Weekly CloudNews: How IT Leaders Grapple with Remote Work

by: Chip Zoller / September, 16 2021

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Here are the blogs we’ve posted this week:

The Truth About Terraform and Hybrid Cloud

With that, onto this week’s news:

Remote work presents challenges for IT leaders

Security Magazine, Sept. 15, 2021

“Remote work has become the new normal for many businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in working from home introduces new risks that IT professionals are struggling to manage with existing security tools, according to a new study. The 2021 Thales Access Management Index, a global survey of 2,600 IT decision makers, was conducted to better understand the new security risks and challenges caused by the rise of remote working and cloud transformation over the past year.

Of the IT leaders surveyed, six in 10 respondents said traditional security tools such as VPNs are the primary vehicle for employees accessing applications remotely. Almost half of respondents (44%) were not confident that their access security systems could scale effectively to secure remote work.”

Gartner: IT skills shortage hobbles cloud, edge, automation growth

Michael Cooney, Network World, Sept. 13, 2021

“Gartner says the current paucity of skilled IT workers is foiling the adoption of cloud, edge computing, and automation technologies. In its “2021-2023 Emerging Technology Roadmap” based on surveying 437 global firms, Gartner found that IT executives see the talent shortage as the most significant barrier to deploying emerging technologies, including compute infrastructure and platform services, network security, digital workplace, IT automation, and storage.

IT executives surveyed cited talent availability as the main challenge for adopting IT automation (75%) and a significant amount of digital workplace technologies (41%). Lack of talent was cited far more often than other barriers, such as implementation cost (29%) or security risk (7%), according to a statement from Yinuo Geng, research vice president at Gartner.”

Infosys, Microsoft migrate Ausgrid’s infrastructure to Azure

Ben Moore, CRN, Sept. 14, 2021

“India-headquartered digital services provider Infosys and Microsoft have inked a multi-year deal to migrate NSW electricity provider Ausgrid’s IT infrastructure onto Azure .The goal is to improve the agility, security and resilience of business operations for Ausgrid, reducing the cost of ownership and improving the performance of its systems and applications, according to a statement from Infosys.

“With over 4 million Australians relying on our services every day, it is essential we are maintaining our high standard of reliability and connectivity, as well as delivering on the expectations of Australian communities,” said Ausgrid acting chief information officer Nick Crowe. Accelerating our cloud transformation journey in partnership with Infosys and Microsoft allows us to improve the reliability of the network, keep downward pressure on electricity prices and bring new services to market at speed and in a cost-effective manner.”