Back in the day when I was taking my first steps on the IT leadership ladder, the guiding principles of infrastructure were reassuringly set in stone. Compared to the chaotic landscape of software development that was wrestling with ever emerging methodologies, languages and toolsets, IT Infrastructure offered a haven of relative tranquility. I often envied my colleagues in those teams for the clarity of purpose and requirements they worked to. Stability and Security were paramount and whilst I know there were many decisions to be made on how best to deliver this, the foundations were clear. Business critical applications and services resided on your own infrastructure so that data can be protected, and performance closely monitored to achieve those all-important SLA (Service Level Agreements).
Then came the launch of AWS and the promise of infinite scalability and elasticity. Life would never be quite the same again. Suddenly there were a multitude of decisions to be made and acronyms to familiarize with. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS filled every slide deck produced by CTOs eager to demonstrate their knowledge of the “Cloud” in fear of being viewed as a relic of the past.
That was nearly twenty years ago and whilst most enterprises will be leveraging external computing resources there are still very understandable concerns about the security of applications that are hosted beyond the corporate firewalls.
Cyber Security is a concept that we are now all too aware of. Ransomware and other malicious attacks have risen by over 200% in the last 18 months during the pandemic lockdowns (source: theconversation.com). In reality this rise has been partly fueled by organizations rushing to mobilize their operations to work remotely without having a clear plan, processes, and technical controls to safely support this transition.
We recognize that not everyone’s risk posture is the same. The requirements within industry sectors can vary wildly as can the regulatory environment across geographic boundaries. Whilst one can argue the point about the security of the cloud and the levels of investment the key providers have made in cyber security, one that we share, it would be arrogant to ignore the concerns of those with a different perspective.
At IdeasCast we understand these concerns and therefore our strategy includes for our flagship platform OpusView to be hosted for both cloud and on-premise requirements.
So, if you want to have complete control of your applications, tucked away securely behind your own firewalls then that is fine. Alternatively, if you are comfortable with and enjoy the flexibility that the cloud offers then we have a very secure platform just waiting for you.
Either way we are here to help you, so get in touch and start your journey with OpusView.
Martin Shaw, CTO.
