Page 129 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

O VERCOMING RESISTANCE T O THE CL OUD

its destination intact and unchanged and is handled by secure
processes afterward. That is, a process that might have been
used by a financial institution to move data from one business
unit to another has now been extended to the cloud.
Fujitsu goes a step further and says that it is planning ways
to be able to handle Health Insurance Portability and Account-

ability Act (HIPAA) data, which includes patient health-care
information. The privacy standards involved will make HIPAA
a steep requirement to meet in the cloud environment, and
such a development may still be years off. Fujitsu’s Lawson
acknowledges that not all health-care processing may be suit-
able for the cloud, but he believes that some of it can be exe-
cuted there.

Unisys has also announced that it will provide services to
support corporate cloud operations and is betting that its abil-
ity to deliver a more secure environment will give it a share of
future cloud activity. Savvis, Verizon Business, and AT&T plan
to offer VMware-based cloud services that go beyond the ele-
mentary controls contained in VMware’s vCloud Express soft-
ware. One area that they will emphasize is greater security of
operations.

Avoiding Lock-In

Cloud advocates will then encounter their final barrier, ven-
dor lock-in. Early cloud users will have to navigate the usual at-
tempts by vendors to establish proprietary control in bids for

109