One of the biggest concerns IT managers have about moving business-critical applications into the cloud and away from the data center is the issue of security. What you may not realize, however, is that the same tools for automation and provisioning that function in cloud implementations also offer a significant opportunity to improve security.
The first concern, of course, is whether the cloud in question is private or public. If you’re using a public cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services, you know you’re looking at Level 1 PCI DSS compliance. If you’re running a cloud solution in-house, however, you need to make sure you’re handling all of that security via firewalls and network and storage management.
Life in the Slow Lane and Buried Under Event Big Data
Sitting in traffic the other day reminded me of a stock trading company that gets millions of system alerts a day. Millions!!! Do they all need attention? Only some? How can you know without viewing them all? There is no way to personally handle such an enormous amount of alerts. To have someone sit and look through millions of messages a day and determine how critical the alert is or the validity of the alert is just impossible.
Then, a car went by in the Carpool Lane.
It occurred to me, that a business system is much like the carpool lane. The carpool lane allows vehicles with 2 or more people to be fast tracked past the traffic. Like the carpool lane, there need to be parameters that are able to identify which alerts are pertinent and allowed to speed through and which alerts are not. We’re not suggesting that some messages hop around others and get to us faster. That is of course, not workable. But, the system needs to be able to identify and process the alert types that are important enough to require immediate attention. Sometimes, the alert is as simple as a transient warning and doesn’t require immediate attention. Other times, the alert is much more important in nature, such as an application failure.
Life in the Slow Lane and Buried Under Event Big Data
Sitting in traffic the other day reminded me of a stock trading company that gets millions of system alerts a day. Millions!!! Do they all need attention? Only some? How can you know without viewing them all? There is no way to personally handle such an enormous amount of alerts. To have someone sit and look through millions of messages a day and determine how critical the alert is or the validity of the alert is just impossible.
Then, a car went by in the Carpool Lane.
It occurred to me, that a business system is much like the carpool lane. The carpool lane allows vehicles with 2 or more people to be fast tracked past the traffic. Like the carpool lane, there need to be parameters that are able to identify which alerts are pertinent and allowed to speed through and which alerts are not. We’re not suggesting that some messages hop around others and get to us faster. That is of course, not workable. But, the system needs to be able to identify and process the alert types that are important enough to require immediate attention. Sometimes, the alert is as simple as a transient warning and doesn’t require immediate attention. Other times, the alert is much more important in nature, such as an application failure.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Speaker Profile: James Weir – UShareSoft
With Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley (11th Cloud Expo) due to open in just under three weeks’ time at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA – co-located with 2nd International BigDataExpo – let’s introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the West Coast conference…
We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing & Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud and/or Big Data solutions that are transforming the world of Enterprise IT?
Cisco’s "Kickstart-to-Cloud" Workshop at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
Cisco’s “Kickstart-to-Cloud” Workshop at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley, Nov 5-8, 2012, is a free half-day event on Monday, November 5, that will offer Cloud Expo attendees a perspective on all the new technologies out there and how to not be distracted by the bright shiny objects.
Join Wayne Greene, Rodrigo Flores, Joann Starke, and Brian Cinque of the Cloud and Systems Management Technology Group & Corporate IT at Cisco Systems as they describe the habits of effective cloud builders and hear in-depth what made one private cloud deployment a smashing success.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Four Degrees of Separation from SaaS
Four companies moving to SaaS, four different challenges, four different markets and four different solutions.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Jan Aleman, CEO of Servoy, will provide four separate, real case studies detailing how these SaaS companies met the challenges.
Moving to SaaS?
Then you’re going to have to rewrite your software whether you want to or not. How do you manage the process without driving your company’s collective brain insane? We’ll show you how one SaaS company handled it.
