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MANILA - Symantec Corp. on Tuesday assured companies that computing on the cloud is both safe and reliable amid concerns raised by Microsoft Corp. on customers' data privacy.

In an interview, Symantec Philippines systems engineering manager Richard Velasco said Symantec leverages on Software as a Service (SaaS) expertise to provide companies with solutions that match business objectives to deliver maximum benefits. He said the company invests approximately 15 percent of annual revenue into research and development to ensure the quality of its products and services.

"Our cloud strategy allows companies to work with Symantec in implementing any cloud storage deployment model which suits their specific requirements," he told abs-cbnNEWS.com.

Velasco said Symantec's Online Backup Services offer reliable data protection via multiple, expertly managed, secure, and reliable SAS-70 type II certified data centers. To help ensure data is kept confidential, he said all data is encrypted with a 256 bit AES encryption algorithm using an encryption key that is protected by a customer specified private passphrase.

"Only the customer and an optional third party escrow service have access to the passphrase," he said.

Microsoft recently released a "white paper" this month that said shifting to software being hosted online as services in the Internet "cloud" brings enormous economic potential as well as serious questions about protecting data. It said companies should know where their data is sitting in the cloud and be guaranteed that they dictate who accesses it and when.

"We want to take the initiative in regard to our position on privacy in the cloud," Microsoft senior director of privacy strategy Brendon Lynch told AFP.

The cloud computing trend gained momentum during the economic crisis, letting businesses save money by essentially renting applications hosted online instead of buying, installing and maintaining software on company machines.

Microsoft has responded to the trend with "client plus cloud" offerings that combine traditional packaged software with features hosted as services online.

"The next generation of cloud computing has enormous potential to create new jobs and economic growth," Lynch said. "Cloud computing is a very significant change; it provides unprecedented scalability and flexibility."

Consumers and businesses need to be assured that their online data is guarded by "robust" privacy policies and infrastructures safe from intruders, according to Microsoft.

Cloud computing typically requires companies hosting services to have data centers in various countries and time zones, raising challenges of dealing with varying regimes, police agencies, and laws, Lynch said.

Velasco said Symantec's latest Cloud Storage solution, Symantec FileStore, has set the new industry benchmark* in performance scalability for cloud storage solutions, far exceeding the previous #1 published result by NetApp.

He said he expects more applications and services to be delivered via the cloud, especially as the hybrid environment matures.

"In fact, we recommend that potential users move IT services to a cloud computing model in a phased, planned approach while carefully considering their deployment model, along with potential challenges," he said.

Symantec’s cloud storage strategy is three-fold:
- Deliver Symantec hosted services for securing and managing information for consumers and enterprises.
- Provide Symantec infrastructure software and professional services to enterprises and service providers building massively scalable and highly automated cloud computing environments.
- Optimize Symantec software and hosted services to enable customers to derive maximum value from their architecture through innovative hybrid deployment models.

"Symantec will continue to bring together an ecosystem of products, services, and partners that will help businesses secure and manage their information. We’ve been integrating new and acquired technologies into the Symantec portfolio to make our solutions stronger and more innovative. We are committed to continue doing this in 2010," Velasco said.