SYS-CON Events announced today that Site24x7, a leading website and web application monitoring service from Zoho Corp, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Site24x7 is a cloud infrastructure monitoring service that helps monitor up-time and performance of websites, online applications, servers and other internet facing network services. The monitoring is done from 40+ locations across the world, thus giving you a global perspective of the end-user experience. Site24x7 supports monitoring HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, TCP, IMAP, SSL, Ping, FTP, SFTP, DNS and other internet facing network services.
Cloud increases chance of denial-of-service attacks, report warns
The eighth annual Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report from security provider Arbor Networks has revealed how cloud services and data centres are “increasingly victimised” by cyber attackers.
The report, which looked at a 12 month period ending September 2012, asked nearly 200 security-based questions to 130 respondents in the enterprise and network operator fields.
The key points of the research were:
- 94% of data centre operators reported security attacks
- 76% had suffered distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks towards their customers, whilst just under half (43%) had partial or total infrastructure outages due to DDoS
- Yet only 14% of respondents had seen attacks targeting any form of cloud service
The result of this was that “complex multi-vector attacks” – combinations of attack vectors intending to hack away at a company’s defences – were on the rise, with big security breaches becoming less common. To exemplify this, advanced persistent threats (APTs) were cited …
Privacy on the cloud: What are your options?
You often hear people saying that privacy is important. Especially online, where your data can be used in ways unknown to you, it’s even more important. Why exactly is it important though? Does an average Joe, someone who has a couple of files here and there on the Internet need to care about privacy?
The answer is an astounding yes. In an ideal world, privacy wouldn’t be something you would have to ask for, or choose. Every software and app you use, and every website you visit will respect your privacy. Unfortunately, it is far from an ideal world, and it’s shocking to see what people who matter think of privacy.
Take the case of cloud file storage, for example. There are some great solutions out there but almost all of them don’t care for your privacy. Some, in fact, are rather frightening.
The excerpt below …
AirWatch Adds Android Email Management Flexability
AirWatch has added Android email management flexibility with the AirWatch Android Email Container, as an enhancement to the AirWatch Mobile Email Management (MEM) solution. The AirWatch Android Email Container supports over-the-air configuration of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) email accounts for Android devices.
Many mobile operating systems, OEMs or third-party solutions, such as NitroDesk Touchdown, may already offer best-in-class email clients, standard security and native encryption on the device, which could provide the best solution for AirWatch clients with limited device variability. However, companies often struggle with device proliferation and variation across email clients as they expand their mobile deployments and adopt BYOD. In these scenarios, companies require flexible email options to balance end-user security, usability and support.
“We recognize that many OSs, OEMs and third-party solutions have best in class email security capabilities already built into the core of their technology,” said John Marshall, president and CEO, AirWatch. “However, as many customers adopt wider BYOD strategies, they struggle to provide an email platform across all devices that meet security and usability requirements. As the largest EMM provider, the strength of our development team and global resources allows us to maintain a vendor-neutral strategy and integrate with all available email clients and develop innovative capabilities, such as the Android Email Container, to meet the customer demand.”
AirWatch will officially present the Android Email Container, along with a series of other significant innovation and partnership announcements, during AirWatch Connect 2013, the leading mobility user group conference, at Mobile World Congress. The AirWatch Android Email Container will be available as an optional add-on component to the AirWatch mobile device management solution. AirWatch’s MEM solution delivers comprehensive security for corporate email infrastructure including Exchange 2003, 2007 and 2010 and cloud-based Gmail, Office365 and BPOS.
How Tough are the Final HIPAA Privacy, Security Rules?
Online Tech is hosting an educational webinar on the new final HIPAA omnibus rule, No More Excuses: HHS Releases Tough Final HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules Thursday, January 31 at 2 P.M. ET. The webinar will discuss how the latest HIPAA modifications affect the healthcare industry and healthcare vendors.
Dickinson Wright’s Brian Balow will lead the No More Excuses webinar with April Sage, Director of Healthcare Vertical for Online Tech. On January 17, 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services released its long-anticipated modifications to the Privacy, Security, Enforcement, and Breach Notification Rules under HIPAA/HITECH.
These modifications leave no doubt that covered entities, business associates, and their subcontractors must understand the application of these Rules to their operations, and must take steps to ensure compliance with these Rules in order to avoid liability. To find out more about the webinar and register via GoToMeeting, click here.
Be Nimble, Be Quick: A CRN Interview with GreenPages’ CEO
CRN Senior Editor and industry veteran Steve Burke sat down with GreenPages’ CEO Ron Dupler to discuss shifts in ideology in the industry as well as GreenPages new Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS) offering. The interview, which was originally posted on CRN.com, is below. What are your thoughts on Ron’s views of the changing dynamics of IT?
