Future Clouds Will Be Safe, Says Symantec

Grazed from Windows IT Pro. Author: B. K. Winstead.

What’s holding back cloud computing? If you’re a fan of The Simpsons, as I am, your first thought might be that it’s all down to the Stonecutters secret society, which seems to control just about everything. After all, few people doubt that the concept of cloud computing makes sense and can provide business benefits in terms of increased agility, scalability, and cost savings. What reason could explain the slow uptake of the cloud other than a vast conspiracy?

Perhaps I overstate. In reality, businesses and IT pros have legitimate concerns about transitioning to the cloud, and although these concerns have a number of specifics, I’d say they can all be boiled down to one basic underlying reason: lack of trust. Can the cloud provider’s security match on-premises security? Is data in the cloud safe and protected and accessible in the event of litigation and e-discovery requests? Can the company meet its regulatory compliance goals with a cloud service? What’s does the business do if they can’t reach the service, whether from a failure within the service or some other Internet or communications outage?…

Any business contemplating cloud computing has probably considered some if not all of these issues. Recognizing these needs, today at Cloud Expo 2012 West, Symantec announced its vision for the future of the cloud and how the company’s portfolio of existing and new offerings will help to enable "safe, agile and efficient clouds" in the next five years. According to Symantec global cloud strategist Dave Elliott, up till now security and availability in the cloud have been "afterthoughts and inhibitors" but going forward they’ll be expected and built in to the foundations of the various clouds businesses are using…

Read more from the source @ http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/cloud-computing-7/cloud-computing2/future-clouds-safe-symantec-144736