ICT solutions provider Dimension Data has predicted the arrival of an increasing number of security conflicts as businesses accelerate their migration to Cloud in 2014.
Dimension Data Director Neil Campbell said traditional IT operations would be challenged as the move to Cloud gathered pace, and the focus for management would become more application-centric than infrastructure-centric.
“Much of the complexity inherent in IT infrastructure has become part of the Cloud platform and responsibility for design, performance and configuration management has moved to the Cloud provider,” he said.
“Tools and reports for infrastructure monitoring and capacity management will change when services move to the Cloud and these functions must now work ‘application down’ not ‘infrastructure up’, necessitating a change in processes, tools and skills. Projects and budgets will also be application driven.”
He expects security to continue to be a key focus in 2014.
“If 2013 was the year that cybersecurity began to shift from an abstraction to a mainstream reality, 2014 will be the year that everybody becomes ‘cyberfluent’” he said.
“Security conflicts will become more the norm and this will have a powerful influence on the perceptions of business leaders.”
According to a statement Dimension Data predicts the key areas of change to be seen in data loss prevention, privilege management, Cloud security and selective automated protection.
Converged communications is another service area where Dimension Data expects to see a significant push by organisations to move to the cloud.
Campbell said the reduction in operational costs and IT support requirements, combined with the ability to accelerate the adoption of new unified communications services, would see more demand for Cloud-based delivery models.
“We expect organisations to demand simplification and ‘one self-service portal’ with the ability to represent multiple vendor solutions,” he said.
“Businesses will demand a pure consumption-based cloud model, with the ability to scale up or down with no penalties, though many are likely to take a phased migration approach to Cloud, utilising a hybrid model to maintain some level of control and guarantee the uptime of unified communication services.”
