Cloud, Mobility and Virtualization: A Triple Play for VARs

By Symantec Guest Blog 2

cloud mobile security

Today, information is everywhere—last year alone it grew 62 percent to 800,000 petabytes. Information no longer resides behind the walls of a data center. Instead, it is stored and accessed from a variety of mobile devices and the cloud. This means that protecting, storing and managing all of this information is becoming an even greater challenge for your customers.

Cloud computing and virtualization provide a tremendous opportunity for our customers to be more agile and drive more value from their IT investments. While they are aware of the numerous benefits associated with cloud computing, when it comes to adoption, information security and resiliency remain significant concerns for our customers. They want assurance that their data is secure, highly-available and in compliance with regulations.

Mobility is also driving IT to support a variety of technologies. The days of IT trying to standardize on one device or platform are over. Today, employees want to use whatever device they choose–whether it’s a PC, iPad, iPhone or an Android– and they want to have access to both their corporate and personal email.

Emerging Trend

In fact, according to a survey we recently conducted, the vast majority of respondents thought allowing employees to use their own devices for work would increase productivity and satisfaction. This productivity also introduces increased security risk and you’ve got an opportunity to help your customers secure the information on these devices.

In today’s environment, protecting the physical device alone is not enough because the information lives in multiple places. So, how can you be sure your customers’ information is secure and managed wherever it whether it’s in a physical or virtual environment, on a desktop or a smartphone?

To be successful in this new environment, we need to take an information-centric approach. To accomplish this, partners have an opportunity to extend their capabilities to protect information in the context of how it is accessed through the infrastructure and used by our customers. By focusing on information, you’ll help your customers confidently capitalize on the opportunities that mobility, virtualization and cloud computing present without creating more cost, complexity and risk.

Randy Cochran Symantec Channel Chief