Securing your data used to be simpler (if not necessarily easy). You had IT infrastructure in your data center. You adopted security controls at all levels – from physical security, controlling who could enter the facility, up through the network and system, and application layers. IT security looked a lot like perimeter security in a building – the valuables are inside, the attackers are outside, so you have good walls and strong locks and monitor what passes through.
The cloud explodes this model. Today, your data is in your own facility, at a managed hosting provider’s data center, and at your cloud provider. And while you’ve got a specific set of servers and network connections at the hosting provider – you can even go see your servers if you want to! – in the cloud you’ve got virtual machines that vary in number and location within the cloud environment. In a dynamic, autoscaling cloud the number of VMs you’re using may change hour to hour. And wait, there’s more – your employees, customers, and partners are accessing that data not just on IT-approved workstations but on iPads, Android phones, and probably Google Glass before long with the rise of BYOD.
Archivo mensual: septiembre 2013
Data Everywhere – Distributed Data Security in the Cloud
Securing your data used to be simpler (if not necessarily easy). You had IT infrastructure in your data center. You adopted security controls at all levels – from physical security, controlling who could enter the facility, up through the network and system, and application layers. IT security looked a lot like perimeter security in a building – the valuables are inside, the attackers are outside, so you have good walls and strong locks and monitor what passes through.
The cloud explodes this model. Today, your data is in your own facility, at a managed hosting provider’s data center, and at your cloud provider. And while you’ve got a specific set of servers and network connections at the hosting provider – you can even go see your servers if you want to! – in the cloud you’ve got virtual machines that vary in number and location within the cloud environment. In a dynamic, autoscaling cloud the number of VMs you’re using may change hour to hour. And wait, there’s more – your employees, customers, and partners are accessing that data not just on IT-approved workstations but on iPads, Android phones, and probably Google Glass before long with the rise of BYOD.
Aspera Drive Offers Sharing, Collaboration Platform For Big Data
Aspera, Inc. today announced the beta availability of Aspera Drive, their new unified sharing and collaboration platform for big data, combining complete desktop explorer integration with performance and ease of use, transparent support for on–premise and cloud storage, and with security, management and access control.
The Aspera platform allows for transfer and synchronization of files sets of any size and any number with maximum speed and robustness at any distance, with the full access control, privacy and security of Aspera technology. Its architecture allows the platform to be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid model.
Aspera Drive brings remote file browsing, transfer, synchronization, and package sending and receiving to the desktop, browser and mobile device. A backend architecture and API allows for fine-grained, centralized control over content access, security and bandwidth, regardless of content storage location – on premise or on cloud.
SYS-CON Launches WebRTC Journal
SYS-CON Media has launched WebRTC Journal on Ulitzer.com featuring over 160 original articles, news stories, features, and blog entries. WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is an open source project supported by Google, Mozilla and Opera that aims to enable browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing without plugins. Its mission is “To enable rich, high quality, RTC applications to be developed in the browser via simple Javascript APIs and HTML5.”
Follow WebRTC Journal on Twitter at @WebRTCSummit.
The U.S. Open Tennis Tournament and Cloud Technology
Sporting events are periodic events that suddenly demand lots of information technology resources and a good example where cloud technology can be applied effectively.
At VMWorld, a marketing executive from a technology company asked me what kinds of workloads were inappropriate for the cloud with today’s technology. Core banking and manufacturing execution systems immediately came to mind. Banks do not want their security compromised, and manufacturing plants do not want any downtime. Current cloud technology is not ideally suited for these applications.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley | Ceph: Distributed Storage for the Cloud
Ceph is an open source distributed object store, network block device, and file system designed for reliability, performance, and scalability. With an advanced placement algorithm, active storage nodes, and peer-to-peer gossip protocols, Ceph scales from terabytes to exabytes with no single point of failure. Through native integrations with OpenStack and Apache CloudStack, Ceph provides a complete object and block storage solution for cloud data. Instead of using scale-up storage appliances, Ceph is a software solution that works on commodity hardware.
In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, Greg Farnum, a Software Developer at Inktank, will discuss the Ceph architecture, its current status, and plans for future development. Attendees will also learn how Ceph integrates with major cloud platforms to provide storage for public and private cloud deployments.
GENBAND Acquires fring
GENBAND, a leading developer of multimedia and cloud communications solutions, today announced it has acquired fring’s Over-the-Top (OTT) mobile IP communications service, which works across all major smartphone platforms. The acquisition of the fring consumer multimedia IP communications solutions expands GENBAND’s cloud portfolio for the consumer market. Through an easy-to-use, white-label service that includes capabilities for mobile group video chat, 2-way video chat, voice-only calls and text chat, GENBAND’s integration of the fring solutions empowers service providers and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to compete with OTT solutions.
CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey on the strength of the PaaS market
It’s been a very good first half of the year for Java-based platform as a service (PaaS) provider CloudBees. The Belgium-based cloud company reported a revenue increase of 148% in the first two quarters of 2013, as well as a 135% increase in its customer base.
The news, which CEO Sacha Labourey describes as “definitely a great step for us”, could also be seen as more affirmation of the sharp rise in the PaaS market.
Almost every recent research paper you come across will mention it.
Market Monitor, a service of 451 Research, recently forecast that PaaS would be the fastest growing area of cloud computing, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41% through 2016. Cloud overall would have a CAGR of 36%.
TechNavio, in May, put the CAGR at near 50%, with their beancounters expecting the global PaaS market to hit $6.45bn by 2016 and …
What Do All these SMAC Developments Mean?
I see digital transformation spinning off many different business trends and technology waves. Consumers want to consume media on mobile devices. This in turn drives tablet sales, as most media is easier to view on tablets. Tablets and other mobile devices encourage and promote the digitization of customer engagements and produce more data (code halos) that enables new business models to emerge based on a strategic use of big data analytics tied to marketing and commerce platforms.
The more data and commerce that flows through mobile devices, the more companies focus on mobile marketing and sales channels. I see no end to the popularity of mobile devices, so this trend is guaranteed to continue. The question for us now is how this will impact traditional sales and marketing channels and strategies.
Africa Leaders Emerge from IT Research
At more than 11.5 million square miles, Africa is almost four times the size of the continental United States, and its population now exceeds 1 billion people. At the Tau Institute, we’ve been able to survey 22 of the 50+ African nations, including four among the northern Arabic nations, and 18 that are generally described as Sub-Saharan. We categorize all of them under “Africa,” following a precedent set by the African Union (formerly the Organization of African Unity), which counts all of Africa in its membership with the exception of Morocco.
The Top 10 in the group we’ve surveyed are Uganda, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Mozambique, Egypt, South Africa, and Zambia.
How does Uganda emerge as the leader? Why doesn’t South Africa rate higher? And where’s Nigeria?
Our Method
As I explained in my recent article about our Middle East rankings, we seek to develop a relative, «pound-for-pound» ranking that can uncover diamonds in the rough and more important, show well a nation is doing with respect to its available resources.
We integrate several technology and social factors into our algorithms — on the one hand including average bandwidth, access to broadband, number of dataservers, on the other hand including income disparity, perception of corruption, human development, and the local cost of living.
This results in rankings that show how well the nations of the world are doing compared to what they already have, with the dynamic that the top performers will continue to outpace the laggards.
We will have another major update at Cloud Expo in Silicon Valley the week of November 4. We are also working on developing regional and city rankings, a massive undertaking for us that won’t be complete until sometime next year.
Meanwhile, to answer the above questions:
Uganda scores well primarily because of what it has achieved in the face of one of the lowest per-capita income levels in the world. It has provided access to 13% of its citizens, actually the second-highest ratio of access to income in the world (trailing only Kenya). Its income disparity level, while high, is lower than many of its neighbors. It has a relatively high average bandwidth speed, given its income. Integrate all of our factors, and Uganda emerges as the true diamond in the rough in Africa.
No one familiar with South Africa today needs to be told that the country remains unfulfilled in its potential. Income disparity that remains among the highest in the world means benefits of IT are not flowing comprehensively through the nation. The country is in the lower quartile for Internet access and broadband connectivity vs. income. Nonetheless, South Africa does still crack our Top 10 for Africa. We don’t factor the sheer size of a nation’s economy, but of course South Africa’s continues to make it an attractive venue for businesses and investors.
Less can probably be said about Nigeria, which has well-known problems accompanying (and perhaps exacerbated by) its oil wealth. In our rankings, it comes up 12th among the African nations, between Tanzania and Malawi. Its large population and size of its economy continue to make it attractive. Separately, it may serve as a model for our incipient efforts to look at specific regions (ie, Lagos State).
Conversations
A major thrust of our work is to identify and explore those countries that may not come immediately to mind. To that end, our rankings can be used to start conversations about the top countries I’ve listed above. Ghana is a country that has received a lot of recent attention (including that of President Obama), and its official use of English makes it intuitively attractive to many. However, also in West Africa, French-speaking Senegal should not be overlooked.
Committed to Non-Violence
As I noted in my earlier piece, our Institute is small, headquartered on a former liberal-arts college campus in Northern Illinois, and in Metro Manila, Philippines. We have a few selected advisors in Africa.
We are also committed unequivocally to peaceful means of solving all problems. This can be a difficult point of view to adhere to, but having seen enough violence on small scales and larger scales, I for one take the view that no further human progress is possible through violent means of any type. Violence has been a great scourge to Africa and the world up to the present day. We’re committed to our research and applying it in a non-political way that (with hope springing eternal) can improve economies and lives.