Putting All Data in the Cloud Is Possible, Say Panelists

During the Waters USA conference in Manhattan, panelists who talked about the growing confidence in adopting cloud services noted issues such as security, multiple providers, and even the risk involved in moving data into the cloud are still big concerns.

To help solve this, State Street senior vice president and chief scientist David Saul said data governance is a key to maintaining strict standards.

"Everything that we do on the cloud starts not with the business process, but what is the data as a value to us," he said. "You have to think which data are the crown jewels because we are going to maintain control of that data."

These "crown jewels" stay on the private cloud, Saul said, and other data can then be placed on public clouds run by third-party vendors.

"Don't even start if you don't have a good understanding of the data you have and want to store," Saul said.

Adam Mattina, vice president of information risk and security for Blackstone Group, said it's possible firms will also run the risk of having the data not integrate well back in the home system, so make sure recombining the information into internal programs is easy. Mattina and the other panelists agreed it's important to have strict evaluation processes when choosing external cloud providers.

When choosing a public cloud, firm need to make sure that providers operate security functions equal to or even better than what is present internally. These vendors should have data controls that they know how to use well. Saul even suggested that companies think of cloud systems as an end-to-end architecture type solution.

Mattina predicted a world where datacenters will be considered secondary as storage for information. "We're going to get to a place where the answer is to consider everything to go to the cloud, where people will go through a thought exercise to see what goes to the cloud and finding out that yes, it can be supported there," Mattina said.