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.

What role does security play in cloud adoption?

Security issues are almost always top of mind for C-level stakeholders, both for service providers offering cloud services as well as organizations consuming them. Customers are increasingly seeking reassurance as to the protection of their data and measures to minimize any potential exposures. But in the longer term, cloud has the potential to be more secure than your average enterprise. What's needed is organizations like the Cloud Security Alliance to continue to create security frameworks and standards and sponsor outreach programs to bridge the security gap.

What is the most significant trend and its impact to security?

As we continue to see a trend towards enabling data centers to massively scale, the underlying network and software infrastructure will have to evolve to accommodate these economies of scale. Instead of security being an add-on, security will need to become an underlying element of the network and software architectures. That's something for network, software and security pundits to start working towards.