out that in the United State, there’s more opposition with around two third (64%) of respondents opposed to government cooperation, in comparison with only 42% of respondents who live in the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

As said by the Chief Executive Officer of Biglass, Nat Kausik, while hotly contested issues such as government intervention are still open, several years of experience with major public cloud applications has demonstrated that in comparison with on-premises apps, the cloud ones can be more secure. He said that one of the main open concerns is that whether or not it is possible for organizations and enterprises to put policies as well as controls in place so that they can securely make use of the cloud computing.

In addition, the survey pointed out that a vast majority of businesses has experienced some kind of cloud security incident. To be more detailed, 47% of them involves access from unauthorized devices, and nearly 60% of them are related to unwanted external sharing. There is also a lack of cloud visibility. According to the survey’s findings, less than 49% of businesses know even the basics, for instances, where and when sensitive data is being downloaded from the cloud.

Another finding is that the organizations’ demand on Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs) is on the upward trend. Pursuant to the survey, 60% of businesses said that they had deployed or had a plan to deploy a CASB, with data leakage prevention is regarded as the most important capability. Few organizations and enterprises have taken action to mitigate shadow IT threats either. The survey showed that 62% of organization are dependent on written policies rather than technical controls.

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So many people have the thought that free cloud storage means that risk-free storage. Nevertheless, the fact is that like paid cloud storage, the free ones comes with the same risks and concerns. Listed below are 3 most common issues you have to deal with when using free cloud storage:

The first common issue you often have to deal with is privacy. This is because of the reason that a vast majority of big cloud companies share user details. Nevertheless, the fact you need to keep in mind is that security and privacy are different from each other.

Pursuant to what experts said, security is top-notch, with almost all mainstream cloud firms. They, however, still keep an eye on user content, as well as share it with third-parties.

In the meantime, security, according to experts, deals with the question that whether or not you’re hackable. As said by experts, privacy means what you’re uploading can’t be snooped on by a cloud company.

Which in reality is the norm of cloud storage services, all major venders, including Box, iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc., can view and share files.

Nevertheless, there are cloud storage services, for instance Tresorit, Sync.com, SpiderOak, and others which take privacy protection very seriously. In addition, they don’t retain any information about their clients.

The second issue you need to pay attention to is the crappy encryption options. As said by experts, encryption is something every user should know. This is because of the reason that it’s quite an important factor of cloud storage, paid or free.

Pursuant to what expert said, normally, the native encryption options that are available in free storage are non-existent or feeble.

Certainly, a direct route around this problem is that you need to encrypt data yourself before uploading it to the free cloud storage service of your choice.

Even if data encryption is not your need or intention, it’s still important for you to understand at least on a surface-level what it is, as well as how important it is to your business.

Another issue is customer support. It holds true that almost all cloud and backup services will offer users either phone, chat, or ticket support in order to help them deal with any personal issues that may occur.

However, if you are using free cloud storage, you cannot call a customer support member. This is because of the reason that free cloud storage services don’t come with customer support. However, according to experts, this doesn’t mean that support via other users or forums aren’t available.

Expecting to be treated like a paying client is what you shouldn’t do. This is because you’re not one. However, almost all mainstream cloud options are very well made as well as work smoothly.

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According to experts, with powerful hybrid cloud systems, you can get elasticity as well as agility for your data center and the business. In addition, it allows you to create better go-to-market strategies while still supporting advanced IT initiatives. One of the biggest question for businesses nowadays is how to align the hybrid cloud strategy with the companies’ goals. Here are 3 useful tips for them:

1. Partner with a vendor who has the ability to support your IT and business goals

It is reported that Azure Stack, which is the very much anticipated Microsoft Hybrid Cloud product, has recently experienced a few issues. Indeed, the architecture is not as perfect as developer were expecting. It will be a bit more limited. Pursuant to a recent post from GeekWire, an American technology news website that covers startups and established technology firms, a huge number of consumers said that simplicity and the development speed are the two important factors, trumping the capability of customizing at the infrastructure level.

As said by experts, in case you’re looking for better levels of infrastructure customization, you should create the partnership with a vender who is capable of supporting it. Otherwise, in case you are standardized on specific hardware models, some hybrid cloud providers are able to specifically support your use cases.

