Exclusive Gulf Tech News
Attributed to: Yarob Sakhnini, Vice President, Emerging Markets, EMEA, Juniper Networks
There is a global drive toward digitally-enabled, data-driven transformation “everything”. The world we live in consists of a pool of resources as applications, services, servers and data that are available to users on demand 24×7. Organizations are increasingly looking to public and/or private cloud with the aim to boost their business with immediate access to these resources when needed and to gain the flexibility, performance and cost efficiency benefits that are crucial to compete in the digital economy.
Cloud adoption has transformed IT and enterprise digitization over the last decade. Indeed, cloud has emerged as a primary disruptive force for enterprises to augment insights-based innovation, to drive digital transformation and maintain a competitive edge.
While the cloud is a powerful tool to create new opportunities, bring capabilities to market more quickly, innovate more easily, and scale more efficiently, it also brings a set of challenges and must be managed wisely to mitigate its complexity.
Cloud Complexity
The reality is that IT never truly becomes simplified, just different. As organizations explore the various clouds that are best suited to their needs, they may favor one deployment model over another. While moving all or part of their business to the cloud, it is all too easy to assume the cloud will prove optimal for simplifying day-to-day administration and costs.
Cloud complexity is the result of rapid acceleration of cloud migration and net-new development, often without forethought about the complexity that this can bring to operations. Complexity grows with the number of connected devices, users, and applications. It is critical to build a network that’s built for the future. The network should simplify and automate daily network operations, increase service reliability and free up resources for innovation, and as a result, drive superior experience for end users.
Data is growing exponentially, and cloud-based applications are increasing in number. As a result, enterprises are dealing with greater risks of breaches, hacks, viruses and malware, often coupled with a lack of robust security architectures. By moving to the cloud, security risk is not reduced – it is heightened.
As cloud providers are required to adhere to strict security regulations (e.g. The GDPR), they have strong measures such as the use of strict protocols and advanced security tools that are put in place to ensure that the infrastructure, data, apps and devices are protected. The goal toward which every organisation should be striving is that wherever users are, they can connect to the data they need wherever it’s located, as part of a full stack security approach. This translates to protection from exploits, ransomware, IoT, insider threats and zero days, from client to workload.
Due to an increase in the options available to the companies, enterprises not only use a single cloud, but increasingly are depending on multiple cloud service providers. This increase in adoption of the multi-cloud strategy is to optimize cost, capabilities, and compliance as multi-cloud offers significant advantages.
Managing multiple cloud environment results in the rise of increasing management complexities. Cybersecurity is challenging enough when everything is on site. It becomes more challenging when data, applications and platforms are housed in multiple locations, such as company data centers and multiple clouds. Organizations should now extend security to every point of connection, from client to cloud, across the entire network. They need to implement a security framework ensuring every point of connection on the network acts as a security enforcement point, sharing threat intelligence feeds based on real-time events happening on the network. As a result, organizations should consider security strategies where they can unify all their network elements into a threat-aware network driven by AI and automation.
One of the main cloud computing industry challenges in recent years concentrates on app migration. Whenever enterprises migrate workloads from legacy platforms to the cloud or attempt to move data or applications between platforms, they encounter frustrating interoperability issues.
When it comes to moving an existing application to a cloud environment, many cloud challenges arise. Most cited challenges include extensive troubleshooting, security challenges, slow data migrations, migration agents, cutover complexity and application downtime. Organizations should mitigate these risks and challenges by using a structured approach to evaluate, plan and execute migration, choosing technologies that can reduce complexity in implementation and provide a simple path to enable the best possible business outcomes.
Technologies that drive business outcomes through creating great customer experiences, often via greater agility and speed, are also those that reduce risk and make managing complexity easier. For most companies to remain competitive, cloud is a necessity. Enterprises must continuously innovate to stay ahead of the curve, and the cloud is the catalyst that drives innovation.
