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THE BIG ADVANTAGE
CUSTOMERS GET BY MOVING TO THE
CLOUD AND SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE
BOTH FROM A VENDOR PERSPECTIVE
AND FROM A CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE
IS OBVIOUSLY FLEXIBILITY.
customer perspective is obviously flexibility;
they can leverage the resources as they need,
rather than having to force themselves into
a particular fixed configuration. Another
advantage is ease-of-use because they
don’t have to build all of the infrastructure
themselves; it’s taken care of by somebody
else. We support a hybrid IT model where a
lot of customers for many reasons, including
regulatory reasons, need things on-premise
but want to leverage things in the cloud as
they can. We provide a seamless bridge to
them where things on the premise look like
things in the cloud in terms of flexibility,
scalability and simplicity, and then from an
end-user standpoint we hide the complexity
by letting them access their resources, whether
it’s in application, in the cloud or on-premise.
Pulse Secure’s CEO, Sudhakar Ramakrishna
Many customers increasingly, because
of the Internet of Things, want to better
understand what’s happening in their
network; who is connecting, why they are
connecting and whether it is a device, a
person, or a thing. We give them that level
of visibility. But ultimately, by delivering
access solutions, we try to improve the
productivity of an enterprise.
Can you explain the benefits of
switching to cloud and Software-as-
a-Service compared to using
on-premise?
Absolutely. The way I would describe what
we do is that we allow customers to evolve
into the cloud without forcing them into the
cloud i.e. we give them options and they
can do it at the pace their business needs
dictate. The big advantage customers get by
moving to the cloud and Software-as-a-Service
both from a vendor perspective and from a
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INTELLIGENTCIO
What are the main security
challenges companies might face
when utilising hybrid IT?
When people think about hybrid IT and
deployment of resources and infrastructure,
they consider what level of access they
provide and what policies dictate those levels
of access. The key challenge that a customer
faces can be described by saying: “I used
to have a walled garden which I don’t have
anymore and with my resources being in the
cloud and on-premise how do I set my user
policies, access policies, security postures
etc.?”, and the biggest risk is not designing
those things in the right way. For instance,
if they split up those things and put some
of them in the cloud and some of them on-
premise, that itself is a security hole because
inconsistent policies and inconsistent user
information is a big source of security
breaches in enterprises. So that’s the first
thing I would say they have to watch out
for in terms of what their access policies are,
what their security postures are and where
they keep user information.
Are there ways of avoiding these
challenges or is it something
companies must learn to manage?
I would say there is a certain onus on us as
vendors to be able to simplify the solutions
and give a more integrated capability set
which is what Pulse is doing, and then
from a customer standpoint, it is a case
of education and learning as opposed to
being fearful of the transition. The transition
is happening and there are a tremendous
number of economic and productivity
benefits that can be derived by completing
the transition. It’s a two-pronged approach;
one dependent on the vendor and the other
on the customer.
What are the main differences you
notice between using a traditional
IT approach, to using a hybrid
approach? Did you find there
were many limitations with a
traditional approach?
I think the main difference is one of speed
and one of flexibility. I think that in a
traditional premises world for instance,
software cycles are much longer, whereas in
a hybrid world, they are expected to be much
faster so that where you come up with new
features as a vendor, they are more readily
consumable by the customers. So that’s
one big difference between a traditional
approach compared to a hybrid IT approach.
How are companies working to
manage new devices and are they
doing this well?
The way we think about secure access
in the context of improving customer
productivity and flexibility is: one; to make
user experiences as simple as possible,
two; assume that everybody is mobile,
three; define the world in hybrid IT terms.
You don’t debate about cloud or premise
as the world is hybrid. So, related to
that and in the context of devices and
device security, we support a variety of
devices from a client standpoint as well as
having a solution called ‘The Workspace’
which provides device and application
management and security on a wide
range of mobile devices, laptops etc. Our
management and policy platforms are able
to manage users, devices and applications
from a single pane of glass.
www.intelligentcio.com