The explosion of mobile devices in recent times has forced enterprises to tackle security issues as more employees are taking to accessing privileged company resources such as email, file servers and databases with their personal phones and tablets. An earlier report by research firm Gartner indicated that the security concern is increasing with this rapid proliferation with 90% of enterprises having already deployed mobile devices, mainly smart phones and with 86% of enterprises surveyed planning to deploy media tablets this year. These devices are now mature enough to replace many of the roles played by laptops or even traditional workstations. Considering the popularity of personal use tablets and the increasing time that employees spend on these units, it makes sense for enterprises to integrate them under a centralized IT network to save employee time and company resources.

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Information and identities are the lifeblood of your enterprise, yet the use of public cloud services challenge many legacy approaches to protecting what’s important. The move to the cloud requires a new control point that provides visibility and protection of your critical information and identity assets.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Nico Popp, Vice President of Product Management and Development for Symantec O3, learn how Symantec O3 can help you realize the vision of a protected cloud, and hear the CISO from a major business bank discuss information security in the new world of cloud computing.

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It used to be so easy. The company needed more IT infrastructure, so you bought more components, built more technology, and scrambled to keep it all well oiled. Then along came the cloud and the world shifted under your feet – or perhaps more accurately, over your head. Suddenly they wanted you out of the server room and (instead) in the boardroom, assessing the services of cloud vendors and discussing the cost benefits of the new technology. And then it’s all “strategy this, planning that.” But you keep thinking to yourself: What was wrong with the old stuff? And do things really have to change?
If “Internal Trembling” is all that comes to mind at the mention of “IT” nowadays, you’re not alone. For the past few years, CIOs have developed an inferiority complex, questioning the very skills that got them where they are now and assessing how they can be useful moving forward. In the worst cases, cloud computing has made flying blind at work a reality, and that can shatter CIOs’ confidence. Server rooms, with their friendly racks of IT infrastructure were once so warm, cozy, and inviting. Now everything’s cloudy. Adding cloud computing – with its associated outsourcing management responsibility – to the mix when your roster already includes responsibility for managing legacy systems, maintaining uptime, delivering customer service, securing data, ensuring compliance, making mission-critical decisions, and sometimes even getting coffee for the CEO, can be overwhelming.

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Not yet included in the NIST taxonomy of Cloud Computing models is ‘BPaaS’ – Business Process as a Service.

Hopefully it soon will be, as although it is the lesser known and discussed of the Cloud categories, it’s the most powerful in it’s ability to directly impact short-term business transformation and perceivable business value to end-users.
Where IaaS provides virtual servers, PaaS the databases and other middleware and then SaaS for a category of software like CRM, as the name suggests BPaaS is the next layer up again, where the software is then tailored for a specific workflow and this is delivered as-a-Service.

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Many firms still dismiss the importance of social networking and some of them even ban employees from using these services while in the workplace. They think that “social” starts and ends with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other networks that might be best described as informal, consumer level and perhaps even fun.
It would be unfair to blame these old traditionalists who have dug their heels in and insisted that their traditional trading systems don’t need fixing, let alone reinventing. It has been a so-called ‘paradigm shift’ and a change in mindset toward social is sometimes a lot to ask for.

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OpenStack Folsom, the sixth release of the open source cloud computing platform, saw a 65 percent increase in contributors, as well as the addition of Networking and Block Storage services, architected in line with the OpenStack philosophy of pluggability and extensibility. While work was underway to establish the new OpenStack Foundation, the thriving community once again delivered the release on-time and with all planned essential features.

OpenStack Folsom automates pools of compute, storage and networking resources, now including emerging Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions via OpenStack Networking plug-ins, to build private and public cloud infrastructures without vendor lock-in. OpenStack Networking currently includes plug-in support for Open vSwitch, the Ryu open source network operating system, standard Linux bridge networking and commercial solutions from Cisco, Nicira, and NEC, with others in development. Written by more than 330 contributors, the Folsom release features a continued focus on stability and extensibility, while adding considerable new features like Networking, Block Storage and Hyper-V support. The community also made significant progress with localization efforts, introducing a new translation framework for the software, user-facing guides and documentation.

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IBM has announced a broad set of global initiatives to better position clients to take advantage of cloud opportunities. This effort is aimed at further expanding IBM’s cloud ecosystem, enabling organizations to develop solutions and services on IBM SmartCloud and PureSystems, built on open standards. As more clients embrace cloud computing, they are looking to local technology providers known as Managed Service Providers (MSP) to help them quickly develop cloud based services in a more simplistic, secure and economical way.
Managed service providers deliver a defined set of technology solutions or services to clients with a pay-as-you-go model. MSPs are largely leveraged by customers which want to take advantage of cloud technologies but lack the internal IT skills, resources and time. For example, smaller hospitals are still challenged with adopting electronic medical records. Many healthcare providers are turning to the MSP model, where an MSP can quickly help the small healthcare provider to build and manage a cloud service to process patient data and make that information available securely in the cloud, freeing up the healthcare provider to focus more on the patient.

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In this jointly presented session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, James Tyler, Director of MarCom, TelecityGroup, and a TelecityGroup customer will deal with how Cloud service providers can expand into Europe and exploit new revenue opportunities. They will cover best practice considerations when selecting a data center partner that leads to success.
James Tyler is Director of Marketing & Communications at TelecityGroup. He is responsible for marketing and communication strategy, Group business development and CSR. He has over 15 years’ experience in senior communications and marketing roles, 12 of which have been in the technology and communications sectors. Prior to TelecityGroup he worked in senior marketing and communications roles in London and Italy for, among others, Level 3 Communications and Baltimore Technologies. Tyler started his career in Porter Novelli, a leading global communications agency.

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