The Cloud: How Far Is Too Far?

[Michael_Bird]

The Cloud has become a backbone of the world economy over the last decade, powering everything from streaming services to mobile banking. It’s a fantastic resource, but as time goes on the limits of the Cloud are becoming clearer, from over-reliance issues to incompatibility with legacy hardware.

This week - part 1 of a 2 part special - we’re taking a look at the challenges of the Cloud, and how organisations can make sure they are making best use of the opportunities it presents. We’ll be examining how the financial world is looking to ensure it doesn’t become too reliable on single points-of-failure in the cloud. We’ll be examining how organisations which have made huge capital investments in non-Cloud hardware are having to make choices about their digital future, and taking a look at two of the Cloud’s biggest selling points: sustainability and cost savings. We’re speaking with HPE Chief Technologists Russell MacDonald and Adrian Lovell around digital transformation and the effects of the Cloud on the world of FinTech.

We’re also talking with Alex Hilton, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum about cloud adoption in the UK, Adriaan Bekker, Technical Director at Softwerx Ltd about the challenges of cloud migration and digital transformation, and EM Law founder Neil Williamson on the legal considerations surrounding cloud computing.

In the next episode, we’ll be looking at how organisations are overcoming these challenges - from upskilling staff to hybrid cloud models.

The Closed box - how to ensure redundancy in Cloud services

Organisations rely on always-on infrastructure to function in the digital world. Most Cloud service providers promise uptime in excess of 99.9% - but problems do happen and it’s not unknown for services to go down in a region. This can be catastrophic to any industry, but would be particularly damaging to the financial services sector. Adrian Lovell is an HPE Chief Technologist who specialises in FinTech. He notes that a singe point of failure is a cardinal sin in finance, but that it’s possible, even with redundancies, that multiple cloud service providers could be using similar or identical technology down their pipelines without knowing it. If that creates a common point of failure and something goes wrong, the results could be catastrophic.

Migration and incompatibility - how do you mix cloud-native and legacy technology?

The Cloud has been part of our world for the last decade. But many organisations rely on, and have heavily invested in, proprietary legacy systems which, put simply, aren’t Cloud enabled. In a phenomenon known as being ‘unconsciously hybrid’, many organisations find that migrating some of their data and processes to the Cloud is easy, but connecting these legacy systems is prohibitively difficult for technical, financial or strategic reasons. We hear from HPE Chief Technologist Russell MacDonald, The Cloud Industry Forum CEO Alex Hilton, and Softwerx Ltd Technical Director Adriaan Bekker about the challenges posed by migrating legacy systems, and the need to have an honest conversation about whether Cloud is the right path going forward.

Data Sovereignty - Who owns and is responsible for your data on the Cloud?

By moving your data to the Cloud, you are essentially entrusting it to a third party. As EM Law founder Neil Williamson explains, whilst there’s no legal limitations (at least in the UK) on what you can store on the Cloud, there are expectations and regulations about how you handle data. Ultimately, it is you the customer, as the data controller, who is responsible for that, so knowing that your data is being stored securely in a territory that has robust privacy and data regulations is something organisations need to consider carefully.

Key takeaways:

• The Cloud is the perfect solution for 99% of business needs. But forgetting the 1% can be costly: capital expenditure, compatibility, and data legislation need to be considered.
• Using the Cloud means handing over your data to a third party. That’s not a problem, but it should be a consideration.
• There are solutions to all these challenges - and we’ll be exploring those in more detail in the next episode.

Links and resources:

The Cloud Industry Forum

Cloud Expo Europe - Cloud Industry Forum Research Report

Consciously Hybrid - HPE

EM Law

Cloud Service Legal Issues - EM Law

Softwerx Ltd

Adrian Lovell - LinkedIn

Russell MacDonald - LinkedIn

Neil Williamson - LinkedIn

Alex Hilton - LinkedIn

Adriaan Bekker - LinkedIn