The government’s goal is clear: to bring 75 per cent of Italian public administrations to the cloud. The digital revolution of the Peninsula also passes through here. A mission promoted with the resources of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and which can count on the availability of the giants of the sector. “We help governments and companies to develop sovereign clouds. And we are working in almost all states of Western Europe, supporting public administrations, small and large companies in their digital transformation,” he tells us. Raghu Raghuram, CEO of VMware. In these days he is flying to various countries of the old continent, from the United Kingdom to France, up to Germany, meeting commercial and institutional realities. And he also came to Rome, where the creation of a national strategic pole which will have to host the strategic data and services not only of the central government, but also of local health authorities, regions, metropolitan cities and larger municipalities.
“Using our technology, the operators working on the development of these projects will be able to create a better and more secure sovereign cloud”, emphasizes the CEO, explaining that VMware solutions not only facilitate the development, execution and control of the applications used. from organizations on the cloud, but they also provide robust defenses against cybercriminals, “preventing the ransomware or ensuring the full recovery and operation of the systems after an attack “.
The development of a national hub, whose management and control must be independent from subjects outside the European Union, is essential to strengthen our technological autonomy, to provide safe and protected services from any cyber-attacks, and to ensure full control over data. As highlighted in the Cloud Italia strategy, the control and autonomous management of digital cloud infrastructures, storage and data processing is of strategic importance in the digitization process of the country, because it protects against the risks of unilateral changes in the conditions of the services provided that could entail , for example, the increase in delivery costs. Not only. Cloud service operators in countries outside the EU could be forced in some circumstances, based on the legislation in force in those countries (think of the Cloud Act in the USA), to provide access to data, even sensitive and strategic, present on their systems.
Dal cloud first al cloud smart
Unfortunately, the digital infrastructures of the PA are not in good health: a census of the ICt heritage carried out by the Agency for digital Italy had found that the 95 percent of data centers analyzed (1252) do not meet the minimum safety and efficiency requirements. Hence the need not only to promote greater use of the cloud in the public, but also to accompany central and local administrations towards the adoption of qualified cloud services.
A challenge that companies have already taken up, considering that in 2021 the expenditure for this sector has continued to grow and today the Italian cloud market worth 3.84 billion euros (+ 16% compared to 2020): in particular, in large companies the 44% of the application park it is now on public or private cloud.
“Five years ago companies were talking about cloud first“, Raghu Raghuram tells us: the priority was to bring data and IT applications to the cloud.” Today, however, they want to be cloud smart“, that is to say they want to be free to choose which service provider to rely on based on their needs. This is because, it is the reasoning, the use of a single cloud could be limiting.” If we look at the numbers, 75 percent of VMware customers rely on two or more public clouds and 40% use three or more “, continues the CEO, explaining the reasons behind adopting a multi-cloud approach:” On the one hand, customers do not want to be too dependent on one supplier; on the other hand, they are aware that some applications work better on one cloud than another and therefore, depending on the technology and services they need, they want to be free to contact more than one company “.
A very widespread strategy also in our country in the private sector. A research ofCloud transformation observatory of the Politecnico di Milano emphasizes in fact that the Hybrid e Multi cloud they are increasingly adopted in large Italian companies, “which today refer on average to 5 cloud provider for the provision of its services (up from 4 in 2020) “, reads the report: the difference between the two approaches is that the first is a combination of services offered by an external supplier and an infrastructure reserved for a single customer for its exclusive use; the second, on the other hand, refers to the possibility of using multiple public or private clouds at the same time.
“One of the key properties that characterize our solutions is that it allows customers to move from one cloud to another”, adds Raghu Raghuram, who explains: “If a company decides to go to the cloud, it will have two choices ahead of it. : convert your applications or develop new ones. Once these applications are up and running in the cloud, they need to be managed and secure. Our technologies help address this process. We are partners with all cloud providers: this is why VMware solutions guarantee customers not only the freedom to choose which service to use according to their needs, but also full control of their applications on the various clouds “.
The multi-cloud approach facilitated by VMware technology thus allows companies to work on multiple clouds at the same time, optimizing the use of internal resources and avoiding unnecessary migrations from one provider to another. In fact, it may happen that a company, which uses the Amazon cloud, buys another one whose applications are based on the Microsoft cloud. Or again, that two or more departments in the same organization are linked to different suppliers. Standardizing systems and using a single cloud could slow down all processes, not to mention the difficulties of educating developers on technologies they do not know or are not used to using.
A platform for remote work
VMware went through three stages of development: initially specializing in server virtualization technology, it later helped its customers develop private clouds. Now in its third phase it provides solutions for multi cloud environments. Its technologies therefore assist companies in the digital transformation process: a process that does not only concern the applications used, but also the digital experience of workers who, more and more often, carry out tasks and tasks from home. “Even after the Covid-19 pandemic, organizations are saying two-thirds of their employees want to work remotely 3 days a week. This is the future, and hybrid work is here to stay, ”continues Raghu Raghuram. A reality that, however, involves a whole series of problems, starting with the security of home connections used in remote work, which are more easily hackable, or the computer applications that employees need. “Our technology makes it possible to remotely install apps, customized according to the employee’s needs, and to provide staff with all the support they need. And then, when they are no longer needed, they can still be removed at a distance “.
A platform for remote work that has also been used in the public. An example is Municipality of Afragola, in the province of Naples, which before the pandemic had not had significant smart working experiences: employees were able to work from home using virtual desktop software, which gave them access to various applications using any physical machine.
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