Skeuomorphism usually means retaining existing design cues in something new that doesn’t actually need them. However, the concept of skeuomorphism can be thought of as relating more broadly to applying existing patterns to new technologies that, in fact, cry out for new approaches.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Gordon Haff, Senior Cloud Strategy Marketing and Evangelism Manager at Red Hat, will discuss why containers should be paired with new architectural practices such as microservices rather than mimicking legacy server virtualization workflows and architectures.

read more

There is little doubt that Big Data solutions will have an increasing role in the Enterprise IT mainstream over time. 8th International Big Data Expo, co-located with 17th International Cloud Expo – to be held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA – has announced its Call for Papers is open.
As advanced data storage, access and analytics technologies aimed at handling high-volume and/or fast moving data all move center stage, aided by the cloud computing boom, Big Data Expo is the single most effective event for you to learn how to use you own enterprise data – processed in the cloud – most effectively to drive value for your business.
A recent Gartner report predicts that the volume of enterprise data overall will increase by a phenomenal 650% over the next five years. Help plant your flag in the fast-expanding business opportunity that is Big Data: submit your speaking proposal today!

read more

(c)iStock.com/Igor Kirillov

Cloud usage has grown rapidly in the UK, with adoption rates shooting up over 60% in the last four years, according to the latest figures from Vanson Bourne. Yet there is an ongoing problem with a lack of clarity and understanding around cloud policies, and decision making within enterprises at all levels.

This confusion comes from the fact the IT department and the rest of the company have very differing conceptions about what cloud policy is and what it should be.

What policy?

Recent research from Trustmarque found that more than half (56%) of office workers said their organisation didn’t have a cloud usage policy, while a further 28% didn’t even know if one was in operation. Despite not knowing their employer’s cloud policy, nearly 1 in 2 office workers (46%) said they still used cloud applications at work. Furthermore, 1 in 5 cloud users admitted to uploading sensitive company information to file sharing and personal cloud storage applications.

By ignoring cloud policies, employees are also contributing to cloud sprawl. More than one quarter of cloud users (27%), said they had downloaded cloud applications they no longer use. Moreoever, with 40% of cloud users admitting to knowingly using cloud applications that haven’t been sanctioned or provided by IT, it’s clear that employee behaviour isn’t going to change. So, company policies must change instead – which often is easier said than done.

On the one hand, cloud applications help to increase productivity for many enterprises, and on the other, the behaviour of some staff is unquestionably risky. The challenge is maintaining an IT environment that supports employees’ changing working practices, but at the same time is highly secure.

Circumventing IT

One of the key findings from the research centred on who employees will circumvent IT to create the cloud they want. Employees know what they are doing is not sanctioned by their organisation and yet still engage in that behaviour. This is generally not due to malicious intent though, and it’s important to recognise that this is. Rather, this approach is because staff see the potential benefits for themselves or their organisation that cloud cab bring and security restrictions mean their productivity is hampered – so employees look for a way around those barriers.

It is not in the interest of any business to constrain the impulse of employees to try and be more efficient. Instead, businesses should be looking for the best way to channel that instinct while improving security. There is a real opportunity for those businesses that can marry the desires of employees to use cloud productively, but with the appropriate security precautions in place, to get the very best out of cloud for the enterprise.

Empower users  

For many companies, the ideal solution is to move towards an integrated cloud adoption/security lifecycle that connects measurement, risk/benefit assessment and policy creation, policy enforcement, education and app promotion; resulting in a positive feedback loop reinforcing both cloud adoption and good security practices. 

This means an organisation will gain visibility into employees’ activity in the cloud so that they can allow their favourite applications to be used, while blocking specific risky activity. This is far more effective than a blanket ban as it doesn’t compromise the productive instincts of employees, but instead encourages good behaviour and promotes risk-aware adoption. In order for this change to be effected, IT departments need to alter their mind set and become the brokers of services such as cloud, rather than the builder of constricting systems. By providing cloud-enabled self-service, single sign-on and improved identity lifecycle management, organisations can empower users while they can simultaneously simplify adoption and reduce risk.

