Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Info Services Powered by Cloud and Big Data

There are many strategies and possibilities when using Big Data technologies to reveal new business insights and the next generation of information services.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Mike Peterson,VP of Platforms and Data Architecture at NeuStar, will discuss how to leverage cloud and Big Data technologies to offer significant value to enterprise and carrier clients.
Mike Peterson is VP of Platforms and Data Architecture at NeuStar Inc.

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Security Automation Connects Silos

A wealth of security information exists in our networks from a variety of sources – policy servers, firewalls, switches, networking infrastructure, defensive components, and more. Unfortunately, most of that information is locked away in separate silos due to differences in products and technologies, as well as by companies’ organizational boundaries. Further complicating the issue, information is stored in different formats and communicated over different protocols.
An open standard from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) offers the capability to centralize communication and coordination of information to enable security automation. The Interface for Metadata Access Points – IF-MAP for short – is like Facebook for network and security technology, allowing real-time sharing of information across a heterogeneous environment.

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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Pretending Your Data Isn’t Relational

The last decade saw an explosion of web applications and mobile devices resulting in overwhelming volumes of data. Traditional database designs from 30 years ago have not kept pace and cannot scale to handle these large data sets and concurrent workloads. This has tempted some developers to throw away the relational database and build on one of the NoSQL data stores that seem easier to code with and promise to scale. But for most business applications the data is relational! Transactions and consistency matter! And so begins the journey to reinvent relational capabilities in many applications built on top of a NoSQL data store.
What if there was a way to scale a relational, ACID-compliant database with no limits, one that offered not only SQL access, but also a JSON document interface that was able to take advantage of the underlying relational schema?

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Six Trends Driving Workers to the Cloud

Automattic, the hosting company for WordPress.com servers, knows the future is now. They have 123 people that operate like self-employed workers, taking advantage of cloud and mobile apps to communicate across 26 countries and 94 cities. Everyone works from home. Here are six trends driving us out of our offices and into the cloud.
The fact that you are reading this is testament to the increased buzz surrounding SaaS/Cloud computing, a buzz that was absent in previous incarnations of the technology (notably ASP during the 1990s). Whether the buzz is driving vendors to produce applications specific for the cloud, or improved applications are feeding the fervor, is a mute point. The fact is that in order to drive a greater usage of the cloud, applications written specifically for the cloud need to be freely available. Advances in technology, the availability of open-source code, and modern platforms such as AWS, are fueling the development of leading-edge applications. With innovations in distribution like the Apple app store, users are now connected with these applications like never before.

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StratoGen Adds New York VMware Hosting, Offers Discount

StratoGen today announced the immediate availability of its latest cloud location in New York, promoting it with an offer of a 33% discount for clients that sign up before the end of November 2012.

“We are really excited to bring our unique VMware hosting solutions to the East Coast.” said Karl Robinson, Vice President of Sales. “Everything we do is driven by the needs of our clients and this expansion is no different.  We built the platform to extremely high standards to ensure our clients’ business critical applications perform exceptionally well and are available 100% of the time. Our no compromise approach meant utilizing top end NetApp SANs and HP Blade systems to give the kind of performance that will leave others reeling.”

StratoGen cloud locations offer an enterprise grade service allowing customers to self-manage their hosted VMware infrastructure through the StratoGen control panel. In addition to deploying elastic servers or VMware appliances; clients can use the control panel to integrate with their local systems (including corporate authentication), build out complex networks, firewalls and even site to site VPNs.

StratoGen also holds SSAE 16 Type II data center certification and ISO 27001 security credentials.


Bad Cybercrime Law Not Unique to US

A disturbing new law called the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 was recently passed by both houses of the Philippines Congress and signed into law by President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. It’s disturbing because it theoretically allows criminal prosecution for people making “libelous” comments on Twitter and also for those who retweet them.

This bad new Philippine law is not unique among the democracies of the world. It simply follows a series of bad laws that have been proposed, with some passing, in the United States, for example. Provisions of the Patriot Act, the Obama Administration’s International Strategy for Cyberspace, and the egregious SOPA and PIPA proposals are all part of this pattern.

Sunog!! (Fire!!)
In the Philippines, a predictable firestorm of protest erupted from many voices from the country’s vocal media, some politicians have chimed in, President Aquino has since backtracked, and the law is now under review by the nation’s Supreme Court. The Congress may also amend it before the court would take any action.

I don’t have the time to write the 5 million or so words necessary to cover all the backstories in Philippine politics and constitutional battles. But a key thing to know is that Article III of the country’s constitution (passed in 1987 after the fall of Ronald Reagan’s good friend, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos) contains a Bill of Rights, including the right of free speech, that is quite similar to the Bill of Rights enshrined in the US Constitution.

