Data, communications and information access technologies are changing the UK’s work / life boundaries. A recent survey by the Federation of Small Businesses found that around 40 per cent of SMEs were now home-based. Apart from over 3 million people estimated as regular home-based workers – of whom around 2.5 million work with computers and telecommunications – the shift to adopting a remote workforce model has accelerated with the emergence of highly sophisticated internet resources and mobile worker applications.

The technology platforms and channels of reciprocal connectivity can now deliver ever increasing levels of complex data and media exchange.  Even with the ready availability of a virtual office PC experience with thin client applications such as DesktopLive, an overwhelming majority of company employers have been slow to adapt to the changing landscape.

During the period of extreme UK weather conditions in December 2010, productivity losses due to the failings of the transport system were minimised in many companies who resorted to the provision of their current basic technologies such as laptops, broadband and dial-in meeting facilities to create a link to the office or customers via the internet or teleconference.

Notwithstanding, staff trust and network security issues – as a result of which, nearly one in five employees wanting to work from home are being prevented from doing so by their employer – many companies, also face a considerable challenge when IT managers are tasked with evaluating the correct IT technologies to support which will best equip the company and its remote users for optimal, customised usage.

Inevitably, the most significant and traditional obstacle is the concern over security. Unsurprisingly, as a Cisco Systems report recently revealed, over half of all respondents saw security as the biggest challenge to enable remote working. The preference for a traditional ‘last resort’ method of issuing ‘secured’ laptops with multi layered, network protection safeguards, is not only restrictive to flexible data access and processing but is rapidly becoming an obsolete method in the age of fast mobile access, storage and handling via web based superservers.

It does beg the question of the obvious, alternative application of a simple SaaS ( Software as a Service) or accessing office software as a resource in the Cloud. The emergence of the iPad leading the way for the use of tablets, alongside the mobile, is an example of how access to common user interfaces across a wide range of devices is poised to change the preconceptions of businesses comfortably working with cloud based applications.

In other words, familiarity of logging on to a virtualised work environment through dedicated applications or a web browser, will help ease the shift from running software locally on an individual user’s physical processing unit and importantly, access is securely protected behind a vendor’s firewall. The crossover is beginning to happen and according to research by IT analysts Forrester, three quarters of European and US businesses already proposing to make use of the iPad and to also replace laptops.

It is a process of partial transition to a more cloud based working model, where the necessities of taking a proactive IT approach to a dynamic web environment of fast paced technology changes, can be moderated by an IT support infrastructure guiding the appropriate deployment of expanding business data storage and application software access.

The recent announcement that Citrix – Managed Network’s Silver Solutions partner – are working with Amazon Web Services to optimise XenServer virtualisation and some Windows software for the Amazon cloud represents not only an “extension of their partnership” but also, according to Simon Crosby, Citrix’s chief technology officer for their datacentre and cloud division, a “focus on furthering compatibility with AWS to give customers an enhanced experience when connecting their XenServer-virtualised datacentres.”

As a tangible expression of a proactive IT approach designed to make it easier to migrate workloads between datacentres and the AWS Elastic Compute Cloud, Crosby believes the collaboration “will ensure unparalleled portability, security and manageability of application workloads between private and public clouds”.

Issues of portability, network security and operability, especially concerning moving sensitive data applications to a cloud environment are still a key stumbling block with many businesses who are, nevertheless, becoming increasingly aware of cloud’s potential to gain competitive market advantage and make significant cost savings, especially during a tough economic period.

However, both SMEs and their larger counterparts are making increasing use of a variety of cloud computing applications by replacing their own enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications with basic off-the-shelf versions to deal with human resources and accounting. The movement out of their data centres has also extended into areas such as CRM, email systems and websites.

As a result of a piecemeal approach, IT managers are having to undertake the management of a quasi hybrid cloud environment, which means some data resides on-premises whilst others are in the cloud. It has been anticipated by technology and IT support analysts that hybrid cloud would be a more favoured path for first wave migration, and global brands such as HP have followed the path of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM. Recently, they announced they would be entering the cloud vendor arena via their new HP Enterprise Cloud Services which bundles server, storage, network and security resources for consumption as pure services.

Appealing to many businesses and organisations that fear cloud lock-in, as well as the costs and complexity of following a SaaS or software platform, and coming from a heritage of on-premises platform, hybrid clouds are intended to help organisations make the transition. Hybrid computing is increasingly being seen as key to enabling core competency for enterprises, allowing growth and management of applications regardless of heritage, production model or technology.

As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile and more geographically dispersed, public/hybrid clouds enable IT departments to outsource IT infrastructure (servers, storage and networking) thus, making IT application services more easily accessible over the Internet.

Cloud computing was highlighted at the World Economic Forum 2011, held in Davos, Switzerland, 26 – 30 January, when Neelie Kroes, the European digital agenda commissioner presented a forceful argument for the EU to be ‘cloud-active’.

Focusing on European technology research and innovation, and the alignment of data protection and other legislation development, Kroes emphasised the existence of “manifold” reasons for EU involvement in the cloud.

As 21st century business imperatives are about to become subsumed ever more deeply into mind boggling petabytes of online data and media, storage, access and transference, savvy enterprises have long recognised that a proactive IT infrastructure harnessing cloud based resources to be the inevitable, long term solution.

But as the European digital agenda commissioner implied, data protection and network security is a factor and, has often been a key reason preventing many companies from making that existential leap from the boundaries of physical ownership to the limitless possibilities of a virtual resource.

For a large number of companies, the most fundamental security boundary between their infrastructure and the outside world consists of the perimeter defence provided by firewalls in their demilitarised zone. IaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, whereby, the client typically pays on a per-use basis for outsourcing IT, moves the fundamental security boundary to the configurations of virtual machines and virtual network paths in the IaaS provider’s data centre. This ultimately means the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components, is owned by the service provider who is responsible for security, running and maintenance.

A 2010 business study conducted by global IT consultants, International Data Corporation (IDC) found, that of the respondents surveyed:

44% saw paying just for what you get as one of the key advantages.
40% said a major advantage of cloud was that it is easy and fast to deploy.
40% considered not needing to buy additional IT infrastructure as a key advantage.

However, on a more typically cautious note :

38% of survey respondents were concerned about the security and compliance of cloud services.
34% were concerned about the location of their corporate data in the cloud.

The coming faster broadband and emergent mCommerce will, undoubtedly, lead more businesses to seriously consider the transition to the cloud. The use of cloud based services to access a dizzying array of online applications has been gaining rapid momentum in the last five years.

Proving extremely popular with IT managers to further enhance operational flexibility and customer service, company owners and their Finance directors naturally welcome the benefits of operating a lower-cost network infrastructure and using data centre resources to transform fixed IT costs into variable operational expenses!

Attitudes towards adopting cloud as a resource service are mellowing, inasmuch as it is recognised that many organisations have been working with cloud applications quite happily for some time. But the issue of multiple remote worker access to replicated PC screen experience and company data storage is not yet resolved although a straightforward solution such as DesktopLive easily provides, is readily available.

The evolution of cloud itself is dynamic and, notwithstanding, the vital necessity of ensuring a secure network infrastructure in place to support cloud integration, businesses should gain greater understanding from their prospective cloud service provider of how the responsibilities of compliance to their security and data protection requirements will be most assuredly met.