Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2015. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Marge Breya, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Informatica
The Year of Cloud Data Responsibility
As
we move into 2015, it's clear that the "cloud" has become the tech
buzzword of the decade. The problem with throwing around this word so
much is that the term becomes a piece of jargon that doesn't help
explain anything and can be misused. Back in 2011, the U.S. government
asked the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) to come
up with a definition of cloud computing. In the final draft, they ended
up concluding that there is no concrete definition and that "cloud computing is an evolving paradigm." Four
years later, our continued obsession with the cloud and confusion over
its definition has made it easy for us to overlook a crucial questions
companies must ask when moving data to a cloud-based service: how are we responsibly managing data in the cloud? The
following predictions will highlight how we'll work towards answering
this question in 2015 - a year sure to be defined by the theme of cloud
data management and responsibility.
- Big Data will mean big responsibility - The
exponential growth in big data and the explosion of data sources -
social, mobile, cloud, IoT, wearables - has a corollary social impact.
Next year, there will be a battle over who's responsible for all that
data. In fact, according to IDC,
while consumers create 75% of all the data in the world, enterprises
are responsible for 85% of it. Trust and ethical policy creation in how
this data is managed will be vital for attracting customers who
increasingly care about data responsibility. Transparency over how data
is used, stored and traded will be the rallying cry.
- Fragmenting into the cloud
- In 2015, many businesses will be traversing the last mile of cloud
adoption, moving traditional on-premise databases and architectures,
such as ERP and data centers, into the cloud. This will amplify data
fragmentation, as data travels to the cloud and resides in different
locations. Ultimately, this fragmentation will result in huge challenges
when it comes to data control, access and exploitation. Successful
businesses will be those able to remain agile when trying to combine,
access and exploit that data, regardless of location. The businesses
that already struggle to understand where their data is, will fail to
control, secure and exploit their data assets.
- Cloud analytics will be here to stay
-- Organizations will only be able to gain a competitive advantage by
having data at their fingertips to make informed and educated decisions. No
longer are people looking at their applications as their unique
advantage, but instead data provides the massive differentiator for both
the B2B and B2C worlds. Great decisions will be made by people who can
harness the power of big data in the cloud with advanced analytics.
- Perimeter defense will be meaningless
- Fortress building is becoming meaningless in the world of data
security in the cloud. Some of the largest scale breaches we've seen
have happened from the inside. The lowest tech, easiest approach is to
bribe or blackmail your way to that cloud data, which means that every
employee is a potential risk. In the face of increased breaches and a
tough environment for consumer trust, next year organizations will need
to look beyond the fortress walls and find a way to secure data at its
source, and in motion. In order to do so, they need to have a much
better understanding of how and where their data moves than they
currently do.
- Data on the shareholder statement
- Described as gold or oil, this year businesses got their heads around
cloud data as an asset rather than an expense. Next year, businesses
will begin to quantify that, and we'll see it spelled out on shareholder
statements. Many businesses are looking to data stored in the cloud and
on-premises as a new revenue source, whether through new services or
selling on that raw asset. However, there is a flipside and due to its
value, data is also a risk worthy of the shareholder statement. As
businesses acquire more data, they will need to outline the inherent
risks in storing, cleaning and securing that data in the cloud.
Particularly if disruptions to that asset have a consequential impact on
revenue.
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About the Author
Marge
Breya is the Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of
Worldwide Marketing and Informatica Education. She brings over 25 years
of technology management experience to Informatica. Most recently, as
HP's senior vice president of Marketing Services, Breya was responsible
for optimizing marketing investment across the world's largest IT
company. Prior to HP, Breya served as executive vice president and
general manager at SAP. Breya has also held positions as executive vice
president, general manager and chief marketing officer at Business
Objects, chief marketing officer and chief strategy officer at BEA
Systems and senior vice president of Marketing at Sun Microsystems.
Breya served on the board of both the BEA and Business Objects
Foundations, helping to form their mission and overseeing the
distribution of funds. Additionally, she sat on the public board of
Document Sciences Corporation, which was acquired by EMC in 2008. Breya
received a Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineering from the
University of Illinois and a Master's in Business Administration from
the University of Oregon.