Web-scale IT is a pattern of global-class computing that delivers the capabilities of large cloud service providers within an enterprise IT setting by reimagining positions across several dimensions. The unprecedented explosion of Big Data and cloud services is driving the development of new storage architectures to store the information produced by this web-scale trend. It is becoming increasingly clear that even a linear growth trajectory for storage is insufficient to deliver the quantity of storage needed for data produced by the Internet of Things. Current architectures have bottlenecks that, while merely inconvenient for legacy data, are simply unacceptable for the scale of storage needed today.

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The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has today released a mammoth document detailing the 100 best practices in big data security – running the gamut from traditional cybersecurity measures to cutting edge cryptographic technologies.

The document discusses each tip at more of a cursory than comprehensive level, offering a few sentences on why and how organisations should implement them. The report goes through 10 areas with 10 tips for each, from real-time security and compliance monitoring to secure data storage, and endpoint monitoring.

One of the more interesting areas of the report focuses on cryptographic technologies for big data. “Rather than burdensome requirements, there is an increased perception that cryptographic technologies are harbingers of trusted utility for impending advances in information technology,” the report authors explain. “There is a realisation across the industry that cryptographic technologies are imperative for cloud storage and big data.”

As a result, key tips are shared, from constructing a system to search and filter for encrypted data, to implementing identity-based encryption – avoiding issues with public key crypto systems – to utilising ‘oblivious RAM’. By shuffling the memory location after data is accessed, not even cloud service providers can tell which data is which, therefore hiding the access pattern.

“This is an important initiative for the cloud community as new security challenges have arisen from the coupling of big data with public cloud environments,” said J.R. Santos, CSA EVP research. “As big data expands through streaming cloud technology, traditional security mechanisms tailored to secure small-scale, static data on firewalled and semi-isolated networks are inadequate.

“Security and privacy issues are magnified by this volume, variety and velocity of big data. This handbook serves as a comprehensive list of best practices for companies to use when securing big data,” Santos added.

You can read the full report here (registration optional).

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EMC has announced the general availability of its Enterprise Hybrid Cloud 4.0 product, a new hybrid cloud offering aiming to help customers advance their cloud journey, as well as given more information on Native Hybrid Cloud.

“Understanding the needs of organisations to transform a more modern, automated, self-service IT environment, EMC continues to develop and deliver innovations into its cloud platforms that are designed, supported and sustained as one to help customers simplify and accelerate their digital business initiatives,” the press material notes.

The company is also set to launch Native Hybrid Cloud in September, which is built on hyperconverged VCE VxRail appliances. The product is designed to smart small and quickly scale and provide a platform to give organisations a ‘flexible, cost effective and optimised hybrid cloud platform for cloud native application development’.

The new products make note of EMC, VMware and VCE technologies. “EMC’s Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and Native Hybrid Cloud are the fastest, surest path to the cloud based on the unrivalled level of collaboration between EMC and VMware,” said Peter Cutts, EMC VP solutions. “They enable our customers to shift their focus from building infrastructure to delivering innovative new services that differentiate their business.

“Today’s announcements emphasise our commitment to developing hybrid cloud platforms that ignite our customers’ IT transformations and simplify and accelerate their path to becoming a digital-driven business.”

“Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and Native Hybrid Cloud are built on a foundation of proven VMware technologies,” said Loretta Brown, vice president of federation at VMware. “With the vRealize Cloud Management platform, Enterprise Hybrid Cloud delivers customers the cloud consumption experience and agility they need to make their transformational cloud journey.

“These platforms accelerate IT’s ability to deliver a software-defined environment that is ready to support the needs of both traditional and cloud-native applications,” added Brown.

EMC was bought by Dell for $67 billion (£43.7bn) in October last year.

DevOps at Cloud Expo, taking place Nov 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, is co-located with 19th Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
The widespread success of cloud computing is driving the DevOps revolution in enterprise IT. Now as never before, development teams must communicate and collaborate in a dynamic, 24/7/365 environment. There is no time to wait for long development cycles that produce software that is obsolete at launch. DevOps may be disruptive, but it is essential.

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Editor’s note: This article is a follow-up to the July piece ‘How the public cloud can benefit the global economy’, which drills down into two of the four areas outlined in that piece – how the public cloud enables new business models, and data sharing and collaboration between entities. The below is an image created by Chef Software which outlines the four towers.

Picture credit: Chef

New business models

Large organisations worldwide are looking for new ways to conduct business more efficiently, more effectively, and at lower cost. Many of these companies are looking to new technologies as the catalyst of these efforts. Use of the public cloud, as part of a hybrid cloud solution, has grown and continues to grow as the basis for these new technologies.

