As cloud computing becomes a mainstay for small and large businesses alike, cloud-enabling technologies such as virtualization, automated computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA) are coming out of the woodwork. The Global Cloud-Enabling Technologies Market has ridden the success of the overall cloud market, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.6 percent from 2014-2019.
Benefits of Cloud Computing
- On-demand self-service: Enterprises can provision or un-provision cloud services through an online control panel
- Broad network access: Resources hosted in a cloud network are accessible from multiple devices and from remote locations that offer online access
- Multi-tenancy: In this architecture, a single software instance serves multiple end-users, where each end-user is a tenant and able to customize applications.
- Elasticity: In a cloud environment resources can be scaled and provisioned systematically
- Measured service: A metering capability for the type of service enables the automatic control and optimization of resources, which includes storage, bandwidth, and user accounts
Global Virtualization Technologies Market
Virtualization was first introduced in mainframe systems, where resources are divided for use in different applications. It creates an abstraction layer between the physical hardware and the OS, which is occupied by a virtual machine monitor to control hardware resources.
Overall, the Global Virtualization Market can be categorized into four main segment—namely hardware, storage, network and data virtualization—which together were valued at more than US$10 billion in 2014. This number is expected to top US$21.5 billion by 2019, as the virtualization market swells in response to demand for cloud-based systems.
But despite the fact that the technology is in such high demand, there’s still a number of concerns plaguing the industry, which are slowing down more widespread adoption of cloud technology.
Increased Cloud Security Concerns
The benefits of cloud computing can often be marred by the security concerns that come up in virtual environments. Any configuration or integration-related issues can lead to a high risk of a security breach, and these issues have to be carefully dealt with before adopting any cloud-enabling techniques to enhance cloud performance.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is built on open standards such as XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI, but these standards do not have built-in security systems, which makes services more vulnerable to attacks. While SOA is great for enhancing cloud operations, it also comes with its fair share of issues, like lack of encryption, logging features and machine to machine communication, which can expose the system to security threats.
Concerns over Managing Cloud Environments
Cloud management is a multifaceted job, which involves challenges like managing multiple abstraction levels and resource types, maintaining energy efficiency, and dynamism. For an enterprise to manage all the technology involved in their cloud deployment, they need software that can work across various platforms, infrastructures, and applications. The increased complexity of the business environment will always make it difficult for an enterprise to adopt a single management software solution to monitor and manage the whole environment, which makes adopting cloud a daunting prospect.