When staff are ignorant of cloud policies, the risk of possibility of data loss, account hijacking and other cloud-related security threats is significantly raised. That ignorance, is not born of maliciousness, but by and large the motivation is to become more productive. As a result, instead of having them square off against each other, companies instead need to find a way to blend productivity and security. By gaining visibility into cloud usage and behaviour, companies can embrace the best of both worlds.

(c)iStock.com/YinYang

It has been nearly five years since Vivek Kundra, then CIO for the US federal government, announced a “cloud first” approach to federal IT. Now, a new report from Forbes Insights and Microsoft argues there is a tipping point for government agencies.

Curt Kolcun, vice president of US public sector at Microsoft, notes: “Initial concerns around moving to the cloud are being countered by real-world government success stories.” In other words, worries about data sovereignty, privacy and security are slowly being dissipated.

The report comes with interesting real life examples, including the state of Alabama, whose secretary of information technology Brunson White called cloud “transformative.” Stephen DePooter, CIO for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, said the agency “will be going to the cloud whenever it can.”

The research found that, primarily, the journey to the cloud by most government agencies gets off to a slow start; email, or office productivity software – low risk migration paths – are naturally the first to move over. Increasingly, the rise of authorised data security standards and processes, such as the Federal Risk and Authorisation Management Program (FedRAMP), help ease the burden for government execs. Microsoft, HP and Amazon are among the list of accredited vendors.

DePooter notes five key areas where the cloud has been able to benefit his agency: speed – outlining and documentation of needs, training and implementation took 16 weeks from start to finish – security; scalability – spinning up additional resources as fast as the service level agreement allows – interoperability; and cost-effectiveness.

“What was really great about this is the way it can be configured,” he added. “If you want to change the look, or design a new report, it’s really easy. To make any kind of change in the past meant needing technical development and that took us into IT governance procedures. But now that functionality is at that user’s fingertips – it no longer requires high end, technical development.”

Back in July, IBM, alongside AT&T and KPMG, won a contract to help move the state of California to the cloud. CloudTech spoke with George Cruser, general manager infrastructure for IBM Global Technology Services. He said: “What we’ve agreed in the contract is to make sure that the department has the expertise to run it if they elect to run it. One of the requirements was they would have a full understanding as opposed to pure outsourcing.”

When asked whether other states would follow suit, Cruser noted: “We’re working with a couple of states who are very much interested in the concept. Everybody is trying to figure out – how do we get into cloud safely and securely? California is clearly a leader in showing they’ve essentially built a private cloud for multi-tenant use.”

You can read the full Forbes/Microsoft report here.

Malicious agents are moving faster than the speed of business. Even more worrisome, most companies are relying on legacy approaches to security that are no longer capable of meeting current threats. In the modern cloud, threat diversity is rapidly expanding, necessitating more sophisticated security protocols than those used in the past or in desktop environments. Yet companies are falling for cloud security myths that were truths at one time but have evolved out of existence.

read more

The OpenStack cloud operating system includes Trove, a database abstraction layer. Rather than applications connecting directly to a specific type of database, they connect to Trove, which in turn connects to one or more specific databases. One target database is Postgres Plus Cloud Database, which includes its own RESTful API. Trove was originally developed around MySQL, whose interfaces are significantly less complicated than those of the Postgres cloud database.
In his session at 16th Cloud Expo, Fred Dalrymple, product manager for EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus Cloud Database, will address the issues encountered in using Trove to abstract a complicated cloud database, including gaining access to database functionality not native in the standard abstraction, providing portability for the database interface into non-OpenStack contexts, and preventing the database from being commoditized by abstraction.

read more

The IoT market is on track to hit $7.1 trillion in 2020, according to an IDC’s study. Are we ready for this massive demand? How can we deal with the challenges?
Some firms choose to take no action by claiming they are too busy with what they are doing. Some organizations blindly jump into it with no thinking or planning. Some companies opt to take a bold stance to bet on something immature. Needless to say, all these attempts are highly risky and naive. What is mandatory is an overarching and adaptive approach to effectively handle the rapid changes and exponential growth.

read more