The new work dynamics imposed by the recent health emergency, and more, have led to a strong acceleration towards the adoption of cloud solutions within companies. Flexibility, scalability and cost models are decreeing its success, but the phenomenon is complex and the recent work "Cloud in Italy: market scenario and migration strategies" by the Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano outlines its characteristics and trends.

Cloud technologies are now considered indispensable when a company decides to implement a new service or new applications or to migrate its legacy solutions to more modern, efficient and secure platforms.

Cloud solutions, what the market offers

The cloud solutions on the market can be mainly divided into: public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and hyperconverged.

If the public cloud refers to cloud services offered by specific providers and provided through public resources and if the private cloud refers to those services and hardware components used exclusively by a single customer; hybrid cloud refers to the set of the main components of both.

But to fully exploit the advantages of the cloud, it is preferable to resort to hyperconverged solutions, through which the different services and resources will be managed in the most functional way, regardless of whether the asset is in public cloud, private or on-premise in the datacenter.

Hyperconvergence, the main advantages

Hyperconverged solutions represent an interesting opportunity in the context of data center renewal processes. In fact, these solutions allow you to migrate, totally or only partially, your infrastructure to cloud technologies with undisputed advantages in terms of scalability and also managing one of the critical factors of the cloud, namely cost control, in the best possible way. Hyperconvergence makes it possible to create hybrid cloud solutions and to arrange even complex installations with a good simplicity of configuration and maintenance through a single dashboard, regardless of where the server on which it is necessary to intervene physically is located.

Hyperconverged platforms, in fact, allow you to make the most of available hardware resources, also planning any upgrades in a simpler way, benefiting from the high scalability of the solution. In addition, hyperconverged solutions facilitate the creation of hybrid cloud environments by leveraging public cloud resources for storage through support for the most popular protocols such as, for example, S3 which offers access to AWS services. Added to this is improved ease of updating and maintenance made available by a single management tool.

Cloud and security: a new approach is needed to protect and manage data

With these technologies, however, organizations must overcome the concept of corporate perimeter, intended as a space within which every resource is safe because it is protected by dedicated devices such as appliances or firewalls. Cloud technologies, in fact, require a more fluid approach: hardware resources can also be available using infrastructures that are not owned and over which the individual company does not have full control.

Companies are required to take a new cultural approach in considering what the real boundaries of their infrastructure are, in fact, by custom, individual PCs and IT devices are considered as risk factors, but in an increasingly connected ecosystem, potentially dangerous areas are also other. In fact, companies must evaluate all possible cyberattacks deriving from the plurality of devices connected outside their corporate network and consider all the endpoints that smart working brings with it.

This new cultural approach is therefore divided into all the IT components present in the company, whether they are modern IIoT devices (Industrial Internet of Things), old machinery connected to the network, traditional workstations or devices connected remotely. It is therefore a question of developing a new security strategy no longer linked to a perimeter to be protected, but flexible as regards threats and their origin. Therefore, the protection of data and their management becomes of primary importance, especially in the delicate process of data transfer on Cloud platforms.

However, in addition to the technology as such, to guarantee the protection and management of the data, it is necessary to support other services, such as device back-up activities and disaster recovery solutions in the event of threats to the system.

Towards the right cloud solution, in complete safety

This migration is a real process that must be planned and managed by organizations, relying on partners, such as the Relatech Group, with proven experience and skills because more and more often the necessary skills are no longer available within the company itself, and therefore, the support of a high standing digital player becomes necessary.

Relatech is a DESK (Digital Enabler Solution Knowledge) Company, specialized in modern frontier technologies, Digital Enabler, which supports companies in their digital transformation process through its Solutions and Know-how. Relatech, in fact, offers its own digital cloud platform, RePlatform, which includes services in the Cloud for the management of infrastructures in hyperconverged mode and in the Cybersecurity for the protection of data and devices. From 2020 it became part of the Relatech Group, Mediatech, a company highly specialized in Cloud solutions and services in all its forms and with a high degree of attention to cybersecurity issues. The Relatech Group not only guarantees a complete migration of data on proprietary datacenters, but also the most total protection in terms of security. In fact, if the RePlatform ReHub module focuses on the Cloud, ReSec is dedicated to security and through this module, Relatech is able to make APIs (Application Programming Interface) available through which to carry out in-depth analysis on data in the field. security. The Group has also developed specific "Hacking Range" software which has the task of analyzing the perimeter of a network and can simulate the customer's environment with virtual devices to assess which types of attacks this environment is exposed to, also considering the possible consequences, as well as activating protection systems and resolution of the problem and / or anomaly. Furthermore, the Relatech Group, also thanks to research and development activities in collaboration with numerous universities, includes artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies in its solutions, in order to be able to preventively analyze the behavior of hackers and prevent possible attacks.