Top Tips for Secure Hybrid Cloud Networking

If, as many enterprises do, you choose a hybrid cloud strategy for your organisation, there are some key issues of which you should be aware, to ensure your public cloud services are secure, simple and effective.

These are important because a potential downside to temporarily shifting workloads to third party clouds can sometimes mean significantly limited performance (latency) and weaker security due to reliance on any simple, untested internet connection.

The beauty of infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings and their typical pay-as-you-go arrangements, such as those offered through international IT solutions and managed services providers, is extra agility and cost effectiveness but you should not have to decide between the security and performance of on-premise IT and the agility of a third-party cloud.

Popular in the cloud

Logicalis research has found that “Storage, Disaster Recovery and non-core business applications (e.g. email) are the main functions already migrated to the cloud, while core business applications (e.g. ERP) and communications (voice & unified comms) and testing & development, are the least likely to be moved externally in the future.” The research found that 46% of enterprises surveyed use software-as-a-service, 26% use infrastructure-as-a-service, closely followed by platform-as-a-service (25%). Data sovereignty remains a key concern for 70% of respondents.

The Logicalis research revealed that “most people host relatively few applications in the cloud, indeed two-thirds host less than 10% in a public cloud. At the other end of the spectrum, just 12% of respondents currently host more than half of their applications in a public cloud, however, it’s a more positive look at the future with the number planning to host more than half of their applications rising to 30%”.

Gartner defines Iaas as: “… a standardised, highly automated offering, where compute resources, complemented by storage and networking capabilities are owned and hosted by a service provider and offered to customers on-demand. Customers are able to self-provision this infrastructure, using a web-based graphical user interface that serves as an IT operations management console for the overall environment. API access to the infrastructure may also be offered as an option.”

Key hybrid cloud networking elements

IT giant Citrix says the following key elements are worth bearing in mind to ensure your hybrid cloud strategy is appropriately robust.

End to End Security: There is security risk attached to simply relying on the basic VPNs offered by traditional cloud protection because it can open new, vulnerable entry points to your network. Enterprises should go a step further and apply advanced encryption to ‘data in motion’ content to keep it safe as it moves between the enterprise and the cloud. This should also prevent any threats from entering your network and will also assist with your compliance requirements.

Optimised Application Delivery: Having a hybrid cloud set-up relies on increased agility, but if performance is compromised, your enterprise’s ability to meet service level agreements, and to keep your users productive, this can be negated. Enterprises need to consider appropriate techniques such as TCP optimisation, compression and data de-duplication as methods to help maintain acceptable performance across WAN links.

Deep Application Visibility: An Achilles heel of some hybrid cloud deployments is complicating the effective management, maintenance and control of enterprise applications. No matter how complex and dynamic your applications become, it’s important to maintain deep visibility into how they are being used. There are added benefits to application-level visibility and monitoring which can help you isolate problems more quickly and also to capture greater business intelligence to help tweak your strategy.

On-Demand Provisioning: To be most effective, hybrid cloud arrangements need to provide a simple way for your people to tap into the cloud services they need, when they want them. One of the strengths of third-party clouds is providing valuable, on-demand resources for your users to ensure they can deal with time-sensitive or temporary needs. One successful strategy is to use L2 bridging to ensure the cloud network becomes a natural extension of your enterprise’s L2 network, making it simple to shift workloads to the cloud without re-architecting applications.

Increasingly, it is being shown that to achieve success in cloud deployment, whether it be public, private or hybrid, enterprises are well advised to partner with appropriate external, experienced and best qualified IaaS external providers, to guide them on the journey.

Logicalis is such a provider, to find out more about how Logicalis can support you, head to the solutions and services page.

Cloud Computing: Forget the hype, focus on the value

The term ‘cloud computing’ has been over used in the technology industry for so many years that people are tired of it. The online world is overflowing with content on cloud computing – how it works, its different flavours, its growth predictions and its long list of benefits. But often, the more you talk the less people listen.

The hyper-interest in the cloud is moderating. With end-users being force-fed cloud-centric information in every nook and cranny of the online world, this is hardly surprising. The weariness surrounding the relentless hype around cloud computing should not be mistaken for a sign that cloud computing is on the wane.

Far from it, we at Logicalis have seen cloud since it first came into existence and have seen its strong growth over the past few years. Cloud adoption is on the rise around the world, indicating that it brings significant value to organisations.

In this blog, we outline the 5 ways cloud technology brings value to end-users as well as software providers:

1. Reduced infrastructure costs

Cloud technology makes external hosting of applications possible, thus removing the need for software providers and end-users to build expensive infrastructure that will incur significant costs to maintain and upgrade. This is even more valuable as an organisation’s technology budget is often tight. End-users now choose to avoid applications that requires a complex IT infrastructure in favor of simpler applications that cost much less through cloud hosting.

2. Improved customer experience

Several cloud providers have packages that include the right people, processes, facilities, enterprise architectures, tools and service desk. Having it all provided by the one organisation makes the management of the technology simple and efficient. Some providers offer a monitoring dashboard that gives organisations visibility into their client’s experience. This is a great advantage as it enables software providers to proactively address customer issues and concerns, and provide immediate responses to customer enquiries as they arise.

