HyTrust, the cloud automation security company, has gotten a new funding and strategic pal in In-Q-Tel (IQT), the venture arm of the CIA and other American black ops.
HyTrust said the undisclosed investment, which is supposed to tickle its technology at scale, was a direct result of the need felt in the federal and intelligence sectors for greater controls and visibility over the management of virtualized data and cloud infrastructure.
VMware and Cisco are also invested in HyTrust for its greater controls, Role-Based Monitoring (RBM) and the so-called “two-man rule.”
HyTrust helps deliver audit, enforcement and policy controls to the administrative layer, including Secondary Approval to enforce the two-man rule on key transactions and delivers cloud control, visibility and operational readiness for mission-critical workloads run by Fortune 500s and other large organizations worldwide.
Cloudy with a Chance of…Success
It’s a standard refrain heard in enterprise IT departments around the world – “I want to move to the cloud, but what about data security, uptime and user response time across a nearly infinite number of devices to support?” Because of this, fear gets in the way and enterprises reap only a small percentage of the potential benefits that can be gained through cloud adoption.
In his General Session at 12th Cloud Expo, Gary Ballabio, Product Line Director responsible for Akamai’s Enterprise Cloud Solutions portfolio, examines a variety of strategies you can employ to make your cloud architecture better performing, more secure and available. Learn best practices for achieving the optimal reliability for applications running in the cloud as well as maintaining or increasing the velocity of real-time data transfers happening in support of Big Data initiatives.
The Top Five Things the Cloud Can Deliver – If You Get Your Security Right
Everyone has an opinion about the ‘Cloud’ and its effect on business – some believe it is dark and scary and fraught with unnecessary risk, while others would argue it’s silver lined and the path to greater business performance and cost savings. The truth is that the Cloud undeniably has the potential to open up a whole new dimension of opportunities to businesses – but only if data security is properly addressed.
First let’s dispel any misperceptions you might have about the cloud. It’s nothing mystical, nothing whimsical, nothing to be afraid of. Or is it? The reason many fear the cloud is its reputation as a dangerous, risky place. And that is true. Anything beyond the physical perimeter of the organization is also, theoretically, beyond the physical protection of the organization. Let’s face it, there are dangers and risks out there, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay behind a locked door. Instead, by arming yourself with the right security you can stay clear of danger and fully tap into the cloud’s potential.
PRISM Scandal Generates Renewed Interest in Non-US Cloud Providers
Guest Post by Mateo Meier, founder of Swiss hosting provider Artmotion
Businesses vote with their feet, in light of the recent PRISM scandal. Up until recently, the US had been considered the leading destination for cloud services with its vast infrastructures and innovative service offerings, but recent leaks have sparked panic amongst many business owners and is driving demand for Non US cloud providers.
The most concerning aspect for many is the wide ranging implications of using US-controlled cloud services, such as AWS, Azure and Dropbox. As a result, businesses are now turning to Switzerland and other secure locations for their data hosting needs.
Swiss ‘private’ hosting companies are seeing huge growth because privacy in Switzerland is enshrined in law. As the country is outside of the EU, it is not bound by pan-European agreements to share data with other member states, or worse, the US. Artmotion, for example, has witnessed 45 per cent growth in revenue amid this new demand for heightened privacy.
Until now the PRISM scandal has focused on the privacy of the individual, but the surveillance undertaken by NSA and Britain’s own GCHQ has spurred corporate concern about the risks associated with using American based cloud providers to host data. It is especially troubling for businesses with data privacy issues, such as banks or large defence and healthcare organisations with ‘secret’ research and development needs.
Before PRISM, the US was at the forefront of the cloud computing industry and companies worldwide flocked to take advantage of the scalable benefits of cloud hosting, as well as the potential cost savings it offered.
However the scandal has unearthed significant risks to data for businesses, as well as for their customers. With US cloud service providers, the government can request business information under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without the company in question ever knowing its data has been accessed.
For businesses large and small, data vulnerabilities and the threat of industrial espionage from US hosting sites can present real security risks or privacy implications, and it’s causing a real fear. Business owners are worried that by using US based systems, private information could potentially be seen by prying eyes.
