The conflicting messages are the result of security colliding with productivity, which is probably a lot like security colliding with performance. In other words, we know who all too often wins that confrontation, whether we like it or not. The problem is that many are approaching the conflict with an either/or perspective. They’re trying to answer the question with an allow or deny policy based on the end-point, but ignoring the other end of the equation: the application or resource.
Like the two halves of drama, comedy and tragedy, the client and the resource (whether application or file or otherwise), go together. Settling on a BYOD strategy should necessarily not be based solely on the answer to “do we allow X on the network” but on the answer to “do we allow X to access this resource”. For example, in the case of many SaaS-styled applications, i.e. data is always stored in the database or on the server and never on the client, is there some other reason to deny an iPad or other mobile device access over any network?
Todas las entradas hechas por Latest News from Cloud Computing Journal
Cloud Computing: Compuware Launches SpeedoftheWeb
Compuware Corporation on Tuesday launched SpeedoftheWeb.org, a new free online cloud service that helps web application and site owners increase the speed of their most important web properties. This cloud service enables organizations to compare the speed of their website’s performance against leading competitor sites.
SpeedoftheWeb is available here.
As modern application delivery continues to add complexity at the edge of the Internet, speed is one of the most important factors for improving end-user experience on the web. Studies have shown that improving website performance can lead to increased revenues and reduced operating costs.
Subscribe to Enterprise Storage via the Cloud
About a dozen years ago, the storage utility model was a novel concept. The idea was that businesses could literally plug applications into enterprise storage, enabling them to outsource administration and begin paying on a monthly usage basis. While the concept was attractive, unfortunately, many of the storage service providers (SSPs) who sprouted back then couldn’t quite perfect the model. Fast forward to today. Over the past 5 years, cloud storage providers (CSPs) have successfully made the delivery of on-demand data storage to the premises a reality, with a pay-as-go model backed by huge economies of scale.
2012 Future of Cloud Computing Survey Exposes Hottest Trends in Cloud
North Bridge Venture Partners has announced the results of its second annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. Supported by 39 industry collaborators spanning established leaders, emerging, fast-growth companies, and startups – the 2012 survey captures current industry perceptions, sentiments and emerging trends in cloud computing. This year’s collaborators include companies such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Eucalyptus, and Glasshouse. A total of 785 respondents spanning industry experts, users and vendors participated in the survey. Respondents were asked about a wide range of key issues impacting cloud computing, including drivers for cloud computing, inhibitors, best practices, sourcing, total cost of ownership (TCO), cloud’s impact on multiple business sectors, and emerging cloud technologies. The survey provides many insights into the adoption of cloud computing, including the cloud configurations and applications that are forming around specific business needs including Big Data, business continuity, collaboration and storage.
CDH: The Standard for Hadoop in the Enterprise Just Got Better
In June Cloudera announced the general availability of CDH4 and Cloudera Manager 4. These releases are significant milestones for the Big Data community, and are also important to any organization which has yet to being their Big Data journey. CDH4 and Cloudera Manager 4 make it far easier to begin projects the right way.
Both CDH4 and Cloudera Manager 4 are full of new features. CDH4 has more security features. Cloudera Manager makes it easy to manage and audit clusters of systems doing Big Data work.
Here is a more technical restatement of that: CDH4 includes high availability for the filesystem, an ability to support multiple namespaces, HBase table and column level security, improved performance, HBase replication, and greatly improved usability and browser support for the web interface (Hue). Cloudera Manager 4 includes new abilities to manage multiple clusters and multiple versions, automation for high availability and MapReduce2, multi-namespace support, cluster-wide heatmaps, host monitoring and automated client configurations. There are many other features which will enhance capabilities for those seeking to built applications on top of CDH, which is important for the large and growing community of applications developers leveraging Hadoop for solutions.
Quest’s Mystery Bidder Plops Down $2.32 Billion
The money in play for Quest Software jumped from $2.17 billion to $2.32 billion Monday morning.
The mystery bidder, believed to be Dell, that looked trumped a few days ago is back in the game after topping the $25.75-a-share offer made by Insight Venture Partners and Vector Capital, two private equity outfits, with a bid of $27.50 a share cash, a sharp increase.
The sum approaches the $28 a share or $2.36 billion JPMorgan claimed the company was worth weeks ago. Insight on its own started with $23 a share in March and had to call in reinforcements last week to go to $25.75.
The unnamed strategic bidder is going to have to pay a $25 million termination fee to make the Insight-Vector alliance go away. Insight-Vector could also re-up but they’re already working on borrowed capital. There’s no financing in the mystery bid. The Insight-Vector combine has three business days to decide whether to match or improve on the “Dell” bid. Wall Street seems to think the deal could get a mite sweeter. Quest’s stock opened at $27.74 then lost a little ground.
Quest’s Mystery Bidder Plops Down $2.32 Billion
The money in play for Quest Software jumped from $2.17 billion to $2.32 billion Monday morning.
