TECHNOLOGY
“ IT ONCE LOOKED LIKE EVERYTHING WAS MOVING TO THE CLOUD , BUT THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION IS IT DOESN ’ T LOOK LIKE THAT WILL HAPPEN ”
JOSH GOLDFARB SECURITY AND FRAUD ARCHITECT , F5
The challenges of moving into the cloud The rapid move to the cloud has resulted in a number of challenges which must be addressed . As organisations move to a variety of different cloud environments to get closer to their customers and maintain the same pace of innovation , it is essential for security to not be overlooked .
“ Let ’ s say I ’ m a bank or a retailer and you ’ re my customer , and you tell me that you want a certain capability on your smartphone application for the bank or for the retail site ,” Goldfarb comments . “ Well , I ’ m going to do my best to get you that as quickly as possible .
“ That might mean that , unfortunately , security and fraud are an afterthought . Or , if I include them from the get-go , I need a way to do that without being overly intrusive in the process of development and deployment .
“ That is another challenge that our customers have is either trying to get security and fraud baked in without it becoming a six-month or a year delay .
And also if it hasn ’ t been baked in , adding it after the fact to protect those applications and APIs in a way that isn ’ t intrusive , that doesn ’ t interfere with your ability , for example , to consume what you want from that application .”
The future cloud landscape Today , global organisations are continuing to grapple with multi-cloud opportunities and challenges . But as F5 ’ s 9th annual State of Application Strategy Report ( SOAS ) found , hybrid IT is here to stay .
In 2018 , 74 % of survey respondents planned to deploy “ up to half ” their apps in “ a cloud .” But today , the report found , just under half of respondents ( 48 %) say they currently have any apps deployed in the cloud , and on average organisations deploy only 15 % of their app portfolio in the cloud .
“ What we see across our customers is that whereas once it may have looked like everything was moving to the cloud , the reality of the situation is it doesn ’ t look like that will happen ,” Goldfarb concludes . “ Some things will remain on-prem , some things will either migrate to the cloud . And in some cases will repatriate back to the on-prem depending on the costing .
“ I think the picture for the next two to three years is one of complexity . The fact that one of our chief differentiators for our customers is our ability to simplify that complexity is going to be a huge win . I think that they ’ re going to find themselves continually in situations where they will have increased complexity and not reduced complexity . And we can help them with that . And I don ’ t see any other way around that . I don ’ t see the world going any other way .”
72 July 2023