During the past month or so, Rich Mogull, analyst and CEO of securosis has published multiple blogs on cloud encryption best practices, specifically in infrastructure clouds. The final blog IaaS Encryption: How to Choose, provides a good opportunity for us to touch and expand on some of the volume storage cloud security points highlighted on Rich’s article:
“Always use external key management. Instance-managed encryption is only acceptable for test/development systems you know will never go into production”
Instance managed encryption means the encryption keys are kept on the virtual disk. In other words, anyone with access to your cloud instance, has access to your encryption keys – hence to your data. In addition, specific cloud operations, such as disk snapshots, will snapshot the encryption keys with it.

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During the past month or so, Rich Mogull, analyst and CEO of securosis has published multiple blogs on cloud encryption best practices, specifically in infrastructure clouds. The final blog IaaS Encryption: How to Choose, provides a good opportunity for us to touch and expand on some of the volume storage cloud security points highlighted on Rich’s article:
“Always use external key management. Instance-managed encryption is only acceptable for test/development systems you know will never go into production”
Instance managed encryption means the encryption keys are kept on the virtual disk. In other words, anyone with access to your cloud instance, has access to your encryption keys – hence to your data. In addition, specific cloud operations, such as disk snapshots, will snapshot the encryption keys with it.

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Many have heard of OAuth but are unsure of how it might apply to their business.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software, will describe how OAuth can be used to facilitate certain business models and simplify the sharing of private data.
Alistair Farquharson is a visionary industry veteran focused on using disruptive technologies to drive business growth and improve efficiency and agility within organizations. As the CTO of SOA Software Alistair is helping to shape and mature the enterprise API and SOA industry. Alistair is responsible for product strategy and development for this leading Enterprise API and SOA Governance company. He spends a great deal of time and energy shaping customer and industry direction with regular conference keynote appearances, discussions with customers, and even the occasional foray into writing code. Alistair has been at the forefront of many technology waves from enterprise web architecture, through web services and SOA, and now into APIs. His expertise spans a wide range of technologies and businesses, and he brings a unique global focus to everything he does.

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The technology infrastructure of today’s business landscape has undergone dramatic shifts in recent years. The consumerization of IT, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, and of course the cloud have revolutionized the way corporations manage data, complete transactions and communicate with employees and customers.
Organizations of all sizes are moving their document and email management needs to the cloud, with increasing numbers opting for a private cloud solution, a proprietary computing architecture that provides hosted services behind an organization’s firewall.

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It turns out cloud computing could be the most useful sales associate on the floor, and you won’t have to worry about it stealing sales leads, ala “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
With the help of cloud computing, some brick-and-mortar stores are combating showrooming, a trend where consumers look at items in a store before buying them online, usually at lower prices, according to an article on Wired.com.
Clouds offer retailers a way to explore the potential of Big Data analytics to understand their customers better. In order to compete with e-tailers, retailers are tapping social networks to learn what customers are saying about them and about their competitors. Weather data is being used to influence product-purchasing decisions, and merchandise promotions are organized around social events.
In many cases, brick-and-mortar retailers are even finding new data sources. Some companies are tracking the movement of customers within stores and analyzing how many stop at displays to improve the effectiveness of merchandising. Others are considering installing license-plate cameras in parking lots to find out which customer is about to walk into the store.

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CollabNet, the enterprise cloud development concern, figures the new version of CloudForge it’s put together kicks butt, leapfrogging GitHub and BitBucket by offering the broadest, freest toolkit around, while romancing developers by taking the shackles off its use.
The multi-tenant development-Platform-as-a-Service (dPaaS) is now unrestricted even though it’s free. It can build web sites, mobile, cloud and web applications, and rapidly prototype and deploy business software.
CloudForge can now be used by an unlimited number of users for an unlimited number of private projects, and it comes with Subversion and Git, the version control fixtures, so these users won’t get lost in their own underwear. If you’ve got something better, bring it along.

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Organizations want extraordinary results from their IT units. Today’s mantra is faster delivery, better quality, cheaper solutions, and safer environments. Many CIOs are implementing cloud computing enterprise architectures to address these challenges with results varying greatly. Why are some organizations seeing only limited results from cloud computing implementations while others are increasing market share, decreasing costs, generating value, and innovating faster?

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The rise of cloud computing has exposed hard drive-based storage as the new data center bottleneck. Combating this, data center managers have deployed SSDs to gain the performance needed to provide real-time access to data. However, due to budget constraints, many have turned to consumer-grade SSDs without understanding that they wear out quickly when processing enterprise workloads. In this session, Esther Spanjer will discuss recent endurance advancements in SSD technology that enable usage of low cost, enterprise-class SSDs, and how this helps organizations lower their storage TCO by avoiding frequent replacements.

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You’re getting pitched every day from your legacy enterprise software and hardware vendors about “cloud.” They’re doing an amazing job of convincing your CIO and CTO about what cloud is and how you should use it. The reality is they’re defending their shrinking market share and keeping you on the legacy treadmill for as long as they can by selling you solutions that aren’t “cloud.”
In her session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Niki Acosta, Cloud Evangelista for Rackspace, will talk through the five dirty little secrets your legacy IT vendors won’t tell you about cloud. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how you should really be thinking about building enterprise apps for the cloud while embracing the fundamental shift away from legacy IT.

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