With the holidays in full swing and the spirit of giving permeating the air, it's a good time for cloud providers to see what items top the cloud customer's wish list. Industry consultant David Linthicum recently highlighted several Christmas wishes for "Santa Cloud," providing some direction for vendors to head in.
The first wish Linthicum identified is the call for standardized security practices across the industry. He hopes for a common framework that can govern all deployments and noted that this would be especially beneficial in multi-cloud deployments.
The second item on Linthicum's list can be delivered with improved service-level agreements. In particular, cloud infrastructure providers can better address their customers' concerns by making stronger performance assurances. Once such provisions have been outlined in the SLA, companies may benefit from management and usage tracking software to ensure those requirements are being met.
The final need Linthicum identified is the way in which cloud services communicate. Customers need a way to better govern the cloud environments they utilize.
"Most cloud providers seem to view responsibility for API management and governance as the API consumer's problems," Linthicum wrote. "However, I see it differently. Cloud computing providers should offer a common framework for API management that works as a standalone solution or that works well with the existing API management platforms and cloud management platforms."
Especially since the cloud itself is on the wish list of many organizations, it will be critical to meet these demands. As MedCity News reporter Stephanie Baum recently noted, performance has been a key concern for cloud adopters in the life sciences industry. This is largely due to compliance in this area, since records must be kept for a minimum of six years. As a result, cloud infrastructure that can inexpensively store large volumes of data has become a high priority.
