Negar Salek catches up with Art Coviello, president of RSA at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. Securing the cloud was the hot topic during the week and Coviello believes there's an opportunity to secure it from the get go.
CRN: Your message at the RSA Conference 2010 was that virtualisation will drive the cloud. And the security industry has the opportunity to embed security in the cloud stack from the bottom up. Isn't it too late?
Art Coviello: No, everybody gets confused [about the cloud]. Just because you can store a few photos with Amazon or Google or [Azure] which is a lot of that consumer stuff, [cloud] is really at the beginning. In terms of major organisations doing cloud it's very early stages.
VMware estimates only 25 percent of servers have been virtualised in big companies. If the first step [to cloud] is virtualisation, we're a long way away.
There's a research report from the 451 Group that has a good description of cloud taxonomy. What they help you understand is that a whole bunch of software as a service or hosting as a service is going on, but that's not cloud, that will give you a good idea in how this will roll out.
CRN: How far away are we from having a secure cloud infrastructure in the enterprise?
AC: I can say with a fairly good level of confidence that in 10 years we'll be done. But I don't know where along the path that will be substantially done. I can tell you in terms of securing virtual infrastructure - and virtual technology is the engine of the cloud - I think we'll have a good handle by the end of 2012.
Does that mean you don't virtualise your environments? No, you'll do it again in steps. You'd be making a mistake if you didn't take advantage of virtualisation technology today. What I'm saying is having it all built in is going to take a couple of years.
CRN: What about in the home?
AC: Same, before and after [10years]. There's a big difference between me dumping a whole bunch of family photos in Mozy and me putting my entire life up on Mozy. I am sick of being the CIO of the household, I just want it to all go away. I dont want to back up drives, if there's software just download it and switch it on.
"It's all about understanding and figuring out what your risk profile is, so for me right now I'm not going to put my entire personal ife in the cloud, but I'll start using it and then as I see more, and understand more, I'll start sending more, then one morning, eventually, it will all be up there, and I'll be saying, wow, why wasn't it always like this.
So that's why cloud is such a relevant thing - if you can see it for yourself - you can only imagine the benefits that a corporation gets out of it.
CRN: Will RSA look to the channel to grow?
Art Coviello: Absolutely. Like most tech companies we started in the US as a direct sales organisation, but outside the US we're 100 percent channel - all the way from the biggest system integrators to the smallest value added reseller (VAR) depending on the product, the vertical and the size of the company we're trying to reach.
CRN: What about the cloud? How will that impact your partners?
AC: If anything, this journey to the cloud is as good an opportunity, if not a better opportunity than ever before. Cloud infrastructures are not necessarily going to be these big external service providers, they'll be private clouds that [businesses] won't necessarily want to outsource.
So, there's lots of technology, lots of services and lots of opportunity for channel partners to add value along the way. And the value proposition for channel partners is like never before, because the journey to the cloud allows you to remove some of these aging, inflexible, hideously complex infrastructures that exist today - so the return on investment (ROI) should be as never before.
CRN: There's some consolidation of hosting companies in Australia. Do VARs need to become hosting companies to sell cloud with a profit?
AC: Sure, and I'm not going to suggest to your readers that there won't be a lot of disruption. It's like it always has been. The channel organisations that are most nimble, that are most creative, that seize the opportunity are the ones that will survive prosper and consolidate others.
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