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As those familiar with SymetriQ are aware, we operate primarily through Channel Partners.  We have over 40 partners across EMEA and for the most part, they have embraced Cloud Computing fully.  However there are some instances where we deal with Partners or potential partners (SI's/Resellers/Distributors) who don't quite 'get it'.
This may seem strange, given that these are technology focussed organisations, in an industry where 'Cloud Computing' has been widespread for a number of years, but let me explain.  They understand the benefits of Cloud Computing (no CAPEX, elasticity, pay for what you use, deploy on demand and so on).  They get the fact that the organisations that they serve are demanding Cloud based solutions.  They fully understand that the market is driving us all in the direction of the Cloud, yet still they do not sell Cloud based solutions.

So why is this?

Let's examine how many IT Service Providers traditionally operate and more importantly how they sell.  They have a yearly target, broken down into months or quarters and spread across their sales teams.  So, let's say that salesperson A has to deliver £10K of gross profit per month.  He or she has an opportunity for a new application for a client.  There are 2 options: A cloud solution, costing the client £500 per month.  The alternative is a hardware on premise solution costing the customer £30K.  The cloud solution offers brings a margin of 25% monthly.  The hardware solution offers the reseller margins of around 10% (this has been driven down in recent years).  The Cloud option therfore brings a margin for that month of £125, whereas the hardware based option brings a margin of £3000. 

Which one will the saleperson push?  The hardware option which will generate a third of that salespersons target is by far the most likely.  However, a quick look at the figures clearly shows that this is a false economy for everyone (except of course the hardware vendors!).  Over a 4 year lifecycle, the cloud option will generate £6K for the reseller - twice that of the hardware option.  Of course, there is a chance at the end of the 4 years that the reseller may be lucky enough to sell the same hardware again - but will end users really still be buying hardware in 4 years?  Additionally, the cloud option generates a recurring revenue stream, which may well increase as the customer scales up use of the application.  For the end user, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is actually reduced, when electricity, hardware support, software licensing and so on are factored in. 

So, the best option is in fact the Cloud option, but it is easy to see why salespeople/consultants at resellers, who have not updated their sales model will continue to fall into the trap of selling hardware.  In the medium to long term, this will alienate customers, who have already begun to see the cloud as a better option, increase operational costs in order to support the legacy hardware and leave the reseller behind the many who are embracing the cloud.

The message to IT resellers is clear - embrace the Cloud or be left behind.

To find out how to make recurring margins of 25%, contact SymetriQ

Johnny Paterson

The 3rd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum took place on June 21st and 22nd at Olympia in London.  SymetriQ were a Silver Sponsor of the event, which as expected, was a very well organised and attended event.


We spoke to potential clients from all over the UK and indeed the rest of the world.  Amongst those who dropped by the SymetriQ stand were attendees from Canada, the U.S., Italy, Spain and Kenya amongst others.
Two trends were particularly notable:  firstly, the conversations with clients had really moved on from last year's event.  2010 was more about information gathering for attendees, whereas this year, many already had some exposure to using cloud technology and were looking for advice on specific projects.
This demonstrates that Cloud Computing truly has entered the mainstream.  The financial and operational reasons for keeping large amounts of hardware on site now are very difficult to see and in fact only exist in some limited instances.


The second trend, unfortunately was not quite so positive - 'cloudwashing', as it has become known was rife at the event, with many datacentre, ISP and SI's proudly displaying literature about their 'Cloud' services.  A cursory glance under the bonnet of many of these proved that it was not true cloud in any sense.
Many had fixed configurations, minimum contracts, no elasticity and so on.  Thankfully, the majority of attendees that we spoke to were able to see through the hype and separate the true Cloud providers from the rebadged colo, with some virtualisation thrown in.  As discussed several times in this blog, without these key components of Cloud computing, end users cannot hope to attain the many benefits available.

