Ensono Cloud Deploys NetApp SolidFire

Ensono Cloud has recently deployed NetApp SolidFire, a Tier-one quality service provider accelerates shift to a software-defined data center with performance guarantees, flexibility, and scalability.

 “Ensono is committed to delivering a superior managed service experience to our clients. With NetApp® SolidFire®, our clients can focus on accelerating their businesses and leave the burden of managing IT to us,” said Oliver Presland, VP of Global Product Management, Ensono. “Simply put, NetApp SolidFire enables us to deliver more value with less resources. It has become a key enabler of our international cloud platform expansion and our shift toward a software-defined data center.”

According to a survey by Harvey Nash and KPMG, CIO priorities are broadening to include automation and improving agility, along with increasing operational efficiencies, improving business processes, delivering consistent and stable IT performance to the business, and saving money. As a leading hybrid IT solutions and governance provider, U.S.- and UK-based Ensono is answering these rapidly changing business priorities with its new secure private cloud platform, Ensono Cloud.

As the storage foundation designed to run business-critical applications for Ensono Cloud, Ensono deployed NetApp SolidFire all-flash storage from NetApp to serve its clients in the UK and United States. With SolidFire, Ensono delivers improved managed IT services from an innovative infrastructure that is predictable, automated, scalable, and highly available to support its clients’ business-critical applications.

With granular, volume-level SolidFire quality of service, Ensono delivers high performance of every customer application from its shared infrastructure and offers simple delivery of different service tiers. Its scale-out architecture enables Ensono to achieve nondisruptive system expansion with instant resource availability to better support its business growth.

Through SolidFire automation capabilities and deep integration with its VMware-based environment, Ensono can provision resources more quickly, allowing its staff to focus on high-value activities such as applications management and designing complex client solutions.

The diverse features provided by the NetApp SolidFire system are critical to transitioning to a next-generation, software-defined data center. This transition, combined with improved managed services delivered through the new Ensono Cloud, has enabled Ensono to release a state-of-the-art platform to an international market. Already available in the UK, Ensono Cloud is slated to deploy in the United States by summer 2017, bringing highly regarded Ensono services to new markets.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

All your streaming data are belong to Kafka

Apache Kafka is on a roll. Last year it registered a 260 percent jump in developer popularity, as Redmonk’s Fintan Ryan highlights, a number that has only ballooned since then as IoT and other enterprise demands for real-time, streaming data become common. Hatched at LinkedIn, Kafka’s founding engineering team spun out to form Confluent, which has been a primary developer of the Apache project ever since.

But not the only one. Indeed, given the rising importance of Kafka, more companies than ever are committing code, including Eventador, started by Kenny Gorman and Erik Beebe, both co-founders of ObjectRocket (acquired by Rackspace). Whereas ObjectRocket provides the MongoDB database as a service, Eventador offers a fully managed Kafka service, further lowering the barriers to streaming data.

Talking with the Eventador co-founders, it became clear that streaming data is different, requiring “fresh eyes” because “data being mutated in real time enables new use cases and new possibilities.” Once an enterprise comes to depend on streaming data, it’s hard to go back. Getting to that point is the key.

Kafka vs. Hadoop

As popular as Apache Hadoop has been, the Hadoop workflow is simply too slow for the evolving needs of modern enterprises. Indeed, as Gorman tells it, “Businesses are realizing that the value of data increases as it becomes more real-time.” For those companies that prefer to wait on adding a real-time data flow to their products and services, they risk the very real likelihood that their competitors are not content to sit on their batchy laurels.

This trend is driving the adoption of technologies that can reliably and scalably deliver and process data as near real-time as possible. New frameworks dedicated to this architecture needed to exist. Hence, Apache Kafka was born.

What about Apache Spark? Well, as Gorman points out, Spark is capable of real-time processing, but isn’t optimally suited to it. The Spark streaming frameworks are still micro-batch by design.

This leaves Kafka, which “can offer a true exactly once, one-at-a-time processing solution for both the transport and the processing framework,” Gorman explains. Beyond that, additional components like Apache Flink, Beam, and others extend the functionality of these real-time pipelines to allow for easy mutation, aggregation, filtering, and more. All the things that make a mature, end-to-end, real-time data processing system.

Kafka’s pub-sub model

This wouldn’t matter if Kafka were a beast to learn and implement, but it’s not (on either count). As Gorman highlights, “The beauty of Apache Kafka is it exposes a powerful API yet has very simple semantics. It is all very approachable.” Not only that, but its API has been implemented in many different programming languages, so the odds are good that your favorite language has a driver available.