2. Make sure that management remains elastic throughout on-premise as well as public systems.

Pursuant to expert, it’s a must for you to be capable of controlling those systems that span cloud and on-premise resources. This is extremely important for information technology (IT) managers who control desktops, as well as other types of workloads that are being delivered to the user. You should keep in mind that we’re working with more data, more mobility, very rich experiences, and more cloud services.

Pursuant to what experts said, all of this translates to requirements around proactive, cloud-ready management. It’s a must for you to plan out and manage hybrid cloud systems. Sometimes, this requires granular control over underlying server systems. If that’s the case, working with venders who have the ability to support those types of services is an important thing you need to do. Most of all, these venders must be capable of extending management between your data center and their cloud. Keep in mind that lost resources are not cheap, and poor user experiences can lead to low productivity.

3. Create and develop data center technologies that are built around scale, predictability, and efficiency.

Pursuant to experts, using new types of converged and hyper-converged systems can help businesses better integration with virtualization as well as cloud resources. Most of all, teams within a company are able to leverage hybrid cloud services for their specific needs. By creating a powerful, underlying data center ecosystem, you can have the ability to enable an architecture which is capable of scaling seamlessly between in-premise and cloud data points.

As said by experts, these converged infrastructure technologies can help you aggregate critical resource points. They can also give you the ability to create greater levels of multi-tenancy, and user experience optimization, security, and infrastructure control.

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It cannot be denied that cloud computing has many benefits for organizations as well as enterprises all around the world. Nevertheless, some people may not know that the cloud is also making advances in the medical industry.

According to what experts said, cloud computing is becoming one of the most important tools for healthcare pros everywhere. Listed below are 3 ways the cloud benefits the medical industry:

1. Cloud computing helps the healthcare industry gain greater reach.

As said by experts, it’s not easy to give the present doctors the information they need, or to getting the necessary pros to the places they need to be in the event of disaster. It is claimed that having the capability of consulting with one another, keeping each other updated on the status of a disaster victim’s condition, or sending requests for man-power or additional resources can be seen as the difference between a life saved or lost.

Nowadays, with the help of cloud computing, it’s possible for an on-site doctor who has very little experience in surgery to get the real-time guidance from an expert to perform a field surgery, for instance, with all the present medical equipment that transmits real-time information from one source to the next with the aim to make sure that the best work is done.

2. Cloud computing can bring better collaboration.

For medical industry, collaboration is quite an important factor. This makes cloud computing a perfect companion in the field. Pursuant to what experts said, cloud computing enables pros to store and access data remotely, which helps healthcare pros from anywhere in the world have the ability to immediately access to patient data, as well as apply the necessary care without delaying. Apart from this, up-to-the-second updates on patient conditions and healthcare developments, remote conferencing, etc. is giving doctors the ability to save those precious life-saving minutes.

3. Cloud computing can help in improving medical research.

According to experts, much in the way big data is help doctors treat their patients in better and more effective ways, cloud computing makes it possible via storing as well as sharing data in order to help the research process to be conducted more quickly. With the ability to gather outside data from a wide variety of fields, data analysts are able to make use of cloud computing with the aim to pool this data as well as condense it into better results, which helps the medical pros gain a clearer and more advanced image of the subjects that they’re researching. As said by experts, these sort of advances are the kind that cure diseases as well as improve the kind of care being given.

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It cannot be denied that moving to the cloud now can be seen as one of the most important and necessary thing for every business. According to experts, the most important thing when moving to the cloud is that you need to know how to fully reap its benefits while minimizing the security risk it can bring to your organization. Here are three tips for you:

# Tip 1: Making use of multi-factor verification

A huge number of cloud operators provide clients with the option to add extra layers of security to the log-in process. Instead of a single password, it’s a need for you to require the vendor to offer you a unique PIN code to be sent to your phone by cloud services. This is really necessary and important because of the reason that well documented data breaches included password data as well as common threats is still a growing trend. As said by experts, users are still clicking on bogus links in emails, as well as giving away passwords and data inadvertently. It is claimed that that extra layer of security at the log-in process will hinder hackers from breaking in.

