Ixia develops amazing products so its customers can connect the world. Ixia helps its customers provide an always-on user experience through fast, secure delivery of dynamic connected technologies and services. Through actionable insights that accelerate and secure application and service delivery, Ixia’s customers benefit from faster time to market, optimized application performance and higher-quality deployments.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that Prashanth Chandrasekar GM of Rackspace’s DevOps Business Segment joined DevOps Summit Silicon Valley faculty. Chandrasekar’s session abstract will be published on Monday. Below please find an exclusive interview with Prashanth Chandrasekar, conducted by Cloud Expo Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff.

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Dasher Technologies is committed to being the best technology solution company in the United States by operating with the highest integrity and building lasting relationships with its customers and partners. Since 1982, Dasher Technologies helped public, private and nonprofit organizations implement technology solutions that speed and simplify their operations. As one of the fastest growing system integrators in the country, Dasher have gained a reputation for effortless implementations with relentless follow-through and enduring support. Dasher’s strong technical expertise and vendor independence allows the company to integrate best-of-breed software, hardware and services into a custom solution that directly impacts the business. Dasher was recently named the HP 2012 ESSN Partner of the Year and is the #1 provider of HP High Performance Computing solutions and HP Open Source/Linux solutions in the US. The company has grown to five offices nationwide with locations in California, Oregon, Washington, Alabama, and Florida. Dasher is listed as a certified Women Owned Business.

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So far, 2014 has turned into a banner year for CIOs that have invested the time and effort to plan for hybrid cloud services, while building strong strategic relationships with their Line of Business leadership. Their approved capital investment budget spend is on-track and operational expenses are contained, as planned.
Savvy senior executives across the globe continue to make selective investments in new business technology. In fact, there could be a moderate IT infrastructure spend over the next 12-18 months, which will likely increase the demand for open source software and professional services as new cloud service projects are approved.
Worldwide IT spending is now forecast to increase by 4.5 percent in 2014 at constant currency, that’s according to updated projections from the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). By and large, this enterprise growth is still being driven by smartphones, apps and the mobile cloud.

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I look at the IoT as having three great components: M2M, wearables, and grids. The components can also be seen (roughly) as enterprise, personal, and government/organizational.I’ll examine each area in follow-up articles. I’ll start with the third, as it applies to research I’ve been conducting for the past three years and dovetails with the very high-level view of the IoT being taken by the largest technology companies in the world. And I’m looking forward to discussing issues great and small with all in attendance at the upcoming @ThingsExpo, for which I serve as Conference Chair.

A Dismal Look
Smart grids, cities, and nations hold transformational potential, especially but exclusively for the developing world. It that holds the promise of fixing the millenium-old human problems of poverty, disease, violence, and poor leadership.

Right?

But to examine the IoT’s potential to transform society means starting with a big-picture look at economics, or the “dismal science,” as it’s lovingly known by its practitioners.

Global economics is not a zero-sum game, although it can feel that way when a competitor is eating your lunch. It can also look that way when comparing the extremes of the wealth of nations.

But I think the IoT can not only solve a particular company’s problems but is also the key to long-term, fair-minded global economic growth and societal development.

A Brief History
We’ve come a long way since Adam Smith’s first articulated his principles of enlightened self-interest and an “invisible hand” that guides economic development without the need for government regulation or intervention. Even seemingly altruistic acts are ultimately done with a personal, self-centered goal in mind, in this view.

The Keynesian revolution (ie, government stimulation is desirable) followed by a few decades of increasingly scientific, mathematically inclined studies of societies and their economics has led to much re-intepretation of Smith’s original thinking.

Recent economic developments, led by Joseph Stiglitz and centered around the power of “information assymetry” can lead to almost the opposite conclusion; there’s nothing enlightened about self-interest, people with an upper hand won’t play fair, and only tough, enforceable government regulation can address it, in this view.

Ha Joon-Chang is another modern-day economist who, in essence, thinks the developed world is not playing fair as developing nations struggle to lift their way out of poverty. I interviewed him a few years ago 864350

On a separate tangent, Dambisa Moyo is another modern-day economist who has taken the controversial stance that altruism is, in fact, damaging to the people it ostensibly tries to help.

Does IT Matter?
Meanwhile, it’s been more than 30 years since the personal computer entered the scene in a big way.

Yet to this day, academic research on “IT economics” seems sparse. Even though so many of us in the industry believe in the rising tide of technology that lifts all boats, and utopian dreams flow out of Silicon Valley and its mimickers with each new gadget or app, it’s hard to find pure research that connects the dots between the aggressive use of technology, economic development, and societal progress.

