Cloud `sans Frontiers’ is coming but is it needed?

 According to a presentation made at the recent Cloud World Forum in London, there is every chance that businesses that relish the idea of working with borderless cloud services environments will now get their wish fulfilled.

And because it is becoming possible, because most of the technical problems are now `solvable’, it raises the issue of whether it is really practical for the majority of businesses to contemplate it. And if they do, what is then involved for them.  

Martin Bishop, Telstra Global Head of Hosting Services, told the Cloud World Forum that ICT is now widely regarded as one of the key fuels that will drive the success of rapidly expanding businesses in the Asia Pacific and other emerging regions. The trend of increased investment is driving the reality of a new breed of borderless cloud services in those regions. 

“CIOs are always looking to simplify their approach to ICT and a globally consistent approach to cloud, network and communications services is key to this,” said Bishop. “There is a dichotomy though. Whilst borderless cloud will simplify your business, they are anything but simple to establish and there are many challenges in implementing them. The complexity only increases as international borders are crossed.” 

Research conducted last year by the Asia Cloud Computing Association highlighted some of the difficulties businesses still have operating in a virtual borderless environment. For example, bandwidth costs are much higher in Jakarta compared with Tokyo, which suggests that though infrastructure investment is going to the emerging markets, there is still some way to go before a reasonable level of parity in capability is achieved.

Bishop also highlighted other problems which are more directly front-of-mind for most businesses users, and for whom the notion of borderless operations may not yet seem a good idea regardless of technology developments and investment. For example, he suggested that information security remains the number one challenge in the global environment.

This is likely to an extremely good argument, for many businesses, why going borderless is not for them. And given the recent rash of news stories about international data security issues, it is easy to predict there will be no immediate rush to go borderless, except perhaps for those enterprises able to operate private cloud infrastructures on a global scale.  

He also identified data ownership/custodian responsibilities, regulatory compliance, legal and contractual issues, information assurance, longevity of suppliers and business continuity as only getting more difficult when you go borderless. 

Legal issues such as data sovereignty will be a major stumbling block for some time to come, not least because different countries have different legal systems. So determining what is `law’ and where it has jurisdiction in a borderless business – particularly where most of the laws being used are arguably unfit for purpose when it comes to data and digitised operations – is only likely to serve one purpose, keeping lawyers fully employed well into the future.

Bishop discussed a recent review his company had conducted across many of the leading global providers of cloud services. The audit showed that supplier management is often complex, with different technological approaches in different locations affecting interoperability and service fulfillment. 

“The future of borderless cloud will be delivered by providers that know the culture and markets they are dealing in and that have built logical interoperable networks from the ground up that utilize simple, consistent ICT infrastructure,” Bishop said.

He ended his presentation with the acknowledgment that the network must not be overlooked and that latency is also a key consideration given the even greater distances involved in international cloud operations.  He also pointed out that Telstra Global has just announced a new worldwide Cloud Infrastructure platform to meet growing customer demands for globally consistent, connected cloud hosting solutions.

That will certainly be a help for those businesses looking for a borderless environment, but it is likely to be a while before the demand is high.