It is no longer about whether to adopt cloud computing, but how. Effective execution is key, and most enterprises are thinking of a hybrid route, where part of their workloads are in the public cloud or a private cloud, and the remainder are on-premise.
 |
| Source: CenturyLink. Tan. |
"An increasingly
common approach is a 'cloud first' strategy to new deployments and
projects. Some organisations are not fully prepared to go with a
complete cloud solution across their environment. Instead,
they seek to combine legacy systems not yet ready for updating,
together with cloud-based services such as analytics, collaboration and
communication. Hybrid IT provides IT services for organisations while enabling risk mitigation, appealing to security conscious executives," he elaborated.
What next-as-a-service?
Storage still required
Appropriate security measures are coming to the fore as well. "Throughout 2017 we will see an increased emphasis on network visibility," said Naveen Bhat, MD, Ixia, Asia Pacific. According to Ixia report the State of Virtualization for Visibility Architectures, 67% of respondents deploy business-critical applications on the public cloud. "Organisations' operations are dependent on an environment with a huge visibility gap, and they are now realising that this has to change to keep their data secure," Bhat said.
Hillstone Networks also champions network visibility. "Visibility is critical in understanding security gaps within cloud, and enterprises will use tools that ease issues across heterogeneous cloud deployments. Enterprises are also in different stages of exploring container technology, and more will be implementing security in development and deployment processes," predicted Tim Liu, CTO, Hillstone Networks.
"In 2016, we have seen a build-up of hybrid cloud deployments by enterprises and this trend will continue in 2017. Many enterprises are familiar with public cloud benefits but also understand the existing lack of comparable security in the cloud with on-premise implementations. In 2017, we will see greater adoption of tools for enterprises managing security across hybrid clouds. Enterprises saw more cloud-related incidents and leveraged security tools to address them," Liu said.
In 2017, Riverbed Technology has two main priorities to help customers win at the digital transformation game, Engelhardt shared. Visibility in hybrid environments is one of the two. "The importance of having visibility across your IT architecture cannot be emphasised more, especially when it is crucial in understanding how things are being influenced as organisations change the digital landscape. With the influx of clouds, apps and devices, wouldn’t companies want to know what’s choking up their bandwidth?" he asked.
“One of our customers, Interplex Holdings, learnt this the hard way when they moved to modernise their IT systems and introduced robotics into its manufacturing processes, creating systems that were slower than the manual ones. After implementing a performance management solution, they were able to reduce bandwidth by 50% and deliver return on investment (ROI) within two weeks.”
Fortiguard Lab researchers point out that the weakest link in cloud security is not in its architecture but in its endpoints, reaching into the IoT. "We expect to see attacks designed to exploit endpoint devices, resulting in client side attacks that can effectively target and breach cloud providers. Organisations will increasingly adopt fabric-based security and segmentation strategies that enable them to create, orchestrate, and enforce seamless security policies between their physical, virtual, and private cloud environments from IoT to the cloud," said the researchers from Fortinet's cyber security intelligence arm.
New skillsets required
The second imperative for Riverbed Technology in 2017 has to do with nurturing a new breed of employees to handle the new hybrid normal. "It is no longer enough to just hire a networking guy to do the same old thing. We expect to see a new breed of network engineers to help departments evaluate and solve their business needs. Ideally, the business should see them as strategic partners, and not just 'the IT guy'," said Engelhardt.
SolarWinds sees a changing role for employees too. “As traditional, siloed IT roles—network administrators, storage administrators, systems administrators, database administrators, and more—continue to take on new responsibilities, such as working with cloud service providers in hybrid environments, implementing new technologies, like containers and microservices, and acting as an IT liaison to business leaders, 2017 signals the return of the age of education and certification,” said Adato of SolarWinds.
SolarWind’s IT is Everywhere surveys have found that IT is expanding beyond the traditional borders of company-owned devices and on-premises technology, thereby placing greater demand on IT professionals to manage technology outside their traditional scope of control. “Sixty-two percent of IT professionals in Singapore say the expectation to support end users’ personally-owned devices connected to corporate networks is significantly greater than it was 10 years ago, while 80% of end users say they expect their employers’ IT professionals to ensure the performance of these devices,” Adato said.
