I was at this conference of small and mid-sized Cloud service providers
who were discussing the current state of the market and evolution with everyone
talking digital. They were hoping to collectively brainstorm and learn from
each other’s experience. They discussed the evaluation criteria they were
subjected to, problem statements they had to answer, and the two biggest
stumbling blocks that would not go away even with the maturity of the cloud
solutions and growing customer base; they are ROI and Security.
Some large enterprises have adopted a cloud first approach to their new
initiatives while they seriously evaluate movement to the cloud whenever faced
with any upgrade or refresh decision. These early adopters and fast followers
now are more or less convinced that it does not make sense to continue
investing in conventional hardware solutions. Data centers and servers are best
left to the experts to manage while application management was outsourced a
decade back. DevOps is the way to go and Cloud is where everything should
reside.
Off course there are industries which have seen exceptions for some
types of solutions which are still not amenable to be on the cloud. Even the
providers acknowledge this and keep away from pitching for such use cases. Big
monolithic solutions are facing the agility challenge and the paradigm has
shifted to accommodate multiple for purpose apps on the cloud that are making
some parts of the big solutions redundant or enhancing productivity by reducing
the effort to complete a workflow or task in the conventional solutions.
Consumer and personal apps reside on the same devices that are used at
work; this transgression managed or otherwise is here to stay. CIOs and CISOs
have learnt that pushbacks are no longer accepted and they have to find a way
to make peace and find solutions that allow coexistence. MDM has evolved to
provide some level of containerization to separate the official from personal
and the ability to brick a device should it be lost or fail to return on exit.
So where is the unfulfilled promise of security and ROI or is it just a
favorite flogging horse ?
How secure is your cloud solution ? Have you had any security
certification done for your software ? When was the last time penetration test
was conducted ? What is the uptime offered on your cloud ? Clouds are expected
to save money; what is the ROI of your solution ? The service providers’
reality was that they had to field these questions every day with every
customer with every opportunity with everyone they met. It was as if repeating
the message would strengthen its value and make it work for the customer and
stakeholders.
After all the due diligence and certifications, customers then go on and
deploy the solution with limited security governance and vulnerable practices
that expose the data. Eventually if and when data leakage does occur, the cloud
and/or the solution is deemed immature and not upto the mark. Attempting to
create idiot proof solutions with all the checks and balances to protect
against human stupidity is the final and ultimate step in ensuring that the
solution is secure; and this has remained the goal of every enterprise and the
challenge for every provider.
Return on Investment is a different ballgame; value is a function of the
frame of reference of the perceiver and nothing to do with reality. For someone
a dollar a month per user may be value and for another $10 is not expensive.
Can service providers do justice to the wide spectrum of expectations ? I am
not sure that kind of elasticity exists; volume driven discounts or market
entry strategies may offer initially low pricing which is rarely sustainable in
the long-term unless the end game is market valuation and not profitability.
At the end of the discussions collective wisdom indicated that
alleviating the fear factor will take its time with evolution not being
consistent and everyone wanting to reassure themselves of the risk factors. It
does not matter how many have taken the leap of faith or how long the solution
has been around. Even today there are buyers apprehensive of every decision
lest it not work in their unique environment or their inability to leverage the
value. I think that the discussion will keep popping up and we will have to
reassure a zillion times over.
Nice
ReplyDelete