Posts from ‘Cloud Computing’
Adoption of MFT Cloud Services is Growing
It’s no secret that more and more companies are turning to the cloud to benefit from all that it has to offer. Subscribing to a cloud service can offer conveniences over deploying software on-premises, including faster deployment, budgeting flexibility, built-in elasticity, near-perfect uptime and it can be significantly less taxing on IT resources.
Managed File Transfer (MFT) is certainly not being left behind in this cloud revolution. According to Gartner, adoption of MFT Cloud Services is growing rapidly and now accounts for approximately 10% of the overall MFT market. While both on-premises and cloud markets will continue to grow about 20% annually, cloud services will become a bigger piece of the MFT pie.
Here’s a nifty graph from the Ponemon Institute’s recently published “The Security of Cloud Infrastructure” report summarizing key cloud drivers from the perspective of both IT/Security and Compliance respondents. Interesting to see that many people believe that cloud services will provide improved security and compliance efforts over doing it themselves on-premises with their resource.
So, how do you feel about cloud security? Are you comfortable with your organization’s data being moved into the cloud?? What cloud security measures would make you feel better???
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been putting the final touches on our next generation of services that will be delivered via the cloud. As with any product or service release, there comes a fair amount of planning including ensuring that one has the best site into competitors, forecast and of course customers. We’ve worked closely with industry analysts, our end-users and prospects and our own internal resources to best understand how and where we should position our cloud services. In presentation after presentation and in conversation after conversation, we were presented market slides showing the enormous growth and opportunity within the overall software as a service (SaaS) markets. The natural reaction is to get excited about all the money we can make in this space; before we did, I issued a strong warning to our team:
“In very much the same way that software is analogous to infrastructure, software as a service is not analogous to infrastructure as a service. That includes integration as a service. The profile of the consumer of SaaS will more than likely expect that things like integration, interoperability, transformation and governance will be part of the service subscription.”
In a nutshell what I was saying was… do not look at forecasts for SaaS and assume that the opportunities for IaaS follow the same trends. If users create content by using services that are delivered via the cloud, they have a reasonable expectation that this content can be shared with other services delivered via the cloud (not necessarily by the same vendor). For example, creating content via salesforce.com and sharing that content with gooddata.com should be as simple as granting the necessary permissions. After all, my Facebook, Twitter and Google+ information is shared by clicking a few buttons. Make no mistake, integration and interoperability are nontrivial, but part of the expectation of using cloud services is that the consumer is shielded from these complexities. As more and more cloud service platforms and providers build in integration and governance technologies the need for a separate IaaS provider will likely diminish.
Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that there is a place for technologies such as managed file transfer and business-to-business integration and collaboration; I definitely believe that Ipswitch will play a significant role in the evolution of those markets. Expect the role of Ipswitch to be evolve as well; not only will we provide the best mechanisms for moving content of any size but we will also govern (or let you govern) that movement and the entire experience around it. This is the centerpiece of Ipswitch’s Cloud strategy.
In my many travels visiting customers and IT professionals around the world, I ask a simple question, “What do you do when you have to send a file to someone that’s just too big?” They ask me how big is big? I say too big for your email or even worse, something that is too big for the receiver’s email. These attachments are typically large powerpoint files, spreadsheets, uncompressed images, media files or even databases. With a sheepish grin people usually tell me they use one of the free email services, like GMail, MS Live or Yahoo. However, recently the answer has shifted. I’m now being inundated with business users and IT professionals professing their love for Cloud services such as DropBox.
In all fairness if you look at my iPad (peeling it from my cold dead hands) you will see my Dropbox app and PAID Dropbox account. So it’s unnerving for me to think about the four hours on Sunday when Dropbox left user accounts unlocked and you could access anyone of the 25 million users’ accounts and data… Including mine. Yep, just type in an email address and use any password you want and it’s all yours.
According to Dropbox there wasn’t any nefarious activity but if YOUR COMPANY’S information was on there – legitimately or illegitimately – you just had a data breach. So I was a breach victim… And if I had any Ipswitch IP on the servers, the breach is extended accordingly. To Dropbox’s credit, their business is all about collaboration and file syncing, not governed file transfer or managed data at rest. In the end, some of these types of Cloud services will eventually get enough of it right to secure their future. Some will last, many won’t.
Regardless, how are you going to handle your data breach this morning? I’m headed over to my bosses office to explain my brazen disregard for corporate data. He’ll probably buy me a new iPad2 that’s locked down (wishful thinking) and order IT to set up a more secure way for me to be mobile with my documents (more wishful thinking).
Yesterday Apple officially announced the availability of its new cloud-based music service. There have been weeks of speculation as industry insiders became aware of payments made to various record companies and labels for the licensing of music to power Apple’s new cloud offering. But there’s a lot more at stake here: the music industry devoid of its past marketing and sales outlets (Apple, Wal-Mart and Best Buy are the dominant sales points) can now count on increased revenue from their users of the iTunes hosted service. What remains to be seen is how this additional revenue filters down to the artist..
Today artists are paid based on units sold and also make money based on the licensing of their works. The licensing of these works are generally managed outside of the record label via ASCAP, BMI and the Harry Fox agency. Apple hosting music in the cloud that has been already “purchased” by iTunes user means that the number of units sold is now in contention. For instance an artist can sell 50,000 copies of her latest album but because of illegal downloads that same artists could be available to 100,000 iCloud users. It can be assumed that Apple will pay the respective record companies for these instances but will the record companies see this instance as units sold? Will they compensate the artists accordingly? And if they do, what stops in the artists from just giving away their product especially if ultimately they get paid from the record companies via Apple?
In the early 2000s advancements in Internet distribution, consumer broadband and storage leveled out the playing field between the brick-and-mortar record labels and the new independence Internet-based independent labels. It’s my contention that what was once a level playing field is no longer as level as some would need it to be. The day before Apple’s announcement I had a reasonable comfort level giving counsel to up-and-coming artists that there were numerous opportunities and routes to market with their product. Today I have a comfort level and telling them they need to strongly consider aligning themselves with one of the brick-and-mortar record labels. Is this the end of the end of the independent record label? No it isn’t there are plenty of people on the planet that do not use Apple products. But when more and more credence is put on iTunes charts, downloads and overall market presence, the independent record label suddenly has a steeper hill to climb.
These are questions that remain as we see more and more of this new product offering coming to market. What’s clear is that the biggest message from Apple is that the traditional buying selling models have changed and the role of the broker or intermediary immediately changes the routes to market.
Ipswitch has been cautioning companies about the dangers of private/confidential information being sent through Google (and other hosted and person-to-person services), both from a security and a responsibility perspective.
Last week’s GMail hack further drives home the point that organizations must proactively manage and have visibility into what information is being shared with service providers and how information is being sent between people.
Don’t let your guard down and simply treat the cloud as just another internal resource…. They need to be properly managed and governed just like any other third-party.
Ipswitch’s Frank Kenney recently concluded a 4-part webcast series on integration. It’s not too late to watch a replay of it. In parts 3 and 4, Frank talks through the issue of relying on cloud providers and provides tips for managing and governing cloud and person-to-person interactions.