# Tip 2: Giving your endpoints the best protection

Pursuant to what experts said, the cloud means that your data effectively follows you around. One of the biggest benefits of the cloud is that it allows you to access what you need at any time and from any place. Nevertheless, this is also regarded as the problem. According to experts, even thought you might be secure in the cloud, it can’t be say for sure that you won’t be lax in your security “on the ground”. This means that your data can be vulnerable due to the network connection you use. For this reason, it’s a must for you to make sure that mobile devices as well as laptops have security software in place. Even though there are good free solutions on the market, you need to be very wary of accessing cloud data in public places or via public networks. In addition, it is advised that you should protect them by making use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in order to prevent anyone from snooping.

# Tip 3: Encrypting your data

According to experts, before signing up to a cloud service, it’s important to make sure that the data you upload and download will be encrypted in transit and at rest by the cloud vendor. Otherwise, your data will be stolen while it’s on the move from point to point. In addition, if it is the file storage that you are using, you should consider encrypting your data before uploading it to the cloud. As by experts, adding an extra layer of security to your confidential information is quite an effective way for you to take into account.

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It cannot be denied that using cloud load testing can bring businesses so many advantages and benefits. In the recent years, cloud load testing has become an increasingly discussed and important topic. In this post, we will show you 4 main reason for why cloud load testing is easy for businesses to adopt.

1. The first reason is that it has no infrastructure to maintain. According to what experts said, when using the capabilities of cloud load testing, you are leveraging the cloud to host your load generators and engines. For this reason, it’s not a must for you to maintain a separate infrastructure for this capability. It is claimed that the providers that you’re using are in charge of building and maintaining these core infrastructure components. They are the ones who take responsibility for delivering this as a service to you. This, in some cases, can help you reduce a huge number of capital and operational expenses.

2. Leveraging cloud load testing can be seen as a way to supplement your current load as well as performance testing abilities. For instance, you may typically run a 1,000-virtual-user test. Nevertheless, for an upcoming event, you want to make sure that you are able to handle and tune for a 5,000-virtual-user scenario. As such, instead of buying an additional 4,000 virtual users, you just need to leverage cloud load testing in order to drive additional traffic to your app under test for only the required period.

3. With cloud load testing, it’s possible for you to concurrently run with existing load tests. As said by experts, in the past, scheduling and shared resource models could help businesses increase the complexity as well as reduced the availability of load and performance-testing resources. Nowadays, with the help of cloud load testing, this capability is available exponentially. In addition, it can be triggered by any people as long as these people have the access to do so. Apart from lifecycle virtualization, this capability has given teams and businesses the opportunity to introduce continuous testing scenarios with an extremely reduced costs model.

4. Pursuant to experts, the capability of integrating has been further adopted broadly over the years. It, therefore, has been across the varied stakeholders. For this reason, there has been the flurry of integrations which help businesses easily schedule, execute, as well as report on cloud load testing results. According to experts, the reason for this is that it now can be triggered from every number of locations such as quality reporting systems, build systems, IDEs, load and performance tools, etc.

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It is claimed that nowadays, more and more organizations and enterprises moving their existing apps to the public cloud because of the tremendous benefits it can bring to them. Nevertheless, the fact is that it’s not easy for all businesses know which apps they should move to the cloud. Listed below are 3 key factors to you need take into account before migrating your apps to the public cloud.

1.You need to consider about redundancy.

According to what experts said, apps refactored for the cloud take into account the availability of the underlying infrastructure. It is claimed that cloud-native app design has the capability to assume so many different components of the infrastructure will fail. It is advised that before moving an app to the cloud, you need to focus on its requirements. Pursuant to experts, if the app need Five 9s (99.999%) of uptime, and you’ve built a redundant infrastructure with the aim to support that uptime requirement, it will be a need for you to think carefully before migrating the app to the cloud.

2. You should focus on virtualized infrastructure.

One of the biggest questions that businesses have before moving their existing apps to the cloud is that how a workload gets to the cloud in the first place. Google, for instance, allows the import of VirtualBox images as well as RAW disk images. In addition, third parties are available in order to assist in migration to the cloud, pursuant to experts. Another way for businesses is to opt for a pre-built OS image. Afterward, it’s necessary for businesses to re-install the app from binaries, as well as to replicate the data set.

It is claimed that the migration is essentially a virtual-to-virtual (V2V) migration. For this reason, from a pure technology standpoint, if your app is currently running on a virtual infrastructure, it can be regarded as a good candidate for the cloud computing. Nevertheless, the app’s physical migration can be seen as a minor consideration.

