When I first discuss security in our Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) SOA course, I ask the class the following question: if a building had 20 exterior doors, and you locked 19 of them, would you be 95% secure? The answer to this 20-doors problem, of course, is absolutely not – you’d be 0% secure, since the bad guys are generally smart enough to find the unlocked door.

While the 20-doors problem serves to illustrate how important it is to secure your Services as part of a comprehensive enterprise IT strategy, the same lesson applies to enterprise Cybersecurity in general: applying inconsistent security policies across an organization leads to weaknesses hackers are only too happy to exploit.

However, when we’re talking about the entire enterprise, the Cybersecurity challenge is vastly more complex than simply securing all your software interfaces. Adequate security involves people, process, information, as well as technology. Getting …

Hostway has announced the Application Packaging Standard (APS) integration of its FlexCloud Servers (Infrastructure-as-a-Service, or IaaS), public-cloud hosting suite, in partnership with Parallels, a global leader in hosting and cloud services enablement and cross-platform solutions.
“In the rapidly evolving cloud services market, collaboration is the key to success. We’re thrilled to work with an industry leader like Parallels to give partners new ways to customize, bundle and seamlessly deliver the cloud applications and scalable infrastructure solutions customers demand,” said Todd Benjamin, Vice President of Hosted Services. “By enabling delivery of cloud services in a Parallels environment, Hostway provides ecosystem partners with a low risk, quick-to-market path to leverage their own channels to grow their businesses and offer an end-to-end solution.”

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Cloud storage provider Nirvanix has announced it has voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as expected, following the news earlier this month it was to shut down effective September 30.

The Nirvanix website paints a sorry picture this morning, with a company update put almost out of the way at the bottom of the page stating that bankruptcy was sought “in order to pursue all alternative to maximise value for its creditors while continuing its efforts to provide the best possible transition for customers.”

A statement on the website also details the efforts the company is taking to make sure its customers don’t lose out, either returning data or transitioning it to other providers. Nirvanix state they are “working hard to have resources available through October 15” to aid the transition process.

The CSP is working particularly closely with IBM, with a team from Big Blue on hand to …

Steve Wozniak says he’s “a fan” of the cloud, yet he’s still worried about what could happen if consumers and companies don’t back things up locally.

This may come as something of a surprise to the tech fraternity, for whom the general consensus was that Woz wasn’t too keen on cloud – to put it politely.

Last August, after a showing of the Mike Daisey monologue ‘The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’, Wozniak was quoted as telling a packed theatre audience: “I think cloud’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.”

Yet 12 months on the Apple co-founder, who is speaking at Apps World Europe in October, said that the position was “unclear” and things needed to be clarified.

“I am actually a fan,” Wozniak told CloudTech. “The advantages of the …

The focus shouldn’t be on threats, but rather on how those threats might change. At the technology level, this focus on change shifts the focus from a static “locked door” approach to security to the immune system metaphor I discussed last year. But there’s more to architecting for security than the technology. At the organizational level, effective EA will help resolve shadow IT issues which can lead to unmanaged security threats as an example. At the process level, EA will address social engineering challenges like phishing attacks. Securing your technology without applying a comprehensive, best practice approach to organizational and process security is tantamount to leaving some of your doors unlocked.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that Plexxi, provider of the first and only affinity-driven networking solution, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Plexxi is the creator of the industry’s first affinity-driven networking solution. Plexxi’s products – Plexxi Control and the Plexxi Switch – create an optimized network that dynamically helps applications perform better. The company has raised $48+ million in venture financing from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Northbridge Venture Partners. Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Plexxi also has offices in Nashua, N.H. and San Francisco.

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Around the world, market leaders in all industries have already deployed managed cloud services. Seeking to use business technology as a strategic lever to advance past their competition on multiple fronts, the senior executives at these leading companies are eager to learn about the next phase of cloud service development.
Worldwide spending on public IT cloud services will reach $47.4 billion in 2013 and will reach more than $107 billion by 2017, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Over the 2013–2017 forecast period, public cloud services will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.5 percent, that’s five times the IT industry growth as a whole.
As one of the key technologies enabling the industry-wide shift, cloud computing has played a crucial role in changing the way companies consume and use business technology. IDC believes that there are signs that cloud services are starting to shift into a the next phase — where the scale of cloud adoption will be much bigger and more user and solution driven.
In this phase of growth, cloud and the other 3rd Platform technologies — mobile internet, social, and Big Data — will become even more interdependent as they continue to drive growth and innovation across all industries that depend on business technology.

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The Google Cloud Platform lets you build applications and websites, store data, and analyze data on Google’s infrastructure. In his session at the 13th International Cloud Expo®, William Vambenepe, Sr. Product Manager for Big Data on Google Cloud Platform, will discuss Big Data Analytics with the Google Cloud Platform.
William Vambenepe is Sr. Product Manager for Big Data on Google Cloud Platform. Prior to joining Google he was an Architect at Oracle, and before Oracle he was a Distinguished Technologist at HP. Follow him on Twitter: @vambenepe
Cloud Expo® 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4-7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

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Today marks the opening of the online enrollment of government-approved health exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

As we previously explored, though the law has been a lightning rod for partisan controversy and bickering, one undeniably positive impact of the law has been its emphasis on utilizing burgeoning IT approaches for healthcare, including cloud computing, to enable more people to access insurance coverage.

As Andrea Tse of TheStreet.com reports:

“Within this budding area of lucrative business opportunities is a sweet spot garnering more and more attention thanks in part to a key, fast-approaching October healthcare implementation deadline mandated under President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA): healthcare cloud computing.”

Through the extension of insurance promised under Obamacare, healthcare IT innovation is set to accelerate, through the exchanges themselves, as well as the digitization of patient data for advanced levels of information sharing and collaboration between …