Today's Guest Blog comes to us courtesy of Dante Orsini, SVP of Business Development at iland.

Taking advantage of all that the cloud has to offer is no small order. That's because extending your on-premise data center resources into the cloud completely changes how you scale performance, assure reliability, secure data and applications, and manage the costs of your day-to-day operations.

For many mid-market organizations and Software-as-a-Service companies, meeting stringent compliance and security requirements proves the toughest of these challenges. Developing or acquiring in-house security expertise is often difficult and costly, and also diverts resources away from the company's core business.

The key to securely extending your operations into the cloud quickly and reliably is to build on proven technology. That means understanding exactly what a cloud platform includes, what costs extra and what you'll need to do to ensure it optimally meets your business and technical requirements. Working with the right integrated cloud platform and Application Programming Interface (API) allows you to leverage the cloud the way you want while simplifying your cloud experience:

Quickly implement enterprise-class security:Gartner predicts that through 2020, 95 percent of cloud security failures will be the customer's fault. More than anything, that figure speaks to the fact many cloud providers deliver raw infrastructure and leave their customers fully responsible for making it work correctly and securely. Further, it implies many cloud customers do not even know they are at risk. Whether you are building or delivering applications, using a cloud platform with integrated advanced security can give you a head start in protecting your business. With the right platform, developers should be able to immediately secure applications with features such as dual factor authentication, IPSEC and SSL-VPN, antivirus/malware, intrusion prevention, encrypted storage and backups, and more.

Leverage advanced management capabilities:In addition to advanced security, evaluate cloud platforms based on their native management capabilities, including performance and cost monitoring, compliance reporting, resource management, backup, and disaster recovery. When these capabilities are integrated with security on the same platform, you can easily manage and protect every facet of your operations.

Improve profitability through extensive visibility:Perhaps one of the biggest complaints about cloud is that it doesn't offer the same transparency IT is accustomed to from an on-premise environment. When choosing a cloud provider, consider whether their platform allows you to monitor and manage performance at every level -globally and all the way down to individual Applications and VMs. Advanced cost controls and analytics can enable company leaders to accurately assess and manage costs. And access to rich performance and security data allows you to more easily prove to regulators and your customers that you comply with their strictest requirements.

Interface with cloud on your own terms:No matter how secure, integrated and transparent a cloud is, you will not be successful unless you are able to access its functionality in a way that best fits your business needs -without being a cloud expert. For many, that means relying on a management console that gives you access to all the cloud's features in a single pane of glass. However, in some cases, DevOps, IT Ops and even managed service providers need to programmatically access the features of a cloud via an API. Make sure a provider gives you the flexibility to choose how you interface with its cloud platform.

Use the language of your choice:Choose an API based on ReST (Representational State Transfer) backed by language-specific software development kits (SDKs) such as Python, Java, and Golang. This gives you the flexibility to use the development language of your choice to accelerate time-to-market while minimizing your development costs.

iland understands that you need to be confident in your cloud solution. That's why we deliver a cloud platform with innovation, intelligent management, and advanced security built in.

Our Enterprise Cloud Services -Advanced Security platform is designed to deliver a hassle-free cloud that doesn't compromise the security of your data or applications. Its ReST-based API enables developers to easily access cloud data, deploy workloads, and integrate the iland cloud into their own management tools.

Overall, ECS-AS is easy to use, bringing operation management and security to a single, all-in-one platform. And you'll enjoy the peace of mind knowing your operations are running on a world-class backend that is built on proven iland and Cisco technology.

Meet with an iland cloud specialist and learn how you can experience all the benefits of the public cloud with proven reliability and simplified advanced security.

Dante Orsini has more than 20 years of business development experience across enterprise software, managed services and technology consulting fields. He's regarded as a thought leader in cloud infrastructure, working closely with customers and partners to anticipate and address global market needs.