Cloud Computing – “Whats the Buzz? - Ask, Find, Discuss about ...

Justin Steinman, vice president of Novell Inc.and a member of the Alliance said “Security isthe number one inhibitor to cloud adoption”.For example, if a payroll services providerconducts services in a third party cloud andthere is a breach of sensitive consumer datathen certain questions need to be answeredsuch as “Who is liable? Who owns the data?Who sues whom?” Justin Steinman seesthese questions would be resolved with thehelp of tough SLAs with cloud providers thathave drastic penalties if things go wrong.Cloud users can also expect to seetechnologies that enable cloud providers tomeet different customer securityrequirements and a push for regulatorychanges that take into account cloud services.Performance monitoring will becomeomnipresentbetween clouds depends on how quicklyvendors and customers reach agreements onstandards. In December 2009, the EnterpriseCloud Buyers Council was created to work onsecurity, reliability and interoperability.Microsoft, Cisco and IBM are part of thisgroup. Emil Sayegh, general manager of cloudfor Rackspace US Inc. said “For cloudcomputing to really take off, it has to beopen. Cloud providers will have to allowmovement between clouds andinteroperability, as well as enabling disasterrecovery between clouds.” DistributedManagement Task Force (DMTF) thatannounced its “Open Cloud StandardsIncubator” is working on one its majorproblem i.e. the lack of standards that enableinteroperability between private cloudswithin the enterprise and hosted or publiccloud providers.Decentralization of IT decision‐makingCloud services are mainly public consumerdeliveryservices and whenever any of the bigcloud providers has a data centre glitch it isimmediately noticed. There is constantscrutiny from large number of third partieswith comparative score cards and glitchreports. As a result cloud providers are underincreasing pressure for tell‐all reports ontheir outages. It is expected that performancereporting will be as common as rush hourtraffic reports.Open standards for cloud computingadvanceWill customers be able to move easilyOne of the first significant actions byPresident Barack Obama’s federal CIO, VivekKundra, was to create a federal applicationstore that allows U.S. government employeesto order services and tools withoutnecessarily having to go through an ITapproval process for each and every action.The federal effort is one of the more visiblesignals of a broader trend. After a drivetowards centralization of IT resources anddata centre consolidation, business units mayget a little independence to add and removeIT services via cloud providers.13