Cloud-Based Security Services: When Will Market Expectations Be Realized?

Gartner recently issued a research note on “Cloud-Based Security Services,” the capability to deliver security controls without on-premise technology deployment and management. The category currently sits in the “Trough of Disillusionment” in the latest Gartner Hype Cycle for Cloud Security, meaning the technologies offered have failed to meet market expectations.
Gartner suggests that users investigate specific areas in their cloud implementations and SLAs, including service continuity, response time, and customization to ensure they deliver on the expected outcomes. A key design goal of the PerspecSys Cloud Data Protection Gateway was to offer multiple deployment options, including cloud data protection as a service. Our validated Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) hosting partners are well-equipped and experienced in supporting enterprise mission-critical business requirements. Our IaaS partners have a long history of providing a variety of enterprise services – including security – without any on-premise infrastructure, and they do not compromise on service continuity, response time, or user customization. Our cloud data protection virtual service is underpinned through our partners’ SLAs, consistent with what enterprise companies have come to expect.

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Cloud Migrator Transfers Files between Amazon S3, Azure, Rackspace

CloudBerry Lab today announced the beta version of its new CloudBerry Cloud Migrator service that allows users to transfer files from one cloud storage to another. The service supports data migration between Amazon S3, Windows Azure Blob Storage, Rackspace Cloud Files and FTP servers.

Cloud Migrator service by CloudBerry Lab is a web application that lets users transfer their files across different cloud storage services without installing any additional software. All copy operations executes inside a cloud and managed through the web interface.

The service allows users to copy files between different locations or accounts within one cloud storage provider as well as between different. It’s a perfect solution to painlessly migrate data from one Amazon S3 bucket to another or from Amazon S3 to Azure Blob Storage or Rackspace Cloud Files and vice versa.

Finally, Cloud Migrator supports FTP so it can also be used to easily copy/move files from an FTP server to any of the supported cloud storage accounts with no need to implement complicated scripts.

In the Cloud Migrator future releases, the new low-cost Glacier storage by Amazon AWS will be added to the list of supported cloud storage accounts.

CloudBerry Cloud Migrator is available at http://sync.cloudberrylab.com/


A Pragmatic Journey to the Cloud

As enterprise adoption of cloud computing accelerates, organizations must have a strategy and roadmap for moving to the cloud. Faced with different options including building a private cloud, subscribing to public clouds, or leveraging a hybrid cloud, organizations need a rational and pragmatic approach. In this Lunchtime Keynote Amir Halfon explores the emerging trends in cloud computing and offers best practices for how organizations can successfully navigate a journey to the cloud.
Amir Halfon is Chief Technologist for Financial Services at Oracle, where he oversees the development of industry-specific solutions and strategy, addressing challenges such as Bid Data analytics, on-demand risk management and deep customer insight.

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Vertical Cloud Targets Needs of Wall Street

NYSE Euronext’s innovative cloud and groundbreaking business model targets the needs of Wall Street IT leaders.
We’ll learn about how this innovative cloud and groundbreaking business model targets the needs of Wall Street IT leaders, how the business of the financial services industry has received them, and explore how providing cloud services as a business has evolved.
We’ve been very happy with the progress we’ve made. When we announced at VMworld last year, we had just gone into early access for our first clients in our data center in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut tri-state area, where we have all of our US-based markets running the New York Stock Exchange Markets, the Arca Electronic Markets, and AMEX

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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Best Practices of API Management

We are in the midst of an API revolution. Countless major enterprises are opening up access to their core information systems, allowing innovative third-party developers to build new business opportunities through collaboration and community. However, this remarkable movement puts pressure on IT to manage APIs. The goal is to ensure optimal business outcomes through APIs without inadvertently creating security and system management problems or running up unsustainable costs.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Alistair Farquharson, CTO at SOA Software, will address this challenge by exploring some proven best practices for API management.

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Cloud Computing: SUSE Cloud Rolls Out

SUSE claims it’s got the first enterprise-supported private Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud solution powered by the Essex version of OpenStack, the open source platform that Red Hat is also supporting.
Red Hat’s widgetry, now in preview, won’t solidify until next year. SUSE’s is ready to roll.
It calls the stuff SUSE Cloud, which is supposed to be easier to deploy and manage than Rackspace’s OpenStack package because it’s integrated Crowbar in the thing.

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AppFog Kicks Off Its PaaS Consolidation Play

There are way too many PaaS options around, so AppFog has enveloped one of them and will suck up its technology.

It’s acquired Nodester, the open source PaaS for Node.js, which it says grew 40% in the last 30 days.

AppFog is using Nodester’s intellectual property to collaborate with VMware to deliver WebSocket support in Cloud Foundry, VMware’s open source PaaS.

According to Krishnan Subramanian, founder and principal analyst at Rishidot Research, “It is clear that polyglot and infrastructure agnostic PaaS solutions are the future of PaaS. As enterprise acceptance of PaaS continues to ramp up it is likely that we will see a wave of consolidation.”

AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson means to be that consolidator.

There are something like 200 PaaSs in the world all doing things differently and in the fashion of the times not letting developers know where their apps are deployed or take them and run. Single language PaaSs are, as Nodester founder Chris Matthieu discovered, too limiting.

Carlson says standardization is needed before the enterprise finds the PaaS “too ugly.” They need to run across all vendors and public, private and hybrid clouds, all looking the same.

He figures his crusade will take him three-five years. As AppFog strengthens, the weak sisters will wither. Carlson means to be the last man standing with a couple of “ankle-biters” surviving. Evidently his VCs are backing his play.

Returning to the present, AppFog will keep Nodester running as an independent service until WebSocket support is integrated into AppFog later this year and Matthieu decides whether he wants to stay or go. At that point the applications will move into the AppFog infrastructure, giving Nodester users access to all AppFog features including cross-cloud vendor compatibility. They will be able to deploy apps to a wide range of different IaaS providers.

AppFog’s PaaS supports Java, .NET, Node.js, Python, PHP and Ruby solutions. It did Node.js before Nodester, whose widgetry is deeper and broader than what AppFog had. AppFog also inherits a reported significant community, doubling its own.

Node is tied with PHP as the most popular language on AppFog with the most number of applications running. AppFog claims to have deployed 60,000 mobile and web apps to the cloud.

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Citrix survey: Is the cloud confusing?

A survey from Wakefield Research for virtualisation experts Citrix has shown that, for consumers, many Americans are unaware of what ‘the cloud’ entails.

32% of respondents stated that cloud was “a thing of the future”, while 95% of those surveyed who thought they weren’t using the cloud actually were, for such simple tasks as online banking and social networking.

The research, which garnered responses from over 1000 American nationals, found some surprising and eye-opening results. Highlights included:

  • 40% of respondents stated an advantage of the cloud was being able to access work information in their “birthday suit”
  • A quarter of those surveyed said the cloud was great for keeping embarrassing videos off the hard drive
  • A third of interviewees said they faked knowledge of the cloud at work, with 14% pretending to know for a job interview and 17% winging it on a first date

Thankfully, Americans did see …

VMware’s OpenStack Hook-up: Analysis & Comments

VMware has applied to join the OpenStack Foundation, potentially giving the burgeoning open source cloud stack movement a huge dose of credibility in the enterprise. There are risks to the community in VMware’s involvement, of course, but on the balance this could be a pivotal event. There is an alternative explanation, which I will hit at the end, but it’s a pretty exciting development no matter VMware’s true motivations.

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The cloud news categorized.