“We’re not in Kansas any more.”
Dorothy’s famous quote referred to the fictional land of Oz, a magical place of dreams. Back here in the real world, her observation deftly describes what many data centre executives are slowly coming to realise: things have changed. Traditional data centres are doomed. Their future is in the cloud.
“But can we be secure in the cloud?” That question came from a government professional who works for his country’s defence ministry. It’s a common query,and these days, it’s a decidedly ironic one.
The biggest reason can be summed up like this: the bad guys are talented, and getting better every day. Just look at the evidence: Adobe, LinkedIn, Target, the US State Department, and countless other major institutions have been hacked in recent months.
Many otherwise savvy professionals don’t realise just how bad things are, in part because of how inaccurate the security narrative remains. Most media outlets and ads depict hackers as lone wolves, operating in dark rooms, wearing hoodies.
In reality, nefarious hacking represents a global industry fuelled by a combination of criminal networks and nation states. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Risks Report, cyber crimes will cost the global economy just shy of a half-trillion dollars this year.
When you appreciate the magnitude of the threat – namely, that it consists of an entire global network training its sights on penetrating your firewall – it’s easier to understand why the major cloud vendors have arguably surpassed traditional data centres in terms of security.
This is not to say that extant, on-premises data centres don’t have solid security. Many of them surely do. The real question boils down to trajectory. Where will we be in 3-5 years? What’s the vector of activity in the data centre universe?
Holger Mueller of Constellation Research has some advice here. “The average write-down time frame for hardware is 2-3 years,” he said. In other words, that’s the timeline most CFOs should embrace for moving away from on-premises and toward the cloud. Granted, old habits die hard, so a more likely window will see this migration over 7-10 years.
Expertise matters
Another factor influencing cloud migration is human resources. Managing cloud security is hard. The tools of last year can barely keep pace with the creativity and moxie of the hacking industry today.
That means there are precious few people who can wield the most modern tools effectively. And who can pay them the most? Like data scientists, these people are in serious demand right now. Cloud vendors have the upper hand here.
Security is just one of many factors in the equation. When comparing cloud versus on-premises data centres, organisations need to think about the spectrum of job functions involved: database, networking, virtualisation, cooling, hardware and software.
Thorsten Schneider, product manager for the SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP), summed it up like this: “When people sign up for the SAP HCP, we take care of everything: server, storage, network, virtualisation; everything.” For those of you not familiar with it, it is SAP’s platform-as-a-service offering to help companies integrate, extend and build out new business applications.
In a nutshell, that’s the cloud argument – and it’s a persuasive one for all but the hardest-line on-premises loyalists. This opinion was echoed by Filip Misovski, VP and chief product expert for SAP HCP. “It’s all about business benefits, engagement and experiences that are layered on top of the on-premises infrastructure.”
And that’s the key point: layered on top of the existing infrastructure. As such, the cloud is not so much a new and separate environment; it’s more of an extension. Most notably, it’s an extension that can scale from the bottom to the top of the stack. Misovski noted that even SAP is renovating its own back-end system right now, implementing a new user interface that leverages HTML5. Customers don’t have to worry about their investments in applications as throwaway. A robust platform-as-a-service will allow customers to extend and integrate their existing systems.
Access points
So, where to begin? A classic misconception with cloud computing is the all-or-nothing mentality. Many companies have avoided the cloud for fear of how grandiose the project would need to be. Instead, baby steps are advised. Companies should take their time, and move incrementally.
A standard rule of thumb for companies looking to begin their journey, is to start with new functionality. Looking to add some feature? Integrate with a new partner? Taking a cloud-first approach for these business drivers can help companies move, slowly but surely, away from traditional data centres.
These days, the list of possible access points is long, and growing. Philip On, vice president of product marketing at SAP, noted the significant evolution of SAP’s new flagship product: “SAP HANA as we know it is no longer just a database; it’s a data management platform. You have the capabilities to integrate your data and clean your data; and all that processing is done in real time and in the cloud with SAP HCP.”
The real-time nature of data cleansing is no small feat. For decades, organisations have fought a losing, uphill battle against the creeping entropy of bad data quality. Almost invariably, data quality initiatives have, at best, generated short-term business benefit. Bad data comes back to haunt the cleansed systems. Simply put, data quality has been a sticky wicket.
By enabling real-time data quality on-demand, SAP has throttled one of the longest-standing perpetrators in the data management world. The technological underpinning boils down to SAP HCP’s in-memory architecture. HCP circumvents the traditional bottlenecks of computing by outright eschewing spinning disk. Sure, there are costs associated with this strategy, but the overall benefit can be quite significant.
SAP veteran Volker Hildbrand, a senior vice president for SAP Hybris, SAP’s suite of Customer Engagement and e-commerce applications, outlined the four pillars of his company’s cloud applications : 1) it simplifies the customer experience; 2) helps reduce cost; 3) is critical from a customer experience perspective; and 4) supports mobile needs of modern applications. “With SAP HCP integration services,” he said, “we’re able to bridge the gap between the front office and the back office.”
And that’s where the magic really happens. When the cloud becomes a conduit between enterprise end points, filling in gaps wherever needed, suddenly the concept of hybrid cloud transforms into a fabric of data and functionality. The daunting side of the equation fades in comparison to satisfied users.
Alison Biggan, SVP, who heads product marketing for the Digital Enterprise Platform, compared the professional journey to the personal one that most business people have experienced over the last few years. “The beauty of these trends is that they really are seamless. They’re not intended to disrupt what you’re already doing on-premises.”
Communicating that message to the throngs of enterprise users who remain reluctant of the cloud will take some time.
Catch these interviews from SAP Insider HANA 2016 on the Facebook SAP HANA page.
Eric Kavanagh is chief executive of The Bloor Group
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