Our Co-Founder, Phil Huber, raised this point during a panel session on day one, which also included our friends at Onyx and also Philipp Starrett, Head of Infrastructure at Barclays bank.  Philipp Starrett was a bit of a Public Cloud sceptic, which did make for some interesting conversation.  Much of what he said made a lot of sense in terms of financial organisations.  The standards do not yet exist to put sensitive financial data into a Public Cloud, but for most other organisations there are far less obstacles.  Phil Huber also made a good, if slightly controversial point about the amount of 'Cloudwashing' on display at the event.

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile event.  Thanks to everyone who dropped by the SymetriQ stand - we will be in touch!

Johnny Paterson

 

Way back in May 2009, Gartner published its report on the “Five Refining Attributes of Public and Private Cloud Computing”. This document attempted to define the characteristics that set cloud computing apart from other forms of internet available content and services. Two years later though, and it seems that the corporate world is still being enticed by the promise of “Cloud Computing” from providers who claim to offer such services despite them only adhering to one or two (or none!) of these key factors. This article will attempt to demonstrate that many of these advertised services cannot truly be classed as Cloud Computing as they fall well short of the standards laid down by Gartner which have become widely accepted within the industry.

To the cynical eye, it seems that any business which operates from the internet has now been rebranded as ‘Cloud Computing’  Clearly, internet services have been available for many years now and have included such features as internet based email, online storage, web hosting and collaboration sites. In recent years providers have reclassified these services and many others like them as cloud computing in an attempt to be seen as participating in the “next big thing”. Such important new trends are few and far between and can be short lived, driving many technology companies to capitalise as much as possible before the next “next big thing” comes along. In this regard, many parallels can be drawn with the rise in popularity of “social networking”.  Like cloud computing, social networking has come to the fore due to the popularity of sites such as Facebook and its meteoric rise to become one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world. In the past, many sites have emphasised collaboration, sharing and social interaction but only recently have sites decided to place themselves under the umbrella of “social networking” for the same reason that technology companies are desperate to be known as “cloud computing” companies: to make a quick buck!

Even within companies that appear to offer a true Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) style of cloud computing, there is frequently a veneer of scalability and elasticity that quickly rubs off when anyone delves into the service that is actually offered. In some cases, companies can take up to two weeks to provision a simple virtualised server. In others, you are offered nothing more than a vnc or ssh connection to a server that was manually created by an engineer and leaves you with little control over your server. Even in Gartner’s first report on defining the nature of cloud computing, scalability was the feature that above all was emphasised. With the later addition of elasticity, they extended the essential “feature list” to incorporate predictable and flexible billing methods that can be increased or decreased on demand to mirror the change in resource usage. In the providers’ haste to provide a solution that they can call cloud, they often skip this characteristic to provide a simple vps that is completely static.

Many companies obfuscate their pricing schemes making it difficult to work out exactly what the cost will be and whether or not it fits into the budget. Individuals may even find that a machine that has been turned off for the duration of the billing period still turns up on the invoice. The cloud philosophy exists to turn IT into a consumable resource rather than a persistent one that you feel obliged to make the most of. A long term contract on a fixed state vps is not cloud computing. Functionally, it may operate the same as a cloud computing service, but the many ancillary benefits of using a true cloud computing service are lost to the customer. This flexibility can save the customer money through switching payment plans or decreasing the resources used. Crucially, this flexibility has to suit the customer which means it has to be automatic and instantaneous. Without it, such a service is not too far removed from the mainframe computing of the 1970s.

The shared nature of cloud computing is essential as it allows cloud operators to provide services that function as well as a dedicated service but at a greatly reduced cost. Resources are often “thin provisioned” to maximise their utilisation as opposed to the dedicated systems that spend the majority of the time idle, only bursting to maximum capacity occasionally. Any dedicated server offering cannot offer comparable economies of scale and won’t benefit the customer with significant cost reductions. On the other hand a cloud service will always have additional capacity that will allow the customer to scale out both horizontally and vertically and scale back again as desired. In essence, only the cloud solution can offer the flexibility to provide the customer with exactly what is needed at any specific time.

