Microsoft has released a report containing data collected for 6 months using their Cloud Security Readiness Tool (CSRT). The CSRT launched in October 2012 (www.microsoft.com/trustedcloud) to allow organizations to receive guidance on evaluating cloud adoption through a series of 27 questions.
In the released report, Microsoft has taken the submissions and detailed at how companies are currently implementing and maintaining datacenters, and then how migrating operations to the Cloud could benefit areas where organizations rate poorly.
The areas they address in the report are:
- Policy design
- Physical design
- Privacy design
- Risk management
- Resilience management
- Security architecture
- Industry-based trends for government/military organizations
- Industry-based trends for nonprofit organizations
- Organizational trends in small and midsize businesses
- Organizational trends in enterprise organizations
For each area they list how things are currently being run, apply observations, and then suggest how the Cloud could resolve the problematic processes.
You may remember, in I’m a Mage Level 8 in the Cloud Game. What level are you?, I talked about a report released by Rightscale that applied almost Dungeon and Dragons-type names to the Cloud Maturity model. Microsoft also gives the varying levels of Cloud Maturity names, but takes a different tact. Microsoft's Cloud Maturity level titles are a bit less creative. They are:
- Getting Started.Undocumented, ad hoc state. Reactive and incident or event response-driven.
- Making Progress.Response-driven, following trends, and somewhat repeatable with limited automation in segments.
- Almost There.Scaled response, using programs. Limited scaling still segmented.
- Streamlined.Centralized, automated, self-service, and scalable. Can allocate resources automatically.
Download the report: Trends in Cloud Computing Cloud Security Readiness Tool
