The problem with web application performance is directly related to the increasing page size and number of objects comprising pages today. Increasing corporate bandwidth (the pipe between the Internet and the organization) doesn’t generally help. The law of diminishing returns is at work; at some point more bandwidth (like more hardware) just isn’t enough because the problem isn’t in how fast bits are traveling, but how many times bits are traversing the network.

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Target. Home Depot. Community Health Systems. Nieman Marcus. Their names have been all in the news over the past year, though probably not in a way they would like. All have had very public data breaches affecting anywhere from 350,000 (Nieman Marcus) to 4.5 million (Community Health Systems) customers. Add the recent high-profile celebrity nude photo hacking scandal and cloud security has become the trending topic in all the news and social media. Some of the discussions reminded me of a line from a short-lived TV show called ‘Almost Human’ (yes I watched it, and since it was not renewed, apparently I was part of a small group). In the opening sequence of the show was the line ‘technology has forever altered the criminal landscape.’ Is that where we are? Are the barbarians at the gate? Will this, or should this, impact decisions about migrating to the cloud?

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In a society that celebrates the public broadcast of an individual’s life through multiple mediums, the return to a more modest ideal may be the only way forward.

Increasingly over the last ten years or so, Millennials, and what some refer to as Generation Z, have been pressured to share intimate aspects of their lives over the internet. If you look back, there has been an interesting trend with this.

Facebook let users share as much content as they wished with whomever they wished. There are adaptable security settings, so that users could decide what is fully public and what is just for their friends. Then came Instagram and Twitter. More popular with the younger Millennials and most of Generation Z, they developed the new phenomenon of broadcasting edited snippets of their lives, but with infinitely more people.

For Twitter, in 140 characters or less, information as menial as what someone ate for breakfast can be shared with the entire world. Alternatively, look at Instagram. You can see snapshots of someone’s day, all shown through their chosen filter. To anyone looking in, they see more, of less.

What I mean by this is, these social platforms created a performance space whereby Shakespeare’s “all the words a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” is truer than ever. Users were given the ability to post designed posts, and create whatever version of their lives they wish others to see. This is well shown in this video:

Now this incessant need to digitally capture and share intimate aspects of our lives has been challenged.

A large number of celebrities have had their phones/iCloud accounts (or whatever the culprit was) hacked, and extremely intimate photos published online for all the world to see.  What is crazy is just how many people have looked up those images, and don’t feel that there is anything wrong with it. Now Jimmy Kimmel is not necessarily a news source, but take a look at how these men feel about looking-up the images:

The publication of someone’s personal images without their permission is not only abhorrent, but in this case has been referred by some as a sex-crime.

As a reaction to the hacking/leak, a lot of people are starting to distrust online security, or more specifically the cloud. Back in May, it was discovered that Snapchat images were not necessarily as short-lived as people would hope. So what is the solution?

Two things need to happen. Firstly, people need to think of uploading to the cloud as getting a tattoo. Be aware that once something is online or in the cloud, it is there for life. This is extremely useful for businesses or other such organizations, or even for storing someone’s music collection. However, it is not necessarily the appropriate place to keep things you will regret down the line. If Facebook’s ever changing privacy settings will teach you anything, it should be that if something is online, it is open to being accessed by whomever.  Just look at this video to see what I mean:

Secondly, there needs to be a change in our attitudes to social media overall. I recently read a book by Ben Elton called ‘Blind Faith.’ It is set in a dystopian future where the golden rule is “only perverts do things in private.” In this world, much like Orwell’s 1984, there are cameras everywhere, except here instead of big brother watching – everyone is. Nakedness is celebrated and everyone blogs incessantly. What struck me about this book is that it is an exaggeration of a reality that we are fast approaching.

If nothing else, this celebrity leak should challenge this generation to rethink whether they want social media. Should it return to its’ original roots as a networking platform, to connect and share in the experiences of their friends? Or rather as a stage, whereby they are willing to broadcast all of themselves in the vain hope of being seen or heard, and therefore feel important? In 2010 The Guardian published an article on how Mark Zuckerberg felt that privacy is no longer a social norm.