CRN:Talk about your new cloud offering.
Dupler:It is available today. We can support physical, virtual and cloud-based infrastructure through a single pane of glass today. We are actually using the technology internally as well.
There is another part of CMaaS that goes into cloud governance and governance models in a cloud world and cloud services brokerage. That is what we are integrating and bringing to market very soon.
CRN:How big a game-changer is CMaaS?
Dupler:I think we are going to be well out in front of the market with this. I personally believe we can go have discussions right now and bring technologies to bear to support those discussions that no one else in the industry can right now.
That said, we know that the pace of innovation is rapid and we expect other organizations are trying to work on these types of initiatives as well. But we believe we’ll be out front certainly for this year.
CRN:How does the solution provider business model change from 2013 to 2018?
Dupler:The way we are looking at our job and the job of the solution provider channel over the next several years through 2018 is to provide IT plan, build, run and governance services for the cloud world.
The big change is that the solution provider channel for many years has made their money off the fact that infrastructure fundamentally doesn’t work very well. And it has been all about architecting and integrating physical technologies and software platforms to support the apps and data that really add value for the business.
When we move to the cloud world, this is now about integrating service platforms as opposed to physical technologies. So it is about architecting and integrating on-premise and cloud service platforms really to create IT-as-a-Service to support the apps and data for the platform. That is the transition that is under way.
CRN:Does the GreenPages brand become bigger than the vendor brand and how does that affect vendor relations in the CMaaS era?
Dupler:We continue to closely evaluate all our key partner relationships. That is managed very closely. What we try to do is make sure we are partnered with the right companies that are really leading this transformation. And our number one partner because they are driving this transformation is VMware. With this whole software-defined data center concept and initiative, VMware has really laid out a great vision for where this market is going.
NEXT: Does Size Matter?
CRN:There is a prevailing view that solution providers need to go big or go home, with many solution providers selling their businesses. Do you see scale becoming more important — that you need to scale?
Dupler:No. People have been saying that for years. It is all about customer value and the talent of your team, if you are adding value for clients. You need to be able to service the client community. And they care about quality of service and the ability of your team. Not necessarily that you are huge. I have been down the M&A road and, as you know, we do M&A here on a smaller scale. And I will tell you there are pros and cons to it. You aggregate talent, but you also have got the inertia of pulling companies together and integrating companies and people and executive teams and getting through that.
I absolutely do not subscribe and never have subscribed to the fact that size in itself gives competitive advantage. There are some advantages, but there are also costs to doing that.
CRN:What is the ultimate measure for success in this new world?
Dupler:It is a combination of three things: technology, and I will firmly say it doesn’t have to be homegrown. It could be homegrown or it could be commercial off-the-shelf. It is the way the technology is leveraged and having the technologies with the ability to drive the services you are trying to provide. What we are trying to do with CMaaS is single pane of glass management for the physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure, which I have mentioned, as well as cloud service brokerage and cloud governance services. You can either develop those on your own or integrate partner technologies or both, but you need the supporting technology base and you need people and you need process.
CRN:How big a transition is this and what percentage of VARs do you think will make it to 2018?
Dupler:The companies that I think are going to have a huge challenge are the big product-centric organizations right now. The DMR [direct marketer] community. They have some big challenges ahead of them over time. All these guys are trying to come up with cloud strategies as well.
Right now there is a premium on being nimble. That is the word of the day for me in 2013. Nimble. You need nimble people and you need a nimble business organization because things are moving faster than they ever have. You just have to have a culture and people that can change quickly.
Going back to is it good just to be big? Sometimes it is hard to maintain [that agility] as you get really big. The magnitude of the change that is required to succeed over the next five years is extremely significant. And people that aren’t already under way with that change have a big challenge ahead of them.
CRN:What is the pace of change like managing in this business as a CEO vs. five years ago?
Dupler:It is exponential.
CRN:Is it tougher to manage in an environment like this?
Dupler:You say it is tougher, but there is more opportunity than ever because of the pace of change to really differentiate yourself. So it can be challenging but it is also very stimulating and exciting.
CRN:Give me five tips you need to thrive in 2018.
Dupler:First of all, you need hybrid cloud management capabilities.
Number two, you need cloud services brokerage capabilities. It is ultimately an ability to provide a platform for clients to acquire as-a-service technologies from GreenPages. To be able to sell the various forms of infrastructure, platform and software as a service.
Number three is cloud architecture and integration capabilities.
Fourth is product revenue and profit streams are not central to supporting the business. The service model needs to become a profitable, thriving stand-alone entity without the product revenue streams.
The fifth thing and it is the biggest challenge. One thing is migrating your technology organization. Then the next thing you need to do is create a services-based sales culture.
