The main reason why small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) turn to the private rather than the public cloud is because they do not have a data classification policy in place.
So says Ryan Skipp, head of global data centre technology architecture at T-Systems, who will speak at this month's ITWeb Virtualisation and Cloud Computing conference, being held on 21 and 22 July at The Forum, in Bryanston.
Skipp says that without a data classification policy, an SME doesn't know what mission-critical data to protect, and will deploy expensive high-risk security across all of its data to maintain proper compliance.
“If you cannot classify your data and what the impact will be following a security breach, the consequence of data loss is severe,” adds Skipp. Another top concern for SMEs, he adds, is security dictating how data is protected in the cloud.
According to Skipp, cloud computing has been around for decades, but the biggest change, taking place in the past five years, is that organisations are storing collaborative applications such as e-mail, CRM and ERP applications off-site via a hosted service provider.
He says the major benefits of cloud computing are that hosting data off-site improves flexibility to scale up quickly and reduces risk and total cost of ownership of hardware and software licences.
“The large multinationals tend to use cloud applications and services more freely than SMEs that are increasingly moving towards the private or hybrid cloud.”
Business users expect nothing less than real-time access to applications and instant gratification, according to Steven Ambrose, MD of World Wide Worx Strategy. “Cloud will drive the integration of all business tools such as SOA, BI and CRM, and business will need to get all the systems to work together.”
According to research conducted by World Wide Worx, SA will reach between 10 million and 12 million broadband Internet users by 2015. This year, there are 6.3 million broadband Internet users in SA. Ambrose predicts that increasing Internet penetration, faster broadband speeds, and falling broadband costs will be key drivers for cloud computing to become pervasive in the business sector.
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