SPSoft completes 17 glorious years

SPSoftware Technologies (I) Pvt. Ltd was conceived with an idea in mind of offering technology driven outsourcing service in 1997. Based in Pune, SPSOFT has now a big family of over 100 employees and are serving over 250+ customers globally.

We have more than a decade experience in the outsourcing services industry and we see ourselves emerging successfully as a global leader in this industry. We strive to make customers comfortable with outsourcing to India by making the process seamless and hassle free. The SPSOFT team is willing to go the extra mile to ensure that we are always there for our customers.

SPSOFT has come to establish unique brand equity among global clients through its steadfast focus on technologies, on commitment for fulfilling its customers priorities and an organic growth strategy. We understand the volatility of existing technology and strive towards future-proof solutions and services to all our clients.

Value Statement

SPSOFT understands and analyses the business needs and performs and delivers cost effective and timely services, converging into customer satisfaction.

Quality Policy

SPSOFT is committed to implement, maintain and continually improve its Quality Management System to live better and serve our customers better. Quality is in our pulse. We live with it!

Mission

To provide cost effective solutions and services to clients across the globe and exceed their expectations by focusing on; commitment to quality, continual technological advancement, and timely delivery, by leveraging our highly skilled work force. We believe in building relationship based on trust and mutual respect.

Five Security matters to focus on when you evaluate a cloud provider

So when you choose a cloud provider, it may not seem to be an easy task, right! Cost might be a factor as this is not a sole commodity decision that you make. It is a critical research for determining whether what the vendor offers would match up to your business needs and the sensitivity of the data. So, when you want to evaluate cloud providers, there are five attributes which can be examined. The right attribute would vary as per your security needs and objectives.

1. Cloud Providers Transparency
When an enterprise selects a cloud provider, it is not only to make a purchase or sign an agreement. Though a contract involves relationship between the customer and the cloud provider to engage on frequent basis, the customer needs to have a clear picture of the provider's commitments which relate to security as well as privacy other than the responsibilities which the customer retains.
Remember, here, transparency is critical. The vendor needs to make clear commitment on what controls are in place, who manages the technology, the data residence and such responsibilities it assumes as custodian of the crucial data.

2. Risk Mitigation
What is Risk Mitigation? Well, it is a key component of any security strategy, when consigning a data to a third party has a chance to reduce or to increase risk. An enterprise, for its own security strategy, needs to investigate the different steps that the cloud provider takes to mitigate risk surrounding the service offerings. An important risk in moving of the enterprise service to the cloud is to manage the end user access for ensuring authorized access only gets permitted to the stored information. When people think about "accessing data", they are actually thinking about provisioning permissions for viewing or for making changes to the data. However, bigger risk is at the revocation of access, when a person leaves the company.
His access to on-premises services can be easily revoked, through the internal directory server of the company. But, if this same directory server is not integrated with the cloud services of the company, access may not be revoked on time, or at all. Because of this, former employee can even continue to have access to the services, which can even be detrimental to the company. A solution to this is single sign-on, as it offers a way for enterprises to integrate, to manage and even to revoke access from a centralized database.

However, as much as companies do want the various benefits of a single sign-on, they do not want to pass their credentials to third parties. Oracle provides such service, where the federated identity technology in its cloud service solves this very problem. What it does is it offers all advantages of single sign-on without any downside to it. So long as the directory service speaks SAML, which is Security Assertion Markup Language. This technology can accept assertions from a customer directory service and then authenticate the user. When some person gets removed from the company directory, the Federated identity can enable them to be removed simultaneously from the cloud service.
Now, for an end user, this whole process irrespective of where authentication takes place, appears as if it is running within the network of the company. This smooth integration is quite unusual and important when hybrid clouds come into the picture.

3. Capabilities proof
It is all well and good for a cloud provider to talk on what security mechanisms it has in place, though it is more important that it can demonstrate the controls verification. Security certifications are actually one method of doing this, where they offer easy and objective way for enterprises to compare providers and also to ensure that the provider who is selected does meet their needs. In regulated industries, like financial services or healthcare industries, it is very important that the provider complies with the regulatory needs of the enterprise. Certification is a proof that the provider does meet the requirements.
For some of the enterprises, compliance is kind of difficult for achieving on their own. For them, it is more critical for choosing a cloud provider which can deliver such service. Sometimes, a vast portfolio of regulatory frameworks is not enough or does not provide the level of certainty and the desired proof. In such situations, it is crucial to know at first if the cloud provider allows the customers to perform an audit or a penetration test, and under what situations, any time, only during certain point of time, unannounced and so on.

4. Options of integration
After you have evaluated the data criticality which is being moved and have set the risk criteria for comparing cloud providers, it is not time for determining what degree of customization and integration is needed, with more inclination towards a private managed cloud, the preferred solution.
You need to know that a cloud does not exist in a vacuum, and applications that run in the cloud may interact with other cloud based apps in different kinds of clouds along with non cloud based applications. Some of these data might be housed on-premise, some in a managed private cloud and some in a public cloud. So, no matter how simple it many seem to appear, to determine how it can fit within the IT infrastructure and the enterprise is the most important consideration. Also, equally important is the connections through which cloud based data would travel. At this point of time, do not overlook the security options which are associated with network-to-network connections.

