What Cloud Strategy is Best for Your Business?

The cloud may be just a buzzword to some, but as it’s on the path to mainstream adoption, it is the foundation for virtualization and future trends. Many people are avoiding jumping into the cloud all the way due to security concerns. To fully benefit from cloud computing, users and companies must ensure that data, applications and systems are properly secured so that the cloud infrastructure won't expose an organization to risk. 

Many people think that once they adopt the cloud, the burden of upholding security is off them and onto the cloud provider. But, Shahin Pirooz, EVP and CTO of CenterBeam, Inc., disagrees.

“A cloud solution is as secure or insecure as you make it,” he explained. “The ownership lies not with the cloud provider, but with the organization using those services.”

The reality is that IT and the application owners are still responsible for their applications regardless of where the infrastructure is; cloud or on-premise. Whether a solution is in the cloud or inside a company, the key is to maintain your firewalls and security defenses, and not allow direct access to your core infrastructure.

“As with many other IT scenarios, the best offense is a good defense – and the best person to put that defense together is the company implementing the cloud solution,” said Pirooz.

The question becomes if end users are permitted to use iCloud (applications such as Box (News - Alert).net, Dropbox, SkyDrive and GoogleDrive) to store data, then how does IT prevent a company’s IP from being stored in one of these, and reduce the risk of data leakage?

The solution has to be a well-rounded (read as unified) approach to policy management on all endpoints. This is where CenterBeam’s Unified Endpoint Management offering comes in; regardless of the endpoint, you need to be able to encrypt data, perform content filtering and provide data protection.

According to Pirooz, the most important thing to understand about the cloud is, “The ‘cloud’ can be many things, but the most recent incarnations are IaaS and PaaS. It is important to understand that IaaS is simply an infrastructure play, replacing physical hardware and removing the need for the four year cyclical hardware refreshes… PaaS is one layer above that… not only is the hardware replaced, but the Web and application layer are also replaced, leaving IT and IS to focus on the things that differentiate the business from its competitors rather than the core underlying plumbing…the cloud is just the plumbing.”

Regardless of whether you are adopting the cloud little by little or jumping all the way in, it is is here to stay. Pirooz says it is absolutely not a fad.

“Do we look back on centralized computing (mainframes and thin client) technologies as fads today? They are the foundations of what has become the virtualization layer that allows us to have IaaS and SaaS (News - Alert) models,” he said.

Cloud services providers that are doing it right are companies like Amazon and Apple.

“I love both Amazon and Apple’s (News - Alert) matching services that don’t make me upload my files to the cloud, but rather give me access to a copy (pointer) of the music files on any of my devices,” he added. “This is brilliant. Why would anyone not take advantage of this?

Pirooz will be speaking at a session at Cloud4SMB Expo, “Defining Your Cloud Strategy – Full Migration vs a Hybrid Approach,” on Tuesday, October 2 from 2:30-3:15in Austin, TX.

“I will leave the individual with a crisp understanding of their responsibilities in picking a cloud provider, and by extension, provide keys to managing both the relationship as well as the services in that cloud,” said Pirooz.

This session will help business and IT leaders better understand the cloud landscape and alternative strategies being successfully implemented across the SMB market. Attendees will learn how to determine which migration strategy is best for their businesses, along with the keys to ensuring a successful migration.

To find out more about Shahin Pirooz and CenterBeam Inc. visit the company at Cloud4SMB Expo, collocated with ITEXPO West 2012 taking place Oct 2-5, in Austin, TX. Pirooz will be a speaker in, “Defining Your Cloud Strategy – Full Migration vs. a Hybrid Approach.” Stay in touch with everything happening at Cloud4SMB Expo. Follow us on Twitter.