Most strategic discussions in boardrooms around the world will include cloud based offerings because the services offered have become fundamental to a modern, resilient enterprise.

Trent Odgers, cloud hosting manager at Veeam

Last year many organisations may well have been taking a wait-and-see approach, but the pandemic has forced everyones hand and sped up digital transformation in all its guises.

Cloud computing is believed to have been invented by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider in the 1960s with the idea of being able to connect people and data from anywhere at any time. Fast-forward 60 years and the various lockdowns around the world have made this idea an absolute and immediate necessity.

There have been winners and sadly there were losers during the pandemic. Some businesses thrived and others paid the ultimate price. The key criteria for many businesses success was their ability to pivot and adapt to new ways of working.

In many ways, we have entered the age of the pivot: large, complex organisations have to make rapid, if not radical, changes fast in order to survive and adapt to changing needs. While this has always been important to prevent being disrupted, today it is an existential consideration.

The cloud enables a business to pivot faster with less stress. You no longer need to be the guru, or hire the most expensive IT staff.

Rather, choose a reputable partner and give them your requirements. This is particularly true for many industries from financial services, automotive, healthcare and manufacturing, to small and medium sized industries, where there is a high cost of managing their own data and security via costly data centres, so offloading this and adopting cloud services becomes more effective for their business.

Without a doubt, this is one of the main reasons there is such a positive attitude in South Africa toward cloud-based services. Some of the biggest attractions of these services is their ease of use and consumption-based model.

While many South African enterprises have a cloud-first strategy, the most accurate description of the local market is that it is a hybrid-cloud environment. At its most basic, this means that there is a strategic mix of services spread across on-premises, private cloud, managed cloud via local cloud providers and public cloud providers.

All of these services that are being consumed are generating data and that data needs to be backed up, recoverable, secure and compliant. If the service is disrupted, it needs to be restored rapidly, because downtime or breaches carry a large financial and reputational risk for an organisation.

Many words have been written about shifting workforces off-site to comply with government restrictions. Beyond the cybersecurity threats, remote working has meant there is more data at the edge than in January, simply because many people had to take their devices home, or use their personal devices for work.

It is obvious, then, to see why it is non-negotiable for organisations to find partners that are able to manage this data in an integrated and compliant manner.

South Africa is going to feel the full weight of compliance in 2021 when the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act comes into force. No longer a concept, compliance now has teeth. The complexities of managing so much personal information are huge, meaning compliance can no longer be an add-on, it has to be front and centre of digital transformation strategies.

SA is on par with the best

Cloud services that are offered by, both public and private organisations in South Africa, are world class. Its not uniquely a South African trait, but we tend to be our own biggest critics. We see first-hand that South African offerings in our partner network are delivering managed services across Africa, Europe and the US with great success.

Companies such as AWS and Microsoft, have already made significant investments in Africa that improve the standard across all elements of cloud-based services, as they require a very high standard which has a positive impact on the entire industry and country. We will continue to see this trend gain more momentum into 2021 as the growth of these services are growing exponentially.

As connectivity and electricity stability improves, the potential for the cloud to change the country and continent is limited only by imagination. With a high-end smartphone, relevant sensors and a fast, stable internet connection, telemedicine could change the face of our continents health systems forever.

Education could also be drastically transformed. Harnessing the power of the cloud could bring world-class education to entire communities no matter where they are and change their current and future prospects.

Of course, this country and continent has unique challenges, but as improving connectivity unlocks the full power of the cloud, we could be unlocking new opportunities and entire new industries.

What is abundantly clear, though, is that Africas time in the cloud is well and truly here. In South Africa, this is being embraced which bodes well for our global competitiveness and prospects.

The industry on these shores is maturing, and with proper Cloud Data Management, organisations can ensure their data is secure and compliant with little to no down time. The world will continue changing at breakneck speed thanks to the vision of Licklider all those years ago organisations need to change with it.

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ST. LOUIS, Feb. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --RoseHosting, the best-in-class managed VPS hosting solutions provider, announced its latest addition to its hosting services, RoseHosting Cloud - a next-generation web-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), that provides developers and businesses of all industries a fast and simple way to improve their online presence and reliability while reducing costs.

