What are the best practices for deploying managed cloud services? Case studies have now confirmed that cloud services can be a better, faster, less expensive and less risky way to source Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions, according to the latest market study by Ovum.
Results from recent research conducted by Ovum details the experiences of five public sector organizations that have successfully deployed cloud services — either with Infrastructure-as-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
Highlighting the known benefits and the catalysts that empower organizations to embrace the cloud service delivery model, Ovum says they have developed a framework to assist government agencies in understanding the organizational factors associated with early adoption of managed cloud services.
A Cloud That Cares? Or About Eating Your Cloud and Having It Too
Although self-service -together with elasticity, pooling/sharing, etc. – is a defining attribute of cloud computing, many of the companies expressing an interest in cloud computing do not seem to be aware of that.
In fact, when asked: who do you expect to provision your services to the cloud?; who will monitor your services’ performance and availability? and; who do you expect to take action if something goes wrong?, a majority of the companies asked look to be somewhat surprised by the question, as they simply assumed that their service provider would do so.
This is a bit like going to a supermarket (a typical self-service facility), pointing to the ingredients you like and expecting the cashier to clean, cook and serve them for you. The name we generally use for such a service however is “restaurant” and it comes with significant different expectations and pricing, as demonstrated by the price of a bottle of the wine in a restaurant versus that same bottle at a supermarket (which is one reason restaurants prefer to buy from exclusive wine merchants and not to put bottles or their wine list that are available in retail).
The growth of Chinese cloud computing
China is the latest country to realise the full potential of cloud computing as they are now pushing a huge amount of money into it.
Chinese cloud computing now accounts for 3% of the global cloud computing market share, which in monetary terms equates to an awful lot – especially if you consider the fact that the market was said to be worth around $90 bn US dollars back in 2011 and it has continued to grow exponentially since.
Growth Plans
It is expected that the Chinese cloud computing market will grow to around 117.4 billion CNY, which is equal to $18.6bn US dollars, or £11.5bn, by 2013.
Furthermore, it has been reported that the Internet Society of China predicts that the country will have reached 1 trillion CNY by 2015 – a simply staggering amount of money!
The Chinese government is said to be encouraging the growth of …
Government SaaS Entrepreneur
As the name suggests our Government SaaS Entrepreneur program tailors their venture accelerator for apps for the public sector.
Examples of apps that have already gone through this process include Huddle IL3, referring to it being suitable for the UK’s information security classification IL3. This has resulted in the Huddle app grabbing the lions share of the G-Cloud market.
[Dave Nicholl] In this interview with Dave Nicholl, CIO for Ontario Province, talks about how they would consider this type of service for key requirements like their Drivers Licence applications, with a critical point about security.
Introducing Cloud Service Dashboard of Dashboards
We’ve added a one-stop “dashboard of dashboards” that displays all the major cloud service dashboards on one page.
The page contains a “window” for each service status page or dashboard, with live, up-to-date info at a glance. Scroll for specific applications or locations, or click the link to jump to the full status page itself.
We included these services initially:
- Amazon AWS
- Google Apps
- AppSpot
- Microsoft Azure
- RackSpace
- Apple iCloud
- Salesforce.com
- Joyent
- internet Pulse
Have we missed any? If we have leave a comment with the URL and we’ll try to add it.
Intelligent Infrastructure: Clouds for Commercial Real Estate
If they plan to remain viable in today’s markets, now is the time for real estate firms to make some dramatic changes by offering intelligent amenities in their commercial properties.
How do we prop up our dying shopping center?
How do we develop and maintain more business for our stadium?
How do we raise our commercial properties’ occupancy from 45% to 85%?
These questions are being asked more and more in the commercial real estate industry as the economy remains in a slump in many locations. Many executives are baffled because their usual management techniques are not working. In addition, assessments and property appraisals that overlook or discount technology within the property’s infrastructure are inadequate at best, and totally erroneous at worse.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Truth and Lies about Cloud in Europe
Are you aware of the new reality that cloud computing is bringing to bear? Cloud is not as global as you might think.
The global acceptance of cloud computing has caused a spike in demand for multi-national cloud capability. As a result, cloud companies are facing an intimidating next step – expanding to new international markets. The Netherlands is the leading cloud hub in Europe that can address this process specific to transatlantic cloud expansion and how to intelligently establish the highest performing Cloud environment between North America and Europe.