The Philippines Cybercrime law started out innocently enough, as a lower-house measure to punish illegal hacking into computer systems. It’s critical that the country has strong laws against this type of cybercrime; it must instill global confidence in the security of its IT infrastructure as it continues to build a massive BPO industry (now at $12 billion in revenue and 500,000+ employees). Provisions against cybersex were also included in the original version of the bill.

But onerous language against alleged libel and its criminalization was inserted into the bill once it reached the Senate. An original House sponsor later admitted she didn’t read the amended version, and Aquino signed it into law, apparently not reading it either or not fully considering its consequences.

I admire the Philippines struggle to achieve a more fair-minded democracy, in a region in which it’s surrounded by Communists, religious and secular authoritarians, and a neighbor that metes out stiff prison sentences for joking about its king.

Perhaps as the country’s politicians sort out this Cybercrime mess in their own unique, circuitous, sometimes entertaining way, they can set an example that their American counterparts can follow.

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Bad Cybercrime Law Not Unique to US

A disturbing new law called the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 was recently passed by both houses of the Philippines Congress and signed into law by President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. It’s disturbing because it theoretically allows criminal prosecution for people making “libelous” comments on Twitter and also for those who retweet them.

This bad new Philippine law is not unique among the democracies of the world. It simply follows a series of bad laws that have been proposed, with some passing, in the United States, for example. Provisions of the Patriot Act, the Obama Administration’s International Strategy for Cyberspace, and the egregious SOPA and PIPA proposals are all part of this pattern.

Sunog!! (Fire!!)
In the Philippines, a predictable firestorm of protest erupted from many voices from the country’s vocal media, some politicians have chimed in, President Aquino has since backtracked, and the law is now under review by the nation’s Supreme Court. The Congress may also amend it before the court would take any action.

I don’t have the time to write the 5 million or so words necessary to cover all the backstories in Philippine politics and constitutional battles. But a key thing to know is that Article III of the country’s constitution (passed in 1987 after the fall of Ronald Reagan’s good friend, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos) contains a Bill of Rights, including the right of free speech, that is quite similar to the Bill of Rights enshrined in the US Constitution.

The Philippines Cybercrime law started out innocently enough, as a lower-house measure to punish illegal hacking into computer systems. It’s critical that the country has strong laws against this type of cybercrime; it must instill global confidence in the security of its IT infrastructure as it continues to build a massive BPO industry (now at $12 billion in revenue and 500,000+ employees). Provisions against cybersex were also included in the original version of the bill.

But onerous language against alleged libel and its criminalization was inserted into the bill once it reached the Senate. An original House sponsor later admitted she didn’t read the amended version, and Aquino signed it into law, apparently not reading it either or not fully considering its consequences.

I admire the Philippines struggle to achieve a more fair-minded democracy, in a region in which it’s surrounded by Communists, religious and secular authoritarians, and a neighbor that metes out stiff prison sentences for joking about its king.

Perhaps as the country’s politicians sort out this Cybercrime mess in their own unique, circuitous, sometimes entertaining way, they can set an example that their American counterparts can follow.

read more

Seven Cool Ways To Enhance Your Trip To Cloud Expo Silicon Valley

These days Cloud is about more than efficiency – it transforms entire industries. That’s why thousands of enterprise IT professionals of every stripe will be converging in three weeks’ time at 11th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo Silicon Valley – co-located with 2nd International BigDataExpo. But to ensure that delegates’ time Nov 5-8 at the Santa Clara Convention Center is totally and utterly well spent, Cloud Expo has also ensured that there are multiple ways to enhance each and every of the days those professionals choose to invest in attending the event.

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NJVC® Introduces Cloudcuity™ AppDeployer to Create and Sell Software Apps

NJVC®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces CloudcuityTM AppDeployer, a new and innovative platform a s a service that allows developers to quickly create and publish software-as-a-service applications for sale in the cloud. Cloudcuity AppDeployer is part of the NJVC Cloudcuity portfolio of cloud offerings.

«Cloudcuity AppDeployer is a game changer for the software development industry,» said Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, NJVC Cloudcuity. «Cloudcuity AppDeployer offers an alternative to writing business applications from scratch the old slow and costly way. With Cloudcuity AppDeployer, developers and independent software vendors can start building applications for free, and potentially take enterprise-class software systems to market in weeks instead of years.»

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NJVC® Introduces Cloudcuity™ AppDeployer to Create and Sell Software Apps

NJVC®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces CloudcuityTM AppDeployer, a new and innovative platform a s a service that allows developers to quickly create and publish software-as-a-service applications for sale in the cloud. Cloudcuity AppDeployer is part of the NJVC Cloudcuity portfolio of cloud offerings.

«Cloudcuity AppDeployer is a game changer for the software development industry,» said Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, NJVC Cloudcuity. «Cloudcuity AppDeployer offers an alternative to writing business applications from scratch the old slow and costly way. With Cloudcuity AppDeployer, developers and independent software vendors can start building applications for free, and potentially take enterprise-class software systems to market in weeks instead of years.»

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