Gartner’s Service-Based attribute is also an argument against dedicated servers, vps or even private cloud in that the customer should not be able to see the inner workings of the cloud. The implication of this is that they are also not responsible for its upkeep, maintenance or upgrades. As far as the customer is aware, they should be able to access their service 24x7 regardless of what technology it relies on or who else is using it. Straight away, this eradicates initial set up costs and teams of engineers to be on hand to set up and administer the service. Indeed, a support facility is frequently included in the monthly cost of any cloud service so that any small business can obtain support without having any in house IT expertise.

Although Gartner’s report was written almost two years ago, we can still see the definition of “cloud” being extended further than anyone would have imagined when the term was first coined. Any service that is provided over the internet today can seemingly be deemed as cloud computing. The cynical view of this would be that providers are seeing this as a buzz term that has breathed new life into an industry that has stagnated recently in the corporate sector. As can be expected, companies want to be involved in this emerging trend as any technology company that doesn’t keep up can quickly be seen to be off the pace.

As a final word, it is likely that Gartner’s next iteration of their definition of cloud computing will be different from this one. Because many of the larger technology firms routinely refer to their offerings as being “cloud services”, the definition will no doubt expand to encompass a wider range of services.  However, providers who can offer all 5 attributes defined by Gartner back in 2009, will continue to bring the greatest benefits to their clients.

 

Paul Woodward

Guest Article by Chris Ward of Business Cloud News

http://www.businesscloudnews.com/public-sector/336-does-public-sector-need-g-cloud.html

 

G-Cloud to be scrapped?

 

It’s a topic that has gone quiet in recent months, but now news is circulating that the Government’s proposed G-Cloud venture is about to be canned. Could this be a detrimental step backwards for public service IT? We talked to UK-based cloud provider, SymetriQ, about the public sector organisations making positive steps to change their IT infrastructure; regardless of G-Cloud.

 

The big pull-out?

 

G-Cloud was never going to be as cool as Apple’s iCloud or get as much media attention, but the potential it has for streamlining governmental IT infrastructure and saving public funds is unquestionable.

And so, it seems odd that at a time when Apple officially unleashed cloud computing into the mainstream, news is filling the airwaves that the UK’s public sector cloud computing scheme, G-Cloud could be about to get scrapped:

“They’ve canned the project,” HP’s Nick Wilson, a man heavily involved in government IT planning, reportedly told IT PRO last week.

“They thought cloud was a bit too much nirvana, so in the short term, the projects that are being looked at are data centre consolidation.”

The news of the scheme’s removal from IT policy has led to a backlash in many industry quarters; especially with cloud providers, who saw the G-Cloud as a great way of further pushing cloud computing into all aspects of UK business.

“It would be very disappointing if the government is backing away from cloud computing and taking a short-term view of the investment necessary to save vast amounts of money in the long term,” Costas Galonis, managing director of Cirrus Stratus, told eWeek Europe today.

“The G-Cloud is a step in the right direction and the British public should know that if this statement by HP is accurate it will cost the British taxpayer dearly.”

However, is this really the case? Won’t most public sector organisations make the necessary steps into cloud computing regardless of G-Cloud’s existence?

Johnny Paterson, Business Development Director for Glasgow-based cloud provider, SymetriQ, believes the removal of G-Cloud might not be as catastrophic as some are suggesting:

“If these reports [about G-Cloud] are correct, then we would hope that this is not a general move away from cloud but perhaps a realisation that a national Government Cloud is not required. 

“Not when there are already options for government bodies who wish to use secure Public Cloud solutions.  It wouldn’t be great news for the large players involved in G-Cloud, but we believe that there is still plenty of scope for Government bodies working with cloud providers like us.”

One such example is South Lanarkshire Council in Scotland, which have so far developed use of SymetriQ’s own public cloud in Scotland to radically cut costs in their IT department, and soon their entire organisation. As Johnny Paterson explains:

“South Lanarkshire didn’t need to wait on G-Cloud – they decided to make the move to cloud by running Microsoft Project Server.

