Cloud Computing

The adoption of cloud computing continues to gain momentum, although a number of enterprises and SMEs are still leery about what should be moved to the cloud, whether or not it will be secure, and how best to make that move. To share her insight, Claudine Bianchi, CMO, NaviSite (News - Alert), recently talked with TMCnet in this video interview.

NaviSite was founded in 1999, and is a publicly held company. According to Bianchi, the company is leading the revolution around IT managed services, including managed cloud services, managed app services and managed messaging services.

There is certainly interesting growth space in cloud computing today – similar to the Internet boom in the 1990s. Bianchi noted that industry analysts project $100 billion worth of opportunity in the cloud marketplace, as it is still a small part of overall IT spend for enterprises. Many enterprises are still looking for test environments to know what it will look like in their own environment to see how they will perform in the cloud.

As a company, NaviSite is on the smaller side, but gives it size gives them the opportunity to create so much more for the client. NaviSite definitely prides itself on the ability to understand business cases so clients can have a win/win.

Bianchi was asked if some parts are doing better than others in NaviSite business. She noted that in addition to testing, managed applications is a huge growth opportunity, as well as data storage and disaster recovery – things that make sense for the cloud as they are not static. The cloud is perfect for that because of the computing power – if a disaster happens, you can easily make the switch to the cloud-based environment.

As for customer mix, NaviSite used to be in the SMB business and discovered it was not their forte. Now, the company focuses on the SME sector and finds many of the pioneers among the cloud in this area. A large percentage of business is coming from North America for NaviSite, although European market appears to be gravitating more towards the cloud, according to Bianchi.

As for security, Bianchi shared, “Security is the A number one issue for customers. We used to give a credit card to the waiter and you never thought twice about it. Now, there is skepticism as to whether or not your information is protected. The same thing is happening with the cloud – also happened back when Amazon first hit the market and we were using a credit card online for the first time.”

Of course, security in the cloud is at an even higher level than many companies experience in-house. The power of the encryption when delivered from the cloud is actually stronger in the cloud, but many enterprises and IT organizations still want the control. It is truly still a control issue.

To learn more about NaviSite and how they can help you make the right move to cloud computing, check out this video interview in full.