Cloud and Datacentre - Challenges and Solutions in 2021

Here are some thoughts gathered from the Cloud and Datacentre professionals about where this technology lies today, how it is evolving and what are the challenges on its way and how to resolve them.

Distributed computing is the conveyance of registering administrations including workers, stockpiling, data sets, organising, programming, examination and insight over the Internet (i.e., on Cloud via datacentre) to offer quicker advancement, adaptable assets and economies of scale. You normally pay just for Cloud administrations you use, helping bring down your working expenses, run your framework all the more proficiently and scale as your business needs change. Cloud gives simple admittance to the data set of a business the executives. It saves time, energy and potential as far as efficiency. This goes about as a major shift from the conventional way organisations ponder IT assets.

Several types of cloud computing are present in the IT industry, such as PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). In today’s world, Cloud and datacentre technology helps in business development and brings amazing on time.

Lack of Expertise

Cloud computing has helped in a lot of business achievements and enhancements. There have been some issues and in some conditions it has turned up to serious conditions as well. Companies make a lot of careless mistakes that can increase their expenses as well as the wastage of time and production. Sometimes, IT professionals like developers turn on a cloud instance that is supposed to be utilised for some time and forget to turn it off again. And some companies find themselves hampered by the hidden cloud costing packages that provide numerous discounts that they might not be using. Cloud technologies rapidly change, develop at every point of time depending on the adaptation of technology. This often keeps us unable to keep up to the trends and market. This lack of availability of IT skills and expertise does not allow the company to utilise its potential.

Solution for Stress

Most of the companies want an organised way of handling their data When it comes to a third party company. It is very crucial in handing over the data which is sometimes very confidential. The main difference between enterprise and company executives is their desire to control over the new modes of operations while using this technology. The client or the company do suggest a customized cloud suite where they can plan, organise and execute according to the company.

Risk of Hacking

Some of the expert hackers are able to hack the application by going through the firewalls and taking the confidential and sensitive information of a company. A cloud provider might have a larger number of clients. When any threats happen to the main server, automatically all the other clients will get affected.

Data Loss Recovery

Data Loss is a very common thing that is faced by the cloud service providers and datacentre professionals. Proper data backup tools need to be placed for recovering or for the backup of the data loss. Almost all the cloud computing service providers need to have their servers economically at feasible locations where they have a good network facility. Generally, an availability of hot and cold data storage facilities need to be implemented to avoid any emergency.

Anuj Vaid, Executive Director of CMS IT Services says, “Hybrid Models that combine the best of both on-prem DC and off-prem Cloud are right now the most-preferred and pragmatic of all available storage solutions and have received much praise for their lower capital expenditure, agility, flexibility and scalability. Although seemingly flawless, it introduces an element of complexity to the IT infrastructure, to be more specific, to the supply chain. A disseminated supply chain is harder to keep track of and there are bound to be soft spots. As in most cases, attackers can use an opportune moment to breach these weak links and set course for more consequential targets. Sustained testing and validation of security controls via techniques like Breach and Attack Simulations (BAS) can bring to attention these weak spots and allow security teams to get ahead of cyberthreats and ‘patch the holes’ as necessary”.

“Hybrid Models that combine the best of both on-prem DC and off-prem Cloud are right now the most-preferred and pragmatic of all available storage solutions and have received much praise for their lower capital expenditure, agility, flexibility and scalability.”

--Anuj Vaid, Executive Director, CMS IT Services

Rajesh Awasthi, Associate VP, Managed Hosting and Cloud Services, Tata Communications says, “Hybrid work models, collaboration infrastructure and a digital-first consumer has led to compounded digital acceleration, requiring a holistic cloud strategy. As demand for technology led business transformation accelerates, Cloud solution providers are faced with the challenge of enabling a connected Cloud ecosystem for all their stakeholders such as enterprises, vendors, home users, start-ups etc. Within this ecosystem they need to deliver a unified experience while addressing the needs for data strategy, security, compliance and migration. To enable this, it also becomes imperative to source the right talent at the right time. As transformation custodians, Tata Communications recognises the need for a unified cloud experience delivering a seamless, secure and connected digital experience. As Cloud graduates from driving technological innovation to business innovation, it is imperative that enterprises transform their digital ecosystem to optimise operations and deliver seamless customer experiences.”

“Cloud solution providers are faced with the challenge of enabling a connected Cloud ecosystem for all their stakeholders such as enterprises, vendors, home users, start-ups etc. Within this ecosystem they need to deliver a unified experience while addressing the needs for data strategy, security, compliance and migration.”

--Rajesh Awasthi, Associate VP, Managed Hosting and Cloud Services, Tata Communications

Ashwin Kumar, Director, Linode India says, “The chief issue that Cloud solutions providers must address is one of trust. Developers want their Cloud solution providers to act responsibly, as they are the source of innovation and entrepreneurship in a global market. This includes how they treat their customers (not mining customer data or stealing their business models) and delivering consistent performance and reliability. By contrast, the chief issue facing datacentre professionals is finding Cloud solutions that hit the sweet spot between delivering the services their application developers need with a pricing model that is both affordable and consistently flexible.”

“Developers want their Cloud solution providers to act responsibly, as they are the source of innovation and entrepreneurship in a global market. This includes how they treat their customers (not mining customer data or stealing their business models) and delivering consistent performance and reliability.”