 

“We were able to facilitate a cost-effective, no-risk pilot project for the Council, which enabled them to prove the benefits of deploying in the SymetriQ Public Cloud.  Microsoft Project Server (or any project software) is a very good use case for Cloud Computing due to the ‘spikes’ in demand driven by project based activity.”

However, with one of the biggest concerns surrounding G-Cloud and the potential reason for its potential demise being security, how did SymetriQ provide the necessary assurance for this public body to feel safe in making the move?  

“Fortunately, SymetriQ are able to guarantee location of data in a secure UK data centre, which meets the relevant criteria for hosting Public Sector data (ISO, SAS, IGSOC, N3 etc).  This enables Public Sector bodies to work with SymetriQ, but we understand that there are major reservations about using any other service which is not hosted in the UK, or in a fully accredited datacentre. 

“In our experiences with Public Sector, we have actually found them to be pretty forward thinking.  Public Sector organisations understand that the Cloud can deliver the cost-savings that they require in these difficult times, and are willing to work through the organisational changes required to implement Cloud services. We believe it is possible to implement secure Public Cloud solutions for Public Sector organisations, without a complex, centralised framework such as G-Cloud.

“It was always going to be interesting to see whether or not G-Cloud delivered the savings and efficiencies which have long been discussed, anyway.  Let’s face it, history shows that this is not always the case in large government projects.”

So, while the UK cloud computing industry may with baited breath for confirmation of G-Cloud’s demise, it appears certain areas of the sector will move on whether or not the scheme ends up going ahead. And certain cloud providers, such as SymetriQ, don’t appear to be losing any sleep over the Government’s decision. 

 

SymetriQ will be exhibiting at the Cloud Computing World Forum on 21st and 22nd June at Olympia, London. To register for the event, visit www.cloudwf.com

Bill McCluggage, Deputy Government CIO and Director of ICT Strategy and Policy for the Cabinet Office, will also be speaking at the event with G-Cloud expected to be a featured discussion.  

 

 

 

SymetriQ are pleased to announce that we are attending the 3rd annual Cloud Computing World Forum, on the 21st and 22nd of June at Olympia in London.

SymetriQ will be a Silver Sponsor of the event again this year.  Additionally, our co-founder, Phil Huber will be presenting on a panel, which includes Barclays Bank and Onyx Group and is hosted by Rupert Goodwins, the Editor of ZDNet.  Last year, SymetriQ came runner up in the 'Best Cloud Platform' award, so we will be hoping for a win this year!  We would be delighted to speak to you - just pop along to our stand.

 

Johnny Paterson

SymetriQ are delighted to welcome Jim Croft back to the company after a break of a year.

Jim returns as 'Lead Development Officer', heading up the UK side of SymetriQ's software development department.

In addition to this, Jim will lead a number of strategic projects at group level within the organisation.

Jim brings a wealth of experience to the role, having previously worked with Lumison, Ballintrae and Flamegreen.

Additionally, Jim was responsible for the SymetriQ Cloud Billing Engine, which as well as being utilised on the SymetriQ Public Cloud, is also now a standalone product offering.

Under Jim's leadership, SymetriQ will continue to deliver truly scalable applications for clients - built in the Cloud and delivered from the Cloud.

 

Johnny Paterson

UK Based Cloud Provider SymetriQ partner with Canadian Provider, Enomaly to bring Government Level Security Cloud Computing to the UK with a unique ‘Green’ angle

Glasgow, UK – (March 14, 2011) -   SymetriQ, the leading UK provider of Enterprise Level Cloud Computing, today announced the launch of their new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) ‘Public Cloud’.  Based on the Enomaly ECP platform, it brings together 2 organisations with a commitment to the highest levels of security in Cloud Computing.  SymetriQ and Enomaly are already working with Government bodies on Cloud projects on both sides of the Atlantic.

