| | November 20168CIOReviewReaping the Cloud RevolutionBy Tom Bressie, VP, Cloud IaaS Product Marketing, OracleThe Advent of Cloud The transformation of enterprise workloads to cloud is one of the most significant IT shifts in recent history. It is changing almost everything about how businesses across industries and geographies use IT to meet their needs.In making this transition to cloud, the overwhelming majority of businesses don't have the luxury of starting over with a cloud-first approach. They need to retain focus on serving their customers, and have invested heavily in their existing infrastructures; making the move to cloud potentially quite disruptive. These businesses are seeking a clear path to run existing operations while gradually moving workloads to the cloud. Circumstances are somewhat different from the vendor perspective­Cloud service providers are shifting as quickly as possible to build solutions that will meet the needs of businesses looking to make the move to the cloud. The new world of IT mixes cloud applications and existing, on-premises applications that interoperate across a hybrid network topology architected according to the needs of the business.The cloud service providers who will win in this new world of IT will be the ones who can offer flexibility and choice, and can deliver solutions that blend the new cloud model with businesses' current environments according to their continually evolving needs.The migration of workloads from traditional on-premises environments to the cloud will happen gradually over time. Businesses have substantial investments in their current application portfolios that will take time to rationalize to a cloud world. Many aren't eager to scrap their existing way of operating their workloads, but are keen to realize the economic benefits that cloud has to offer. Therein lies the tension that cloud service providers need to help businesses navigate their way through. Meanwhile, cloud continues to evolve from both a business value and capabilities standpoint. Cloud service catalogs are offering more powerful and use case-specific capabilities and all as infrastructure pricing continues to drop. We also continue to observe many customers looking to take advantage of new opportunities made possible through cloud in areas including the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence to name a few. Cloud is not only helping transform existing workloads, but also enabling use cases that were previously not possible with existing technologies. Staying Ahead of the Challenges Historically, the most common concerns in making the shift to cloud have been security and the governance necessary to verify the integrity of operational security. However, security in the cloud is now quickly becoming a driving factor for cloud adoption rather than a blocker. Attackers are better funded and resourced than ever before, enabling them to outpace the security measures in place in many corporate data center environments. Our internal research indicates that at present, the volume and duration of security breaches in corporate data centers is at an IN MY OPINION
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