There’s plenty of history at this point. The 80s were famous for $1 trillion worth of PC sales, with no apparent productivity increase in the global economy. The 90s showed that the benefits of this technology took awhile to become apparent; they did become apparent once widely connected to networks and with the invention of the Worldwide Web.

The 2000s were a disaster, with the dot-com meltdown, the post-Y2K technology recession, the Great Recession, and war disaster by the US. Even so, enterprise IT—including tens of millions of personal computers sold each year—rose by the end of the decade to several trilliions of dollars.

Now, as we progress through the second decade of the 21st century, we see cloud computing, Big Data, and the Internet of Things. It’s time for economists to study the “IT effect” with rigor.

As a non-academic with perhaps just enough graduate school experience to be dangerous, I won’t be the person who seizes this field of study and emerges as the Joseph Steiglitz of IT economics. But to paraphrase the Dennis Hopper character in True Romance, I find this stuff to be fascinating.

Relatively Speaking
Our research at the Tau Institute is socio-economic in nature, but as of yet lays out no grand theories.

We abide by the principle that technology is not only inevitable but inevitably good for the human species; though Google Glass today is seen as having great comedic value, the same twitters could be heard (well before Twitter) with images of people lugging around computers, talking on wireless phones, and seeking hotspots.

The big cavaet, of course, is that our political and societal leaders don’t abuse the wonders of technological progress. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

Yet the net gain to the world economy brought by personal computing devices is enormous. Mobile phones are the only way to communicate in much of the developing world, and are also used as virtual banks. Mobile computers in the developed world have surely reduced the number of people—an therefore, congestion–showing up to work every day in central cities.

Wireless connectivity has freed people to work and access information from almost wherever they choose, and it’s cut down on the time people watch television—a development that cannot, on the whole, be deleterious.

(More to come in future postings!)

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As we make the shift to the cloud era, computing’s traditional building blocks are increasingly abstracted away. This is fueled by the advent of hypervisors, virtual machines, public clouds, and application containers. Despite being roughly sixty years old and existing in an industry that sees tectonic shifts at least once a decade, the operating system remains a rock solid foundation and the underpinning of modern information technology. Why is it that this core building block will not quietly go away?

The functions that the operating system provides are critical to computing – as long as there are systems with memory to manage, I/O to arbitrate, processes to schedule, and storage or networks with which to interface, the operating system remains vital.

Does abstracting the operating system make these functions less important?

While we do not notice the electricity and water that sustain our homes and office buildings every day, no one would dare say that they are irrelevant. As the sources for these and other utilities have been abstracted, we’ve grown accustomed to their availability; we take them for granted.

The operating system has also evolved to become such a utility. It is pervasive and ubiquitous, and we don’t notice it because it just works.

Critical not only to the function of enterprise IT, the operating system lies at the core of our daily lives, serving as the underlying force of IT consumerization. The operating system is everywhere – it is in our mobile phones, our cars, our smart DVD players, and our thermostats. IDC predicts that there “will be approximately 212 billion ‘things’ globally by the end of 2020”, including a large percentage of intelligent systems that will be installed and collecting data across consumer and enterprise applications. The operating system helps us to control and connect with the Internet of Things around us.

And let’s not forget the application, which needs an operating system to provide system services as well as linkage to its dependencies — the required software libraries, run time components, and device drivers. The application may be king, but the operating system is its castle – providing the foundation, the resources, and the security for the application to thrive.

Those who claim that the operating system is irrelevant are trying to shift your focus from this critical technology because it’s in their best interest to do so. Beer manufacturers will point out that drinking beer after exercise will hydrate you slightly better than water – of course, beer is 95% water.

Regardless of technical advancements, the operating system remains at the core of enterprise computing. It is here to stay, and will forever be foundational to our interconnected world.

A blog post on the gov.uk website has outlined a hazy date of the end of September when G-Cloud migrates from the CloudStore to the new shiny Digital Marketplace.

G-Cloud’s new home, which made alpha back in March, aims to replace the CloudStore as well as the Digital Services Store, a home for finding people who can design digital projects and services.

As Ivanka Majic wrote on the government’s official blog, the move will start at the end of this month, with plans to turn the lights off on the CloudStore by the end of September, should things run smoothly.

“Digital Marketplace is reaching a stage which allows us to consider making it the route for G-Cloud purchases,” the blog reads. “We are considering a staged approach to its launch and will be making sure there is a four week transition period during which people will be able to choose whether they buy through CloudStore or Digital Marketplace.”

Andy Powell, head of product marketing at Eduserv, a G-Cloud supplier, was generally positive about the proposed change yet admitted his company was still in a “wait and see” position.

“It’s good to see consolidation across the G-Cloud and Digital Services frameworks,” he told CloudTech. “My initial reaction to the interface is that it has been streamlined quite nicely.

