As the coronavirus pandemic forced millions of employees, suppliers, and customers to work virtually, enterprises are seeing an exponential increase in both transactions and endpoints. The current global crisis has greatly affected the cloud migrations of many companies due to the sudden increase in working-from-home.

While the market is seeing an accelerated interest in cloud technology adoption in Southeast Asia, Oracle, an American multinational computer technology firm, said that some businesses are still hindered from leaping because of security concerns and data residency regulations.

“It was the first time we had to support our customers remotely, but we managed to have many go-lives across the region despite not being able to travel. The entire process of negotiating and finalizing contracts can now be conducted completely online, effectively underlining what can be done digitally,” Mina Lim, managing director, Oracle Philippines, told Back End News in an email interview.

Oracle Cloud

Lim reiterated that Oracle is “well-positioned” to support its customers and partners navigate the complexity of cloud computing.

“Not every workload is right for cloud, and Oracle [can] help our customers determine how to best leverage both on-premise and cloud-based solutions to achieve their goals,” Lim said.

She added that Oracle has developed a “holistic and integrated” cloud infrastructure that is “secured by design,” and “secured by default.” It has also integrated automation in its technology to ensure that there are continuous security updates.

“You can start using Oracle services knowing that the infrastructure is secured by design and that the initial configuration is secured by default,” she said.

“The foundation of a strong security strategy is identity and access management. Humans are the weakest points in data security. These are mainly insider threats: someone inside your organization who wants to do some damage, or employees who simply open an email attachment by mistake,” she said.

Alibaba Cloud

For its part, Alibaba Group’s digital technology arm Alibaba Cloud has revamped its hybrid cloud strategy and Hybrid Cloud Partner Program to focus on “bringing compatibility, security, compliance, scalability and reliability” with its newly upgraded products.

The Hybrid Cloud Partner Program aims to recruit capable partners to provide hybrid cloud plans, design, and resale services to customers. It also launched new appliances to support enterprises’ private cloud utilization needs.

“A key observation from 2020 is that hybrid cloud deployments will accelerate in the time to come as it expedites the digital transformation requirements of businesses everywhere,” said Kevin Li, general manager, Hybrid Cloud Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

VMware Cloud

In September, California-based cloud software company VMware unveiled its newest Carbon Black Cloud Workload to deliver “intrinsic security” to the world’s digital infrastructure. This innovation delivers advanced protection purpose-built for securing modern workloads to reduce the attack surface and strengthen security posture.

VMware said the solutions will advance security for the public and private clouds, security operations, and distributed workforces as organizations accelerate cloud adoption to build resilient, future-ready digital infrastructure.

“This innovative solution combines prioritized vulnerability reporting and foundational workload hardening with industry-leading prevention, detection, and response capabilities to protect workloads running in virtualized, private and hybrid cloud environments,” it said.

SAP Cloud

Built with an intuitive user interface, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software SAP (stands for Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) has recently introduced its newest cloud-based solution SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking that provides enterprises with simple, innovative tools to record, approve and monitor the time of their workforce.

The cloud-based solution enhances the employee experience and helps ensure people are paid accurately, on time, and under local regulations.

“The SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking solution provides employees with the personalization and simplicity they would expect from a consumer-grade experience,” said Amy Wilson, senior vice president, HXM Product & Design, SAP SuccessFactors.

This year, we are faced with this challenging crisis, many companies have also taken the unprecedented time to leverage their cloud technologies to adapt to the new normal. Enterprises have enhanced their mindset, procedures, and tools within their organizations to improve their services to customers despite not being able to travel due to restrictions.

Indeed, digital transformation has become a top priority for many companies this 2020.