3. Focus on core activities

Cloud technology has enabled the provision of managed services, whereby an external cloud provider manages infrastructure and maintains the system for a set monthly fee. This allows end-users and software providers to relieve themselves of the burden of time-consuming tasks that mostly revolve around “keeping the lights on.”  These tasks include maintaining the infrastructure, administering updates and upgrades, monitoring incident reports and responding to alerts. Essentially, it allows organisations to allocate more time towards core activities that can improve overall business performance.

4. Increased revenues and profit margin

For software providers in particular, partnering with a cloud provider can bring additional value to the organisation, and end-users. A software provider that partners with a cloud provider with extensive managed services capabilities will have the ability to sell a complete solution their end users, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), application management and other services that they otherwise would not have been able to extend to their clients. This lets them access a new revenue stream that can contribute positively to revenue and profit margin.

5. Stringent security measures

One thing that causes a good deal of concern around cloud technology is security. However, enterprise cloud providers in general have to meet stringent process and control audits to help organisations meet their industry-standard compliance laws and regulations. Over and above this, a cloud provider’s security measures extend to IT management and critical features such as disaster recovery and backup.

These are the five core components of value that cloud technology delivers. These benefits are advantageous now, but as the IT industry moves further into The Third Platform and unleashes a new raft of challenges for organisations, these benefits will pay off handsomely. To learn more, check out our blog, The Third Platform and its Impact on CIOs.

Going Cloud? How to deal with the data sovereignty dilemma

Our recent research on Cloud adoption amongst CIOs found that while they see the value in cloud hosting, decision makers are pausing for thought before making the move.

Half of all respondents think that outsourcing to the Cloud frees up time for the IT department to spend on strategic tasks, specifically on innovation plans, development initiatives, forward planning and strategic direction consulting. But the survey highlighted security as the biggest concern in cloud services, with almost 70% of respondents citing data sovereignty as an issue. Recent Price Waterhouse Coopers research supports this finding, highlighting that data security is the biggest barrier to cloud computing. Compliance and data sovereignty issues are very real concerns for decision makers.

What makes data sovereignty such a major concern?
Two recent expert sources highlight the concerns surrounding data sovereignty. Our  interview with Dudley Kneller, Partner at Madgwicks and UNSW’s Board and Executive Officer’s Guide to Data Sovereignty and the Cloud, released in June 2013, uncovered six key concerns:

1. Digital documents become more vulnerable
With documents being digital, moving them and copying them to other locations is easy, quick and non-traceable. Putting valuable data and IP in the hands of others is a concern. The UNSW guide suggests that “if the server location or control is not disclosed by the cloud provider or if it is subject to change without notice, the information is more vulnerable to the risk of being compromised”.

2. Unauthorised access
Your data may be accessible by foreign litigants and governments, if their legal framework allows that they may access any data within their jurisdiction. Most countries tend to favour access requests when it comes to documents under the control of entities within their jurisdiction. Both Kneller and the UNSW guide refer to the U.S. Patriot Act as the best known example of legislation that compels cloud vendors to grant government access to their customer data, if required.

3. Changes to national laws and regulations
Kneller reminded us that Australia will introduce new privacy laws in March 2014. Cloud providers will need to be mindful of domestic laws, and take into account changes in laws of the country hosting their data centres. Essentially, cloud providers need to constantly keep up with both country’s privacy laws and ensure their offering adheres to both, which may well be challenging, and when faced with conflicting regulations, downright impossible.

4. Varying security standards
Data stored in another country could be subject to differing security standards. For example, some countries of the European Union are part of the international agreements addressing these issues but many countries do not have well-developed online laws. A worldwide standard for data security seems highly unlikely.

5. Unfavourable contracts
Kneller points out that some cloud providers offer generic, off-the-shelf Service Level Agreements to most clients. This essentially means their solution is not likely to match all client’s needs. The UNSW guide suggests that cloud providers may have contracts with differing liability clauses. Some public Infrastructure-as-a-service providers may intentionally exclude liability for matters which should typically be their responsibility.

6. Data retrieval processes
Dudley Kneller highlights that the retrieval processes in relation to contract termination is rarely covered in detail within the contract and in some cases, poorly managed. Data needs to be stored so that it can be recovered quickly when needed, and produced instantly when required for legal reasons, such as for governmental audit.

Without strategic and comprehensive data sovereignty policies in place, and business processes that ensure compliance, corporations put themselves at risk.

Mitigating the risks
• The UNSW guide concludes that businesses need to undertake a detailed audit of their providers’ background and cloud service offering, including financial condition, infrastructure, data centre locations, security procedures, record of reliability, secure access maintenance, disaster recovery plans and insurance coverage.

• Negotiate the contract to ensure all your main concerns are addressed. Iron out the details on managing sensitive data, storage location, access by other entities, breach notification obligation, disaster recovery, monitoring and termination.

To get more tips on mitigating the risks of data sovereignty for CIOs, read the full Board and Executive Officer’s guide to Data Sovereignty and the Cloud by University of New South Wales and our blog on the interview with Dudley Kneller.

Logicalis has built its Virtual Private Data Centre (LVPDC) with a strong focus on data sovereignty. In order to meet clients’ data sovereignty requirements, Logicalis stores data in Tier 4 data centres within Australia. This is supplemented with advanced networking and security options and integrated disaster recovery and back-up options to ensure the highest standard of data protection. As well as a methodology for migrating customers and customer data onto our Virtual Private Data Centre we can share with customers our methodology for “off-boarding” customers, should they decide to move their data to another provider or into their own data centre infrastructure.

Learn more about the Logicalis Virtual Private Data Centre or contact one of our consultants.