“One of the greatest challenges to security in the cloud is management,” noted David Meizlik, Vice President of Marketing at Dome9 Security, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “With cloud computing,” Meizlik explained, “the infrastructure is owned and maintained by a third party, so you can’t just walk down the hall to get to your infrastructure.”
Cloud computing represents the advent of a global computing utility that transcends national boundaries. Is that what makes clouds a challenge from a security point of view?
Globalization is more a challenge from a governance and compliance perspective. The greatest challenge to security in the cloud is that traditional security models don’t apply. Take, for example, the firewall. Firewalls were designed to protect the perimeter. The cloud, however, is outside any perimeter, and thus a traditional enterprise IT approach to firewalling is simply not practical. Fundamentally, as we re-architect our infrastructure we need to re-architect our security. It’s an opportunity and not just a challenge.
The Platform as a Service (PaaS) market grew out of the fact that no other cloud solution addressed the ever-increasing complexity of managing and writing modern applications: no frameworks, libraries or APIs alone could tackle the sticky application engineering challenges. Unfortunately, PaaS 1.0 is what people are now seeing as strictly a “tool” to easily deploy apps to the infrastructure in a self-service way with little or no differentiation among offerings. However, in order for PaaS to reach its full potential and become the modern day abstraction layer for software delivery, we must enter the PaaS 2.0 phase.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Sinclair Schuller, Co-Founder & CEO of Apprenda, will explain how organizations are currently using PaaS, where PaaS is evolving to, and highlight best practices to maximize the value of existing investments when adopting PaaS today.
“Cloud” promises Flexible IT. Cloud has also taken various forms of every aaS imaginable. Determining the right model for the developer is just as confusing as it is for the end user. The primary reason – multi-vendor, cross-platform components are needed to truly deliver on the promises of flexible IT through integrated, cloud solutions.
Hybrid has extended from internal to external connectivity – to easy management of multiple platforms from multiple vendors.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Mike Robski, VP of Research & Development at Hostway, will provide a technical perspective on how developers can create and service companies can integrate utilizing open API calls to deliver fully customized, service-rich solutions to the market. From a business perspective, learn how this approach has helped Hostway and its partners jointly deliver high-value solutions to the market and create new revenue streams.
Enterprises want to mix the best of their own data centers with private and public cloud services without compromising security and uptime. Making internal information assets available to work across private and public clouds requires a management layer that can stitch together disparate services to create a hybrid enterprise. This requires a way to abstract, secure and manage information flows across all domains.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Matt McLarty, Vice President of Client Solutions at Layer 7, will cover proven techniques that will help companies govern data and application interactions across the hybrid enterprise in order to maintain mission-critical service levels.
Big Data is often described by the three drivers (dimensions) of: volume, velocity and variety. But Stefan Andreasen, Founder and CTO of Kapow has alerted us to the fourth – spread. Volume describes the overall AMOUNT of Big Data. It almost goes without saying, that for data to be big, there must be a lot of it.
“Exponentially increasing data volume, Internet access points and speed have made Big Data more accessible and therefore more practical,” noted Mike Carpenter, VP of Business Development at CARI.net, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Add social media, mobile proliferation, cloud computing, and CDNs to the mix,” Carpenter continued, “and now it becomes the foundation of intelligence.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – “While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.”
The importance of an enterprise-grade network at the center of cloud services cannot be overstated. Without it, private clouds are closed systems and public clouds are vulnerable to security breaches. The optimum cloud is one that is network-based, where cloud services are actually embedded in the network. A network-based cloud allows cloud services and applications to be managed and delivered as part of a total solution straight down to any device just like voice and data.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Steve Caniano, VP, Hosting, Application & Cloud Services at AT&T Business Solutions, will discuss how this unique approach can offer enterprises the scale and flexibility of the cloud, without sacrificing performance, reliability and security.
Today, more enterprises are enabling applications to be deployed on public and private cloud infrastructure. However, to date there have been no PostgreSQL Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) options available that have the features, functionality and support that are required for enterprise environments.
In her session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Karen Padir, executive vice president of products and engineering at EnterpriseDB, will discuss what enterprises require from a DBaaS and why DBAs should consider PostgreSQL to move database operations to public and private clouds. She will also provide tips and tricks to using PostgreSQL as the back-end database for your hybrid/private/public cloud environments.
With Cloud Expo 2012 New York (10th Cloud Expo) now just seven weeks away, what better time to introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…
With all the hype around “the cloud,” it’s difficult not to be skeptical about its value. While cloud computing seems complex, it is possible to understand the building blocks that help make the cloud more tangible for businesses of all sizes. In fact, understanding the innovation the cloud delivers can profoundly impact critical parts of your business and may be the key in providing business growth and scalability. However, before diving into cloud adoption, it’s worth doing your homework.
There are many terms in the cloud computing lexicon, including popular terms like IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service). As the owner of a growing business, you will likely have direct experience with SaaS – software applications most often hosted in the cloud. You’ll find that the SaaS market is considerably larger than the PaaS or IaaS markets, and SaaS adoption continues to grow. According to a recent Techaisle survey on SMB Business Application Cloud Computing, over 70 percent of respondents have already implemented cloud business applications in the past three years and plan to add an average of 2.9 cloud business applications to their current suite in 2012. In any case, let’s break down these terms as they relate to the cloud, removing needless complexities and using a language even technophobes can understand.