5. Breadth of information
Cloud services can be offered to customers in multiple industries, which can include Retail, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Financial Services and Government.Due to this, new expertise has been developed in security and compliance from which all customers can benefit. For instance, to have economies of scale, common security controls within industries have been looked upon. Almost 75 to 80 percent of controls are similar across industries, and these became the baseline control in cloud offerings.This consistency in controls can allow for automation of the operational management and for monitoring the controls.

Five things to look for in a Cloud Provider when it is a question of security

- Internal technology services which lack resources, efficiencies and rigor are main candidates for the cloud

- You need to know the business as well as the regulatory needs which are around the data and the needs to be moved to the cloud

- You need to know the security and the privacy commitments of your cloud provider along with the responsibilities you retain

Cloud computing is actually changing the way companies do business worldwide. Technology has been a facilitators for a long period of time for business processes, so cloud computing is usual in this matter. There are few technologies, which has been adapted as quickly or have had the wide reading ripple effects of a cloud computing.

There are many things which fuel up cloud growth from its ease of use to its low initial investment. But a key driver for enterprises has been the method cloud computing offers technology services in a less expensive and a more efficient manner than it had previously been possible.  This can allow enterprises to focus on the core business and can leave the management of IT services to cloud providers who are experts in technology services.

While this easy access to information offers lots of benefits, it even introduces many concerns. Security and such related operational risks do rank among the top concerns for companies which consider to move to the cloud.

Security is a main concern with most of the new updated technology, but by their nature, cloud computing impacts not just what is in the cloud but also the security of the entire enterprise. If the cloud is the weak link in the security, the entire enterprise would definitely feel the vulnerability.

Data security other than privacy, compliance and risk need to be the primary focus for any enterprise which has a cloud computing component of its IT services. A company needs to know the criticality and the sensitivity of the details which are managed within a cloud service and then, ensure that the cloud provider has the appropriate controls to protect it properly.

Move of the 'Right' Apps to the 'Right' Cloud

An inherent part of building a cloud ecosystem means you actually allow your cloud provider to be a custodian of your important and crucial details. It depends on the provider capabilities that an enterprise would improve the entire security compared to what it might, if not, resource on their own. So, what does an enterprise need to do for ensuring that it is getting the precise security that it requires from a cloud ecosystem?

First and foremost, it is crucial to move the right kind of technology services and details to the right kind of cloud. The very first query to ask whenever one is developing a cloud strategy is not about the technology at all. It is " which business problems can be solved by moving them to the cloud?"

Before you consider what kind of cloud service you would use, you need to evaluate what technology services would offer you the most instant benefit when moved to the cloud.

What is a prime candidate for the cloud? You need to look for internal technology services which lack rigor, efficiencies or resources. There are some applications which will be better maintained in the cloud, like the enterprise which do not have the resources to maintain or to secure that application. To send these services to the cloud can reduce the risk tremendously and can even deliver a more robust solution than its development in-house.

It is very essential to understand the business and their regulatory needs around the data which a buyer needs to move to the cloud for a cloud strategy to be successful. In knowing these needs would narrow the cloud choices in initial stage. Later, during the vendor selection procedure, it would enable you to be clear on your own expectations and your enterprise's needs, which can even allow you to evaluate each vendor as per their own merits. You need to keep in mind that not all of the cloud providers are similar in the security services that they offer, and so you need to know your needs and map them to the provider's capabilities which can ensure that you select the best fit service for your risk tolerance and regulatory requirements.

It is quite interesting to know that the cloud providers themselves are varied in their own weaknesses, strengths other than their overall quality. It is crucial to start with the kind of cloud which can best suit your needs before you evaluate the vendors.

When you are done with your assessment needs, you can look for the available cloud offering kinds. There are very less general cloud kinds which you can consider like private on-premise, Software as a services which run in a public cloud and manage private cloud. Each has their own set of merits, demerits and such associated security implications. A private on-premise cloud is designed for exclusive use of one organization. It resides on-premise in the data center and is entirely controlled and even managed by internal IT.

About SPTECH Services

We are a recognized entity in the area of providing end-to-end engineering services to storage vendors in the enterprise and consumer storage solutions domain. We have extensive experience with building solutions for storage network management, storage systems and software, and storage devices. We have delivered various long term assignments managing and delivering complex products.

To leverage our storage expertise, we also work with our clients to understand their setup, applications and their expectations from cloud computing. We do detailed analysis and projections to help the client decide about a move to cloud computing. If a positive decision to move to cloud computing is made, we help with application architecture, development, deployment and testing. We believe in incremental innovation, process oriented execution and delivering compelling solutions.

Since the mobile and wireless technologies are moving to the forefront in a world of seamless enterprise usage and exponential device growth; SPTECH, aims to become a one stop shop for wireless application vendors. Having its eye set on being one of the fastest growing units, we aim to keep hand in hand with the fast paced wireless industry, where technology changes occur almost every other day.

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