Data sovereignty: a cloud myth debunked

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 14 February 2012 06:20

Ovum has published a report that it says "debunks the common misconception that data sovereignty issues are a major barrier to the use of public cloud services."

The Ovum report "[shares] the positive public cloud adoption experiences and lessons learned by 10 corporate and government enterprises."

According to Ovum, it found that "Concerns over data security and regulatory compliance were taken seriously, but were not viewed as 'showstoppers' as long as careful thought is given to the categories of data that will be stored in the cloud and to identifying specific risk factors and contractual and process mitigations...[and] not all public cloud services are equal in terms of their ability to meet enterprise reliability and security requirements, so the biggest risk mitigation is the choice of a high quality enterprise-grade cloud services provider."

Dr Steve Hodgkinson, research director for Ovum's Asia Pacific IT research and advisory services, said: "New trade-offs, however, between the benefits and risks of public cloud services are required, along with a willingness to 'think outside your boxes'.

"Traditional ICT approaches are focused on owning and controlling resources, assets, and contracts for specified services. The public cloud enables the focus to shift to accessing evolving services and participating in dynamic Internet ecosystems. The benefit for CIOs is less time spent managing technology and software and more time spent managing information and data to drive business innovations."