Australian Government agencies have some new regulations to consider when they are contemplating moves to the cloud, particularly clouds hosted outside of Australian borders. These guidelines, known as “The Australian Government policy and risk management guidelines for the processing and storage of Australian Government information in outsourced or offshore ICT arrangements”, are part of the broader Protective Security Policy Framework announced earlier this year and are aimed at protecting data being stored and processed in cloud environments.
The Framework document clearly acknowledges the benefits that Australian Government agencies can gain from moving to cloud environments but points out that privacy, security, integrity and availability of personal information cannot be sacrificed in pursuit of these benefits. In particular, “offshoring” of information (e.g., using US-based cloud services) is highlighted as a situation that creates a number of challenges in this arena, and the Framework is meant to help agencies determine when to use these services on a case-by-case basis.
The Cloud of Tomorrow
Before talking about the cloud of tomorrow, in his General Session at 12th Cloud Expo, Kevin Clarke, Director of Cloud Platform Engineering for Verizon Terremark, describes what core characteristics compose the cloud of today, and discusses three fundamental features: independent architectures, multi-tenant infrastructures and the concept of ‘different controls. He explores the challenges that exist in running enterprise applications, or what he calls the “hard stuff” and the ideal features future cloud offerings should provide enterprises.
Kevin Clarke is the Director of Cloud Platform Engineering for Verizon Terremark. He is responsible for building the Verizon cloud platform that brings “Cloud without Compromise” computing to the Enterprise. Prior to joining Verizon, Kevin was the Director of System Engineering in the midrange storage division of EMC, where he ran System Architecture, Performance and Security. Kevin spent 21 years working in Silicon Valley for Sun Microsystems in Cloud Computing, Solaris Operating Systems and Storage. He holds a BSCS and MBA from Northeastern University in Boston.
Cloud Viewed as Fed’s Answer to Big Data Needs
Cloud computing is steadily working its way into the U.S. federal government, potentially simplifying access to information for the public, but also creating some consternation over who ultimately controls that data.
Some federal agency managers are reluctant to hand over their data to cloud computing providers, for fear of diminished security or potential hassles should they need to switch vendors, according to an article on FederalTimes.com.
But the government’s growing appetite for collecting information is forcing agencies to consider the promised benefits of cloud computing, such as storing and managing their data for less money and the ability to access data from any device over the Internet. The latter is a major tenet of the Obama administration’s push to make more data accessible to the public, and to increase productivity by allowing employees to access systems and files remotely, or via the cloud.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google: The Cloud Leading Trio
Following several discussions with fellow bloggers and industry executives, I found it quite fitting that the natural cloud leaders are the top software and web giants: Google, Microsoft and Amazon. While Amazon’s AWS is The public cloud today Google recently reported that it is doubling its office space near Seattle, just miles from the campuses of Amazon and Microsoft, in order to expand its cloud technology team and engineers. Over two years prior to these Google’s expansion news, Microsoft reported that 90% of its R&D investment was earmarked for cloud technology. Last month they finally announced that that Windows Azure Cloud Services now support auto-scaling. For these reasons and more, the following points will strengthen the trivial perception that cloud technologies should and will prosper in the hands of this software giant trio.
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Upgrading to the Cloud
“We have just recently launched a new product called Mission Critical Cloud, which is a VMware-based public cloud solution. We did that because we are seeing more and more demand to outsource and to outsource in a cloud fashion from larger enterprises,” stated Robert Miggins, Senior Vice President of Business Development at PEER 1 Hosting, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Pantheon Forks the Data Center
Pantheon, the all-in-one Drupal platform, today announced the launch of Multidev, which cuts website management costs by letting teams instantly provision unlimited development environments in the cloud. Multidev does for a company’s website what software-defined data centers do for its infrastructure. Each member of a team can fork the entire stack of services that power a site on demand, developing in tandem on a single platform. As a result, large websites launch faster and cost less to manage over time.
Based on Pantheon’s multi-tenant containerized architecture, Multidev spins up in seconds, with no need for additional infrastructure or virtual servers. For managers, that means freedom from bugs introduced by outdated databases or platform fragmentation, and from hearing, “It worked on my machine” from their team.
For developers, the process is easy. A team member hits ‘fork’ to provision a complete cloud development environment in seconds. What used to require a separate rack of hardware, now happens in seconds via software. Whether developing, testing or handing off a stable copy of the site for review, there’s no risk of overwriting or losing data. Multidev supports feature-branching, per-developer sandboxes, dedicated quality assurance environments and more.
“With Multidev we’ve eliminated the big reasons behind website launch delays,” said Zack Rosen, CEO and co-founder of Pantheon. “Multidev delivers on the promise of a software-defined data center for website development. It gives users the ability to spin up an entire new web stack including database, caching and version control for every developer on demand. Now even extensive and complex sites can hit their launch targets.”
Will Microsoft Be Successful in the Cloud?
Microsoft held a Build conference targeting developers and showed significant their cloud capabilities. This note summarizes their strengths and challenges.
When you think of IT vendors and cloud computing, companies like Amazon and Google first come to mind because they are very successful with start-ups that leverage their cloud services. HP, IBM and Oracle are making big strides primarily by targeting large enterprises with private cloud solutions. Cisco, EMC and Intel are primarily technology vendors serving as arms providers to cloud service providers. Microsoft falls in a unique category that dominates certain IT segments and covers customers ranging from start-ups, consumers and large enterprises. The recent Microsoft Build conference provided many opportunities to learn about a range of the company’s cloud computing capabilities.
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Enterprise Class Cloud Platform
“NaviSite has a long history in managed hosting, co-location, and cloud services for the large enterprise and business market and it was a nice way for the parent company [Time Warner Cable] to expand into the cloud space,” stated Sandra Palumbo, Director of Product Marketing at Navisite, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Three Steps to Lower Costs and Improve Compliance Using Cloud
While cloud computing is well known for lowering costs, and bringing additional agility to enterprises, the emergence of vertical-specific clouds is beginning to define their value as well. Vertical-specific clouds are those public or community clouds that provide processes and support for data storage that are specific to a vertical, such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, finance, etc.
These types of clouds provide pre-built business processes that are specific to a vertical industry, and they provide pre-built data structures, as well as vertical-specific compliance and security. For example, as we discussed in the last blog post, vertical-specific give a cloud provider the ability to support HIPAA as a service that’s built into the cloud.
Three Steps to Lower Costs and Improve Compliance Using Cloud
While cloud computing is well known for lowering costs, and bringing additional agility to enterprises, the emergence of vertical-specific clouds is beginning to define their value as well. Vertical-specific clouds are those public or community clouds that provide processes and support for data storage that are specific to a vertical, such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, finance, etc.
These types of clouds provide pre-built business processes that are specific to a vertical industry, and they provide pre-built data structures, as well as vertical-specific compliance and security. For example, as we discussed in the last blog post, vertical-specific give a cloud provider the ability to support HIPAA as a service that’s built into the cloud.