Wrap-up of Cloud Expo Europe
We recently exhibited at Cloud Expo Europe, held at London’s Excel this was a real showcase for the rapid progress the cloud industry is making. Anyone and everyone who has a cloud offering was there and our partners Veeam, Zerto, Trend Micro and VMware all had booths. For me, personally, this was a great opportunity to see the latest developments, take stock of changes and get a really good look at what lies ahead in the industry. The Smart IoT and Innovate UK Zones were particularly impressive. Every new invention imaginable was on show, from new technology being trialled in association with the NHS to help people with dementia stay safe and well in their homes, to smart cooking appliances that enable you to tell your mobile app what to cook before you get home so that your meal is timed to perfection upon your arrival.
This really got me thinking about how the world is transforming into a new and exciting digital environment and, as a result, how connected we have all become. The wonders of this new digital world are really quite amazing, especially when one sees all these innovations brought together in one hall. However, this kind of digital transformation is also one of the biggest challenges CIOs, CMOs and heads of business face today. From the threat of ever growing competitors, to the building of much needed agility on top of ageing systems, many of the companies that I come across every day, as well as at the show, admit that their digital transformation programs come up short.
Nevertheless, the drive towards digital transformation is unrelenting. According to analyst firm IDC, by the end of 2017, two thirds of global 2000 CIOs will have digital transformation at the centre of their strategy. In addition, according to the recent CIO Report, 85% of CIOs have just two years to advance their digital transformation or they risk falling behind their competitors.
So, while the pace that organisations can innovate today is unprecedented as the economy becomes increasingly digital, it is also essential that organisations evolve and adapt in order to avoid being displaced or left behind. Individuals expect service and access to their information to be instant, automated, mobile and secure, and these expectations are only continuing to escalate. As these individuals get frustrated with organisations that cannot keep up, their loyalty begins to shift, and they begin to seek out new organisations that value their preferences.
This is where cloud computing has become a vital platform in enabling digital transformation. The power, speed and agility cloud provides empowers companies to drive innovation with data, reinvigorate old business models, and embrace the tools that will enable them to stay one step ahead of the competition.
And as cloud has become more mainstream, the majority of organisations using cloud don’t tend to put all their eggs in one basket. Rather, they run multi cloud infrastructure platforms, applications and their own private and hybrid clouds.
But that in itself causes all sorts of management and visibility issues and this is where iland attracted a lot of interest at the show. We have recently launched updates to our Secure Cloud Console which help organisations to more easily manage their cloud. This is critical as visibility and ease of management so often determines how successful an organisation is with cloud. The iland Secure Cloud Console delivers transparency into cloud resources, predictable and historic cost analysis, as well as easy access to our cloud management capabilities – from network configuration to DR failover testing to performance monitoring. The console natively combines deep layered security, predictive analytics and compliance in order to deliver visibility and on-demand reporting for our cloud hosting and disaster recovery services. The cloud management functionality in the console is designed to foster strategic, self-sufficient control of a cloud environment, optimising overall cloud usage and costs to drive business initiatives and growth.
We all know that moving to the cloud brings unprecedented benefits to organisations but no company that is implementing cutting-edge cloud technology can afford to ignore security, which is understandably a key concern. IT organisations struggle to keep pace with the constant changes in compliance regulations. This includes pressure to adopt new cloud technologies and ensure compliance with changing and stringent data privacy regulations. In order to satisfy industry compliance requirements, companies must provide proof and validation of their business compliance posture with reporting on items such as security and penetration testing, ISO, UK Data Registration, SOC2, and HIPAA for US healthcare organisations. In fact, cloud security has become such a concern that it had its own dedicated Expo at the show with keynotes on the Security of Things, Compliance, Governance and Cloud Security Strategies.
Again, this need for compliance generated a lot of interest for iland due to the aforementioned launch of our Secure Cloud Services. With iland, cloud data compliance and cloud security risks need not be a hurdle for cloud adoption anymore. Our new services include support for Model Contract Clauses and compliance to the US and UK Privacy Shield Frameworks which address the challenges of rapidly evolving cloud compliance and data privacy regulations. iland Secure Cloud Services come natively with an arsenal of proactive security features including vulnerability scanning, anti-virus/anti-malware, web reputation monitoring, intrusion detection and prevention, integrity monitoring, log inspection, and much more to deter cyber-criminal threats such as ransomware.
The challenges the IT industry today are so diverse that no one company can solve them all. That is why events like Cloud Expo Europe and Cloud Security Expo play a critical role in bringing the industry together to collaborate and pave the way for new technologies that will help us all thrive in a future that is becoming increasingly digital.
Image Credit: Everything Possible / Shutterstock
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