3. You should pay attention to licensing

It holds true that cloud infrastructures are experiencing a similar transition. According to what experts said, some specialty software or OSs may need to have additional licensing for the cloud. In the meantime, some solutions may not even provide users with a cloud option. As said by experts, the database layer is a good place to start looking. It’s a need for you to make a discussion on the database engine that you are leveraging. It’s also a need for you to know that whether or not it has licensing for your target cloud vendor. You can also choose to leverage the database service which is offered by your cloud vendor.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the fastest growing enterprise company that the world has ever seen – a testament to the fact that huge numbers of businesses are moving their data to the cloud not only to save on costs but to be able to analyse their data more effectively.  Netflix, Airbnb, the CIA and other high-profile organisations now run large portions of their businesses on AWS. Yet with lingering concerns about a ‘big bang’ move to cloud, many businesses are adopting a hybrid cloud approach to data storage.

Hybrid cloud is the middle ground of private storage with lower infrastructure overheads plus superfast, low latency connection to the public cloud.  Companies increasingly have their own mix of cloud storage systems reflective of their legacy IT infrastructure, current budgets and current and future operational requirements. As a result, many CIOs are having to think about how data is moving back and forth between various on-premise systems and cloud environments. This can be challenging when the data is transactional and the data set changes frequently.  In order to move this data, without interruption, active-active replication technology like WANdisco Fusion is required so the data can be moved and yet still fully utilised with business still operating as usual.

Software defined data centres (SDDC) – with virtualisation, automation, disaster recovery and applications and operations management – are making it easier for businesses to build, operate and manage a hybrid cloud infrastructure. Such a system enables businesses to move assets wherever they need to whilst maintaining security and availability.

As a result, according to an IBM study, “Growing up Hybrid: Accelerating digital transformation” many organisations that currently leverage hybrid cloud and use it to manage their IT environment in “an integrated, comprehensive fashion for high visibility and control” say that have already gained a competitive advantage from it. In many cases software defined data centres with hybrid cloud are accelerating the digital transformation of organisations as well as making it easier for companies to use cognitive computing such as predictive intelligence and machine learning.

Although hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming the option of choice by reducing IT costs and increasing efficiency, this shift is creating new concerns as CIOs must ensure a seamless technology experience regardless of where the company’s IT infrastructure resides. Whilst businesses are increasingly comfortable transitioning business-critical computing processes and data between different environments, it is vital on-premise infrastructure, private clouds and public clouds are monitored as changes can occur in any of these segments without notice.

In January this year HSBC saw a failure in its servers that left UK online banking customers unable to log in to their accounts for 9 hours. It took more than a day to identify the cause of the issue and as a result customers vented their anger on social media and the case made national headlines. Failures that cannot be quickly identified have the potential to cause huge financial losses as well as significant reputational damage.  Businesses must have real time visibility in a hybrid cloud environment to enable them to be able to head off or respond to issues in real time.

With companies needing to indefinitely maintain legacy IT infrastructure, a software defined data centre supporting a hybrid cloud can allow a business to have the best of both worlds – the cost effectiveness with elastic expansion & contraction of public cloud computing and the security of a private cloud. If you want to future proof your business and remain at the cutting edge of innovation in your sector, hybrid cloud and software defined data centres are what you need to ensure you can access public cloud resources, test new capabilities quickly and get to market faster without huge upfront costs.

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Choosing the right cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider is growing increasingly difficult in a highly competitive market. Here are the top IaaS players identified by Gartner and their recommended use cases.

Gartner identifies 9 major IaaS players

The cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) space is undergoing major upheaval this year, according to research firm Gartner. In its 2015 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide, Gartner analysts found service providers were shifting strategies as the ecosystem consolidates around market leaders.

Leaders

IaaS vendors had to offer a service suitable for strategic adoption and boast an ambitious roadmap to make the cut for Gartner’s Leaders quadrant. These vendors, according to Gartner, offer services that serve a broad range of use cases. They may not necessarily be the best providers for a specific need, and they may not serve some use cases at all, but they have a track record of successful delivery, significant market share and lots of customers that can provide references.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS is the 800 lbs. gorilla in the IaaS market, with more than 10 times more cloud IaaS compute capacity in use than the aggregate total of the other 14 providers Gartner studied.