Stephen Melville, CEO of SymetriQ’s parent company, MyKey Global Holdings said “Our Group’s vision has always been to deliver ‘financial and environmental solutions, that make commercial sense and commercial solutions that make financial and environmental sense’. SymetriQ’s Cloud Computing platform delivers significant cost savings through its innovative technology-based shared services platform and a Zero Carbon Footprint reducing Carbon Tax liability for our clients”.

Since its launch in 2008, and subsequent acquisition by MyKey Global Holdings in 2010, SymetriQ has broadened its portfolio of cloud solutions, adding Private Cloud, Consultancy, Managed Services and Software Development offerings. Based on the breadth of its offerings and rapid customer adoption, SymetriQ has expanded rapidly into both Public and Private sectors in EMEA which has led to this exciting new partnership.

 Phil Huber, Co-Founder of SymetriQ said “After evaluating the market for a partner for the next stage of our ‘Public Cloud’ platform, it became very clear Enomaly was the best fit for us.  Not only in terms of performance, functionality and scalability, but perhaps most importantly was their commitment to security in the Cloud.  We share a desire to ensure that organisations which move to the Cloud have levels of security which are greater than they would have in-house”.

Martin Low, Group Business Systems Manager at South Lanarkshire Council stated “South Lanarkshire Council were looking for a solution which would reduce up-front cost and complexity on software and infrastructure for a key project, but at the same time would allow us to grow our resource usage as the business requirements increased.  It became clear that a ‘Cloud’ solution would help with fulfilling these criteria.  SymetriQ’s Public Cloud platform gave us these benefits, along with the levels of security that we require”

 “We’re thrilled to work with SymetriQ to offer UK Government-focussed cloud solutions,” said Dr. Richard Reiner, CEO of Enomaly. “Starting with the USA, Governments around the globe are recognising the strength of the Enomaly ECP platform to deliver the requirements of the most demanding Government users for mature, massively scalable, highly reliable cloud services..

 

“The Enomaly ECP IaaS platform helped ARC address many of the rigorous demands of the recent US Federal government, GSA Cloud Computing Contract.  ARC was selected as one of a few, exclusive contract awardees, having successfully differentiated its offering based on a higher level of security and flexibility, made possible by Enomaly ECP ” said John Keese, President of Autonomic Resources.

 

Johnny Paterson

Cloud computing still stirs up quite a lot of antagonism in some people – there are regular „it‟ll never work‟ pieces in the press expounding the unseen dangers of letting your data out of the confines of your own data centre.

Along with this, writers regularly quote the „Fallacies of Distributed Computing/Cloud‟, a list written seventeen years ago by L. Peter Deutsch, then working at Sun Microsystems, along with his colleague James Gosling.

It‟s worth a look at these „fallacies‟, because there‟s an element of truth in the fact that, yes, these are issue that need to be considered. But are we all being led astray by the chimera that is cloud?

1. The network is reliable

2. Latency is zero

3. Bandwidth is infinite

4. The network is secure

5. Topology doesn‟t change

6. There is one administrator

7. Transport cost is zero

8. The network is homogeneous

http://blogs.sun.com/jag/resource/Fallacies.html

Starting at the top – is the network reliable? And if not (because of course it‟s not completely), is the lack of reliability a problem?
“One hundred percent reliability is a fallacy,” says Johnny Paterson, business development manager at SymetriQ. “But any cloud provider is more resilient than just about any corporate network – we provide fully redundant, resilient networks because it‟s our core business. If we have an outage it‟s catastrophic. When it‟s core to your business you just invest more in it,” he says.
“There‟s not a single measure of reliability that you can measure, anyway,” says Alex Bligh, CEO of Flexiant. “You might get the occasional break of a second or two, but for most applications that isn‟t the end of the world – the network heals itself, and for most applications it‟s sufficiently reliable.”
The way applications are being engineered is changing, too, says Bligh. “You can‟t expect everything to be working all the time and never fail – applications today are built to cope with unreliability and carry on.”
Network reliability can be the Achilles Heel of cloud, admits Digital Systems KTN Director Ian Osborne, “but you just need to know whether it‟s good enough for your business needs, and robust against the risk of disruption from DDOS attacks and the like.”

