Though cloud computing has emerged as a buzzword in the IT world, there is a dark side to it.
This is according to Rudie Raath, chief technologist at HP SA, who was addressing the ITWeb Cloud Computing Summit last week.
He said that, while in the cloud, users can easily fall victim to hacking, and urged organisations to be cautious.
"The smartphone and tablet market has become the main driver in opening certain exploits into traditional IT structures, where the risk is now the apps that get downloaded for free to the devices, which are also used to access critical business data," he added.
Initially, he said, organisations blocked all devices that were not under their control, to try to protect their environments, but now - with public cloud solutions - traditional methods are challenged and organisations that want to use these types of solutions to stay competitive are forced to relook their policies and business processes.
One of his suggestions is that, when moving to the cloud, businesses must understand the partnerships terms with their cloud service providers, especially on liabilities and service level agreements.
"With public cloud, the key success factors are automation and provisioning engines wrapped with a service management framework such as ITIL to govern the changes and additions to the various environments. This change requires a different look at the liabilities and regulatory compliance," he added.
"Due to standardisation, organisations have moved to managed private cloud solutions, which allow them to shape the SLA and not conform to the legal clauses hidden behind the dreaded 'I agree' button when subscribing to new services on most public clouds," he said.
The business case is the most important aspect of the cloud journey, and there are valid reasons why one would consider adopting the cloud, he added. Companies want a rapid growth strategy, new revenue and mitigation of risk, which would mean sharing the risk with someone else, and they want cost reduction, he noted.
Raath also mentioned that companies adopting the cloud should be aware of the legal impact, and ensure they don't fall foul of regulations, and remain compliant.
"Corporate South Africa will need to understand the impact around local and even international regulations. Other compliance issues might be more relevant to SMEs, where issues like open platform support become critical when moving from one provider to another. These concerns are not always addressed upfront, and when organisations start to consider moving away from their current provider, they are faced with the reality that it is not easy, and is very costly, with a possible downtime window that can have a devastating effect on their organisation," noted Raath.
Raath said companies must approach cloud discussions with caution, and must ensure they understand their own reasoning when considering cloud architecture or solutions. Companies need to define their business models - financial, operational and support - behind this strategy, and only then look at the technology.
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