The mystery bidder, believed to be Dell, that looked trumped a few days ago is back in the game after topping the $25.75-a-share offer made by Insight Venture Partners and Vector Capital, two private equity outfits, with a bid of $27.50 a share cash, a sharp increase.
The sum approaches the $28 a share or $2.36 billion JPMorgan claimed the company was worth weeks ago. Insight on its own started with $23 a share in March and had to call in reinforcements last week to go to $25.75.
The unnamed strategic bidder is going to have to pay a $25 million termination fee to make the Insight-Vector alliance go away. Insight-Vector could also re-up but they’re already working on borrowed capital. There’s no financing in the mystery bid. The Insight-Vector combine has three business days to decide whether to match or improve on the “Dell” bid. Wall Street seems to think the deal could get a mite sweeter. Quest’s stock opened at $27.74 then lost a little ground.
Folder and File Sharing with IBM SmartCloud Storage
The previous two articles discussed different access methods to your IBM SmartCloud Object Storage and Team Folder collaboration features. This article introduces the Folder and File Sharing feature with your IBM SmartCloud Storage.
Functionality wise, Folder and file sharing is similar to team folder collaboration. There are 3 major differences.
(1) Team folder is managed by administrator for the team; while Folder sharing is managed by each team member.
(2) Team folder can only be published to known team users; while folder sharing can be shared to external user on a read-only basis, in addition to sharing with internal team users.
(3) Team folder is always collaboration on a folder level; while folder and file sharing can share on a single file level.
It’s Official: Microsoft to Acquire Yammer
Microsoft has, as leaked a couple of weeks ago, gone ahead and cut a deal to buy the Twitter-y enterprise social network Yammer for $1.2 billion cash to extend its cloud services and protect its revenue flank.
The four-year-old start-up and its 400 people will be sent to the Office Division when the acquisition closes in Q3. Yammer CEO David Sachs, the former COO of PayPal, will report to Office president Kurt DelBene.
Yammer’s five million-odd verified corporate users reportedly include 85% of the Fortune 500.
Yammer offers a free secure private network hoping to trigger a viral “grassroots movement” that it can convert into a company-wide initiative competing with Microsoft for $5 a head every month. Customers pay to upgrade their network with administrative and security controls, integrations with enterprise applications, priority customer service and a so-called designated customer success manager.
Microsoft plans to accelerate Yammer’s adoption by integrating it with SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics, Outlook and Skype. It says the service will develop new capabilities and scale bigger. It will also continue to be offered as a standalone product.
Yammer already integrates with SharePoint.
Yammer raised an $85 million fifth round led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson in February. All Things Digital says the “implied valuation” then was around $600 million so Microsoft is paying double. Yammer has raised $140 million altogether.
The blog also said Yammer’s free users are notoriously hard to convert into paid users and suggested it’s hard to integrate.
Yammer may have a million paid subscribers.
Rival Jive Software, which IPO’d late last year, forces users to pay after a 30-day trial. It reportedly has 676 companies paying. Cisco’s got WebEx Social, Salesforce has Chatter and IBM a thing called Connections.
Yammer has iPhone and Android apps.
It was reportedly advised by Midas-like Qatalyst Partners.
Microsoft, which owns a slice of Facebook, closed down 2.7% at $29.86. Yammer has added Facebook-like features since it started on Peter Thiel’s nickel. He was Facebook’s first major investor and worked with Sacks at PayPal.
Will Microsoft Surface Rekindle RYOD?
The Microsoft Surface, whenever it arrives, is actually two machines. The lower end system running Windows RT seems destined to compete with the iPad within the general consumer market, while the higher end system running a full implementation of Windows 8 may indeed be perceived as a laptop computer rather than a tablet, and should be of interest to corporate buyers.
The Surface, if it works well, may compel may enterprise IT managers to try to rein in the current BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) movement that threatens chaos in the world. It seems eminently plausible for IT to embrace (if not extend) the Surface Windows 8 Pro model, and provide it as standard-issue equipment to company employees, in the old-fashioned RYOD (Receive Your Own Device) model.
The currently missing price point won’t be as much of an issue with the Pro model. I was issued a Thinkpad at an internal cost of $1,800 by a software company I worked for just a few years ago. A few people who complained enough got Macs, at much higher internal price points.
But the issue of whether the Surface will start with a pricing of $400 or $600 or $800 or more is less relevant to the higher end Pro.
Getting the Pro as a standard corporate provision will be splendidly ironic when it happens, because after all, Microsoft OS-based computers were the vanguard of the business PC revolution 30 years ago when corporate masses, tired of aloof mainframe IS managers, brought the new machines into their offices and integrated them into their everyday reality.
The IBM PC running Microsoft DOS were the original BYOD systems; now Microsoft stands as the bastion of the old guard. But no more speculation at this point – I’d like to see a real Surface machine work before I pronounce anything more about it.