What enterprises should consider when choosing a public cloud?

As businesses take the next steps in their cloud journey, they need a public cloud built on the foundation of open source software, security leadership and higher levels of control to meet regulations.

  • Published On May 14, 2020 at 04:18 PM IST
Read by: 100 Industry Professionals
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By Lingraju Sawkar

World over, the majority of enterprises across sectors are about 20 per cent into their transition to the public cloud. Most companies are about to embark on the next chapter of their cloud journey – a point when they would look to shift mission-critical workloads to the public cloud and optimise everything from core banking systems to supply chains.

At this critical juncture of their cloud journey, they need to consider a few factors while choosing a public cloud.
Meeting today’s and tomorrow’s needs Open source technologies are widely believed to be vital to any company’s plans to meet its ‘Business IT’ requirements in the present and the future.

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Technologies like Linux, Containers and Kubernetes have an important role to play in the evolution of the public cloud. After all, open technologies enable enterprises to build mission-critical applications once and run them anywhere.

They are also fundamental to run their most complex workloads natively on the cloud. Businesses should also look out for public cloud platforms that provide the tools for managing Kubernetes for massive scale and workload diversity.

Further, open technologies are being established as the new standard or fabric that can bridge and tie all of the different public and private clouds together. Therefore, they are also enablers of enterprises’ hybrid cloud strategies.
Besides, while open source technologies foster innovation, businesses are always wary of the threat posed by patent trolls due to the high costs they may have to pay.

To overcome this barrier, companies must choose a vendor who has committed their patent assets to initiatives like The LOT Network.

Quintessential question of security What is the most important aspect to look at from a security perspective while deciding a public cloud vendor? This question is particularly pertinent for businesses operating in highly regulated industries.

The answer is simple - open cloud with pervasive security at every layer (in transit, in memory, at rest, while running and on disk). Other key elements that enterprises should look at are the availability of a hardware security module (HSM) and cryptographic technology with cloud providers.

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With HSM, enterprises can alone control access to their data while encryption technologies give them the ability to retain complete control of their encryption keys.

Above all, they should evaluate if the cloud is hyperscale-ready so they can quickly scale their networks in a controlled, secured environment suited for sensitive workloads. The bottom line is that they should be able to innovate with the cloud while meeting the highest security and privacy standards.

Different ballgame for financial services players

The financial services industry faces the additional challenge of manually testing the security and compliance of its every single vendor. The industry players need public cloud providers who can safely host their applications and workloads and assist them in working with independent software vendors and Software-as-a-Service providers that meet the compliance requirements.

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The public cloud requirements for the industry are different, so banks and financial institutions need an automated process.

Essentially, they need a financial services-ready public cloud that will help reduce costs, speed up delivery of new services to their customers and enable them to meet compliance, security and data protection requirements unique to their industry.

Lastly, enterprises should factor in the global network of cloud data centers following their global deployment requirements. They should seek availability of Application Programming Interface driven cloud-native services like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Internet of Things, Quantum Computing and Edge Computing.

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In essence, enterprises need to move beyond the public Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model and consider a Platform-as-a-Service cloud combined with IaaS to provide an integrated experience.
To succeed in the next chapter of their cloud journey, businesses should consider these factors while choosing their public cloud platform.

The author is General Manager, Global Technology Services, IBM India/South Asia

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.

  • Published On May 14, 2020 at 04:18 PM IST
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