RoseHosting Cloud aims to fill the gap present for many developers and businesses - an easy-to-use system for creating, managing and expanding their server infrastructure. This system makes advanced features such as high-availability, clustering, load-balancing, and scalingall available by a simple click of a button, while making running costs more affordable and predictable.

"We are thrilled to provide businesses and developers with this new platform. Its extensive feature set can help anyone more easily create advanced server setups, all while paying only for what they actually use," said RoseHosting CEO Bob Rose.

"We are thrilled to provide businesses and developers with this new platform. Its extensive feature set can help anyone easily create advanced server setups, all while paying only for what they actually use." - RoseHosting CEO Bob Rose

RoseHosting's new Cloud PaaS provides its users with a straightforward ideology - the intuitive web-based dashboard makes it easy to set up a full server topology, expand on it by adding redundancy and scaling, and import your existing projects, all with just a few clicks.

The Cloud PaaS also includes all of RoseHosting's classic comfort features, such as their legendary Fully-Managed Support and regular backups. The monthly cost of this service is based on the resources used over the billing period. RoseHosting Cloud lets you pay for what you use instead of paying for the resource limits.

This platform provides individuals, startups, and established businesses with the tools and features they need to build robust, advanced systems without requiring the extensive knowledge or prior experience that is otherwise required.

About RoseHosting

Founded in 2001, RoseHosting was the first on the market to provide commercially available Linux VPS Hosting. RoseHosting offers a variety of hosting plans that can fit any use case, big or small. They have built a reputation around their award-winning fully-managed support team. RoseHosting continues to innovate in the hosting industry, providing its users with enterprise-grade hardware and reliability, paired with a fully managed support system that provides for a consistently high-quality hosting experience.

Media Contact Jeff Wilson2977 Hwy K, STE 252O'Fallon, MO 63368[emailprotected] 888-767-3467 Ext: 0

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Digital transformation has been one of those important buzzwords in recent years with which we have all become familiar.

However, this year, it really came into its own. Several factors contributed to digital transformations recent domination. Trends such as an increased dependence on cloud computing, IoT, the explosion of data across the organization and the wider need for firms to develop digital platforms are all driving transformation, the use of the cloud, and hyperscalers forward.

Couple this with an accelerated need for these technologies, brought on by the side effects of COVID on business and a requirement for better technology this has equated to many organizations transitioning toward the cloud and its plethora of applications and possibilities at pace.

What is a hyperscaler?

At an enterprise level, enabling the cloud is critical. The majority of organizations applications need to be hosted in some sort of cloud and so for many, it means working with a hyperscaler.

Typically, at its most basic level, hyperscalers provide cloud, networking, and internet services at scale by offering organizations access to infrastructure via an IaaS model. Examples of todays hyperscalers include Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba, and Amazon. These large companies are mainly dominating cloud services and are continuing to grow.

Many of todays largest enterprises are already customers of all of the hyperscalers, allowing them to pick and choose services that best fit their business and, at the same time, avoid vendor lock-in.

The benefits of using hyperscaler services are multifold. Firstly, its important to recognize the power behind hyperscale data centers. To accommodate fluctuating and high demand, their infrastructure is built on thousands of physical servers and millions of virtual machines. The result is data center resources that are easily accessible, cost-effective, reliable, and scalable.

What does hyperscale mean for my business?

For businesses, hyperscalers architecture often overshadows that of the traditional data center, offering them next-level performance without the complexity of managing a corporate data center. Furthermore, using a hyperscaler offers a level of reassurance in terms of the future. Hyperscalers constantly have an eye on whats next. Microsoft, for example, recently revealed that it invested nearly $20bn to build the infrastructure necessary to support its Azure cloud. These organizations are constantly innovating and developing their infrastructure for the future and businesses that use these services stand to grow and develop in tandem.

Taking advantage of hyperscale

For the next few years, enterprises will want to operate across multiple clouds and multiple data centers. The transformation challenge lies in reconciling a complex ecosystem of physical and virtual platforms that includes the existing enterprise data centers and a multi-cloud strategy.

This must address opening up legacy infrastructure to work with the cloud by answering how it can be transformed and operated to perform as a cloud-like platform. Its often too difficult to refactor legacy applications for the cloud, so why not instead transform the underlying infrastructure to deliver many of the same benefits promised by the cloud?