The desire for data privacy has therefore seen a surge in large corporations turning to ‘Silicon’ Switzerland to take advantage of the country’s renowned privacy culture. Here they can host data without fear of it being accessed by foreign governments.
Mateo Meier, founder of Artmotion, spent the early stages of his career in the US before returning home to Switzerland to start Artmotion. Artmotion was started in early 2000 and provides highly bespoke server solutions to an international set of clients.
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Embracing the Cloud
“We are saying to customers – embrace the cloud for the benefits it provides but do it with eyes wide open. Make the decisions for the right reasons, and we are helping them figure out what those right reasons are,” explained Omar Khawaja, Global Principal, Security Solutions, at Verizon Terremark, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 12th International Cloud Expo, held June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2013 Silicon Valley, November 4–7, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
Amazing Amazon
Amazon’s stock this last week crossed $300 (from $2 in 1997 when it went public, after splits) and the valuation reached $140B, twice that of Facebook, but lower than Google and Apple. This is indeed amazing.
Amazon started out as a web-based book selling company. Now it has three businesses:
Selling new books as well as users can sell their old books.
Using its fulfillment engine to sell every other consumer goods.
The Amazon Web Services platform for offering cloud based services.
The last item is growing to become its number one business soon. It started monetizing its huge computing infrastructure few years back, first with renting storage (S3). Then came the Elastic Computing Cloud followed by myriad other cloud services. The AWS platform is the dominant cloud infrastructure, both IaaS and PaaS. It has been innovating new technologies such as REST, Dynamo, etc.
McKesson Transforming the Enterprise
McKesson Corp. accomplished a multi-year, pan-IT management transformation that has enabled it to better leverage an agile, hybrid cloud model.
Gardner: It’s hard to believe it’s been a full year since we last spoke. What’s changed in the last year in how McKesson had been progressing and maturing its applications delivery capabilities?
Smith: Probably one of the things that have changed in the last year is that our performance metrics have continued to improve. We’re continuing to see a drop in the number of outages from the standardization and automation. The reliability of the systems has increased, the utilization of the systems has increased, and our system admin ratios have increased. So everything, all the key performance indicators (KPIs) are going in the right direction.
Bezos Center for Innovation to Inspire Would-Be Entrepreneurs
What’s an e-commerce tycoon to do after funding everything from nuclear fusion startups to commercial spaceflight ventures? Why, help develop a museum exhibit to inspire young folks and teach them about innovation, of course.
After more than two years of development and $10 million from Jeff Bezos’ own pockets, the Museum of History and Industry will open the doors to the Bezos Center for Innovation on October 12th. Not only does the center aim to help visitors learn about “the importance of innovation” through interactive exhibits, but it will toot Seattle’s horn for being “the birthplace of so many trailblazing companies.”
The shifting buying patterns of cloud service adopters
We’ve certainly come a long way. Over the last couple of years, we’ve witnessed the trials and tribulations of the early-adopters of managed cloud services, and we’ve observed how the offerings have matured to attain broad-based market acceptance.
Cloud computing has become pervasive within today’s forward thinking companies. It’s already a transformative force throughout the global networked economy. Every enterprise that uses Business Technology is either considering or implementing cloud solutions — to create a strategic advantage over their late-adopter industry peer group in the marketplace.
According to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC), about 77 percent of North American companies were already using at least one public cloud service in 2012. IDC believes the companies that are spending on cloud-based capability have reached a deployment pace that’s unmatched by any previous business technology transformation.
Moreover, they say that those leaders who …
The hows and whys of moving your contact centre to the cloud
The key responsibility of the CIO is to ensure an organisation has the technology it needs to function cost effectively, while at the same time remain a competitive force.
Nowhere is this more relevant than in the contact centre industry. If a contact centre does not have technologies, such as interactive voice recognition (IVR), multimedia queuing or real-time speech analytics, then it risks not being able to meet customer expectations of service.
However, buying-in all of these solutions can be an large capital outlay for an organisation. This can be a major drawback to a company that prefers the agility and flexibility of OpEx over CapEx. The alternative is to look at moving some or all operations to the cloud.
It’s not all or nothing
The first consideration for the CIO is: how much IT infrastructure should be transferred to the cloud?
Some might think that moving all telephony …