The nature of an enterprise’s most valuable assets has evolved. Traditionally, it was the physical and human capital that sat on the company’s balance sheet; now, it’s the application capital that defines the digital age. The value of many modern companies – inspired by the business models of Facebook, Amazon and Uber – is increasingly non-tangible and resides in its applications and data.
As the concept of value evolves, so does the approach required to protect it. Modern enterprises are managing complex IT estates that typically involve a blend of IT architectures and deployment models, with more reliance on multiple cloud-based digital services. These include software that once would have been housed in the enterprise’s private IT environment, but is now being managed ‘as a service’ (SaaS), virtualised computing infrastructure (IaaS) and platforms for developing, running and managing applications (PaaS).
Accessing these services provides enterprises with a stronger basis on which to drive efficiency and operational excellence, as well as innovating for the new. IDC predicts that by 2020, more than 90 per cent of enterprises will use multiple cloud services and…
