Storage Pros Worry About Putting Data in the Cloud
Cloud storage platforms need to mature before they are enterprise-ready, particularly for customers in highly regulated industries.
Thu, October 15, 2009
Network World — Cloud storage platforms need to mature before they are enterprise-ready, particularly for customers in highly regulated industries, IT professionals attending Storage Networking World in Phoenix, Ariz. this week said.
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Security, legal issues and portability of data are potential roadblocks cited by customers.
“It still has some maturity issues,” said Basant Agrawal, enterprise architect with APS, an Arizona utility company. “Number 1 is security. Also, the vendors have to be big enough to handle legal issues. It’s not just about technology. It’s about the whole infrastructure, and legal issues and regulations. Then the technology has to be seamlessly integrated.”
Agrawal said APS uses software-as-a-service platforms such as Salesforce.com, and has looked into cloud services for disaster recovery. But because APS is a highly regulated organization “there is always a concern about data getting lost or stolen, and then getting sued,” he said. Vendors need sufficient insurance in case of a security breach, he said.
“Today the lawyers feel comfortable if the node is inside the perimeter,” Agrawal said. “If we get to the point where the node can be anywhere in the cloud and they can be assured the same level of security as if it was inside the perimeter, that would raise their comfort levels.”
Brett Daley, another SNW attendee who works for Early Warning Services in Scottsdale, Ariz., a bank fraud prevention vendor, said his firm wouldn’t adopt cloud storage because it is a custodian of financial data.
“Being a custodian of bank data, we couldn’t do it,” Daley said. “Would you want your checking account stored out [in a cloud service]?”
Daley said he gets the sense that most customers are still trying to understand the pros and cons of cloud storage.
“It’s still very new, most people don’t have their arms around it yet,” he said. “I’m still grasping it myself. It’s very object-oriented. It’s a way of storing things as objects as opposed to bytes and bits, so it’s a different way of thinking. … Financial institutions probably can’t do it because they have so many restrictions with what they can do with their data and how they have to secure it. Other companies may choose to do it, but time may tell.”
David Royer, president and CEO of Royer Systems Integration in Dallas, Texas, said his clients include a number of Fortune 500 companies and none of them have adopted cloud storage yet.
“We’re looking at ways that we can make it applicable to customer environments,” he said. “Part of the challenge is finding the right applications and the right functions that customers are wanting to get out of the cloud.”
