I shot the above video as part of several videos I made at this week’s SAP UK and Ireland User Group Annual Conference in Manchester. It was a great event, attracting record attendance with representatives from businesses large and small.
In this 3 min 36 sec snippet, Alan Bowling chairman of SAP UK&I UG discusses some of the risks of public clouds and how he views private clouds as an extension of outsourced models of computing. For those who think that SaaS/cloud is the Next Big Thing, Alan’s remarks should be sobering.
In recent times I’ve heard some vendors saying things that I’ve found deeply worrying. Scant attention to real security risks for starters. I know that others are concerned that it only needs one well known vendor to suffer a catastrophic failure for that to potentially put the industry back years. I’ve also heard partners from some firms saying they won’t use certain services because they don’t have assurances the server environment complies with Data Protection Act requirements.As of next year, the DPA will likely have some ferocious penalty teeth.
As I tour around and meet vendors of all shapes and sizes certain patterns are emerging. It is clear that at the very small business end, there are greater potential risks in part due to there being no real industry wide operational standards. You can argue the same would be true further up the scale. I draw comfort from understanding the rigorous security models and practices the large vendors have in place.
As time goes on, this could easily become a differentiator. Equally important then is for practitioners to have an understanding of the various security aspects that might impact clients using SaaS/cloud solutions.
Some will shrug and think this is overkill or the heavy hand of IT. But if you lost your business critical data, would you feel the same way?
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