On this journey towards adopting hyperscaler computing, it will be important for organizations to work with proven consultants and systems integrators that have the knowledge and expertise to enable the benefits of hyperscale computing while controlling the risks and uncertainties.

Within this, the key to achieving these goals is to adopt an end-to-end approach that allows the organization to maximize its cloud value.

Source: Capgemini.com

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As the pandemic spread across the globe, most companies mandated their employees to work from home. Suddenly, organizations needed network infrastructures that could support remote workers logging in to access critical company systems. C-suite executives directed their IT departments to quickly pivot resources to support the altered workforce.

Along the way, companies and employees discovered that working virtually has its benefits and may very well become the new standard of working life. Although some organizations are beginning to have employees return to the office (in a social distance-friendly manner), others such as Google, Twitter and Zillow recently announced that their employees may work remotely indefinitely.*

The shift to remote work also fundamentally alters the need for real estate assets while broadening the talent pool for qualified candidates who are no longer limited by their geographic locations.

Work from Anywhere

In an effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees began working from home.Recent survey reports show that 95%of employees will continue or start to work remotely.

By 2022, more than 50% of those who responded indicated that their physical locations were affected by lockdown orders to some degree.

In 20212022, corporate executives( including Senior management) expect a 333% increase in business and expect more than 75% of their workforce to operate remotely.

Conversely, the survey showed a 65% decrease in businesses that plan to keep most/all employees on-premise,which represents a massive shift in business operations.

Heavy Lifting by Networks

The quick shift from the office to working from home spurred an unexpected business transformation as many organizations discovered that there are long-term benefits to the arrangement, including:

As organizations adopted a diverse employee pool,strategic and valued employees and candidates are no longer bound by geographical locations. Work-life balance has become a table-stakes requirement.To support large-scale remote operations, organizations accelerated the adoption of managed services and the move to the cloud in their effort to build a resilient infrastructure.

As per the survey, even though 43% of the respondents companies had to reduce headcount, they reported a 46% increase in productivity by implementing remote work, improved processes, resilient infrastructure, automation and applications.

Management of ever evolving security threat landscape : Effects of pandemic on network security

The rapid shift in business operations significantly impacted the cyber threat landscape. As companies fast-tracked the migration of digital assets to the cloud, they also inadvertently increased the attack surfaces from which hackers can try to gain access to their data and applications.

C-suite executives are moving quickly with network plans to support exploding customer and supplier demand for contactless interactions and the unplanned need to connect a remote workforce. Yet they are also aware that they are not fully prepared to adequately protect their organizations from unknown threats. The situation is further compounded by the cloud shared responsibility model, which says that cloud service providers are responsible for the security of the cloud while customers are responsible for securing the data they put into the cloud.

Cybersecurity is a key business driver that senior managers know must be incorporated into strategic planning at the highest levels. As the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks continue their relentless pace, organizations seek ways to automate detection and mitigation. Unresolved security incidents can be disastrous to companies already dealing with issues related to the pandemic.

Protecting the cloud

Hosting applications and data in the public cloud is a proven way for enterprises to be nimbler with network operations, improve the customer experience and reduce costs. As more data moves to the cloud with the adoption of contactless payments and remote work initiatives, about 32% of the respondents reported that they rely on public cloud hosting providers to secure their digital assets.

The issue with that approach is that every public cloud provider utilizes different hardware and software security policies, methods and mechanisms, creating a challenge for enterprises to maintain standard policies and configurations across all infrastructures. Plus, public cloud providers generally only meet basic security standards for their platforms because they want to standardize how they monitor and mitigate threats across their entire customer base. Lastly, the aforementioned cloud shared responsibility model further complicates things.

Depending on the type of cloud deployment software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) customer security responsibilities will be determined. The failure of customers to fully understand and adhere to the shared responsibility model is responsible for the majority of public cloud data breaches.That leaves gaps in security, which hackers are more than happy to stay at home behind their keyboards to exploit.

Understanding the Security Risks of Cloud Environments: What cloud security gaps do organizations need to address now?