“The major caveat to that is that we have yet to see how Cabinet Office is going to implement their approach to the 14 cloud security principles, and associated claims made by suppliers, in terms of filtering search results,” he added.

“Given that security is likely to remain one of the key characteristics by which buyers differentiate available services, this is critical to the overall success of the marketplace as a tool for both buyers and suppliers.”

Databarracks managing director Peter Groucutt expressed similar concerns regarding search functionality in the old CloudStore.

“The truth is, vendors offering services on the G-Cloud framework had little idea as to how their services would be displayed within the CloudStore,” he said. “As a result, the simple option for vendors was to revisit old SEO tricks in a bid to boost their position.

“By improving the way vendors input information about their offerings, it provides buyers with a more accurate understanding of the services available to them,” he added.

“The improvements demonstrate that real thought is being put into the process; how the buyers buy, how the vendors will want to sell, and ensuring those on the framework have access to the right services to suit their specific needs.”

G-Cloud 5 went live back in May, with CloudTech at the time gauging the opinions of various suppliers. Most were of the opinion that while G-Cloud had made it easier for cloud providers to sell their services to government, there was still work to do in terms of procurement and education.

At the time of launch, G-Cloud programme director Tony Singleton railed against the idea of the government cloud marketplace becoming “business as usual.”

“There is much to be done in transforming the way IT is not only bought but also consumed across the wider public sector,” he warned.

The government has also urged users and suppliers to keep testing and finding bugs as the Digital Marketplace moves from alpha to beta. You can find out more about that here.

14th International Cloud Expo, held on June 10–12, 2014 at the Javits Center in New York City, featured three content-packed days with a rich array of sessions about the business and technical value of cloud computing, Internet of Things, Big Data, and DevOps led by exceptional speakers from every sector of the IT ecosystem. The Cloud Expo series is the fastest-growing Enterprise IT event in the past 10 years, devoted to every aspect of delivering massively scalable enterprise IT as a service.

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“The cloud will transform everything about technology.” This statement is better suited for 20 years ago when the cloud was in its infancy. In 2014 the statement should be that “The cloud has taken over technology.” Cloud computing has been around since the sixties believe it or not, but over the past few years the industry has recognized the concept better as more organizations are embracing cloud technology and more vendors are creating amazing cloud-based business solutions.

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On the heels of the recent Community Health Systems (CHS)  data breach, in which 4.5 million Personal Health Records (PHI) were compromised, the industry is abuzz about data security in the HIPAA Compliant cloud businesses.  Data breaches like the one at CHS are not the exception – they’re the norm.  The FBI warned that the healthcare industry is extremely vulnerable to hackers in a recent Internet Crimes Bulletin.

The massive security breach at CHS shows just how important it is to be proactive with all aspects of data security. PHI can no longer be secured with traditional security technologies and methodology- even up to date antivirus and firewall technologies are not enough to protect sensitive data from professional hacking teams. As the healthcare industry rapidly adopts new technology to meet the Meaningful Use: Stage I & II mandates of the Affordable Care Act, patient data is digitized and exchanged more than ever.  Securing this data has become increasingly difficult, requiring sophisticated tools and armies of engineers.

Keeping PHI secure is a difficult job, but there are resources available to guide you through the process.  Having an expert who can walk you through keeping your environment secure, available to your end-users, and profitable is the key to success.  Work with your Managed Services Providers to create a “Security Matrix of Responsibility”, and use this as a basis to develop a proactive security policy.  Service providers like Logicworks and AlertLogic can help identify which areas of the matrix fall under your purview.  By narrowing the focus to those areas of your security policy are your responsibility, it becomes easier to identify areas of focus for your business.

While CHS did have security technology in place, others often have little to no additional security beyond a traditional firewall to protect their infrastructure.  Even in the case of the CHS breach, there was the possibility to do more; they have publicly stated that they have recently increased security and implemented new technologies to reduce the likelihood of this kind of attack in the future.  Consult an expert in securing businesses in your industry, and consider implementing solutions such as:

• Web Application Firewall
• Log Shipping and analysis (with Alert Logic)
• Monitoring service to alert you of any anomalies in your infrastructure.
• Intrusion Detection (with Alert Logic)

HIPAA Compliance, and the security of PHI is not possible without an ongoing commitment to policies, standards and procedure.  Here at Logicworks, to ensure that we’re always at the top of our security game, we constantly audit ourselves. Aside from identifying area of improvemnts, internal audits help identify where you are failing to gather data effectively.  Maintaining proper access-control logs is essential to protecting against cyber-attackers.

The post Community Health Systems, HIPAA, and Cloud Hosting appeared first on Cloud Computing News.