The cloud holds enormous promise for improving agility, availability, and cost for app deployments. Amazon’s EC2 is especially attractive given the investments they have made in building out capacity around the world, allowing apps to be deployed where they are being used, minimizing latency. However, some enterprises are unsure about cloud deployments because of security concerns. In this post I will talk about how to enhance EC2 security to allow APIs to be deployed in the AWS cloud in a way that delivers enterprise-grade policy enforcement while fully realizing many of the cloud’s benefits.
Monthly Archives: July 2013
Why trade finance is moving to the cloud
The development of cloud technology is opening the door for companies in the trade finance sector to move away from the inherent constraints of paper-based processes.
In Asia, this is particularly compelling, as importers don’t need to invest heavily in hardware and software to use cloud-based trade finance solutions – in some cases enabling them to leapfrog more costly and complex ERP tools.
As such, many operators in these less mature markets are very open to working in the cloud and receptive to the competitive opportunities it brings.
From a corporate perspective, SaaS-based multi-bank trade finance applications and exporter-led solutions are also extremely compelling in terms of cost and their potential to make essential processes more effective.
Typically, cloud-based trade finance solutions are far easier to deploy and use, especially when compared with more restrictive on-premise technologies. This in turn can enable corporate users to increase business efficiency and payment …
Proverb: When a Door Closes, Just Make Sure You Don’t Leave a Window Open
Access policies must be a part of any company’s risk assessment and security policy because unsecured, unmonitored access by former employees can only lead to trouble.
Earlier this month I attended a local cloud developers group, and I met a gentleman who consults with companies to engage in deep dive forensic examinations of their networks. He looks for the virtual fingerprints of misdeeds, fraud, and misdoings that can be used for e-discovery in legal cases. He essentially gets down to the bits and bytes of how much information flows to certain IP addresses to ascertain whether or not proprietary data has been tampered or stolen.
What’s Missing from Today’s Hybrid Cloud Management – Leveraging Brokerage and Governance
By John Dixon, Consulting Architect, LogicsOne
Recently GreenPages and our partner Gravitant hosted a webinar on Cloud Service Broker technology. Senior Analyst Dave Bartoletti gave a preface to the webinar with Forrester’s view on cloud computing and emerging technology. In this post we’ll give some perspective on highlights from the webinar. In case you missed it, you can also watch a replay of the webinar here: http://bit.ly/12yKJrI
Ben Tao, Director of Marketing for Gravitant, kicks off the discussion by describing the traditional data center sourcing model. Two key points here:
- Sourcing decisions, largely based on hardware selection, are separated by years
- In a cloud world, sourcing decisions can be separated by months or even weeks
The end result is that cloud computing can drive the benefit of a multi-sourcing model for IT, where sourcing decisions are made in close proximity to the use of services. This has the potential of enabling organizations to adjust their sourcing decisions more often to best suit the needs of their applications.
Next, Dave Bartoletti describes the state of cloud computing and the requirements for hybrid cloud management. The core of Dave’s message is that the use of cloud computing is on the rise, and that cloud is being leveraged for more and more complex applications – including those with sensitive data.
Dave’s presentation is based on the statement, “what IT must do to deliver on the hybrid cloud promise…”
Some key points here:
- Cloud is about IT services first, infrastructure second
- You won’t own the infrastructure, but you’ll own the service definitions; take control of your own service catalog
- The cloud broker is at the center of the SaaS provider, cloud VAR, and cloud integrator
- Cloud brokers can accelerate the cloud application lifecycle
Dave does an excellent job of explaining the things that IT must do in order to deliver on the hybrid cloud promise. Often, conversations on cloud computing are purely about technology, but I think there’s much more at stake. For example, Dave’s first two points above really resonate with me. You can also read “cloud computing” as ITIL-style sourcing. Cloud computing puts service management back in focus. “Cloud is about IT services first, infrastructure second,” and “You won’t own the infrastructure […]” also suggests that cloud computing may influence a shift in the makeup of corporate IT departments – fewer core technologists and more “T-shaped” individuals. So called T-shaped individuals have knowledge and experience with a broad set of technologies (the top of the “T”), but have depth in one or more areas like programming, Linux, or storage area networking. My prediction is that there will still be a need for core technologists; but that some of them may move into roles to do things like define customer-facing IT services. For this reason, our CMaaS product also includes optional services to deal with this type of workforce transformation. This is an example of a non-technical item that must be made when considering cloud computing. Do you agree? Do you have other non-technical considerations for cloud computing?
Chris Ward, CTO of LogicsOne, then dives in to the functionality of the Cloud Management as a Service, or CMaaS offering. The GreenPages CMaaS product implements some key features that can be used to help customers advance to the lofty points that Dave suggests in his presentation. CMaaS includes a cloud brokerage component and a multi-cloud monitoring and management component. Chris details some main features from the brokerage tool, which are designed to address the key points that Dave brought up:
- Collaborative Design
- Customizable Service Catalog
- Consistent Access for Monitoring and Management
- Consolidated Billing Amongst Providers
- Reporting and Decision Support
Chris then gives an example from the State of Texas and the benefits that they realized from using cloud through a broker. Essentially, with the growing popularity of e-voting and the use of the internet as an information resource on candidates and issues, the state knew the demand for IT resources would skyrocket on election day. Instead of throwing away money to buy extra infrastructure to satisfy a temporary surge in demand, Texas utilized cloud brokerage to seamlessly provision IT resources in real time from multiple public cloud sources to meet the variability in demand.
All in all, the 60-minute webinar is time well spent and gives clients some guidance to think about cloud computing in the context of a service broker.
To view this webinar in it’s entirety click here or download this free whitepaper to learn more about hybrid cloud management
Teradata releases own Hadoop products
At the Hadoop Summit conference last week, Teradata announced some Hadoop-only products that are a lead-in for applying its data management services to this emerging platform. The new offerings, announced in conjunction with strategic partner Hortonworks, include a new Teradata-branded Hadoop-only appliance that adds new deployment and node management capabilities, and deeper Teradata-delivered service and support options. The announcements raise the question of what value-add IT incumbents bring to the Hadoop game, when professional support subscriptions are otherwise available direct from the source. The answer is twofold: one-stop shopping for enterprise data platforms and the potential of optimized data integration and management across increasingly heterogeneous analytic platform environments.
Enriching Hadoop
Teradata has announced for Q4 release a new standalone appliance for Hadoop; it also announced an a la carte Hadoop offering that provides options for installing Hadoop on a recommended commodity Dell server or on third-party hardware chosen by the …