C-suite executives should not expect the pace of decision-making to slow as the pandemic continues. Network migrations to the cloud, which likely would have taken place over five years, will be compressed into much shorter time spans. In the race to move digital assets to the cloud, most organizations did not have time to ensure basic network security compliance. More than 30% of the respondents said that they rely on their third-party providers to certify security management services.

Although the cloud enables organizations to respond rapidly to pandemic-related issues and market opportunities, the decentralized nature of this model adds complexity to how applications and computing resources are secured.

Organizations cannot simply move their critical business infrastructure and applications to the public cloud and assume that the hosting partner will take care of security. Cloud providers typically deliver the same standardized security across their customer base,essentially a checkbox level offering that meets basic requirements but does not meet the specialized needs of a specific enterprise. This depends on the nature of the application and the enterprises readiness to move to the cloud as is or needing to be transformed into a cloud-native architecture. Organizations may assume that cloud providers are securing their digital assets without realizing how many gaps exist in the broadened attack surface.

To understand where the gaps exist in public cloud network security, organizations need visibility across all the different platforms from one holistic solution that enables management of the security posture by utilizing one common language. The goal is to be able to:

As network architectures get more complex,there is added pressure to secure the new points of attack vulnerability. Cloud environments introduce significantly larger attack surface that requires protection from cyberattacks.

There is also a lack of visibility about which entity the organization or the cloud service provider irresponsible for specific elements of network security.

In the State of Web Application Security Research report, 65% of the respondents said that they are not clear about security boundaries, and 53% of the respondents experienced data exposure as a result of misunderstandings with the public cloud provider regarding security responsibilities.

Increased agility and the pace of assets staged or destaged make it challenging for organizations to realize and protect their rapidly changing security perimeter.C-suite executives should be mindful of potential security gaps as they continue to move digital assets to the cloud.

Indicators of Cloud Security Gaps

Senior executives are seeking ways to reduce risk exposures by proactively aligning network security strategies with business objectives. There are a number of questions they can consider to determine if their cloud environments have security gaps that need to be addressed.

Looking Forward

C-suite executives see the future as a globally dispersed,remote workforce catering to a customer base that primarily interacts with brands digitally, consuming goods and services from the comfort of home.

While the pandemic may have forced companies toward an acceleration into the cloud, C-suite executives embraced the opportunity to future-proof their organizations by building resiliency, honing budget management and adopting new processes and technologies. They quickly rethought their business, products and services and the infrastructure required to support their customers and employees in a contactless economy.

Throughout the next two years, organizations will continue to shift to the cloud and increase their investments in IT infrastructure and applications, in addition to machine learning, AI and automation. This will create more agility and efficiency in business operations and provide a better digital experience for consumers. These changes will require a powerful, complex security posture that is both agile enough to evolve at the speed of business and robust enough to ensure protection against a rapidly expanding threat landscape that specifically targets the cloud

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Protecting Remote Enterprises in the Cloud - CXOToday.com

Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) said they'll be working together to connect Azure to HPE's Spaceborne Computer-2. The pair are touting the partnership as bringing compute and AI capabilities to the ultimate edge device -- a supercomputer in space.

HP and NASA partnered to build the Spaceborne Computer, which is a commercial, off-the-shelf supercomputer. The HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 is designed to simulate computation loads during space travel via data-intensive applications. On February 20, HPE's Spaceborne Computer-2 is scheduled to launch into orbit on the 15th Northrop Grumman Resupply Mission to Space Station (NG-15).

By handling processing in space, customers will be able to gain new information and research advancements in areas like weather modeling; plant and hydroponics analysis; and medical imaging for astronauts on the International Space Station, officials said.

The HP-Microsoft Spaceborne announcement is an extension of Microsoft's Azure Space initiative, announced in October 2020. Azure Space is a set of products, plus newly announced partnerships designed to position Azure as a key player in the space- and satellite-related connectivity/compute part of the cloud market.

In other Azure news, Microsoft announced today it will add an East US 3 datacenter region in Georgia (Fulton and Douglas counties). The company didn't provide a date when it would be open, but said it will offer Azure Availability Zones there, which provides support for avoiding/lessening the impacts of datacenter failures. Later this year, Microsoft will launch its already-announced West US3 region in Arizona, officials added.

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Microsoft to support HPE's Spaceborne Computer with Azure connectivity, AI processing at the edge - ZDNet