Latency, from „fallacy‟ number two, is never zero, it‟s true, says Osborne, but that‟s true of anything web based, he says. “If you want very low latency, you have to pay for it – and unless you‟re working on a trading system or other specialist area, it‟s not necessarily an issue.”
“If the data‟s in a sensible place in the first place, latency‟s not really a problem,” says Bligh.
“If the data and the compute power are both remote, then you‟re fine. And cloud providers have put a lot of effort into reducing latency, to the point where it‟s better than most in-house set ups. If you think about it, most big enterprises are global and have compute power in different countries – until we work out how to beat the speed of light the issue‟s always going to be there, there‟ll always be a 70mllisecond round trip between New York and the UK. What matters is how you deal with that.”
Paterson says that customer perception of latency can be difficult to handle. “Our datacentre is in Slough, and one reason for that is exactly this perception of latency as a problem. And yet the reality is, people use Salesforce.com without a thought, and they‟re connecting to the US ! We use salesforce.com ourselves, and yes, we do see some latency but it‟s not anything to worry about,” he says.

Bandwidth can certainly be a concern for cloud providers – often it‟s at the client‟s end that things need to be improved.
“It‟s not an issue for us, at Symetriq – we have multiple high bandwidth connections,” says Paterson. “But it can be at the customer‟s end, and it can mean adding extra lines – but it is possible to get 50 Megabits to your home these days, it‟s easy to fix!”
One hiccup is that bandwidth is generally asymmetric, with very little upload bandwidth compared to what‟s available for download, says Osborne. “The myth of Digital Britain was that we can all have two megabits at home, but that‟s very difficult to achieve in practice, whether in heavily built up urban areas or remote locations.

That brings us to security – the bugbear of any cloud salesperson.
But “it‟s probably less than an issue than it was even a year ago,” says Paterson. “The cloud providers have done a good job of explaining it, and people are starting to realise it‟s probably more secure than the customers‟ own sites. Even physically, at some sites just about anyone can stroll in – whereas we have government-level security. And in terms of network access most companies have VPN access these days to let people connect from home, and they can see the cloud‟s no different.”
And as Bligh says, “the network IS insecure, and that‟s no bad thing. You can‟t build impregnable gates but you can build applications capable of surviving attacks. We‟ve been doing that since the 1990s, anyone who builds an internet application without the right technology needs to reconsider what they‟re doing. The risks are there, but they‟re generally possible to control, so long as you start with the premise that things are insecure.”

Topology – this one cause some confusion, as it‟s not clear what‟s meant, but “one benefit of cloud is that you can change the topology yourself – it does change but it‟s within your control and it should be transparent,” Bligh says.
Storage is the area where topology is likely to change the most, says Paterson, “and there‟s a lot of people addressing the issue, looking at speed and scalability.”
Administration and staffing issues always come up when there‟s talk of cloud. What does it mean for the careers of people working in IT today, and how do you manage people who are running a vast network, like a cloud provider‟s datacentre?
“The provision of any service today requires managing many services and providers, both inside and outside an organisation,” Osborne says. “How do you manage those service providers – there‟s a whole new set of skills needed, it‟s true. But you just need to train and find the right people to do it,” he says.
Bligh agrees. “People are used to having complex security capabilities, multiple teams managing different aspects of IT, so the cloud isn‟t very different, really. Back in 92/93, phone relay networks became popular and people worried then about the risks of handing over control to a supplier - we‟re just in the same situation here.”

