In Australia, the adoption of cloud computing is expected to speed up in 2014. Australian companies will become more application-centric, while an infrastructure-centric approach will gradually become redundant, according to a report published by Dimension Data (News - Alert), an ICT Solutions and Service provider.

The report notes that security is going to be a key concern for Australian companies in the next 12 months. It predicts that as the move to cloud computing accelerates, there will be a rise in security conflicts.          

“Security conflicts will become more the norm and this will have a powerful influence on the perceptions of business leaders,” according to Neil Campbell, director of Solutions at Dimension Data.

Campbell forecasts formidable challenge to traditional IT operations, as the move to cloud gathers pace and management’s focus becomes application-centric rather than infrastructure-centric,” he said.

“Much of the complexity inherent in IT infrastructure has become part of the cloud platform and responsibility for design, performance and configuration management has moved to the cloud provider,” Campbell added.

The shifting of services to the cloud will lead to a change in tools and reports for infrastructure monitoring and capacity management,  Campbell said, adding that these functions must now work ‘application down’ not ‘infrastructure up’, necessitating change in processes, tools and skills. Additionally, projects and budgets are also expected to be application-driven.

According to Dimension Data, the key areas of change in the Australian security landscape will be seen in relation to data loss preventions, privilege management and the cloud security.

In response to the implementation of the upcoming changes to Privacy Law, organizations are rapidly reviewing and adopting Data Governance and Data Protection strategies. In 2014, the adoption of privilege management will also see a huge rise.

With increased adoption of cloud, organizations will require more advanced data and application level protection. Dimension Data said that this will be in the form of cloud-based DDoS Protection and Web Application Firewalling, especially for “pop up”/micro sites; dynamic application based encryption and selective automated protection.

The dynamic, application-based data encryption ensures that the data placed into an organization’s cloud-based application is secure and only can be accessed by the organisation’s intended users. Also, as part of the selective automated protection, organizations will look to uplift their security capability in-house, or look to managed security service providers, to provide selective automated protection.

Additionally, converged communications is another service area where Dimension Data expects to see a significant push by organizations to move to the cloud.