How should organisations approach a compliance evaluation?

First consider the legal and regulatory requirements of the sector.

Second consider the adherence to these regulations in terms of the following:

• Geographical – where are Datacentres located. Pay particular attention to any back up Datacentres or third party applications?
• Operational – are Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery procedures consistent with requirements? Are procedures for Data Breach and Security consistent with requirements? Are tools being used to perform quasi real time vulnerability assessments?
• Environmental – are current and future Green IT requirements met?
• Auditable – are auditing procedures consistent with requirements in place?

RedMule provides services to ensure that cloud based services are fully compliant.

Whilst not scheduled to be available until Q4 2010 printing expert ThinPrint promises to remedy the problem, with a cloud printing solution.

ThinPrint are promising to relocate the complete printing system in the cloud, the end user acting as a facilitator for direct communication between applications and printers.

“The company has evolved with each business buying its own systems. We also acquired a number of companies. We had difficulty in sending email across the company,” said Bryan Kinsella, chief information officer.

Kinsella has now mandated the use of Google Apps across the group for email, collaboration and video conferencing.

The company aims to rollout Google Mail to 35,000 during 2010. To simplify the rollout, the company will continue to provide access to their legacy email, while providing Google Mail, via a web browser, for all new mail correspondence

Under terms of the contract, Royal Mail Group’s 30,000 employees with access to new IT services using Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), part of Microsoft Online Services.