Transport costs might not be zero but they‟re not a massive concern for most, says Paterson. “We sometimes have to get the customer to add more bandwidth at their end, but at the moment we bundle that into the cost of the service.
“You do need to keep adding capacity, but people will be prepared to pay for what they want to do , if it‟s important enough to them,” says Osborne.
And obviously, some situations just aren‟t suited to remote processes, says Bligh. “If you‟re running a video animation suite, for instance, you‟re moving enormous amounts of data and you have to keep it in-house. But for the rest of us, who don‟t get to watch comics all day, the cost isn‟t big.”

And to the final point: homogeneity. “Heterogeneity actually protects against failure, by making it hard to bring systems down,” says Osborne. And standards are in place that allow heterogeneous systems to work smoothly together anyway, says Paterson.

Overall, all of the cloud fallacies reflect some truth, but they don‟t add up to a reason to baulk at cloud technologies.
“Like the Facebook status – „it‟s complicated‟,” says Bligh. “I‟m not a cloud evangelist – it‟s not a solution to everything, clearly some applications suit it and others are less well suited. I think lists like this make it more like a religious argument when instead you have to look at what‟s right for the customer and for the application. Cloud suffers from a surfeit of religion... But still, lists and myths about cloud at least illustrate the questions that are worth asking.”

This article is produced by Digital Systems. Its publication does not imply any endorsement by Digital Systems of the products or services referenced within it. Any use of this article independent of the Digital Systems’ Web site must include the author's byline plus a link to the original material on the Web site.

https://ktn.innovateuk.org/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=afbed104-c405-4d21-becf-e6033fb37683&groupId=31318

Gillian Law

As we near the end of 2010, a year which has seen the uptake of Cloud services grow massively (Gartner estimate that Public Cloud spend now makes up 10% of all external IT spend), we still hear about the supposed lack of security in the Cloud.  In this blog, we will explore the reality of the security situation in the Cloud.

Firstly, it is useful to identify who exactly has these security concerns.  It is tempting (and sometimes correct) to blame these concerns on traditional hardware vendors, who undoubtedly muddy the waters regarding Cloud Security.  The reasons for this are obvious; to protect their core business of selling hardware to enterprises.  However, as Tier 1 vendors like HP and Dell increasingly embrace the Cloud (sometimes with a pretty tenuous definition of 'Cloud'), it is no longer in their interest to shed 'Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt' on the Cloud.  So is it end users themselves who have the concerns?  Yes, according to the data.  Take the recent survey of CIO's conducted by Cloud Consultancy Savvis, which indicated that only 21% felt that Cloud Computing met their security requirements.  Pretty damning statistic, but how does this stack up against Gartner's recent claim that 'Cloud Security is Better than What You Have Today'?

Take a typical 'Cloud Provider'; they have dedicated technical security staff, who spend 100% of their time working on keeping the cloud secure.  Could a typical enterprise say the same?  Outside of large enterprises - probably not.  Security is often part of the remit of a Network/Systems Engineer.  Undoubtedly, these people do a good job in most cases, but it would be virtually impossible for their security knowledge to be at the same level as a dedicated security professional.

Moving onto physical security at the datacentre level - any reputable Cloud provider will be located in a Tier 3+ datacentre, which will have all of the relevant accreditations and physical security measures.  Additionally, some Cloud providers, such as SymetriQ have even more rigorous measures in place at the datacentre level:  All staff in the SymetriQ datacentre have government level Security Clearance, enabling us to work with Government agencies.  Compare and contrast to the security measure employed in server rooms in the SMB sector.  Again, while there will no doubt be many examples of excellent security in server rooms/datacentre in mid-tier enterprises, we have all seen situations where physical security is virtually non-existent.

From a purely commercial point of view, the incentives for a Cloud provider to ensure the highest levels of security are obvious.  Any breach of security at a Cloud provider would (quite rightly) be highlighted by the media, potentially causing real damage to business.  Whilst a security breach at an enterprise is more likely to escape such criticism (apart from some high profile sectors).  This contrast is not lost on Cloud providers, hence the reason for the additional levels of security outlined above.