“The ability to quickly learn new IT concepts and skills will be more important than being an expert in any one technology. While siloed experts who managed disparate parts of the infrastructure and application stack played a fundamental role in the traditional IT department, the modern data centre is more interconnected than ever. As a result, IT generalists – who know a little bit about everything, have a holistic understanding of the application stack, and can make quick, informed decisions about new technology – will be particularly successful in 2017 and beyond.”
Data protection and privacy
Enterprises will also have to keep up to date on new data legislation that affects the way data can be shared in the cloud. "New global regulations such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) began rolling out in 2016 with the intention of strengthening and unifying data protection. In 2017, organisations around the world will learn to comply with these new protection and privacy regulations, all while adapting to the changing global markets and the increasing adoption of cloud computing along with moving larger amounts of data in the cloud.
"In light of this, information governance tools will increasingly become a differentiator and competitive advantage for organisations, pushing them to address any regulatory gaps within their own businesses and providing their customers with better protection and peace of mind," said Cheng of Veritas.
Interested?
Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about how data centre infrastructure is coping with an expanding Internet of Things
In 2017, Tan said organisations will increasingly demand customised services within a hybrid framework to meet their needs, and will look for a single provider to provide them. Strategic alignment between internal and external IT professionals to support business objectives will be required for success, he added.
“It is clear that the predominant cloud model for the foreseeable future will be hybrid, as most understand the agility benefits of cloud but are not willing to move entirely to public cloud at this point. We expect this to continue throughout 2017,” agrees Russell Skingsley, CTO, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific.
 | ||
| Source: Hitachi Data Systems. Skingsley. |
“It is clear that the predominant cloud model for the foreseeable future will be hybrid, as most understand the agility benefits of cloud but are not willing to move entirely to public cloud at this point. We expect this to continue throughout 2017,” agrees Russell Skingsley, CTO, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific.
 |
| Source: Riverbed Technology. Engelhardt. |
“Companies will continue to grapple with hybrid cloud environments – whether it’s a cloud purchased by their marketing department, a new app created by HR to track annual leave, or the countless devices that employees are demanding support for," said Bjorn Engelhardt, Senior VP, Asia Pacific & Japan at Riverbed Technology.
“Over the next several years, IT departments must exercise their growing responsibility to act as a technology liaison for business management by staying informed and making smart decisions when it comes to cloud, even if the decision is to do nothing in the near future because there is no immediate need for change. The key is to build a hybrid IT roadmap that integrates cloud adoption based on a per-workload and per-application basis to achieve a more agile, available, scalable, and efficient data centre,” added Leon Adato, Head Geek and Technical Evangelist at SolarWinds.
On a related note, bimodal IT will be the dominant strategy for managing technology infrastructure, Hitachi Data Systems says. In bimodal IT, one mode is about traditional IT management, emphasising safety, accuracy and availability, whereas the second mode is non-linear, and focuses on fostering agility and adaptability to changing environments. IT departments must be able to manage both modes and implement systems that can bridge between them.
Hitachi Data Systems' Skingsley said, “From a storage perspective it is important that data from both IT modes can be leveraged, so organisations will look more to systems that can bridge the gap between the two. This means the ability to present cloud protocols, the capability to be instantiated on-premise or in public clouds and to facilitate data mobility between these environments.”
“Over the next several years, IT departments must exercise their growing responsibility to act as a technology liaison for business management by staying informed and making smart decisions when it comes to cloud, even if the decision is to do nothing in the near future because there is no immediate need for change. The key is to build a hybrid IT roadmap that integrates cloud adoption based on a per-workload and per-application basis to achieve a more agile, available, scalable, and efficient data centre,” added Leon Adato, Head Geek and Technical Evangelist at SolarWinds.
“In 2017, IT and business leaders will decide on specific solutions as they implement hybrid IT. For example, they may choose to use Office 365 and Skype for Business while hosting the identity management solution, Active Directory Federated Services, on-premises. Alternatively, the cloud has proven to be the best platform for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), delivering organisations the required flexibility and elasticity to provision and de-provision virtual desktops in bulk. By migrating this workload to the cloud, an organisation is able to relieve its IT professionals of the need to manage that infrastructure directly and refocus efforts on other on-premises projects."
