The following excerpts are from an interview with Bernie Trudel, Asia Pacific Regional Data Center and Cloud CTO, Cisco Systems, Inc.

As someone whose world is dominated by cloud, data center, privacy, and compliance, it was exciting to meet a long-term expert with the same-shared interests. Bernie Trudel has been with Cisco for 17 years, and in addition to his role as Regional CTO, he is Chairman of the Asian Cloud Computing Association, an industry organization dedicated to making cloud computing a reality across Asia Pacific (APAC) by addressing the needs for common platforms. He shared his ideas with me on key regional trends,  security to accelerate cloud adoption, and the future of the data center.

What are the key regional trends?

Increasingly APAC countries are adopting a national broadband policy driven by a combination of the adoption of cloud and the ubiquity of personal computing. There is a strong focus on data sovereignty and privacy in response to emerging data privacy legislative measures in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines and also greater awareness around consumer’s rights to protect private data. International connectivity is also emerging as an issue as smaller countries rely on networks that cross geographic borders.

Many of these trends are measured in the Cloud Readiness Index, which uses 10 parameters that focus on risk, power, sustainability, and other metrics to assess readiness across the region.

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Tags: Asia, asian cloud computing association, cloud, Cloud Security Alliance, data center, privacy, virtualization

While Cloud Computing is getting the majority of the headlines within the IT industry, it could easily be argued that no industry is going through as much change as Healthcare. Whether it’s Healthcare reform in the United States, the rollout of Telemedicine solutions (by corporations and municipalities), or online collaboration to educate and discuss outbreaks and crisis, the business of keeping people well is going through radical change. Not only are the economics of Healthcare being forced to change, but so to is the technology that allows doctors to deliver care, medical records to be stored and researchers to find the next cure.

This past week I had the opportunity to present at the NCHICA “Health Information in the Cloud” along with experts from industry, technology, law and standards-bodies. The conference focused on many aspects of Healthcare + Cloud, including HIPPA standards, Legal and Compliance considerations, Security, Deployments in Public vs. Private Clouds, offerings from Managed Service Providers and real-world case studies (presentations can be found here and here). The presentation we gave focused on the infrastructure required to build Private Cloud.

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Tags: Auditing, Cloud Computing, Cloud Security Alliance, compliance, healthcare, NCHICA, private cloud, Public Cloud, security