Maybe it’s time we shaped a new norm.

The post Why Mistrust From the iCloud Leak Isn’t Necessarily a Bad Thing appeared first on CloudWedge.

Hybrid cloud refers to the federation of a public and private cloud environment for the purpose of extending the elastic and flexibility of compute, storage and network capabilities, in an on-demand, pay-as-you go basis. The hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness that a public cloud computing environment offers without exposing mission-critical applications and data to third-party vulnerabilities.

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Seth Bostock is CEO of IndependenceIT, a company that encourages its users to “think outside the boxes.” It is a pioneer in the idea of Desktop-as-a-Service (which can also be though of as Workspace-as-a-Service). Its core service is Cloud Workspace, designed to deliver apps, desktops, and entire corporate IT systems as a high-performance, secure cloud service. Cloud Workspace users can work from anywhere at anytime, and on any device with the same experience, in this environment. We had a few questions for Seth about the company and what it does: Cloud Computing Journal: How have you seen the idea of Workspace- or Desktop-as-a-Service grow over the past few years?

Seth Bostock: IndependenceIT has seen tremendous growth—337% through mid-year 2014)– in Workspace-as-a-Service.

Scale and integration have been key challenges for IT Administrators when implementing application and desktop virtualization. This has limited the promise of what the technology can deliver for many organizations.

The Cloud Workspace Suite solves this problem up front with a single pane of glass to manage all workloads across any public, private or hybrid cloud.  Coupled with the powerful API set for ease of integration with our customers’ existing operations and business support tools, simplifying deployment of the CWS platform while speeding time to market.

CCJ: What are the most important aspects of DaaS to your customers?

Seth: As our Customers are the Channel and IT Administrators, the most important aspects of DaaS is how to effectively scale and manage workloads across multiple platforms and domains. IndependenceIT’s automation is focused on taking all of the common, repetitive, time consuming and complicated tasks associated with a virtual environment and making them simple and efficient
 
IndependenceIT focuses its automation in three areas:

Initial platform installation, to speed time to market with new single tenant or multi-tenant deployment
New end user deployments, to rapidly deploy the entire end user environment in minutes speeding time to revenue
Operations and management of the environment, to simplify IT administration and user management for greater efficiency and scale.

CCJ: How is the continued proliferation of phones and tablets driving the need for workspaces and desktops in the cloud?

Seth: The influx of mobile devices throughout the enterprise, pervasive access to high-speed connectivity and more distributed workforce environments are causing companies to look to the cloud for desktop and application enablement.

The Cloud Workspace Suite provides location and device independence, allowing organizations to capitalize on the productivity advantages of mobility – all without compromise to security, performance or control.

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InMage earlier this year announced the release of Scout 7.1, enabling customers to leverage the public, hosted and private cloud as a target for backup and/or disaster recovery (DR). This next generation solution for hybrid cloud backup, recovery and migration is available in three form factors – software, SaaS and the InMage 4000 Series appliance. “We’ve always been ahead of the pack with our award winning technology, but with the addition of public and private cloud support for backup and DR, we’re now truly in a class of one,” said Kumar Malavalli, CEO, InMage Systems.

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As cloud computing becomes ever more pervasive, future models will begin to revolve around XaaS. Anything as a service, everything as a service, more as a service, call it what you will. The overall effect is that a new type of service will deliver IaaS, PaaS and SaaS in one package.

That’s the verdict of John Dixon, consulting architect at GreenPages Technology Solutions. Let’s be clear on how we define XaaS first. Dixon cited desktop as a service (DaaS) as a good example of XaaS, citing servers to run virtual desktop infrastructure (IaaS), an office suite (SaaS), maintenance and a physical endpoint for it to come together.

A CloudTech article from August 18 on that very subject proved extremely popular, garnering over 500 shares. With that in mind, we asked cloud experts on the latest ‘as a service’ culture.

Doug Clark is UK&I cloud leader at IBM. Given IBM’s chief exec Virginia Rometty previously introduced the concept of ‘IBM as a service’, he sees XaaS as a clear trend.

