For 2014, MSPs and VARs will look to add Backup-as-a-Service and DR-as-a-Service to their portfolio of offerings as a way to add business value for their customers.
However, after some initial enthusiasm for public cloud services, it was perhaps inevitable that issues such as security and availability would attract more scrutiny. In 2013, in a very public and messy failure, cloud provider Nirvanix shutdown operations leaving customers scrambling to move their data to new services.
Unsurprisingly, this has given greater urgency to the issues of using public cloud services.
The primary lesson from all this is that, you can outsource your organisations data to a cloud service but it is you, and not the cloud provider, who are ultimately responsible for ensuring that it is secure and available.
One way to mitigate some of the risk is to have copies of your data with multiple cloud providers and include one of the big 3 or a telco-affiliated cloud provider like Savvis. This ensures that the SLA’s in the contract are enforceable and if the worst happens, you can still get access to your data.
Organisation will now have to be more careful about weighing the benefits and risks of public cloud services when deciding on their organisations cloud strategies.