Creating a Self-Defending Network Using Open Source Software
A coworker and I put a couple pieces of open source software (OSSEC and Snort) together to respond to certain types of automated attacks we were seeing in our IDS (we use Snort in this case). Prior to this, an engineer would manually respond to alerts by logging into our firewall and blocking the IP address causing the alert. This process was tedious, repetitive, and time consuming. By the time the firewall change would be pushed, generally the scan (it was usually a scan) was over and the attacker had moved on. So we took advantage of a feature in OSSEC called “active response”, which is used to react to events on the network. OSSEC was configured to watch for Snort alerts, and would run a script on our Internet routers (running Vyatta core 6.3) to block the IP for 10 minutes. This response runs almost immediately. We hand selected alerts that we had associated with simple scans, such as FTP Brute Force attacks, and set them up to block the addresses. But this wasn’t enough for us.
IBM Arms ‘Sparta’ for Big Data & the Cloud
IBM will be adding another one of its Oracle Exa-like converged PureSystems in a webcast from Boston on October 9.
AllThingsD broke the news in a piece that has mysteriously disappeared from the Wall Street Journal’s site.
It said the thing – which IBM is advertising as an integrated solution for Big Data and the cloud – was developed under the codename Project Sparta, which makes some sense since the first PureSystems – PureFlex and PureApplications – announced in April, were reportedly codenamed Project Troy.
New SafeNet Authentication Service Designed for Service Providers
SafeNet, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of SafeNet Authentication Service, a new cloud-based authentication service. The cloud authentication solution was designed and engineered specifically for the service provider environment and allows service providers to rapidly introduce authentication-as-a-service to their enterprise customers. By doing so, it enables service providers to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU), significantly reduce the cost and complexity associated with offering and implementing strong authentication, and strengthen their security and compliance posture.
SafeNet Authentication Service extends the company’s portfolio of two-factor authentication solutions, providing enterprise and government organizations with choice and flexibility to best customize their authentication solutions to meet current and future security needs.
SafeNet Authentication Service’s automated, customizable cloud platform can reduce authentication-related operational costs through the elimination of manual tasks associated with the provisioning, administration, billing, and management of users and tokens. Service providers can manage their customers from a multi-tier, multi-tenant platform that is vendor-agnostic and will work with an organization’s existing token technology, enabling a quick migration to a centralized cloud environment with minimal disruption to end users. In addition, the service can be white-label branded and completely customizable to the service provider’s needs, enhancing the service brand and overall awareness. In addition, the platform is highly scalable, which enables service providers to accommodate a growing number of customers added to the service without requiring costly infrastructure upgrades.
Strong authentication has also become a major challenge for today’s “extended enterprise,” in which remote employees, partners, customers, and other third parties require access to an organization’s systems, applications, and data. With no infrastructure required, enterprises can quickly turn to service providers for SafeNet Authentication Service to simplify the implementation of strong authentication in this environment—providing “security without borders” from a fully automated, high-assurance, trusted cloud environment.
In addition, SafeNet Authentication Service enables service providers to free up their customer’s IT staff to focus on higher-value activities. By doing so, this automation facilitates real-time policy application to ensure regulatory compliance and improved business efficiency.
According to Chris Morales of the 451 Research Group, “The consumerization of IT, the adoption of mobile computing and SaaS applications, and the incipient growth of desktop virtualization places identity front and center of emerging security and management concerns. As identity assumes more centrality for IT (in terms of both industry and organizational function) in coming to terms with these trends, securing the integrity of the identity assertion, characterizing it in terms of risk assessment, and supplementing (or supplanting) user name and password comprise the initial set of security hurdles. Also, as enterprises and organizations assess the requirements for authentication against the cost and flexibility of the options available from incumbent vendors, authentication-as-a-service, and new form factors or channels such as smartphone tokens and one-time passwords delivered as an SMS have gained in appeal.”
SafeNet Authentication Service reflects the combined offering resulting from SafeNet’s acquisition of Cryptocard in March 2012. This new service combines SafeNet’s market-leading authentication solutions with Cryptocard’s innovative, scalable, and flexible platform.