On a related note, bimodal IT will be the dominant strategy for managing technology infrastructure, Hitachi Data Systems says. In bimodal IT, one mode is about traditional IT management, emphasising safety, accuracy and availability, whereas the second mode is non-linear, and focuses on fostering agility and adaptability to changing environments. IT departments must be able to manage both modes and implement systems that can bridge between them.
Hitachi Data Systems' Skingsley said, “From a storage perspective it is important that data from both IT modes can be leveraged, so organisations will look more to systems that can bridge the gap between the two. This means the ability to present cloud protocols, the capability to be instantiated on-premise or in public clouds and to facilitate data mobility between these environments.”
Managing data in the cloud
As adoption of public cloud platforms continues, enterprises will see the need for associated tools, said Victor Cheng, MD, Asia South Region, Veritas.
"Customers increasingly migrated to the public cloud in 2016 and this will only accelerate - both in speed and numbers - in 2017. With more of their information in the cloud, organisations will look to better manage their data to maintain uptime, protection and governance. They will also increasingly be on the lookout for tools that enable them to make sense of their data and extra value from it as a competitive advantage," he said.
Besides platform-as-a-service (PaaS) adoption, software-as-a-service (SaaS) will become more popular, Veritas' Cheng said. "Globally, customers are adopting SaaS more quickly than the public cloud. In 2017, SaaS will grow to become an even bigger part of the enterprise software market as enterprises and organisations of all sizes look to consolidate their cloud and on-premises based business functions and IT strategies. Vendors that can support both scenarios - and that can help customers navigate and streamline this complex shift - will win in 2017," he noted.
Hitachi Data Systems' Skingsley adds, "IT managers across the Asia Pacific region (APAC) will be focused on developing skills in cloud monitoring, cloud workload performance and security management, and cloud capacity management. Instead of buying infrastructure from different vendors and knitting them together with management software, IT will want access to the converged systems required to deliver IaaS."
 |
| Source: Veritas. Cheng. |
"Customers increasingly migrated to the public cloud in 2016 and this will only accelerate - both in speed and numbers - in 2017. With more of their information in the cloud, organisations will look to better manage their data to maintain uptime, protection and governance. They will also increasingly be on the lookout for tools that enable them to make sense of their data and extra value from it as a competitive advantage," he said.
Besides platform-as-a-service (PaaS) adoption, software-as-a-service (SaaS) will become more popular, Veritas' Cheng said. "Globally, customers are adopting SaaS more quickly than the public cloud. In 2017, SaaS will grow to become an even bigger part of the enterprise software market as enterprises and organisations of all sizes look to consolidate their cloud and on-premises based business functions and IT strategies. Vendors that can support both scenarios - and that can help customers navigate and streamline this complex shift - will win in 2017," he noted.
Hitachi Data Systems' Skingsley adds, "IT managers across the Asia Pacific region (APAC) will be focused on developing skills in cloud monitoring, cloud workload performance and security management, and cloud capacity management. Instead of buying infrastructure from different vendors and knitting them together with management software, IT will want access to the converged systems required to deliver IaaS."
What next-as-a-service?
 |
| Source: Solarwinds. Adato. |
Solarwinds predicts that 2017 will see more specialised cloud services such as functions-as-a-service (FaaS) appear. Adato of Solarwinds said, “This new cloud computing category allows customers to develop, run, and manage application functionalities without the headache of architecting and overseeing the backend infrastructure...The ability to run nearly any type of application or function, with zero infrastructure administration on the IT professional’s behalf, is tremendously appealing, and new services will likely focus on these benefits.
“It will allow IT professionals to develop programs to perform specific tasks without the barriers that are currently in place. The rise of a new chapter in cloud computing signals the continuing maturity of the cloud market from its roots as infrastructure as a service, to PaaS, SaaS, FaaS, and beyond.”
CenturyLink, on the other hand, is banking on disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) to grow. "Capital costs of conventional disaster recovery can be enormous, particularly if a company chooses to operate a dedicated remote data centre in addition to its on-premise set up," said CenturyLink's Tan. "DRaaS provides a lower cost structure as the cloud infrastructure is spread between multiple subscribers. The replica servers that reside in the cloud platform are only activated when a disruptive event occurs, which further reduces operating costs."
“It will allow IT professionals to develop programs to perform specific tasks without the barriers that are currently in place. The rise of a new chapter in cloud computing signals the continuing maturity of the cloud market from its roots as infrastructure as a service, to PaaS, SaaS, FaaS, and beyond.”
