Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 73 | Page 36

FEATURE : CLOUD SOLUTIONS
Sherelle Farrington , Cloud Security Solutions
Manager , Fortinet data storage scalability while allowing them to acquire and integrate published APIs in their solutions . In terms of stability , scalability and Business Continuity , the cloud has established itself as worthy opponent to large propriety datacenters that come with considerable operational challenges ,” he said .
Mohan said CIOs must prioritise visibility and application performance while migrating to the cloud . “ The first step in successful cloud migration is having complete visibility into the performance of the company ’ s present configuration . IT teams also require cloud and application-agnostic troubleshooting skills to ensure that service quality and user experience are unaffected before and after workload migration . The multiple edges throughout the IT environment – from the client to the network to the data centre / cloud service edge – can produce visibility gaps .
“ Maintaining visibility with analytics and security throughout the cloud migration helps to ensure the delivery of high-quality services .
As a result , cloud monitoring can assist IT in determining how effectively an application operates in the cloud and whether the provider meets set service level agreements . Finally , service edge visibility enables IT , teams , to guarantee that performance is sufficient and that end users are satisfied ,” he said .

THE BIGGEST BARRIERS HOLDING BACK CLOUD ADOPTION ARE EXPERTISE , COMPLIANCE , DATA SECURITY AND RISK .

While there is no doubt that cloud offers organisations the agility to launch new services and innovation fast , CIOs should avoid certain pitfalls when developing their company ’ s cloud strategy .
Kilzie said CIOs should refrain from approaching the cloud on an ad-hoc basis ; incorporating various cloud components tactically and without a clearly defined strategy . He said this may result in a surge in the effort to maintain a cohesive IT architecture , data fragmentation , integration challenges and more .
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