There’s still a need for a more focused and refined understanding of what Cloud service level agreements should be and ultimately a more concerted approach towards the applications. So while neologisms such as speed, agility and flexibility remain synonymous with Cloud Computing, its success and maturity ultimately depend upon a new focal point, namely velocity.
Velocity bears a distinction from speed in that it’s not just a measure of how fast an object travels but also in what direction that object moves. For example in a Public Cloud whether that be Amazon, Azure or Google no one can dispute the speed. Through only the clicks of a button you have a ready-made server that can immediately be used for testing and development purposes. But while it may be quick to deploy, how optimised is it for your particular environment, business or application requirements? With only generic forms the specific customization to a particular workload or business requirement fails to be achieved as optimization is sacrificed for the sake of speed. Service levels based on uptime and availability are not an adequate measure or guarantee for the successful deployment of an application. For example it would be considered ludicrous to purchase a laptop from a service provider that merely stipulates a guarantee that it will remain powered on even though it performs atrociously.
Three Approaches to Single Sign-On for Cloud Application Providers
Signing up and signing on are major threats to any cloud application business. What approaches can an application provider take, and what are the implications on the business?
Did you know that:
Half of paid SaaS customers do not use the application at all
Nine out of 10 has left an application when they forgot a password, instead of restoring it
Eighty-six percent may leave a web site when asked to sign up
Two out of five would rather scrub the toilet than come up with a new password
These figures, based on research from Totango and Janrain in 2012, clearly show that sign-up and sign-on are major issues for any cloud application provider.
Cloud Business Models of the (Near) Future
The cloud is often touted as the answer to all our problems. The cloud broker model can give service providers the chance to avoid commoditization by repackaging their own offerings together with cloud services and selling these to customers. But cloud brokers beware. There’s a risk of being a jack of all trades and master of none. It’s crucial to ensure that a cloud offering is designed to meet the needs of a specific market.
But cloud brokers beware. There’s a risk of being a jack of all trades and master of none. It’s crucial to ensure that a cloud offering is designed to meet the needs of a specific market. For example, enterprises and small/medium sized businesses (SMBs) will hardly subscribe to all cloud services from a single provider. So which approach is best for which target market?
Cloud Computing: Samsung Uses Centrify for Safer Android Platform
Centrify has signed its biggest contract ever.
Samsung has OEM’d Centrify’s Active Directory-based security and cloud identity technology intending to put the widgetry on millions of its notoriously insecure Android-based smartphones and tablets to out BlackBerry.
BlackBerry is generally acknowledged to have the most secure mobile devices and, having made its bones in the consumer space, where it’s now far and away the leader, Samsung is out to woo the enterprise customer helped along by the problems besetting BlackBerry and spooking its users.
Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Dave Linthicum – Blue Mountain Labs
With Cloud Expo New York | 12th Cloud Expo [June 10-13, 2013] hurtling towards us, let’s start to take a look at the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference coming up June 10-13 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.
We have technical and strategy sessions for you all four days dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and 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 that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?
IBM Picks Mobile for Its Next Big Growth Play
Pity IBM won’t say what it spent on mobile last year sans acquisitions, but whatever it was it’s going to double it this year under a big new “ second wave” initiative decreed by its new CEO Ginni Rometty, who has apparently sensed an inflection point that will grow Blue by a few billion dollars.
It’s Ginni’s first big initiative, and Mike Riegel, IBM’s VP in charge of mobile solutions, has been heard to say that the rise of mobile connectivity and e-commerce is “bigger than the web.”
That makes the new initiative the equal of IBM’s famous push into analytics and the cloud.
So, the company is mustering its troops and its 270 mobile patents and its R&D people behind the effort and has carved a new MobileFirst platform out of the products and services bought in by its 10 acquisitions in mobile that it will hawk.
SOA Software Announces OAuth Solution for the Enterprise
“By bringing OAuth to enterprise identity and access management systems, we are revolutionizing the way that businesses secure the integration of enterprise, partner and external applications,” said Alistair Farquharson, CTO at SOA Software, SOA Software, as his company today announced SOA Software OAuth Server, described by SOA Software as «the industry’s first comprehensive OAuth solution for the enterprise.»
“Enterprises can use the SOA Software OAuth Server to allow their users to approve mobile, web, and desktop applications to act on their behalf and securely share private data, without the need for legally complex, risky and heavyweight mechanisms,” Farquharson added.
SOA Software Announces OAuth Solution for the Enterprise
“By bringing OAuth to enterprise identity and access management systems, we are revolutionizing the way that businesses secure the integration of enterprise, partner and external applications,” said Alistair Farquharson, CTO at SOA Software, SOA Software, as his company today announced SOA Software OAuth Server, described by SOA Software as «the industry’s first comprehensive OAuth solution for the enterprise.»
“Enterprises can use the SOA Software OAuth Server to allow their users to approve mobile, web, and desktop applications to act on their behalf and securely share private data, without the need for legally complex, risky and heavyweight mechanisms,” Farquharson added.
AWS Gets Its Own Form of Obamacare
Israeli-based Newvem, a start-up cloud operation analytics service, can do triage, so to speak, on anybody’s Amazon installation, pinpointing where the user or corporation of any size may be losing money by using the widgetry incorrectly or over-provisioning with resources that are too big for the job.
A user can stay up-to-date in real-time with what he’s spending on Amazon compute or storage, and find out precisely what resources are being deployed or where his governance is going awry.
From what it’s seen so far, the company estimates that 50% of Amazon users have security issues, 30% run an outage risk and 15% under-utilization problems.
Since Newvem started offering a free beta of its just released Amazon Cloud Care healthcare service eight months ago, its top 25 customers, mostly large accounts, have upped their use of the Amazon cloud anywhere from 3x to a whopping 70x.
Juniper Delivers Cloud-Based Global Attacker Intelligence Service
«Next-generation security must be built on automated and actionable intelligence that can be quickly shared to meet the demands of modern and evolving networks,» said Nawaf Bitar, senior vice president and general manager, Security Business Unit, Juniper Networks, as Juniper today unveiled its next-generation security products for protecting data center environments, fortified by the Junos Spotlight Secure a global attacker intelligence service
«This is only possible if you are able to collect definitive information about attackers,» Bitar continued. «Junos Spotlight Secure provides the platform to deliver advanced intelligence with device-level attacker tracking. This integrated approach improves security intelligence, provides collective defense against attackers and delivers true defense in-depth for the data center,» he added.