Worldwide IT Outsourcing Services Spending To Surpass $251B In 2012: Gartner

A new Gartner report predicts that worldwide spending on outsourced IT services (ITO) will reach $251.7 billion in 2012, a 2.1 percent increase from the $246.6 billion spent on ITO in 2011.

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The cloud computing services market, which is part of the cloud-based infrastructure as a service (IaaS) segment, is the fastest-growing segment of ITO, with an estimated growth of 48.7 percent in 2012 to $5.0 billion, up from $3.4 billion in 2011. Meanwhile the application outsourcing (AO) segment is expected to reach $40.7 billion, a two-point increase from the $39.9 billion spent on AO in 2011, and data center outsourcing's (DCO) 34.5 percent representation of the entire ITO market in 2011 is expected to drop by one point in 2012.

In spite of current business slowdowns, Gartner forecasts that the ITO market in the emerging Asia/Pacific region will represent the highest growth of all regions.

What impact will the evolving ITO market have on your CU? Read the article and get more insights from the Gartner research team.

Beyond Dropbox: Security is only part of the cloud's problem

Cloud computing = security breaches + data theft/loss + service disruptions...choose your vendors wisely!

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A bit discouraging for CUs seeking data management solutions. Yet this is the message we keep hearing over and over; it's no wonder that there are still a lot of businesses that aren't about to just dump their precious data into the cyber snake pit also known as the Cloud. The potential security breach that's now got cloud storage provider Dropbox in the hot seat again with its 50 million users is merely another addition to the never-ending list of wakeup calls about how precarious an environment the Cloud can be.

As this article points out, nailing down proper security is only half the battle. The other part of the equation for a safe cloud environment is availability. Cloud collaboration service provider ftopia's usage of Amazon S3 cloud infrastructure, for instance, mirrors data across multiple physical locations - critical for cloud storage, as it backs up the data and ensures that the service is always up and running.

On the security front, extra points go to ftopia for its self-validating data integrity feature powered by Guardtime which enables users to determine whether data has been compromised - something to think about in light of Dropbox's current situation.

Know what you're signing up for before you give up your data. Read networking technology analyst Dave Greenfield's take on reaching a higher level of confidence in cloud computing.

Financial Regulators Address Cloud Security

In effort to help financial institutions address and understand the risk of cloud computing and avoid outsourcing haphazardly, the US Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has published Outsourced Cloud Computing.

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This resource document stresses the importance of due diligence when shopping cloud service providers. Vendors may be unaware of the regulatory requirements applicable to financial institutions, but the financial institutions are still responsible for the compliance and security of their records and therefore must make sure their providers meet risk-management, compliance, quality-of-service, and cost standards.

Focused on business continuity planning, regulatory and legal compliance, audits, information security, vendor management, and due diligence, this FFIEC resource is an excellent guide for outsourcing cloud services and hammering out your vendor contracts and service-level agreements.

Read the story in CloudTimes and take advantage of this invaluable resource for your CU.