14-Nov-2018 01:07 PM
Posted by Prashanth G J, CEO, Technobind
Security is not really the biggest fear around cloud computing any longer! I know you must be thinking, “That’s old news”. But do you know what the most common ‘cloud fear’ is? It’s actually the ‘fear of missing out’ or FOMO, as it has been adeptly acronymized!
Cloud isn’t an option anymore, it’s an
absolute necessity. So organizations are adopting it in one way or the other.
In the process, many of those organizations have chosen a somewhat ad-hoc
adoption or migration methodology, with results that leaves a lot to be
desired.
I think this is primarily because the
developments in cloud are so fast and overwhelming, and suddenly your FOMO
kicks in!
A Commvault survey conducted last year
confirms that, 81 percent of the IT leaders who took part in the survey were
either extremely concerned or very concerned about missing out on cloud
advancements.
For starters, cloud deployments call for a
carefully thought-through strategy and plan. Otherwise, your cloud migration
journey is going to be quite bumpy.
Storage
moved, what next?
Despite the ambiguity, IT leaders continue
to invest on cloud. I would say, only less than 5 percent of organizations will
likely cut their cloud spending in the coming few months. Cloud services revenue in India, for instance,
continues to grow, with key sectors increasing their spending.
The average growth rate of this market is
still around 40 percent, which is quite remarkable considering that cloud isn’t
a recent phenomenon.
Data storage has always been the easiest
stepping stone to cloud, even for those organizations that are not very
cloud-savvy. We have observed that many organizations get stuck at this point,
and end up in significant amount of shadow IT. Because whether the IT brings it
or not, the business does need cloud to make them more efficient!
Data protection and backup is cited as the
‘most impactful cloud project on the business’ by more than 75 percent of IT
leaders in the Commvault survey that I mentioned earlier. Cloud is a critical
step in modernizing disaster recovery solutions and strategies; it’s
increasingly being seen as a more flexible and faster option during times of
service disruption/downtime.
For organizations that are not yet ready
to move their production to cloud, DR, archival and backup migration has proven
to be an ideal strategy.
It
doesn’t stop at DR…
Other than the ‘FOMO’, security still
remains a key concern for businesses moving to cloud, which is why a lot of our
customers are considering secure authentication infrastructure to support a
variety of cloud services. Reports show that only about 40 percent of the data
stored in the cloud is secured with encryption and key management solutions.
With the introduction of GDPR, we see an
increased sense of adherence and awareness among companies towards data
protection, which is a very positive development.
There is also an increasing focus on implementing
cloud access controls when transitioning to cloud hosting services such as
Amazon, Box, DropBox and others.
Partners
in success
Partners have always had mixed feelings
towards cloud. Many saw it as a threat to their traditional IT solution
selling. In a way, this is another type of FOMO — the fear of missing out on your
comfort zone; the fear that cloud will eat into the business you have
painstakingly built!
But, it’s heartening to see how many of
our partners have leveraged the cloud to their advantage, by helping hundreds
of their customers have a smooth cloud migration journey. In fact, a lot of
companies consider their SIs, consultants and channel partners as the trusted
source of information about cloud developments. Rather, an effective way to
overcome their FOMO!
Taking this trust to the next level, many
partners who were once anxious about the impact of cloud, have gone on to find
new revenue streams around cloud migrations services.
Developing cloud skills internally has
always been a great challenge for a large number of organizations, especially
the small and mid-sized companies. We are hopeful that our partners are
equipped to fill this void and get on a cloud journey that is equally rewarding
for them as well as their customers!