Gartner recommends AWS for all use cases that run well in a virtualized environment, but notes that some — particularly highly secure applications, strictly compliant applications or complex enterprise applications (such as SAP business applications) — may require special attention to architecture.

Microsoft

Microsoft, with its Azure Infrastructure Services, is the only other IaaS vendor to make the Leaders quadrant. It holds second place in market share, with more than twice as much cloud IaaS compute capacity as the other providers Gartner studied (excluding AWS).

Gartner recommends Azure for general business applications and development environments for Microsoft-centric organizations, as well as cloud-native applications and batch computing.

Visionaries

Vendors in Gartner’s Visionaries quadrant distinguished themselves with an ambitious vision of the future and significant investments in the development of unique technologies. They might be new entrants to the market or veteran providers in the process of reinventing their business. These vendors may have a significant number of customers but don’t yet serve a broad range of use cases well compared with their Leader quadrant counterparts.

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There is no denial that everyone’s rushing to the cloud. Things have certainly been going in that general direction, but so far it’s been more of an amble than a rush. Last year, computing research found that about three per cent of data centre workloads per year were being shifted out to cloud providers.

It is clear that that average figure hides a multiple of scenarios, of course, from those that have moved lock stock and barrel to cloud, to those determined to keep themselves at least one bargepole length away from anything to do with the dreaded C-word. Between those extremes you have companies who are putting the odd commodity workload into the cloud, or who are using it to handle peaks in demand.

However, the big public cloud vendors have announced a huge growth in the adoption of their services. The largest by far – Amazon – saw AWS revenues rise almost 70% in 2015, the first year for a long time in which the company has actually made a profit – whereas Microsoft Azure may be growing even faster, albeit from a lower base. (While Microsoft will not reveal separate cloud figures it claims that revenue grew 140 per cent last year; nevertheless the consensus is that Azure is about a tenth of the size of AWS in revenue terms, with Google and IBM SoftLayer just behind.)

David Richards, who is CEO of WANdisco, believes that we are about to see the start of a major uptick in the use of public cloud services. Pursuant to David Richards, “I’d expect to see AWS go from being a $7bn to a $50bn company inside Amazon in the next two or three years. That’s going to be one of the IT stories of the century”, “I don’t know of a company that isn’t trying to move significant portion data processing into the cloud.”

Keep in mind that one of WANdisco’s products allows large volumes of data to be migrated to Amazon S3. Therefore, such growth figures may be wishful thinking: the more firms start pushing petabytes of data into the cloud the more demand there will potentially be for WANdisco. Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue with Amazon’s growth figures and there are signs that some of the traditional barriers to cloud adoption are being overcome.

The price is right

Whereas cloud providers have always claimed their services are cheaper than in-house equivalents this has frequently proved not to be the case in the long run. However, for many use cases public cloud probably is genuinely less expensive now. Public cloud prices have fallen 66 per cent in three years according to some estimates.

Besides, pricing models have changed to pay-as-you-go – with users charged by the volume of data stored or processed. More transparent pricing means that nasty shocks down the line are less likely. A terabyte of data stored in standard S3 will cost you around £50 per month, while putting the same in the Redshift data warehouse will set you back about £500. Microsoft Azure prices are comparable and recently Redmond announced a price drop too.

Overcoming jitters

Richards also states that worries about regulations, such as those around data location and security, are being overcome as the big players build data centres in Europe and as the hybrid cloud model, with sensitive data kept on-site, becomes a practical reality. “A number of government departments of the UK and the US are looking at this architecture very carefully, and banks I know could be working to move certain data-processing into the cloud,” he says. “Then it becomes a hybrid environment because you have some data behind the firewall some in the cloud.”

Pursuant to Matt Aslett, Research director at analyst firm 451 Research, some in finance are losing their inhibitions, at least for some functions. “Many financial services firms are cautious about the cloud, but some are adopting it and some are adopting aggressively to encourage transformational change,” he says. “For example, we recently spoke to a mainstream financial services firm using Amazon Redshift as its primary data warehouse for its billing system and related reporting and analytics.”

Besides, according to Aslett, Redshift costs just 40 per cent of the on-premises equivalent; therefore, that company is now looking to move other services to the cloud to save money.

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