Innovation around new business models will depend on the business type and technical maturity of a new organisation. While many possibilities exist, the models that seem to have the most potential are those that utilise the data gathering and distribution, and service distribution, aspects of the cloud.

One example of a potential new business model could be in the insurance industry. Efficiencies in the insurance industry are based on the quality of the data gathered, the speed at which this data is assimilated and analysed, the speed at which the data can be distributed, and the ability to effectively present that data to users and customers.

Using cloud technologies, information can be gathered from many sources, assimilated either in the public cloud or transferred securely to an on-premise private cloud implementation via microservices. The information, once analysed, can be distributed globally using public cloud regionalisation services, and presented using globalised applications through public cloud-based content distribution.

Data sharing and collaboration between entities

In recent years, companies and organisations within the same industry have begun to co-operate on specific initiatives, even while competing in other circumstances. IT industry-wide initiatives, such as open source, have transformed the way software is developed and the way platforms are created and managed. This ‘coop-etition’ has led to the need for easy collaboration between organisations and common platforms through which to share data without having to develop a portfolio of services that may only be used for a single initiative.

The answer, in my opinion, is data sharing through the public cloud. Once the data, files and documents have been loaded into a content distribution system – for example, AWS CloudFront – they can be accessed globally using whatever tools the user currently has. While access controls must be set up to ensure that data does not become corrupted, this process of creating a shared data repository can be accomplished in a matter of hours as opposed to weeks to build out new collaborative services.

Here’s an example. Two software companies decide to co-develop a set of services for a common customer. Architecture and design documents, libraries, and code elements (AWS CodeCommit for example) can be shared via a common repository, created in a few hours, and populated as the project progresses. The fact that one company is in New York and the other in India makes no difference.

Conclusion

The global nature of the cloud, the ease of distributing content and data, and the ability to gather information from multiple points in the globe and assimilate them as if they came from one source, can be of great benefit to global entities and the global economy as a whole.

Editor’s note: Part two will aim to discuss the final two pillars – better co-ordination of efforts between international entities, and increased speed of international transactions. Look out for this on CloudTech in the coming weeks.

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Asana, Greenhouse Software and WalkMe have been ranked as the three best private cloud computing companies to work for, according to a new study from Glassdoor and Battery Ventures.

The study focused on larger, privately held firms, with 200 or more employees, and ranked CEO approval, as well as a ‘positive business outlook’. Participants were asked to rank on a scale between one and five, with 1.0 meaning they were ‘very dissatisfied’, 3.0 signalling ‘okay’, and 5.0 marking ‘very satisfied’.

Productivity app firm Asana came out on top with an overall company rating of 4.9, a 100% approval of CEO Dustin Moskowitz, co-founder of Facebook, and a 99% positive business outlook rating. Enterprise software providers Greenhouse and WalkMe picked up the silver and bronze medals respectively. In total, seven companies polled rated 4.9 out of 5.0 overall – Chef Software, Sprout Social, Grovo, and Procore Technologies – while the former, a Battery client, polled only fourth despite getting 100% in both CEO approval and business outlook.

All of the top 50 companies scored above 4.0 overall, with bigger names at the outside the top seven including Couchbase (4.5, #22), DocuSign (4.4, #24), MongoDB (4.3, #34), and Dropbox (4.1, #47). The latter saw 77% confidence in CEO Drew Houston, with 71% – the lowest in the top 50 poll – for positive business outlook.

“This list provides a window into which private, business-focused cloud companies are generating the most excitement among employees – one key proxy for company health, and part of the broader business trend we see today around transparency on the Internet,” said Neeraj Agrawal, a Battery general partner specialising in cloud investing in a statement. “We look forward to tracking these standouts as they mature, and to watching smaller, up-and-coming cloud startups make the list in future years.”

The report also noted key tenets of employees wanting to work at the highest rated firms; the need to work for ‘mission-driven companies with strong and unique company cultures’, as well as embracing transparency, and teams who regularly and clearly communicate with their employees.

Back in March, this publication posted a list of the top 100 cloud companies and CEOs to work for based again on Glassdoor as well as the latest figures from Computer Reseller News. Including companies across the spectrum, the top performer was Zerto; 95% of employees said they would recommend the disaster recovery and virtual data replication company to a friend.

The full Glassdoor/Battery table can be seen below (companies with asterisks after their name indicate a Battery investment):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A cybersecurity transformation discussion on how cloud security is rapidly advancing, and how enterprises can begin to prevail over digital disruption by increasingly using cloud-defined security.
We’ll examine how a secure content collaboration services provider removes the notion of organizational boundaries so that businesses can better extend processes. And we’ll hear how less boundaries and cloud-based security together support transformative business benefits.

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