Weekly CloudNews: IT Management During a Pandemic, Cloud Service Use Rising

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Earlier this week, we looked at continuous delivery for software-driven innovation and five challenges that multi-cloud management can help overcome. We also launched our #ITHeroism campaign to highlight IT/cloud acts that go above and beyond during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With that, onto this week’s news:

How to manage IT during a pandemic

Neal Berggren, Techerati, March 31, 2020

“Many midsize and enterprise companies are now tossing their business continuity plans out the window. Most companies can handle the one or two-day closures from a major storm or other natural disaster without too much pain, but with a weeks or months-long remote work and lockdown situation, the response is entirely different

Customer service, for instance, can be handled through automation, such as a support website, or their interactive voice response (IVR) software.  But after a few days, the company must determine how to take phone calls or at least have live conversations with customers through electronic means.  A few days at home isn’t a huge concern for most workers when it comes to using personal equipment. Now, companies need to address the security and reliability of those home office setups for “the new normal” of remote work. Companies with consumer-facing websites experiencing increased demand right now have other problems to solve – namely keeping those external processes working smoothly for customers stuck at home.”

Cybersecurity Cloud Transition Likely to Accelerate

Michael Vizard, Security Boulevard, March 31, 2020

“A survey of 130 security practitioners who attended the recent Cloud and Security Expo in London suggests the rate at which security tools have been migrating to the cloud thus far has been deliberate. Over half of respondents (52%) began migrating to cloud-based security tools during or before 2018, while nearly one-fifth (18%) waited until 2019. Another 3% started in 2020, while 13% have not started. The rest of the respondents said they don’t know if they will migrate.

Among those that have migrated, well over half (58%) said they have migrated at least one-quarter of their security tools to the cloud, while one-third (33%) said more than 50% of their security tools are now cloud-based.

At the time of the survey in March, 22% of respondents said migration to the cloud was not a priority for their organization. Nearly a third (32%) said they did not know what concerns their organization has about moving security tools to the cloud.”

Coronavirus Disruption Leads to Jump in Cloud Services Use

Debra Kaufman, EtCentric, March 31, 2020

“Amid the disruption of the coronavirus, cloud-computing services have become crucial in keeping people online and connected. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others also provide the foundational technology for e-commerce, workplace collaboration tools like Slack Technologies, streaming video services such as Netflix and streaming game services. In fact, cloud services are pushed to their limits in some areas. In Australia, Microsoft advised some customers that Azure cloud is running out of capacity in some regions.

The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to a Microsoft spokesman, the company is ‘actively monitoring performance and usage trends.’

WSJ points out that, as the migration to the cloud has been building over the last decade, ‘the trends have made cloud-computing one of the most contested battlefields among business IT providers.’ The impact of the coronavirus is likely to ‘accelerate the move to the cloud,’ said HashiCorp chief executive Dave McJannet. ‘If you look at Amazon or Azure and how much infrastructure usage increased over the past two weeks, it would probably blow your mind how much capacity they’ve had to spin up to keep the world operating.’”

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