Kafka has the notion of a topic, which is simply a namespace for a stream of data. It’s very simple to publish data to a topic, and Kafka handles the routing, scalability, durability, availability, etc. Multiple consumers coordinate subscription to these topics, to fetch data and process or route it. Asked about how this translates into the application development experience, Gorman stressed that it’s not trivial but it’s straightforward: “Building applications that work with Kafka is fairly easy [as] the client libraries handle much of the nuances of the communication, and developers utilize the API to publish or subscribe to streams of data.”

The problem, if any, isn’t the technology. Rather, it’s a question of paradigms.

The real trick for developers, Gorman tells me, is “to think about using streaming data with a fresh pair of eyes.” Why? Because “data being mutated in real time enables new use cases and new possibilities.”

Let’s look at a tangible example. Perhaps a client publishes data about ridership of a ride-sharing service. One set of consumers analyzes this stream to perform machine learning algorithms for dynamic pricing, then another set of consumers reads the data to provide location and availability of the cars to customers’ mobile devices. Yet another consumer feeds an aggregation framework for ridership data to internal dashboards. Kafka is at the core of a data architecture that can feed all kinds of business needs, all real-time.

Kafka in the cloud

This is great for developers and the companies for which they work, but Kafka demand is no guarantee of Eventador’s success, given that it has to compete with Confluent, which has the distinction of being the founder of Kafka. What’s more, Confluent, too, has announced a cloud offering that likely will compete with Eventador’s Kafka service.

Gorman is not bothered. As he describes,

The real difference is that we aren’t limited just to Kafka. We use Kafka where it makes the most sense. We are an end-to-end, enterprise-grade, stream processing framework built on Apache Kafka and Apache Flink. We have connectors for AWS S3, a REST interface, integration with PrestoDB and Jupyter notebooks, as well as connections for popular databases and even other streaming systems like AWS Kinesis. We offer plans from a simple single node to full on-prem enterprise configurations.

Besides, given the booming demand for real-time data, Gorman believes there is room for many different players. Not only does Eventador complement Kafka with Flink and more, it has taken to heart Rackspace’s mantra for “fanatical customer support,” which starts with a well-built, fully integrated product. Having spent decades doing operations for some of the world’s largest companies, Gorman continues, “We know what it means to run a first class, professional quality, rock solid, as-a-service offering.”

He’s absolutely right that the market is still young. Developers are still working to understand how Kafka can be integrated into their projects. The use cases are expanding every day, driven by this need to compete with data.

Years from now, however, “It will be common to rely on streaming data in your infrastructure,” Gorman points out, “and not just some ancillary workload.” This is the future they’re building for. “Once you start expecting data to be more real-time, it’s hard to stop.” Eventador, Confluent, and undoubtedly others are building for this real-time, streaming data future. For some, that future is now. For others, these startups hope to get them there sooner.

Source: InfoWorld Big Data

Data is eating the software that is eating the world

No one doubts that software engineering shapes every last facet of our 21^st century existence. Given his vested interest in companies whose fortunes were built on software engineering, it was no surprise when Marc Andreessen declared that “software is eating the world.”

But what does that actually mean, and, just as important, does it still apply, if it ever did? These questions came to me recently when I reread Andreessen’s op-ed piece and noticed that he equated “software” with “programming.” Just as significant, he equated “eating” with industry takeovers by “Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies” and then rattled through the usual honor roll of Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Google, and the like. What they, and others cited by Andreessen, have in common is that they built global-scale business models on the backs of programmers who bang out the code that drives web, mobile, social, cloud, and other 24/7 online channels.

Since the piece was published in the Wall Street Journal in 2011, we’ve had more than a half-decade to see whether Andreessen’s epic statement of Silicon Valley triumphalism proved either prescient or, perhaps, merely self-serving and misguided. I’d say it comes down more on the prescient end of the spectrum, due to the fact that most (but not all) of the success stories he cited have continued their momentum in growth, profitability, acquisitions, innovation, and so forth. People from programming backgrounds – such as Mark Zuckerberg – are indeed the multibillionaire rockstars of this new business era. In this way, Andreessen has so far been spared the fate of Tom Peters, who saw many of the exemplars he cited in his 1982 bestseller “In Search of Excellence” go on to be deconstructed by business rivals or blindsided by trends they didn’t see coming.