Analyzing the costs and risks of transitioning
If you decided to build your new system from scratch, you’re the main technology provider. Are you up to the task? Can you get it done in a timely fashion? Go the outsource and third-party component route and you’re now orchestrating an effort you don’t totally control. Where are the main risks? Our case study will show you how they reduced these risks.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Lunchtime Focus Keynote – Day 3
The cloud is changing the way enterprises consume IT infrastructure and applications. Networks and application deployment strategies are being re-architected to manage an increasingly hybrid network where storage, utility compute and applications are being designed to move seamlessly across private and public cloud infrastructures.
In his Lunchtime Focus Keynote at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Todd Paoletti, Vice President of Product Management at Akamai, will discuss the trends, new products and roadmap to help increase cloud adoption and business agility.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Speaker Profile: Mark Skilton – Capgemini
With Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley (11th Cloud Expo) due to open in three weeks’ time at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, let’s introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the conference…
We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT?
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Freeing Cloud Data – SQL for SaaS
As data as a service providers are emerging to aggregate and manage large data set sources from multiple sources to make this information more easily available and usable to businesses, it is increasingly imperative to enable an easy-to-use service for data connectivity. As customers put more of their data assets in the hands of cloud vendors, they will demand readily available visibility into the source of their data and how it is used.
The challenge of managing multiple cloud and enterprise data sources is becoming increasingly more complex. With a diverse set of solutions such as CRM, B2B, EAI, accounting, and more becoming more prevalent in the cloud, working together and sharing data can be daunting to IT departments that are used to managing their solutions in-house.
Is the Clock Ticking for OpenStack?
A new Forrester report says “the clock is ticking” for OpenStack, because “have been relatively few enterprise-ready OpenStack-powered products on the market.” The report was quoted as such in a leading tech publication, which had also reported, just five weeks ago, that SUSE had just “thrown its hat into the already crowded OpenStack distribution game.”
Well, which is it? Do prospective OpenStack customers have a surfeit of selections or a plethora of possibilities?
These questions are set against the larger background of the battles among open-source stacks, VMware, Oracle, and Microsoft.
Numerous court intrigues are also present in the picture. Is VCE partner and cloud pioneer Cisco a friend, foe, or “froe” of fellow VCE adventurer VMware? Is VMware’s Ncira-driven entry into OpenStack really a benign, practical move? How many people believe Oracle is truly offering cloud computing, and what does it matter?
How important, and disruptive, are multiple mobile platforms to Cloud Computing? What does the Big Data/Cloud Computing Boolean chart look like, and how much of Big Data is Hadoop? How serious is the oncoming unstructured Big Data onslaught, and how much of a threat is that to Oracle?
Regarding OpenStack’s prospects in particular and Cloud Computing in general, I think it’s also important to consider the role of first-mover advantage. This is one of those business-school concepts that works very well in analyzing arm wrestling, but less well in business. I can’t think of a single technology company today (including IBM) that had first-mover advantage. Somebody please tweet me with evidence to the contrary. I don’t mind looking foolish now and then.
But I doubt any perceived leader in today in either the battle of the stacks or in Cloud Computing is guaranteed leadership five years from now or 20 years from now. I reported from last year’s Cloud Expo West about RightScale’s finding that its varied, multi-cloud customers were supporting a virtual dead heat among Eucalyptus, CloudStack, and OpenStack.
The three are quite different species of duck, but they all seem to walk and quack in the same way to the untrained eye and ear. But if I learn at this year’s Cloud Expo West that one has assumed a clear leadership – ie, in terms of revenue, customers, and momentum – can we assume that will remain the case for long?
Even if a few OpenStack members get disenchanted and disengaged from the project, will that be a death knell or just another story for bit-stained wretches to chew on for a few days?
The driving cacophony emanating from Cloud Computing technology vendors is giving us one of the great golden ages of IT history. In the end, it will make enterprise IT and personal technology more productive, and thereby play a major role in improving the world’s economies. But as I wrote yesterday, cloud computing comprises a small portion of IT today, and will still do so several years from now.
It’s way too early to talk of ticking clocks, unless these are old-fashioned analog clocks with a big hand indicating years and a little hand indicating decades.