VMware Global Alliances Blog

Posted by Shobhana Viswanathan
Senior Marketing Manager -
Global Alliances

As many organizations have already discovered, security and compliance are key issues that need to be addressed for a successful migration to cloud computing.  The benefits of cloud can be dramatic—including increased  agility, greater end user empowerment, and dramatically reduced costs —but enterprises need to pursue these goals while maintaining IT control, protective safeguards, and regulatory compliance.

These concerns have slowed cloud adoption at many organizations.  In a recent Tech Target survey of over 700 IT and business professionals, 70 percent claimed that they were already leveraging or considering cloud services, but the same percentage also believe the cloud is inherently insecure. An astonishing 60 percent were unaware of the leading applications and other resources that are available to secure cloud environments.

Many of these same issues apply to virtualization, the technology that provides the foundation for cloud.  As reported by Gartner research, only 18 percent of enterprise datacenter workloads that could be virtualized had been virtualized by the end of 2009; and that number is expected to grow to more than 50 percent by the end of 2012.  As more workloads are virtualized, as workloads of different trust levels are combined, and as virtualized workloads become more mobile, the security issues associated with virtualization are likely to become more important than ever.

"Virtualization is not inherently insecure," said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner fellow. "However, most virtualized workloads are being deployed insecurely. The latter is a result of the immaturity of tools and processes and the limited training of staff, resellers and consultants."

Cloud Security Comes of Age

The good news for organizations with their eyes on the cloud is that proven solutions are now available to secure virtualized and cloud environments—and without  sacrificing the agility and end-user choice that are hallmarks of the cloud era.  Working in concert with our security partner ecosystem, VMware is helping businesses of all sizes migrate to secure cloud computing.

You can learn about the results of this collaboration on the new “Trust in Your Cloud” microsite from VMware. It  features the latest VMware vShield™ solutions and resources from our partners including HP Tipping Point, HyTrust, Layer 7, LogLogic, Trend Micro.  These cost-effective and adaptive security services and tools let you use a single policy framework for deploying and managing security services from VMware as well as third parties.

What you’ll see on this microsite is that we’ve arrived at a new era in cloud security.  Check it out, and discover that security issues no longer need to stand in the way of your cloud initiatives and your business.