In the spirit of all that’s holly and jolly, I’m sharing my top five cloud industry-related wishes for 2018:
With all the hype around GDPR and the doomsday scenarios being painted that businesses will be paying up to 4% of revenue in fines if they fail to meet GDPR mandates, we are seeing a feeding frenzy by vendors and the media regarding what it will take to become compliant. Sound familiar? It’s Y2K-hype all over again. Pre-2000, the world was predicted to come to a grinding halt and companies would go out of business. We all know what an anticlimax that was, partly because of the remediation that took place prior to Y2K. My wish for this Christmas is that businesses will educate themselves on the implication of GDPR on the business and will start remediation immediately. It is unlikely that many companies will be fined the 4% of revenues, but the regulators will certainly pick one or two large companies – likely a bank – to make an example of how serious non-compliance truly is. GDPR is not just a European or large company issue, it will change the way we transfer data across borders and will change the supply chain process.
I’m amazed by how many companies are still debating cloud v. on premise. With the advances in cloud security, performance and reliability, it should no longer be a debate about whether or not to use the cloud but more about how the cloud can speed up our business growth. It’s my hope that the IT industry will start to look more to the advancements in the cloud and how it can benefit organizations rather than dwelling on the questions that (for the most part) have already been answered by the mainstream cloud vendors.
I wish for a cloud discussion that goes beyond the mainstream vendors such as AWS, Microsoft and Google. Granted, these big-name vendors have captured a huge market share in cloud adoption, and Forrester Research predicts they will own 76% of the market in 2018. However, there are hundreds of cloud and SaaS solutions that bring significant value to businesses outside of the Big Three. While many of these solutions are deployed on the big cloud vendors’ platforms, many are also on proprietary platforms that have equal benefits. My wish in the coming year is that the wider cloud market becomes mainstream to offer a breadth of solutions that have not received the airtime they deserve. By opening those markets we will see game changing solutions particularly in areas such as finance and banking, retail, healthcare and manufacturing.
Not all cloud solutions are created equally. Although standards have improved drastically, my hope for the coming year is that due to the cyber threats occurring on a daily basis we will see a more rigorous approach from the Government, standards bodies and industry to be more proactive in detection and remediation of these threats. It is unlikely that security threats will ever go away – in fact most experts are predicting an increase due to ransomware, malware, etc.). If vendors acknowledge they have risks and invest in remediating those risks, we may see a stronger security posture across organizations. While larger organizations can afford strong security defenses, many of the small and mid-tier organizations will have to rely on cloud vendors. As vendors, we need to talk openly with our customers to put their minds at ease about the cloud security puzzle.
It’s no secret that we’re currently undergoing a severe cybersecurity skills shortage. In fact, it’s on track to grow to 3.5 million open positions by 2021. This shortage of experts impacts every organization that needs (artificial intelligence, big data analytics, security, Bitcoin and whatever new trend is due to cross the horizon) cloud experts. If only there were an unending supply of qualified resources for us to pull from. If only…
While these wishes are particular to me, they are in no way the only wishes worth wishing for (I’m still open to receiving that pony, Santa). What’s on your wish list?
Happy holidays to you all and best wishes for safe and happy New Year!
By Darren Glenister
