08 July 2021
Adrian Rowley, senior director EMEA at Gigamon
Adrian Rowley offers insight into the pervasive issue of the hybrid cloud visibility gap, and explains why observability is key for cloud migration, security and customer experience.
The ‘hybrid-cloud visibility gap’ is a direct consequence of a period of accelerated digital transformation and the rapid, sometimes unplanned and unprepared for, shift to the cloud. The IT landscape that we knew before the COVID-19 pandemic has altered significantly, meaning that many digital tools and traditional processes have become practically obsolete. While network monitoring remains a top priority, full visibility into all data-in-motion has often been lost as organisations have rushed to implement multi and hybrid cloud infrastructure alongside their on-premises systems, yet many legacy tools do not stretch seamlessly to the cloud environment. In fact, visibility has often been completely restricted, so much so that each cloud embodies its own island of visibility. This creates a ‘gap’ that needs to be bridged in order for NetOps teams to once again achieve a unified view of their network and ensure that potential cyberthreats are detected and data processing is optimised.
During a time in which businesses must innovate to survive, cloud infrastructure has become integral for success and will continue to be important as the hybrid workforce looks set to stay. Yet with 90% of organisations stating their cloud usage has become more than they initially planned for, it seems that not many businesses are prepared for securing and scaling their cloud operations, and some NetOps teams may feel out of their depth. The hybrid cloud specifically, a combination of public and private clouds, will continue to grow and is currently already being deployed by 82% of IT professionals. Yet, if visibility is not prioritised, it could cause a number of worrying issues for those hoping to drive recovery in the post-COVID world.
According to a recent poll, 40% of respondents claim that a lack of visibility is one of their main concerns when migrating to the cloud. It is impossible to manage what you cannot see, and if visibility is ‘clouded’, migration will become far more costly and complex. In fact, digital initiatives may fail completely if they become over-complicated and if there is not sufficient visibility to successfully rebuild workloads within the new environment. A visibility gap across the hybrid cloud network means that security, compliance and performance issues are likely to arise and digital transformation could be scuppered completely. What’s more, as additional teams, tools and agents are feeding into the complex migration process, there will also be an unnecessary increase in network traffic, which has expensive repercussions for bandwidth and CPU capacity. Unified visibility is key to reducing the complexity of the hybrid environment, and a single pane of glass view into traffic can mean that the movement of data is optimised and therefore costs are reduced.
Security within the cloud is one of the biggest concerns within the IT environment – with 81% of organisations viewing cloud security as a challenge. A gap in cloud visibility will inevitably mean that a business is more vulnerable to cyberattacks, as it then becomes impossible to monitor all traffic, or detect all threats. Without full visibility, SecOps teams must turn to less reliable sources of information, like application logs or trace files, yet this level of insight will not protect a cloud environment from the increasing number of attacks. It is important to remember that the instrumentation of logs and applications can vary developer to developer. For example, it is common to see logging levels minimised by CloudOps teams to improve performance, but compromise on security. Therefore, to better ensure security and compliance within the hybrid cloud, all data-in-motion should be visible, including east-west traffic from containers and unmanaged devices. Only then can SecOps teams be confident with their cloud security posture.
If cloud security is compromised, digital transformation becomes overly complex, networks remain far from optimised and customer experience will inevitably decline. When a NetOps team is unable to glean a clear view into network traffic, application problems can go unnoticed and network bottlenecks can build up. While customers are already enduring a slow digital experience, IT teams will then struggle to remedy issues quickly if the hybrid cloud visibility gap remains un-bridged. One or two disgruntled customers is an issue many organisations must tackle, yet a large amount of disruption on your network could have more far-reaching consequences and cause significant damage to revenue, as the end-user looks to your competitors. However, if visibility once again becomes a priority, troubleshooting issues can be a more streamlined process and NetOps teams can filter out low-risk, duplicate or irrelevant data to free up bandwidth, speed up the network and ensure a better digital experience for customers.
It is clear that it is not simply IT professionals that feel the consequences of the hybrid cloud visibility gap, but that the whole business will suffer its repercussions if left unmanaged for too long. A unified view into all data across your network is essential to secure your workforce and satisfy your customers, whether that is simply between a public and private cloud, or spanning a number of cloud and on-premises environments. Without this visibility, maintaining a high-functioning and secure digital environment becomes more challenging than ever before.
