Network Communications News (NCN) May 2017 | Page 22

CLOUD COMPUTING & VIRTUALISATION The role of Cloud Assurance in Digital Transformation It would be unwise to suggest the digital transformation (DX) that’s impacting every sector, from financial services to heavy industry to retail, has not benefited, or been driven completely, by cloud computing, says Michael Segal, area vice president for strategy at NetScout. W ith the cloud’s revolutionary technology, new digital centric businesses are emerging with more agile and innovative practises that have scarcely been seen before. Enterprises that have been long established now need to worry 22 | May 2017 about new and agile competitors, whilst also being subject to mass upheaval that they haven’t experienced before. Indeed, figures from IDC have shown that one-third of the top 20 companies in every industry will have been disrupted by other more digitally focused companies by 2018. What does this mean? Disrupt or be disrupted. To try and keep up, enterprises are now on a modernisation path that is accelerated, aiming to extend, or even just maintain their leading status in industry. For more established enterprises this is a per tinent challenge; they aren’t green star t-ups that can be purely cloud based. Legacy systems and applications