There are definitely some dark areas still left in the cloud. For now, 35% of tech executives worldwide say they currently store more than half their legacy data in the cloud, while 80.5% say they’re prioritizing such a move in the next 12 monthsOpens a new window . Are those numbers anywhere near where they should be? Or do the drawbacks of this model still outweigh the benefits? Tibi Popp, Chief Technology Officer, Archive360, talks about the pace of cloud migration and trends to expect in the recent future.
For a long time now, the facts and figures around cloud migration have been on the rise. Sure, there are bumps ever so often, but despite all the obstacles and fears, we’ve seen this movement to the cloud occurring at a steady pace. This helps explain why Amazon, Google and Microsoft are among the wealthiest corporations globally, why SaaS providers are drawing huge investments, and how the business world could stay relatively stable when so many people had to work remotely. The cloud literally hovers over all these trends and many more.Â
What Do the Numbers Say?
The benefits of the cloud are as obvious as they are undeniable. These arrangements cut costs across the board while enabling easy scalability. There’s virtually 24/7 uptime, limitless resources, instantaneous scalability, automatic updates for everything from the OS to third-party software, and data centers worldwide to ensure reliability.
In this environment, it seems clear that cloud migration, especially of legacy data, should have been completed a long time ago. And yet, 80.5% of tech executives say they’re prioritizing a move to the cloud for their legacy app data over this year. That figure is undoubtedly high, and it’s good for the industry. However, we might also ask why it hasn’t happened already.
Here’s another number from the survey that offers a clue: Only 58% say more than half their SaaS vendors meet all security requirements. In other words, despite all the considerable (and much-hyped) advances surrounding many SaaS offerings, there are still indications that innovation may be running ahead of adoption.
The Case for Customized SecurityÂ
The reasons are pretty clear. According to the survey quoted above – and we can all certainly see it in our interactions in both the public and private sectors – almost all the tech leaders we engaged (96.5 percent) want greater customization of security protocols in the cloud.
This is a severe and perhaps under-reported problem. These executives describe issues with particular requirements—for example, 53% claim they’ve never had a security policy exception for SaaS-based vendors, and 62% say they’ve never stored their data with a SaaS-based vendor that’s been the victim of a cyberattack. That may be damning this far into the cloud era. The numbers should be far higher. Perhaps most ominously, 10% don’t know if this has happened with their vendors.
Drilling down a little further, only a tiny minor 3% are actively managing more than 75% of that data. This is not just surprising but perhaps a little depressing when you consider that the benefits of such a strategy are readily apparent – risk management, e-discovery, productivity, etc.
A Personalized Cloud
After all these years of cloud-related hype, the overall picture is that many organizations are finally beginning to take advantage of information management capabilities in cloud architectures. So what needs to happen for this trend to continue and accelerate?
The primary motive for cloud adoption and digital transformation is not hard to understand – they’re undertaken to use IT capabilities to support business goals. At the very least, those include reducing costs and risk while enhancing innovation and productivity. But this isn’t always simple. Even with clear technology advances available, the needs and priorities of particular enterprise constituencies – CIOs, CFOs, CISOs, line-of-business chiefs, etc. – are often different and sometimes contradictory. Evaluating data management and security solely through the lens of, say, the CISO is simply not enough. It gets even more complicated when taking customers into account. They want solutions and processes adapted to their organization’s security protocols, not vice versa.
This is the one big issue with current SaaS offerings. Even when the business benefits they deliver are noteworthy, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ data security limitations found with many cloud providers are grossly inadequate. Moreover, while securing the data from internal or external threats is vital, the data can’t be kept away from everyone – it needs to be available to optimize analytics opportunities and other legitimate uses.
See More: Navigating the Road to SAP® HANA
Are We There Yet?Â
Cloud migration is happening and perhaps accelerating, but it can’t happen in a vacuum. Many technology chiefs remain concerned about critical processes and protocols, but those fears are being addressed with new solutions that enable the management of’ cold’ and even ‘hot’ data that is encrypted and stored or managed inside an isolated platform within the cloud infrastructures. This satisfies a plethora of data privacy and regulatory and compliance mandates while offering authorized access with entitlements and access controls. Encrypting data before moving to the cloud can offer a ‘safe harbor’ defense if the cloud is later breached and could guard against hefty fines from emerging data privacy laws.
So if and when these executives are surveyed again a year from now, will the numbers be dramatically different and better? While the tools to do it are available, let’s hope they’re adopted and deployed in time for our collective migration.
Do you think concerns over privacy slowing down our move to the cloud? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear what you have to say!