The five challenges you must face to successfully introduce cloud computing

Cloud computing brings us a lot of convenience and advantages, but also brings many new challenges. So, if companies want to successfully apply cloud computing, they must face a range of challenges, including the challenges of new IT infrastructure, user privacy challenges, security challenges, data sovereignty challenges, and the challenges of new standards. Next, we'll elaborate on each of these challenges.

The five big challenges that cloud computing must face

Challenges of IT Infrastructure setup

A prerequisite for the spread of cloud computing is that the relevant IT infrastructure needs to be upgraded. One of the most important links is the web, because cloud computing needs to be shared over the Internet. Therefore, if there is no efficient network, then a good "play" can not sing out. Enterprises need to upgrade the network bandwidth first, whether it is fiber or wireless network, need to cooperate with other departments to achieve. This is one of the difficulties.

Challenges of IT Infrastructure setup

In addition, because cloud computing is a massive computation that requires large, easily scalable data centers to support, the traditional way of building data centers certainly cannot meet this need for collaboration. Therefore, we found that the large sector cloud computing platform is based on standardized hardware to build, the server and related data center products put forward a standardized demand, otherwise difficult to adapt to the needs of future enterprises.

New challenges for user privacy

Whether or not cloud computing, user privacy is a security risk. Especially with the popularity of the internet, some hackers maliciously steal user information, for profit. At the end of 2011, the "Leak door" was the best example. Therefore, in the cloud computing era, the more users privacy on the cloud, the more valuable, the greater the likelihood of malicious attacks, for the cloud service providers to challenge the greater nature.

When the Internet is not popular, people like to lock their privacy in the drawer, more important locks in the safe or to the bank for safekeeping. When this privacy is stored on the Internet, or in which one is not known to the user, fear is exacerbated.

New challenges for user privacy

On the one hand, users may be worried about cloud service providers by storing their privacy on the cloud: will cloud providers use their information to do evil? They will not sell their information to some of the people who are out of their hair ads, often by spam messages harassment.

In addition, when a user's information is stored on his or her own computer, anyone who needs that information is allowed to do so, and hacking is the trigger of the law. However, we find that when the user information is stored on the cloud, there is no clear law that the cloud service provider or other official agencies are not able to view the information, how these privacy leaks will be punished. This is also the industry has been trying to advance the matter, once a day, many countries have introduced the relevant laws and regulations of cloud service providers, then cloud users can be the cloud services as a bank to cooperate confidently.

Security challenges

The above mentioned user privacy protection, mainly for the cloud service providers. And the security here is more a challenge to the common security of the Internet.

Once, the user assured boldly to the enterprise and personal data stored in the cloud, cloud service providers are also subject to the law will not see the user information, but still can not escape from the network hackers brute force. The main channel for cloud computing is the Internet, which is a frequent channel for malicious attacks, and it does not get up early, and some of these attacks come from the internet, and some even from physical attacks. So what is the difference between the security challenges of the cloud era and traditional security?

Security challenges

The first is the security problem caused by multiple tenants. Different users are isolated from each other to avoid mutual influence. Cloud era, through some technology to prevent users intentionally or unconsciously "drop". At the same time, each user program is running in the data center inside, must guard against Huoqixiaoqiang time.

Second, the use of Third-party platforms to bring security issues. The provider of cloud services does not all have its own data center, once rented a third party cloud platform, then there is a very real problem, the service provider Management Authority issues. Managers are able to log in to the admin system without user authorization.

Third, service continuity issues. Traditional Internet services also have a single point of failure, so there will be two-computer backup: The primary server to stop the service, the standby server in a short period of time to start and provide normal services. In the traditional way, a group of services to stop the work will only affect their own business and users, but in the cloud environment, cloud services service terminated, the impact is not a user. In April 2011, cloud service provider Amazon had more than 24 hours of server downtime, affecting the normal operations of nearly 10 businesses.

In addition to technical problems, the user's awareness of self-protection must also be strengthened. Although, now gradually have various security measures to protect, even in the future will continue to introduce laws and regulations, but the final data security is largely in the hands of users.

The challenge of data sovereignty

A person has the nationality of a country, then his unique identity is easy to identify. No matter what country he is in, what kind of lawsuit he has, he needs to deal with the country. However, if the person is a nationality of more than one country, it is not so easy to deal with the dispute once it has occurred.

The challenge of data sovereignty

On the Internet, data is completely free, it can flow from one website to another, from one cloud service provider to another, or from one country to another. If a user using a service provider cloud services, but a service provider has used the data center of State B, in this case, if there is a legal dispute, we should be based on which country's laws to judge this dispute?

Now many countries, are in succession to the development strategy for cloud computing, cloud computing has risen to the level of national strategy. At the same time, the national protection of cloud data is also very important, but the current biggest challenge is how to achieve strong data protection between countries, without affecting international business cooperation.

The challenge of the new standard

Standardization is critical to the development of cloud computing. We may remember, in the early days of Enterprise informatization, we will also mention a concept called "Information Island", but also some people become "information silos", meaning that many enterprise applications are independent, the various departments of the enterprise data can not be formed organically, so the enterprise data utilization is very low, The value of enterprise data is also very low. Later, a software vendor presented SOA, a service-oriented architecture that tried to string together all enterprise applications through a unified, open interface.

Today, the rise of cloud computing, although the concept is new, but still face the old problems. Cloud computing vendors so many, if there is no standard, it is not shoes old-fashioned?

The challenge of the new standard

With the development of cloud computing, people want to use the cloud service, mobile phone, computer, flat plate and other terminals, different terminals can interact with the data on the cloud through various terminals. This requires the cloud platform to provide a standard unified interface to achieve access to other device vendors. Expand Open, if each cloud computing platform can provide such a unified interface, then it is really the world can interconnect interoperability, software integrators days will be the future.

But unification and openness are a great dream, and today's cloud computing standards are hard to build. Internationally, about more than 10 standardized organizations are starting to do some standardization work on cloud computing. These standardization organizations can be divided into three categories,

1. Traditional Information technology standardization Organization: including ISO/IEC, Distributed Management Task Group (DMTF).

2, the new organization for cloud computing, including cloud Buyer Council, Cloud Computing Security alliance.

3, the standardization organization in the field of telecommunications, including FGC (ITU set up a new cloud computing special Working Group).

The study of China's cloud computing standards began in November 2008, with the Chinese Institute of Electronics inviting a large number of government and university experts and scholars to organize the establishment of a cloud computing expert committee. Both domestically and internationally, as with the birth of other industry standards, are very slow and difficult. On the one hand, the application of cloud computing is still not wide enough, industry standards for many manufacturers do not pay attention to, on the other hand, the different organizations, different manufacturers want to be in the development of standardization of cloud computing, in the dominant position, so, it can be said that the implementation of standardization of cloud computing is