Experts believe that most businesses will be restricted in their move towards cloud computing as a result of the various licenses that govern the way in which the applications they use can be implemented.
With some applications licensed only to run on internal systems or private cloud-based platforms, businesses could find themselves drawing up boundaries within the cloud because of third-party policy.
Novell’s Javier Colado explored this subject at the firm’s Brainshare Europe conference last week, suggesting that there was a thin line for IT managers to tread between complying with regulations and actually using the cloud with as much flexibility as the technology can theoretically offer.
Mr Colado said that businesses would need a management system that could balance the workloads of various applications without breaching licenses, compromising security or limiting scalability. These potentially mutually exclusive criteria are said to be achievable, but to many it may seem like an impossible task.
Mr Colado envisions a future of three tiered IT operations, with physical, virtual and cloud-based stacks, all requiring management, robust data security and online backup in order to avoid conflict, loss and non-compliance with industry regulations and application licenses.
The juggling act of keeping customer information and business secrets safe and secure whilst properly implementing the multiple layers of storage is set to become harder for those who do not equip themselves with the right tools, according to Mr Colado.
Many software firms are working on products that will allow businesses to designate the management of different application workloads across their internal and virtual systems, with the option to shift everything to the cloud depending on the requirements at any given moment, which is a true definition of scalability.
Novell’s Roger Whitehead said that management software and services would gradually become more homogenised as business requirements change, with IT departments requiring less of a distinction between the various systems and services they employ. As cloud adoption grows, a new set of challenges continues to emerge, but there are also vast opportunities which are increasingly recognised by industry leaders.