Rise of the learning machines

However, it has become clear to everyone, especially the old-school disruptors cited by Andreessen, that “software,” as it’s normally understood, is not the secret to future success. Going forward, the agent of disruption will be the data-driven ML (machine learning) algorithms that power AI. In this new era, more of the logic that powers intelligent applications won’t be explicitly programmed. The days of predominantly declarative, deterministic, and rules-based application development are fast drawing to a close. Instead, the probabilistic logic at the heart of chatbots, recommendation engines, self-driving vehicles, and other AI-powered applications is being harvested directly from source data.

The “next best action” logic permeating our lives is evolving inside of applications through continuous inference from data originating in the Internet of Things and other production applications. Consequently, there will be a diminishing need for programmers, in the traditional sense of people who build hard-and-fast application logic. In their place, the demand for a new breed of developer – the data scientist – will continue to grow. This term refers to the wide range of specialists who craft, train, and manage the regression models, neural networks, support vector machines, unsupervised learning models, and other ML algorithms upon which AI-centric apps depend.

To compound the marginalization of programmers in this new era, we’re likely to see more ML-driven code generation along the lines that I discussed in this recent post. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and other software-based powerhouses have made huge investments in data science, hoping to buoy their fortunes in the post-programming era. They all have amassed growing sets of training data from their ongoing operations. For these reasons, the “Silicon Valley-style” monoliths are confident that they have the resources needed to build, tune, and optimize increasingly innovative AI/ML-based algorithms for every conceivable application.

However, any strategic advantages that these giants gain from these AI/ML assets may be short-lived. Just as data-driven approaches are eroding the foundations of traditional programming, they’re also beginning to nibble at the edges of what highly skilled data scientists do for a living. These trends are even starting to chip away at the economies of scale available to large software companies with deep pockets.

AI and the Goliaths

We’re moving into an era in which anyone can tap into cloud-based resources to cheaply automate the development, deployment, and optimization of innovative AI/ML apps. In a “snake eating its own tail” phenomenon, ML-driven approaches will increasingly automate the creation and optimization of ML models, per my discussion here. And, from what we’re seeing in research initiatives such as Stanford’s Snorkel project, ML will also play a growing role in automating the acquisition and labeling of ML training data. What that means is that, in addition to abundant open-source algorithms, models, code, and data, the next-generation developer will also be able to generate ersatz but good-enough labeled training data on the fly to tune new apps for their intended purposes.

As the availability of low-cost generative training data grows, the established software companies’ massive data lakes, in which their developers maintain petabytes of authentic from-the-source training data, may become more of an overhead burden than a strategic asset. Likewise, the need to manage the complex data-preparation logic for use of this source data may become a bottleneck that impedes the ability of developers to rapidly build, train, and deploy new AI apps.

When any developer can routinely make AI apps just as accurate as Google’s or Facebook’s – but with far less expertise, budget, and training data than the big shots – a new era will have dawned. When we reach that tipping point, the next generation of data-science-powered disruptors will start to eat away at yesteryear’s software startups.

Source: InfoWorld Big Data

Dataguise Presents Data-Centric Audit and Protection (DCAP) Solutions At AWS Summit

Dataguise has announced that the company will exhibit at the AWS Summit in Chicago. Dataguise will showcase its award-winning security and compliance solution for the detection, protection, monitoring, and auditing of sensitive data in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Redshift, and all databases supported by RDS. During the event, Dataguise will feature enterprise customer deployments of DgSecure where IT professionals have securely migrated enterprise data to AWS and leveraged the highly scalable platform in financial services, health care, insurance, and other tightly regulated industries.

The AWS Summit in Chicago takes place at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center from July 26-27 and is a popular industry conference that brings together the cloud computing community to connect, collaborate and learn about AWS. Dataguise will show DgSecure, a multi-platform data-centric security solution which integrates with AWS to scan and locate all sensitive information stored on Amazon S3, Redshift, and RDS to reveal the location and status of this information throughout its lifecycle. The solution also provides data masking for databases supported by RDS, including SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres, and MySQL.

