Feeling safe up in the cloud

As Infosec hits London this week, it brings together the top people in the tech industry to discuss and debate the hottest topics in the security space. Of these topics one that is going to be on everyone’s lips is the cloud and whether it is secure or not. While the agility and cost savings gets IT decision makers excited, the loss of control of data is something which we know concerns IT managers.

However, there is no doubt that cloud computing can be a secure solution. Some CIOs and IT directors are still nervous about putting the whole of their IT operation into the cloud; but there are still cloud options that can work for them.

Those in charge of IT can choose the right ‘flavour’ of cloud which they feel best fits their needs and organisation. Hybrid cloud often offers the right solution through private and public clouds. This enables businesses to host their core applications and data on dedicated hardware and then burst into the public cloud to cope with increased demand more cost effectively. This tailored approach also answers security worries that companies might have – sensitive applications can be kept in-house in a private cloud, but still benefit from the unlimited flexibility and scalability of public cloud.

We have seen several thousand companies head into the Rackspace Cloud since we launched the UK’s first major cloud infrastructure at the beginning of the year. Startups and SMBs were the first to embrace the cloud for its efficiencies, but we are now seeing more large enterprises adopting cloud solutions. This is in part to the cloud’s versatility and revenue saving ability and also down to the growing consensus in the business world that it does indeed offer a secure solution to modern computing needs.