CRN:Talk about how big a change that is.
Dupler:It is a huge change. Again, if people are not already under way with this change they have a huge challenge ahead of them. Everybody I speak with in the industry — whether it is at [UBM Tech Channel’s] BoB conference or at partner advisory councils — everybody is challenged with this right now. The sales force in the solution provider industry has been old paradigm physical-technology-based and needs to move into a world where it is leading with professional and managed services. And that game is very different. So I think there are two ways to address that: one is hiring new types of talent or helping the talent we all have transform. It is going to be a combination of both that gets us ultimately where we need to be.
CRN:What do you think is the biggest mistake being made right now by competitors or vendors?
Dupler:What I see is people that are afraid to embrace the change that is under way and are really hanging on to the past. The biggest mistake I see right now is people continuing to evangelize solutions to customers that aren’t necessarily right by the customer, but conform to what they know and drive the most profit for their organizations.
Short-term gain isn’t going to drive long-term customer value. And we need to lead the customers forward through this transformation as opposed to perpetuating the past. The market needs leadership right now. The biggest challenge for people is not moving fast enough to transform their businesses.
This interview was originally posted on CRN.com
To learn more about GreenPages’ CMaaS offering click here!
Department of Defense Enlists Cloud Computing Services
Ask not what your cloud can do for you, but what it can do for your country.
The Defense Department’s IT infrastructure is on a mission of consolidation, standardization, security and access, the Defense Department’s principal deputy CIO told attendees at a recent cloud computing panel discussion, according to an article on Defense.gov.
The department is reducing the number of data centers from about 1,500 to “a number far below that,” Robert J. Carey said, and is implementing a coherent and consistent architecture across thousands of computing environments.
This process is taking place in part because of costs, but also because it makes sense when it comes to securing data within the network, Carey said.
In addition, DOD is shifting toward a cloud computing posture.
Cloud computing isn’t without its risks, Carey added, but the department is moving the paradigm of security from the infrastructure to the data layer. This includes continuous monitoring and cryptography.
Elastic Scaling of APIs in the Cloud
As an Enterprise Architect for Intel IT, I worked with IT Engineering and our Software and Services group on the elastic scaling of the APIs that power the Intel AppUp® center. Our goal was to scale our APIs to at least 10x our baseline capacity (measured in transactions per second) by moving them to our private cloud, and ultimately to be able to connect to a public cloud provider for additional availability and scalability. Here’s a quick set of practices we used to achieve our goal:
Virtualize everything. This may seem obvious and is probably a no-op for new APIs, but in our case we were using a bare-metal installs at our gateway and database layers (the API servers themselves were already running as VMs). While our gateway hardware appliance had very good scalability, we knew we were ultimately targeting the public cloud and that our need for dynamic scaling could exceed our ability to add new physical servers. Using a gateway that scales in pure software virtual machines without the need for special purpose-built hardware helped us achieve our goal here.
Effectively Shifting from a Maintenance to an Innovation IT Philosophy
Innovation doesn’t just happen… it evolves out of business desires and it frequently involves changing your own view of the IT value statement. This article focuses on one of the key components needed to make the shift from maintenance to an innovation IT philosophy, Business Service Reliability. As a progressive IT department you must understand exactly what it is, how you can manufacture Business Service Reliability in real time so that you can measure and report your contribution in business language, and how adopting the framework shifts your organization into an innovative business partner.
Because of our long-lived traditional IT department philosophies, most IT organizations, whether or not they realize it, focus almost exclusively on component availability rather than the overall reliability of their business services and the related customer interactions. The problem, of course, is that you can achieve decent availability metrics for individual tiers of IT services – but still wind up with customer interactions (the business services) that are unpleasant. And frequent painful customer experiences drive customers and their money away from your company. They cause your customers to say bad things about you… in public and online. They undermine your credibility, so that the business sees you as a maintainer of poor systems and an overall liability, not an innovative business partner. The shift to innovation starts with your customer, and understanding what gives them a good experience, and proactively transforming your operating model to manufacture what the customer wants.
Is Cloud Computing On Course to Becoming a $100 Billion Market?
«Cloud computing’s not a panacea and it’s not the ideal solution for every business situation,» wrote Oracle SVP Bob Evans recently in Forbes, «but at the same time, it’s no longer some nebulous (pardon me) theory whose risk is high and whose potential benefits are impossible to quantify.»
Evans was commenting on the state of the infrastructure industry in response to a report by McKinsey consultants James Kaplan, Chris Rezek, and Kara Sprague in which they suggested that the recent IDC saying spending on third-party-managed and public-cloud environments will surpass $70 billion in 2015 might significantly under-estimate the true size of the market.