“As an established Amazon AWS partner, Dataguise has invested the time and resources required to develop the most effective solution for Amazon’s cloud infrastructure platform,” said JT Sison, VP, Marketing and Business Development for Dataguise. “As a result, DgSecure enables users to unleash the power of data in the cloud in the most secure and compliant way possible. The presentation of this technology at the AWS Chicago Summit is expected to draw interest from enterprises with deployments on AWS infrastructure as an increasing number of workloads move to this platform.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Cloud Technology Partners Launches Cloud Kickstart For AWS

Cloud Technology Partners (CTP) has announced that it has launched Cloud Kickstart for Amazon Web Services (AWS), a fixed-time, fixed-price offering that enables clients to safely and quickly leverage the power of AWS across their organization.

“Regardless of whether clients are looking at one workload, multiple workloads, or an entire portfolio, transforming from on-premise to cloud-based IT requires a deep understanding of the best technologies, tools, and vendors to build the right end-to-end solution,” said Robert Christiansen, vice president and cloud adoption practice lead, Cloud Technology Partners. “Cloud Kickstart for AWS takes the guess work out of standing up an enterprise-grade AWS environment and includes all the processes and tools you need to enable your team to safely and securely start provisioning cloud resources.”

Cloud Kickstart for AWS enables your team to quickly start leveraging a secure cloud environment and gain instant awareness of the transformative power of the cloud within your organization. Reducing time to cloud from up to a year to just six weeks, Cloud Kickstart for AWS provides an enterprise-grade AWS environment with all of the essential automation, security, governance, and compliance controls in place including:

• CTP’s recommended tagging standards
• AWS account standards
• IPSec VPN connectivity to AWS
• Platform common services VPC (both production and nonproduction)
• Active Directory integration for controlling access to tooling and environment
• Automated creation of Windows and Linux AMIs
• AMI snapshot management
• Creation of custom IAM Roles
• SDLC toolchain using best-of-breed automation tools

Cloud Kickstart helps companies realize time to value faster with pre-built continuous integrations and continuous testing capabilities that provide immense efficiency gains to DevOps teams. As well as providing best-in-class security, compliance and analytics capabilities to keep your organization’s data secure.

In addition to these features, Cloud Kickstart for AWS also includes a robust reference architecture created with best-of-breed tools in the AWS ecosystem to create a simple package for rapid AWS adoption at scale. From configuration management with chef to security leveraging Trend Micro, Dome9 Arc and Vault, to operational analytics using Sumo Logic, Cloud Kickstart for AWS includes all the tools you need to ensure a secure and compliant AWS environment. Today’s Cloud Kickstart for AWS reference architecture includes these proven solutions:

• Host-based anti-malware, intrusion prevention and detection, integrity monitoring and application control (Trend Micro)
• Network security and IAM monitoring and enforcement (Dome9 Arc)
• Secrets store, temporary access leases (Vault)
• Encryption for EBS volumes (AWS)
• Monitoring (AWS Cloudwatch)
• Consolidated logging including CloudTrail, Build, Automation, and security events across all accounts (Sumo Logic)
• Configuration management (Chef)
• Orchestration (Jenkins)
• Binary repository (Artifactory)
• Code repository (Git)
• Managed Cloud Controls for Continuous Compliance and Continuous Cost Control (CTP)

“Moving to the cloud is one of the most transformative changes an organization can make, however, it can be disruptive to the business without the right tools or expertise,” said William Fellows, founder and research vice president, 451 Group. “Today, organizations are seeking methods to help them transition to the cloud more quickly and securely. With Cloud Kickstart for AWS, Cloud Technology Partners has brought together best-of-breed partners to address this business need and help organizations rapidly take advantage of the cloud.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Logicalis US Expands Its Microsoft CSP Program

Logicalis US has announced it has expanded its Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and is relaunching its offerings to include additional professional and managed services attractive to organizations of all sizes — including enterprise organizations. To help CIOs wondering if a CSP relationship is right for their business, the Microsoft solution experts at Logicalis have identified seven reasons CIOs should consider a CSP relationship. Microsoft’s CSP program provides organizations an alternative consumption model for procuring cloud-based Office 365 and Azure subscriptions that does not require the kind of stringent, three-year commitment inherent in larger, volume-based on-premise enterprise agreements (EAs). Additionally, by bundling the right professional and managed services, Logicalis, a Microsoft Gold Partner and one of the top 200 Microsoft solution providers of 2017, is able to provide comprehensive Office 365 and Azure solutions that take advantage of the cloud’s flexibility, delivering a monthly consumption- or usage-based model capable of meeting the varied needs of customers of all sizes — small to large.

