Cloud IT Community Week in Review: Intermedia, IDC and Cloud Security

By Rory Lidstone
Contributing Writer

This week marked the launch of the Cloud IT Community and it managed to be quite a week with a lot of news on cloud security and an answer to the question what is cloud IT?

To kick things off this week, there was a lot to be said about cloud security. First, a white paper from Intermedia (News - Alert) outlined some of the reasons why companies should choose private cloud deployment. Benefits include the commonly cited security, as well as customization, integration flexibility, control and data replication. Indeed, the private cloud has all of these advantages over the public cloud as a company has complete control over every aspect of a private cloud. However, this also means added cost and complexity.

Keeping with the theme of security, web editor Rory J. Thompson reminded users that, although the cloud is generally pretty safe these days, companies shouldn’t get complacent. Even though cloud providers are getting better at combating breaches, it’s still smart to take a few simple steps to ensure your data is secure in the cloud. These steps include not getting lazy with passwords, adding as many layers of encryption as possible, continue using firewalls, and thinking twice about storing sensitive data in the cloud.

In other news, International Data Corp (IDC (News - Alert)) released its “Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker” report, which acts as a regular updated on where the cloud is and where it’s going. The report states that vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products for cloud IT grew by 23 percent year over year to $7.6 billion during the third quarter of 2015. In other words, the cloud is here to stay and those still on the fence as far as making the transition to the cloud had better get moving.

Lastly, Intermedia released a new service called SecuriSync that makes cloud backup and file sharing easier than ever. SecuriSync is essentially an affordable two-in-one solution that provides real-time backup and point-in-time restoration for your computer, while being comprehensive enough for businesses of any size.

That’s all for this week in cloud IT, but be sure to check out the Cloud IT Community for more news in the space.