IDC's recent finding that Asia/Pacific financial services institutions seek greater clarity on cloud computing regulations and better articulation of business benefits by IT vendors emphasizes how not all businesses are ready cloud converts.
Enterprises making the transition to cloud computing, be it building and managing self-owned private clouds or consuming from third-party cloud services, will invariably face hurdles around IT management and control; service availability and performance; and data security and protection.
Nonetheless, cloud computing, like virtualization, is well on its way to becoming mainstream technology in the region as more businesses of all sizes exploit it for agility and efficiency. Frost & Sullivan projects that the cloud computing market for the Asia Pacific region (ex-Japan) will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 39% from 2010 to 2015.
"The number one challenge with cloud computing, whether it is internal, hybrid or external, is managing the availability and performance, especially in [fulfilling] a service level agreement (SLA)," said Alan Murphy, manager of Technical Marketing at F5 Networks. "The second challenge is security. When you move services into the cloud, you give up some level of control. When you translate that control into user access for governance and compliance, for instance, it becomes a big issue."
1. Integrate management
So, enterprise customers must be able to manage the cloud with the same level of control as in an on-premise data center. "They should be able to choose any cloud provider or cloud model and still have the assurance that their users on the cloud are secure and their cloud applications are always fast, available and secure," said Murphy.