CenturyLink, on the other hand, is banking on disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) to grow. "Capital costs of conventional disaster recovery can be enormous, particularly if a company chooses to operate a dedicated remote data centre in addition to its on-premise set up," said CenturyLink's Tan. "DRaaS provides a lower cost structure as the cloud infrastructure is spread between multiple subscribers. The replica servers that reside in the cloud platform are only activated when a disruptive event occurs, which further reduces operating costs."
Although DRaaS resides in the cloud, data protection is continous, with failover and failback times that are almost instantaneous, limited only by the time it takes to boot up the protected virtual machines, Tan said.
Storage still required
"Accelerating toward the cloud does not mean that businesses’ storage needs will disappear," Cheng of Veritas added. "Companies will need to be able to manage storage holistically based on real business needs, such as uptime, cost and responsiveness. In 2017, as organisations look for more turnkey-style solutions for managing storage across their hardware, a new generation of software-defined storage will help them align and merge their cloud and on-premises strategies."
Cloud-based analytics
Cloud-based analytics
 |
| Source: Tableau. Kim. |
Jonah Kim, Product Manager, APAC, Tableau, sees analytics moving to the cloud in response to organisations moving their data to the cloud, a consequence of cloud solutions becoming more secure, reliable and easier to use. "Analytics’ move to the cloud has reached a tipping point. In 2017, the concept of data gravity will take hold as more businesses realise the value of deploying their analytics where their data lives. Cloud data warehouses like Amazon Redshift will continue to pull data, and cloud analytics will become more prevalent as a result. While many organisations will continue to deploy a hybrid architecture of cloud and on-premise solutions, cloud analytics will increasingly represent a faster and more scalable solution," he said.
Collaborative analytics is another trend that Tableau has identified. "This signals the end of an era in which information flowed in one direction. Gone are the days of sharing data via static PDFs or PowerPoint decks. In 2017, people will share their workbooks and data sources. They’ll build on each other’s work and iterate to answer their own questions. They’ll leverage the cloud and other sharing functionalities like email alerts and subscriptions to stay in touch. And they’ll embed their dashboards within other enterprise applications to reach people where they are," Kim said.
Architecture evolution
Even though everyone is only getting used to cloud as
we know it, things are not going to stay static. "Applications on
mobile devices will continue to collaborate with centralised cloud-based
services, of course. But nascent technologies like mobile edge
computing (MEC) will open up a world of new possibilities, such as
low-powered devices taking advantage of local compute resources in the
network to preserve battery, or mobile devices being pursued by
self-migrating instances of low-latency network services," says Adam
Judd, VP for Asia Pacific Japan, Brocade.
"In 2017 we will begin to see the foundations of this hyper-distributed
architecture emerge, with massive implications for the future of both
network and application architectures."
Software AG
also identified edge computing as a technology to watch in 2017. "The
transition to edge computing begins in earnest as organisations move
critical analytics from the cloud closer to devices. In remote areas, or
in smart factories with lots of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled
devices, the dependency on the analytics is so critical that even short
disconnects to the Internet can be disastrous. Moving part of the IoT
stack from the cloud onto gateways will be the way forward," said
Anneliese Schulz, VP, Software AG Asia.
Cloud security starts with visibility
New computing models will lead to new vulnerabilities being exploited. Joergen Jakobsen, Regional VP for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Sophos, says companies should be on their guard against exploits focused on virtualised and cloud systems.
“Attacks against physical hardware (e.g. Rowhammer) raise the possibility of dangerous new exploits against virtualised cloud systems. Attackers might abuse the host or other guests running on a shared host, attack privilege models, and conceivably access others' data. And, as Docker and the entire container (or ‘serverless’) ecosystem become more popular, attackers will increasingly seek to discover and exploit vulnerabilities in this relatively new trend in computing. We expect active attempts to operationalise such attacks,” he said.
Collaborative analytics is another trend that Tableau has identified. "This signals the end of an era in which information flowed in one direction. Gone are the days of sharing data via static PDFs or PowerPoint decks. In 2017, people will share their workbooks and data sources. They’ll build on each other’s work and iterate to answer their own questions. They’ll leverage the cloud and other sharing functionalities like email alerts and subscriptions to stay in touch. And they’ll embed their dashboards within other enterprise applications to reach people where they are," Kim said.