--Ashwin Kumar, Director, Linode India

Harshdeep Khatri, CTO, eZee Technosys says, “Cloud solution providers often face challenges, some of the concerning ones are data privacy and security assurance through regional regulations compliance. In the era of data, privacy and security is utmost important. For international leaders such as eZee, it becomes crucial and inevitable to follow countrywise local regulations and guidelines. For instance, GDPR restricts cross border data transfer. Furthermore, to ensure services and products remain available all the time to their customers, cloud solution providers need to invest in constant efforts. To tackle and overcome these challenges, cloud solution providers heavily rely on their cloud hosting providers viz, AWS, GCP or Azure. To handle data privacy and security related issues, one can rely on encryption at rest and transit mechanisms.”

“Cloud solution providers should make an effort to keep themselves aware of the local compliances and how they impact their offerings, to bridge the gap between. Additionally, for uptime, one can utilise scaling and fault tolerant architectures.”

Harshdeep Khatri, CTO, eZee Technosys

Ajay Kumar KG, Chief Evangelist, ManageEngine says, “With multi-Cloud and hybrid environments becoming a reality for businesses, our solutions seamlessly integrate not only with each other but with a host of other cloud applications to enhance IT interoperability. Another important challenge is ensuring secure access to infrastructure assets and data."

He continued, "Our datacentres are globally distributed and each primary datacentre has a backup and disaster recovery (DR) site with full capacity; so in case of an outage, our services are rendered from the DR site, thereby ensuring minimum downtime. For times like that, ManageEngine has and maintains a channel through which customers are continuously informed about any remediation measures and status updates.”

“Each of our primary datacentre has a backup and disaster recovery (DR) site with full capacity; so in case of an outage, our services are rendered from the DR site, thereby ensuring minimum downtime.”

--Ajay Kumar KG, Chief Evangelist, ManageEngine

Rushikesh Jadhav, CTO ESDS Software Solution says, “The reason behind adopting Cloud and datacentre technology is that it serves as the foundation for various Digital Transformation strategies. Hence, getting a Cloud Service Provider for fulfilling customer needs and expectations at every stage of the customer lifecycle can be a significant challenge for some emerging businesses. ESDS has been providing end-to-end a wide range of Managed Services to its customers across various industries. Through our security stack ranging from SOC (Security Operations Center) to Web Application Firewall (eNlight WAF) & Website Vulnerability Scanning tool (VTMScan), we ensure user-critical data and services remain protected against all threats & vulnerabilities.”

“The reason behind adopting Cloud technology is that it serves as the foundation for various Digital Transformation strategies. Hence, getting a Cloud Service Provider for fulfilling customer needs and expectations at every stage of the customer lifecycle can be a significant challenge.”

--Rushikesh Jadhav, CTO ESDS Software Solution

Jaydeep Ruparelia, Co-founder, Infopercept Consulting says, “The need is to ally with Managed Security Services with their capabilities. We focus on the tactics of attackers along with techniques and have partnered with Cloud companies like AWS to help clients manage Security in the Cloud. What we need is a focus on tactics rather than techniques, which can always be manipulated. This focus on tactics will help in understanding the adversary’s mind set deeper and can pay back in the same coin. The attackers’ sense is what is core to Invensense”.

“What we need is a focus on tactics rather than techniques, which can always be manipulated. This focus on tactics will help in understanding the adversary’s mindset deeper and can pay back in the same coin.”

--Jaydeep Ruparelia, Co-founder, Infopercept Consulting

Digital Transformation and Beyond

Subodh Parulekar, CEO & CO-Founder, AFour Technologies says, “With the onset of the pandemic, it stands to reason that business strategies are to be revamped and driven through technology to become more agile, competitive and efficient. Digital transformation is more than just implementing digital services and applications. It requires the business to first assess the actual problems and what opportunities they can provide. Further to that, digital solutions can be identified to address those challenges. The company’s mission is to enable its customers to build and maintain resilient, scalable and secure software systems with high predictability and reliability using agile methodologies”.

“Digital transformation is more than just implementing digital services and applications. It requires the business to first assess the actual problems and what opportunities they can provide. Further to that, digital solutions can be identified to address those challenges.”

--Subodh Parulekar, CEO & CO-Founder, AFour Technologies

Ram Sellaratnam, CEO & Managing Director, iBus Networks says, “The Cloud has evolved into a new dimension as it provides hyper scalability, high security and agility. Cloud hosting/Datacentre needs two critical resources – uninterrupted electrical power with ESG compliance and availability of network. The source of power is available primarily from the public sectors/DISCOMS and with thrust on the demand of green power, the availability of renewable energy is constraint at the point of consumption. To resolve this issue, the solution lies in innovation in green power solution and regulatory schemes.

The datacentre where the Cloud infrastructure is hosted, needs 24 x 7 highly available & fail-safe connectivity to their user application assets at the point of demand. It is important both connectivity & power needs are addressed.”

“The source of power is available primarily from the public sectors/DISCOMS and with thrust on the demand of green power, the availability of renewable energy is constraint at the point of consumption. To resolve this issue, the solution lies in innovation in green power solution and regulatory schemes.”

--Ram Sellaratnam, CEO & Managing Director, iBus Networks

By Vishal SS

Read more IT news here

Read products news here