3 cloud trends to watch in the move toward Everything-as-a-Service

Software-as-a-Service and the cloud revolution started a trend that has spread to nearly every corner of the IT world: from Desktop-as-a-Service to Infrastructure-as-a-Service to Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service to Platform-as-a-Service to much, much more. Let's look at three things to watch as the revolution unfolds.

1. The cloud backlash

A lot of functions have been moved to the cloud and other as-a-service offerings in recent years. It's natural that many companies are going to find the shortcomings and the unintended consequences of those moves. Issues of control, compliance, data sovereignty, and cybersecurity are leading some organizations to rethink or at least refine the way they work with these services. Look for case studies of companies that are on stage two, three, or more of their cloud journey to find best practices for next generation deployments.

2. The hybrid cloud

Many of the companies that are now adapting their cloud strategy are moving to more of a hybrid cloud model, where they rent services, servers, apps, computing power, or storage in the cloud but keep certain strategic functions--or parts of them--in their own data centers. This is especially the case with data, which is of course, the most valuable commodity in most organizations. No matter how you use the cloud, take another look at your data strategy and compare it to the latest IT wisdom and best practices.

3. The cybersecurity impact

Many companies were initially hesitant to move to the cloud because of the security implications. But since those early days, a lot of organizations have come to realize that cloud providers have a lot more expertise and resources dedicated to security than they do. However, in recent years many companies have found that the weakest link in security can often be the connections between partners, and that includes cloud partners. Make sure you're regularly auditing those connections and ensuring that your partners are keeping up with the latest best practices in cybersecurity.

Special report

To learn more, read our special report "The Future of Everything as a Service." You can read all of the articles on ZDNet or you can download them in one PDF on TechRepublic, available for free to registered users.

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Previously on Monday Morning Opener:

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