The reality of many 'cloud security breaches' is simply that they are no different from security breaches in traditional environments, with malicious behaviour (either internal or external) at the root of them.  The risk of these breaches can be reduced by having the correct measures in place in terms of personnel screening internally and robust security policies in the IT environment.  Who is more likely to have this in place?  A reputable Cloud computing provider or a small to medium business?  I think we know the answer to this one.

In summary:  Are fears over security in the 'Cloud' unfounded?  No, they are not.  Are they overblown?  Probably, yes.  Are these fears going to go away?  The answer is no - but this is not necessarily a bad thing, as it ensures that Cloud providers are continually striving to increase the levels of security in the Cloud.

If you have any real concerns over putting your data into the Cloud, speak to some Cloud providers and see how their security policies measure up against your own.  You may be surprised.....

 

Johnny Paterson

As we approach the end of 2010, analysts, bloggers and the media are publishing their predictions for 2011.

In this article, we will discuss some of these and even offer up a couple of predictions of our own.

 

On the subject of Cloud Standards, it seems that the prevalent view is that we won't see any real movement on this in 2011.  Despite a lot of work by several organisations, there are no major agreements on standards on the horizon.  Analysts Forrester and Cloud Computing expert, David Linthicum, speaking on infoworld.com both share this view, as do SymetriQ.  As a Public Cloud provider, SymetriQ are very keen to see standards in the industry, but we are just not there yet.  On a positive note though, the absence of industry standards does not lead to the level of 'vendor lock-in' that some sceptics would have you believe.  It is possible to move between Cloud providers and many organisations have already done so.  SymetriQ have helped several organisations to do this in the last few months alone.  Yes, this required some manual intervention (including V-to-V conversion and large scale data transfer), but it can still be done relatively easily in a lot of situations.

Analysts Forrester feel that 2011 will see costs from Cloud vendors drop.  David Linthicum reckons we will see prices drop by around 30% over the year.  While we agree that the market will drive down costs (30% doesn't seem an unrealistic figure), we also feel that many customers are willing to pay a premium for certain services - particularly around security.  For example, guarantee of data location and government level security will still appeal to certain organisations despite the additional costs that this may bring.

In his Infoworld.com article, Linthicum states that he believes 2011 will be the year that Government finally gets it's 'cloud act together'.  For example the GSA Blanket Purchase Agreement, which will include Cloud Provider Enomaly, is one of several government initiatives expected to be rolled out over the next 12 months.  Although he is referring to the U.S., the trend will be broadly the same in the U.K.  With the recent announcement of massive Public Sector budget cuts in the UK, organisations will need to look to alternative business models for the delivery of IT projects.  Even leaving aside 'G-Cloud', Public Sector organisations are already looking seriously at Cloud projects.  SymetriQ are working with several Public Sector bodies in the UK at present and although these are mainly at the early stages, we expect to see many of these ramp up as we move into 2011.

Mergers and Acquisitions are expected to continue in the tech world in 2011, with Cloud Computing at the heart of many of these (Oracle and Salesforce are one of the latest rumours).  Ernst & Young report that tech M&A's are up 49% on the 3rd quarter of last year and they expect the trend to continue.

One trend that SymetriQ can see beginning to make an impact in 2011 (despite the aforementioned lack of industry wide standards) is the concept of cloud brokerage.  More specifically, this relates to an intermediary selling excess capacity in the Cloud, a high profile example of this was recently announced by Enomaly.

And finally we expect to see a continuation of the trend of SMB IT resellers moving from their traditional business model and reselling cloud services.  SymetriQ had a lot of interest in our partner program in 2010 and we are seeing this increasing even further as we move towards 2011.  By moving away from 'pushing tin' at ever decreasing margins and moving to a monthly revenue model these resellers can ensure a more profitable (up to 25% margin with SymetriQ for example) and sustainable revenue stream as well as bringing the benefits of the cloud to their end users.

 

Johnny Paterson

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