“Providing our Microsoft customers – including enterprise-level clients – with a model that can adapt to changes in their business is particularly important to organizations that may not be able to predict business fluctuations three years in advance,” says Wendy McQuiston, director, Microsoft Professional Services, Logicalis US. “If a customer needs 1,000 seats of Office 365 this month, then wants to decrease those seats to 800 the following month, under their CSP agreement with Logicalis, they can do that with no financial penalty. Our CSP program combines the product pricing as well as the level of support that fits the customer’s changing needs and digital transformation strategy — no more money lost due to non-consumption or increases based on the difference between EA estimates and actual usage. Logicalis’ Microsoft CSP program allows any size customer to purchase and pay only for the subscriptions and services they actually use on a month-to-month basis.”

Seven Benefits of a Microsoft CSP Relationship

Logicalis’ Microsoft CSP program can help users of any size take advantage of a more flexible, pay-as-you-go, consumption-based model with the option to bundle Microsoft cloud subscriptions like Office 365 and Azure with a host of professional and managed services designed to ensure those solutions are functioning as expected and to assist with the migration to those services.

• Pay-As-You-Go: No more long-term pre-pay service commitments, enabling a faster ROI on Microsoft Office 365 and Azure cloud implementations and services.
• Migration Help: Built-in migration assistance to move users to the cloud.
• Professional Services Included: Security, identity management and application needs as well as ongoing support services are bundled into the Logicalis CSP professional services engagement.
• Faster Issue Resolutions: Logicalis US becomes the CIO’s main point of contact for issue resolution, delivering the right level of support faster.
• Digital Transformation Strategies: By partnering with Logicalis, CIOs will learn how to combine Microsoft solutions with other multi-vendor solutions to drive their organization’s digital transformation.
• Logicalis-Direct Invoicing: Cloud subscription invoicing will come directly from Logicalis, unless customers choose to retain on-premise EA subscriptions.
• Combined Program Capabilities: Organizations can continue to purchase their on-premise EA licensing direct from Microsoft and still utilize the Logicalis CSP program for their cloud subscriptions or alternatively add professional or managed services support to services procured through an EA.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Archer Voted Best Cloud-Based Services Provider

Archer has been voted best cloud-based services provider in the 2017 Waters Rankings. The win was revealed at today’s Waters Rankings Awards Presentation luncheon held at the Metropolitan Club in New York.

The 15th annual Waters Rankings recognize the investment management community’s leading solutions providers. Winners were determined based on a survey of financial technology professionals who rated their peers in terms of overall quality of service.

“This is a fantastic team win for Archer,” said Bryan Dori, Archer CEO. “Firms competing for Waters’ Best cloud-based services provider category include the strongest brands in Fintech.”

Dori adds, “Our flexible cloud-based services model is ideal for investment managers positioning for growth. Firms are able to focus on investing and client relationships with scalable technology and services. The Best cloud-based services provider win is an acknowledgement of the value of our integrated model as much as the way we deliver it.”

Winning Waters’ best cloud-based services provider is the latest in a series of accolades received by Archer and its team so far this year. Archer CEO Bryan Dori was named Entrepreneur Of The Year 2017 in the Fintech category in Greater Philadelphia, and Archer CFO Ted Pastva was recognized as a Leading CFO in Philadelphia by Philadelphia Business Journal.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

COPA-DATA Wins The 2017 Microsoft Internet of Things (IoT) Award

Microsoft has crowned COPA-DATA, the Austria-based software manufacturer for industrial automation, as its global Microsoft Partner of the Year in the Internet of Things (IoT) category. The award was presented at this year’s Microsoft Inspire, the company’s worldwide partner conference, which was held between July 9 and 13, 2017 in Washington, D.C., USA. This award is a recognition by Microsoft of COPA-DATA’s innovations and software solutions based on Microsoft technology.

Each year, Microsoft presents its sought-after Partner of the Year Awards at its worldwide partner conference. This year, projects were submitted by more than 2,800 companies across 115 countries in a total of 34 global categories and 103 national categories. Following on from two victories at the Microsoft Awards last year, this is the third prize for COPA-DATA. The company was honored for its solutions and services involving its zenon software system in the global Internet of Things (IoT) category.

“This success is excellent proof of the high quality and performance demonstrated by our IoT solutions based on our zenon software and the latest Microsoft technologies and products, especially the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, including the Azure IoT Suite,” explains Johannes Petrowisch, Global Partner & Business Development Manager at COPA-DATA. “We are extremely pleased with this award and would like to thank all our customers and partners who have made this achievement possible.”

