The global cloud infrastructure is nothing but addressing data requests of organizations from across the world. The opaque nature of the cloud industry has been a disadvantage for organizations and they have been continuously searching for transparency for assessing vendor claims and mitigating financial risks. The cloud service providers (CSPs) have been making efforts to offer organizations the right information and help them make informed decisions driven by data.
Trust has been the foundation of relationships between leading cloud technology providers and organizations. Being transparent about products and services is the reinforcement of that foundation. The cloud service providers are therefore committed to transparent sharing of information to solidify their relationships with organizations. Organizations look for transparency into the supply chain for assessing the sales claims of CSPs and mitigating financial risks.
The Need for Transparency
There have been concerns among organizations regarding clarity with their CSPs. A key reason behind this is that the CSPs do not unveil anything about their claims of the state-of-the-art security measures. Organizations will be better able to believe in their cloud service provider if they clearly represent that they are in compliance with their corporate requirements. Being transparent in their practices is of utmost importance for CSPs.
There are multiple ways where the cloud service providers can gain loyalty of organizations. These measures range from verifying the background information to conducting onsite audits . However, realizing a completely transparent system is challenging, particularly for SMEs, unlike large organizations who can demand transparency from their cloud service providers.
It has been seen that organizations are still reluctant to completely deploy their infrastructure on the cloud, as they look for CSPs to fulfil compliance requirements of the corporate world. Also, the growing number of data breaches in recent years has driven organizations to be cautious about putting trust in their cloud vendors regarding their sensitive data.
There is an urging need for clarity in every contract on issues that influence and raise concerns among organizations worldwide. The onus remains on CSPs who are expected to take measures for providing greater transparency about poor performance and service disruptions. These measures must further be backed up legally for gaining trust among potential consumers of cloud services. The real challenge is in wordsmithing the legalese. From the perspective of technology, to deliver SLA transparency clauses, application performance technologies are required to enhance visibility in operations and systems.
How Can Transparency Be Achieved
The cloud service data, when collected through automation with the help of software APIs, enables effective comparisons of the services. However, this approach is still at its nascent stage. As cloud computing continues to evolve and gain high popularity in the market for enterprise IT deployments, new industry analysis techniques are emerging for understanding the supply chain of cloud services.
Listing the cloud services with software automation will prevent exposure of capabilities that are internal to organizations and their operations. This can be a good start for organizations and cloud services providers to achieve transparency.
