There’s an unwritten rule that says when describing a network architecture the perimeter of the data center is at the top. Similarly application data flow begins at the UI (presentation) layer and extends downward, toward the data tier. This directional flow has led to the use of the terms «northbound» and «southbound» to describe API responsibility within SDN (Software Defined Network) architectures and is likely to continue to expand to encompass in general the increasingly-API driven data center models.
But while network aficionados may use these terms with alacrity, they are not always well described or described in a way that a broad spectrum of IT professionals will immediately understand.
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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: A Cloud-Based Application Delivery Strategy
With business application traffic over the Web expected to double in less than five years, the need for a solution that can meet and exceed this demand grows increasingly urgent.
In his General Session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Gary Ballabio, a Product Line Director for Akamai’s Application Performance Solutions, will discuss how to meet this challenge head on and extend application delivery out of the origin and across the public Internet without sacrificing security, performance or control.
The CIO’s Next Imperatives: Social, Mobile and Touch
The cloud is a commercial vehicle. This undeniable truth must now be accepted as a deeply entrenched truism by CIOs who are looking to manage the forward-looking growth of their technology architectures.
We can actually refine this statement further. The cloud is a commercial vehicle designed to facilitate customer engagement, sales and therefore profits.
These are not inconvenient truths, but it is an undeniable truth if you believe the proclamations being made by some of the new change-makers driving cloud computing from the Platform-as-a-Service level.
This commercialization of the cloud is facilitated by the way users are interacting with cloud services. Although that may sound like stating the obvious, what we mean by this use of the term «interacting» is now increasingly impacted by social applications. Analyst firm McKinsey estimates that there is $1.3 billion dollars waiting to be unlocked in the global economy if we harness enterprise level social technologies effectively.
Self-Service, Automated Software Delivery to the Cloud
“Cloud computing is still in the early stages of adoption and demand will continue to grow,” noted Alban Richard, CEO of UShareSoft, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Pricing, however, will vary,” Richard continued. “Many cloud providers are playing a volume game and will reduce prices for compute, storage and network resources to meet the needs of price-sensitive customers.»
Cloud Computing Journal: Just having the enterprise data is good. Extracting meaningful information out of this data is priceless. Agree or disagree?
Alban Richard: Agree. Making sure you collect data is an essential first step, and new technologies including cloud computing make data collection easier than ever. But there is little value inherent in the data itself. You need to be able to extract information that can be used in a concrete way to help set, then achieve your business goals and objectives.
Cloud Computing: Rackspace Lets Go of OpenStack
control, turned over to an independent foundation charged with developing, distributing, promoting the adoption of the open source cloud platform and strengthening its ecosystem.
To achieve this grand design, the OpenStack Foundation, which claims 5,600 individual members, has gotten $10 million in funding and Rackspace, which had been supplying most of the management and money, has recently turned over the OpenStack trademark and technical assets like the cloud controller.
Since Rackspace and NASA concocted OpenStack it has gotten the support of 180 companies and 550 contributing developers.
Healthcare Provider Pays a Steep Price for Patient Data Privacy Breach
Earlier this week, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Massachusetts Ear and Eye, Inc. (MEEI) agreed to pay a hefty $1.5 million settlement to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services for alleged HIPAA violations. According to MEEI, a personal laptop that contained unencrypted electronic protected health information (ePHI) was stolen, exposing a large amount of personal, clinical, and patient prescription data.
The government’s investigation found that MEEI failed to take steps necessary to comply with several HIPAA Security Rule requirements regarding data protection, and that the failures occurred over an extended period of time. And while this healthcare data breach involved a laptop, data security risks like this extend to larger “secure” IT environments as well. Just take a look at the largest healthcare data breaches in the last few years, and you’ll see that intrusions have taken place not only on portable devices, but on enterprise servers, client-server systems, centralized back-up systems, and cloud implementations.
The Basics of Starting an e-Commerce Site
Now that the World Wide Web has taken over bricks-and-mortar shops as the primary medium through which to sell a product or service, there’s never been a better opportunity for anyone, regardless of financial or business background, to set up their own e-commerce store.
While bank loans, property leasing and constant monitoring meant that it took an incredible amount of effort to set up a business 15 years ago, the internet has provided entrepreneurial opportunities that nearly everyone can take advantage of. Provided they know the basics, of course.
So, where should businesses begin when creating an e-commerce site?
Stacks Evolve as Cloud Expo Approaches
As Cloud Expo approaches, the ongoing, evolving open-stacks scrum emerges as one of the most interesting stories in the business.
The high-level view finds three unique strategic ploys:
OpenStack launches its foundation, with IBM, HP, RedHat, and now VMware (primarily because of Ncira, we hope) as key members.
CloudStack pins its hopes on being an Apache Software Foundation project
Eucalyptus buddies up with Amazon
OpenNebula, led by OpenStack pioneer Christopher C. Kemp, is also in any open-source discussion, as it continues its strategy as a cloud-management toolkit.
Analysts and pundits enjoy viewing the world in term of absolute winners and losers, and indeed, some enterprise shops will make a sole winner out of one of the open-source cloud stacks. The reality is more complex, as one will no doubt find any or all of these products within many enterprises within a few years.
VMware is often said to be “the enemy” of open-source, although in many instances (so to speak) its foundational product is not said to be cloud at all, but merely a nice way to achieve server consolidation.
Meanwhile, the true enemy is the idea of a “cloud in a box,” offered by a company that has its core database technology in 90% of enterprise shops in the US, and likely, the world.
I don’t have a problem with the premise that cloud can be on-premise, but it must be decoupled into services, virtualized, metered, and highly elastic to be so. The same should be said for off-premise cloud as well – can’t live on hosted services alone.
Otherwise, we’re just fooling ourselves. Cloud computing’s promise is to let us use our IT resources wisely – one doesn’t need ideology or religion to be wise, but we can’t just sing the same old song either.
BYOD and the Death of the DMZ
BYOD remains a topic of interest as organizations grapple not only technologically with the trend but politically, as well. There are dire warnings that refusing to support BYOD will result in an inability to attract and retain up and coming technologists, that ignoring the problems associated with BYOD will eventually result in some sort of karmic IT event that will be painful for all involved.
Surveys continue to tell us organizations cannot ignore BYOD. A recent ITIC survey indicated a high level of BYOD across the global 550 companies polled.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Top Ten Cloud Security Threats for SMBs
SMB cloud adoption is critical for growth of most cloud vendors, but the SMB market is typically ill-prepared for some of the nastiness the sophisticated attackers in Russia and Asia are throwing at them, like ransoming their sites with DDoS, draining bank accounts with ZEUS, and more.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Terry Woloszyn, Founder/CTO of Leeward Security Ltd, will cover the most important security concerns SMBs need to address for safe cloud computing, as well as some of the «roadkill» we’ve seen in the past year.