Pioneering Software Solution

Triumph at the 2017 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards was based on an IoT application by COPA-DATA, which uses the technological interaction between zenon and Microsoft Azure to prepare equipment manufacturers for digitization in the industry. This gives users access to all data relating to individual machines, assembly lines, or a company’s entire production site from a single system. Additional services such as predictive analysis, machine learning, cross-site reporting, remote maintenance, and control can be fully cloud-based or implemented in hybrid scenarios – opening the door to service-oriented business models.

“Our ecosystem of innovative partners is the cornerstone to delivering transformative solutions to our mutual customers,” said Ron Huddleston Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft Corp. “We are pleased to recognize COPA-DATA for being selected as winner of the 2017 Microsoft Internet of Things (IoT) Worldwide Partner of the Year award.”

Source: CloudStrategyMag

QTS Enhances Carrier-Neutral Cloud Connectivity Ecosystem

Responding to increasing customer demand for diverse cloud connectivity options, QTS Realty Trust announced that customers will be able to access elastic interconnection services powered by Megaport, a leader in global Software Defined Networking (SDN).

Megaport is part of QTS’ multi-phased approach to expand its carrier-neutral cloud ecosystem and simplify customer network strategies by providing diverse connectivity for cloud and hybrid IT environments.

Megaport enables QTS’ customers and partners to connect over a Software Defined Network (SDN), reducing cost, and providing rapid connectivity and provisioning across a single platform. Virtual Cross Connects (VXCs) to services are provisioned via QTS’ portal and managed via any mobile device. Megaport complements QTS’ existing portfolio of network services to include direct connectivity to some of the world’s largest hyperscale cloud providers.

“Expansion of QTS’ connectivity ecosystem supports today’s enterprises seeking speed, agility and efficiency to solve their hybrid IT strategies,” said Dan Bennewitz, chief operations officer, sales, product & marketing. QTS. “By partnering with Megaport, QTS customers can connect with who they want when they want, more efficiently and effectively.”

“QTS has evolved into a highly innovative provider of cloud and hybrid IT solutions backed by an increased emphasis on strategic carrier-neutral cloud interconnection,” said Vincent English, CEO of Megaport. “Megaport provides the ideal foundation for QTS customers to connect easily to each other as well as over 200 service providers across our ecosystem, including the top five global cloud service providers.”

Enterprises will be able to access Megaport from QTS’ mega data centers in Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas-Irving, Texas; Richmond, Virginia; and Santa Clara, California.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

Report: Most Businesses Using the Cloud Spend 0,000+ on Additional Security Features

Businesses prefer storing data in the cloud, but plan to invest in extra security precautions, according to the second report in Clutch’s Annual Cloud Computing Survey. Clutch is a B2B ratings and reviews firm.

Nearly 70% of businesses on the cloud prefer storing data in the cloud instead of on a legacy system, and these businesses are willing to invest heavily in keeping their cloud’s data secure.

In fact, over half of companies surveyed spend more than $100,000 annually on additional cloud security features.

One reason for the high investment in cloud security is companies’ greater awareness of the security risks that are out of their cloud provider’s control, according to industry experts. When it comes to application-level security, including user access, password sharing, and other individual interactions, the company and its employees shoulder the responsibility for security.

“There is suddenly a number of people recognizing that application-level security needs to be done by the user, not the vendor,” said Haresh Kumbhani, founder and CEO of Zymr, Inc., a San Francisco-based cloud consulting and agile software development services company. “If this is the case, then they need to invest top dollar in securing the data.”

In another finding, nearly 1 in 4 businesses on the cloud indicate that they use IoT services. However, the quality of security for IoT varies.

“Nascent is the first word that comes to mind [regarding IoT security]. For every company that properly locks down IoT-enabled machines on a factory floor, you have thousands of unsecured ‘smart’ lightbulbs,” said Jamie MacQuarrie, co-founder of Appivo, a platform for developing cloud-based web and mobile applications.

Companies can protect themselves from security threats and prevent issues by following both mandatory and voluntary security guidelines and implementing additional security features, such as extra encryption.

Currently, 65% of businesses follow the security guidelines released by the Cloud Security Alliance, and 64% of businesses use encryption as an additional security tool, according to the survey.

The survey includes responses from 283 IT professionals at businesses across the United States that use cloud computing.

Read the full article here.

Source: CloudStrategyMag