“There is definitely a trajectory of providing solutions as a service,” he tells CloudTech. “We’ve got business process as a service, we’ve got various consulting services, which are bundled and wrapped in that similar pay as you go context.

“Some of those services are pretty standardised, so they’re definitely cloud, they’re not just a spoof,” he adds.

A blog post from February this year argued the concept of ‘IBM as a service’, as part of Big Blue’s cloud-first rebranding operation. Robert LeBlanc, SVP software and cloud solutions, wrote at the time: “The way I see things, we’re taking the best of IBM – all of our innovations, knowledge and aspirations – and building services around them, and delivering all that value via the cloud. That’s IBM as a service.”

At the same time, however, there’s a sense that the ‘as a service’ terms are becoming outdated, and that they only serve to cause confusion.

Chris England, director of business development and marketing EMEA at Okta, wrote on the CloudTech LinkedIn group that “ultimately the ‘as-a-service’ will disappear altogether long term.”

“I don’t talk about my telephone as voice as a service, my gas and electric as energy as a service, or my online banking as money as a service,” he wrote. “Hopefully IT will evolve to become normal day-to-day terminology in the future versus the complexity we love to introduce to confuse people on very simple topics.”

Matthew Finnie, CTO at Interoute, recalls a company which advertised its USP as ‘anything over IP.’

“I said that was a ridiculous statement,” he tells CloudTech. “He said why, and I said because anything can go over IP, so why are you stating the bleeding obvious?

“He was coming from a traditional voice and telecoms background,” Finnie adds. “He said you can speak over IP…well of course you can, it’s a packet.

“Anything you can shove into a packet you can put over an IP network. Doesn’t mean it’s going to work, but it means you can put anything over it.”

Ivan Harris, cloud services manager at Eduserv, argues the ‘as a service’ model is useful for customers.

“I think people like nice pigeonholes to put things in, so you can find stuff easily,” Harris says. “I think that’s the way Gartner makes its money in defining what those pigeonholes are.

“There’s loads of –aaS, and I think the –aaS badge is useful to help you find things,” he adds. “I think it’s going to stick for some time, and it’s going to proliferate as well.”

The overall effect of XaaS would be fewer data centres, with more IT resource and power located off-premise. This will come about as the public cloud continues to grow in stature.

A recent David Linthicum thought piece, published on CloudTech, argues the private cloud’s new role as an entry point for organisations to public cloud. Finnie argues there’s similar confusion over the definition of public and private, admitting he’s “always hated” the definition of both.

“The trouble is people assume with public cloud you get that elasticity, you get that flexibility, but you don’t get security. That’s not true,” he says. “That’s you making an assumption of what public cloud is.

“Not all cloud computing platforms are purely internet-facing. The version 2 ones which are network integrated give you the option to have that public cloud interface, and experience, and elasticity, but in an entirely private domain,” he adds.

One of Dixon’s tenets for XaaS was analogising clouds with cars. When you buy a car you pay for one service, but different parts are manufactured in different places, and components can be customised to suit the buyer’s needs.

Interoute also uses the car analogy to describe its offerings, yet Finnie adds a caveat.

“When I was a kid there were loads of brands of cars,” he explains. “Now, you’ve probably got eight manufacturers worldwide.

“As an analogy it’s a useful way of thinking about it, because it says at some level…if what you’re buying is a car, which is infrastructure in the analogy, then it is so much about scale, and size, and R&D, and how sophisticated that car’s going to be,” he adds.

“If you’re going to use a cloud service provider and you’re going to buy from someone who’s a good old boy who’s bought a couple of racks and spun up a bunch of servers, it’s possibly not the smartest thing to do. You might want to use his advice, but you might want to use his advice on something else.”

So what to conclude? The concept of XaaS has been around for a long time – but then again, so has the concept of cloud. Now, the technology and business needs may be catching up with the aspirations.

When you plan your migration to the cloud, and the cloud security best practices to secure it, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  Here is some advice from the Fortune 500. Use these tips to learn from others’ successes and to avoid their failures – maybe their companies can afford “valuable” learning lessons, […]

The post Cloud Security Best Practices of the Fortune 500 appeared first on Porticor Cloud Security.

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