Architecture evolution
 |
| Source: Brocade. Judd. |
 |
| Source: Software AG. Schulz. |
Cloud security starts with visibility
New computing models will lead to new vulnerabilities being exploited. Joergen Jakobsen, Regional VP for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Sophos, says companies should be on their guard against exploits focused on virtualised and cloud systems.
 |
| Source: Sophos. Jakobsen. |
 |
| Source: Ixia. Bhat. |
Hillstone Networks also champions network visibility. "Visibility is critical in understanding security gaps within cloud, and enterprises will use tools that ease issues across heterogeneous cloud deployments. Enterprises are also in different stages of exploring container technology, and more will be implementing security in development and deployment processes," predicted Tim Liu, CTO, Hillstone Networks.
 |
| Source: Hillstone Networks. Liu. |
In 2017, Riverbed Technology has two main priorities to help customers win at the digital transformation game, Engelhardt shared. Visibility in hybrid environments is one of the two. "The importance of having visibility across your IT architecture cannot be emphasised more, especially when it is crucial in understanding how things are being influenced as organisations change the digital landscape. With the influx of clouds, apps and devices, wouldn’t companies want to know what’s choking up their bandwidth?" he asked.
“One of our customers, Interplex Holdings, learnt this the hard way when they moved to modernise their IT systems and introduced robotics into its manufacturing processes, creating systems that were slower than the manual ones. After implementing a performance management solution, they were able to reduce bandwidth by 50% and deliver return on investment (ROI) within two weeks.”
Fortiguard Lab researchers point out that the weakest link in cloud security is not in its architecture but in its endpoints, reaching into the IoT. "We expect to see attacks designed to exploit endpoint devices, resulting in client side attacks that can effectively target and breach cloud providers. Organisations will increasingly adopt fabric-based security and segmentation strategies that enable them to create, orchestrate, and enforce seamless security policies between their physical, virtual, and private cloud environments from IoT to the cloud," said the researchers from Fortinet's cyber security intelligence arm.
New skillsets required
The second imperative for Riverbed Technology in 2017 has to do with nurturing a new breed of employees to handle the new hybrid normal. "It is no longer enough to just hire a networking guy to do the same old thing. We expect to see a new breed of network engineers to help departments evaluate and solve their business needs. Ideally, the business should see them as strategic partners, and not just 'the IT guy'," said Engelhardt.
SolarWinds sees a changing role for employees too. “As traditional, siloed IT roles—network administrators, storage administrators, systems administrators, database administrators, and more—continue to take on new responsibilities, such as working with cloud service providers in hybrid environments, implementing new technologies, like containers and microservices, and acting as an IT liaison to business leaders, 2017 signals the return of the age of education and certification,” said Adato of SolarWinds.
SolarWind’s IT is Everywhere surveys have found that IT is expanding beyond the traditional borders of company-owned devices and on-premises technology, thereby placing greater demand on IT professionals to manage technology outside their traditional scope of control. “Sixty-two percent of IT professionals in Singapore say the expectation to support end users’ personally-owned devices connected to corporate networks is significantly greater than it was 10 years ago, while 80% of end users say they expect their employers’ IT professionals to ensure the performance of these devices,” Adato said.
“The ability to quickly learn new IT concepts and skills will be more important than being an expert in any one technology. While siloed experts who managed disparate parts of the infrastructure and application stack played a fundamental role in the traditional IT department, the modern data centre is more interconnected than ever. As a result, IT generalists – who know a little bit about everything, have a holistic understanding of the application stack, and can make quick, informed decisions about new technology – will be particularly successful in 2017 and beyond.”
Data protection and privacy
Enterprises will also have to keep up to date on new data legislation that affects the way data can be shared in the cloud. "New global regulations such as the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) began rolling out in 2016 with the intention of strengthening and unifying data protection. In 2017, organisations around the world will learn to comply with these new protection and privacy regulations, all while adapting to the changing global markets and the increasing adoption of cloud computing along with moving larger amounts of data in the cloud.
"In light of this, information governance tools will increasingly become a differentiator and competitive advantage for organisations, pushing them to address any regulatory gaps within their own businesses and providing their customers with better protection and peace of mind," said Cheng of Veritas.
Interested?
Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about how data centre infrastructure is coping with an expanding Internet of Things
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