Cloud computing has remained one of the most important trends to ever have surfaced in corporate IT, as it quickly overhauled the ways in which organizations provision, use, maintain and optimize their technological assets. Although cloud markets were first very heavy on software, the industry has evolved rapidly to offer infrastructure, platform and other options necessary to have a fully functional and optimally enabled IT department.
Still, security has been a touchy subject for cloud providers and users since the technology first began to gain traction in the market, and this has been especially true for organizations working in regulation-heavy industries. The obvious example is healthcare, which accelerated its deployment of new technologies, including those based in cloud computing, but faced an increasingly complex cybersecurity situation and has been widely on the losing end of the battle to protect patient information.
At the same time, vendors and managed service providers have made an exceptional amount of progress when it comes to cloud security improvements, especially given the fact that security is one of the only obstacles standing in the way of more prolific adoption. As long as healthcare organizations are using secure cloud services, taking the next step in the evolution of the market's capabilities and transformation will be a bit safer and more efficient.
What comes next?
Gartner recently argued that the personal cloud is one of the more prominent trends in the cloud computing market today, and that this is not only relevant to individual users outside of the workplace. Rather, similarly to enterprise mobility's BYOD trend, personal cloud services are likely to grow in adoption among staff members in the coming years, perhaps translating more simply to "bring your own cloud" programs that allow users to leverage the tools they prefer for their various tasks.
"The personal cloud is the collection of content, services and tools that users assemble to fulfill their personal digital lifestyle needs across any device," Gartner Research Vice President Stephen Kleynhans explained. "Each user's personal cloud is unique and evolving, as the user's daily needs change and as vendors and products come and go. Looking forward, we see continued upheaval and challenges from the blending of personal and corporate digital tools and information within each user's life."
Now, this does not mean that businesses will begin to move away from corporate provisioning cycles for cloud assets, but that they will likely need to boost the elasticity of their management and security strategies to embrace this novel trend. According to Gartner, roughly half of managed service providers and "IT support organizations" will begin to handle personal clouds and other items that do not fall within the normal boundaries of their portfolios within the next few years.
Furthermore, the analysts noted that some of the more prominent trends in IT today, most notably the Internet of Things, will require companies to handle more robust personal clouds, and preparation will be key to get this right.
Security implications
If a company is struggling to protect its information today, chances are these issues will only intensify as the IT landscape becomes more complex, which is a certain future to be sure. Think about how quickly enterprise mobility, for example, grew from a novel trend that many believed would pass just as quickly as it came in, but then spread to the vast majority of organizations in only a few years' time.
The same goes for the IoT and cloud computing, and business leaders must ensure that they are using secure cloud services to shore up defenses in the modern era of cybersecurity management.
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