Borderless clouds on horizon as businesses look East

ENGLAND, UK: Emerging markets are no longer just about natural resources, cheaper labour and low-cost manufacturing according to Martin Bishop, Telstra Global Head of Hosting Services, who says the trend of increased investment is driving the reality of a new breed of borderless cloud services.

Speaking at the Cloud World Forum in London in front of a packed auditorium of industry delegates, Bishop said ICT is widely regarded as one of the key fuels that will drive the success of rapidly expanding businesses in the Asia Pacific and other emerging regions.

"CIOs are always looking to simplify their approach to ICT and a globally consistent approach to cloud, network and communications services is key to this," said Bishop. "There is a dichotomy though. Whilst borderless cloud will simplify your business, they are anything but simple to establish and there are many challenges in implementing them. The complexity only increases as international borders are crossed."

During the keynote, Bishop revealed research from the Asia Cloud Computing Association in 2012 illustrating that developed countries in the Asia Pacific score highest on the cloud readiness index. The data shows that Japan has once again topped the rankings in the index, whilst countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia have dropped further behind.

"Bandwidth costs are much higher in Jakarta compared with Tokyo. Along with many different factors, this highlights the difficulties companies have operating in emerging compared with established markets," added Bishop.

Telstra Global's head of cloud and hosting services said information security remains the number one challenge in the global environment. He also identified data ownership/custodian responsibilities, regulatory compliance, legal and contractual issues, information assurance, longevity of suppliers and business continuity as only getting more difficult when you go borderless.

Bishop discussed a recent review his company had conducted across many of the leading global providers of cloud services. The audit showed that supplier management is often complex, with different technological approaches in different locations affecting interoperability and service fulfillment.

"The future of borderless cloud will be delivered by providers that know the culture and markets they are dealing in and that have built logical interoperable networks from the ground up that utilize simple, consistent ICT infrastructure," Bishop said. He ended his presentation with the acknowledgment that the network must not be overlooked and that latency is also a key consideration given the even greater distances involved in international cloud operations.