Author: David

Grazed from CloudBestPractices.net.  Author: Neil McEvoy.

One of our major program areas is Cloud Identity and Security Best Practices (CloudIDsec).

Here is our Linkedin social community for this, and the practice will shortly be underpinned by a new Kantara Initiative working group of the same name that I’m currently launching.

As the name suggests this practice is focused on the intersection between federated identity systems and Cloud Computing security, and a perfect example to introduce the domain is this recent press release from NASA, about their use of ‘PIV’ technologies to secure their move to Google apps…

Grazed from Law.com.  Author: Gerry Silver.

Given the ever-increasing reliance on cloud computing, it is inevitable that disputes and litigation will increase between corporations and cloud service providers. The most obvious point of contention will occur if data in the cloud is lost, damaged, stolen or is otherwise rendered inaccessible for a period of time. In such circumstances, the corporation may be facing enormous liability and will seek to hold the cloud provider responsible, while the cloud provider will undoubtedly look to the parties’ agreement and the underlying circumstances for defenses. This article discusses five key considerations for litigators representing corporations and/or cloud providers to focus upon in litigating cloud computing disputes…

Grazed from SacBee.  Author: Editorial Staff.

 www.IceWEB.com, a leading provider of Unified Data Storage for cloud and virtual environments, was named in a predictive analysis entitled, "Unified Storage: A Must-Have for the Cloud," by independent industry expert Arthur Cole, IT Business Edge.

Mr. Cole cites a notion he credits to analyst Greg Schultz, portraying unified storage as the flip side of the cloud computing coin, providing the support infrastructure necessary to realize the true benefits of the cloud…

Grazed from CSOOnline.  Author: Bob Violino.

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) is an independent organization that aims to give its members a voice in shaping the future of cloud computing. The alliance is developing "usage models" to meet the challenge of providing secure cloud environments. The models lay out a set of standard tools that allow vendors to offer different levels of security to cloud-consuming organizations, so that IT and security executives can quickly understand where the threats are and mitigate the risks.

CSO contributor Bob Violino recently interviewed alliance president Curt Aubley, vice president and chief technology officer, Cyber & NexGen Innovation at Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions, about cloud security issues and the alliance’s efforts to help secure the cloud…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act directs the DoD (Department of Defense) to transition from private clouds controlled by the DoD to public, commercial clouds. The idea is that commercial clouds can provide better service at a lower cost to the taxpayers. But critics say that through this law "Congress has now increased costs, delays, and security risks for the DoD."

Having watched this work progress over the last several years, I believe Congress is right on this decision.

The act’s language clearly indicates a bias "to cloud computing services generally available within the private sector that provide a better capability at a lower cost with the same or greater degree of security." You can bet this came from the cloud computing lobbyists wandering around the District of Columbia. But as an overall policy, public cloud as the preferred option when all else is equal is correct…

Grazed from Dr. Dobbs.  Author: Ken North.

If you count yourself among the informed members of the software and computing community, you’re undoubtedly aware of NoSQL, "Big Data", cloud computing, and supercomputing. Sometimes technology that has become trendy is a branch on an evolutionary tree; other times it’s a revolutionary departure from long-established status quo.

The arrival of new technology often rekindles the pervasive debate over the merits of "tried-and-true" versus "new and improved". The latter often introduces new words in our lexicon, with recent examples being Big Data, NoSQL, and cloud computing. Supercomputing has been with us for a while but there have been significant strides in 2011, including IBM Watson, Tianhe-1A, and an Amazon virtual supercomputer…

Grazed from CloudPro.  Author:  Maxwell Cooter.

Grazed from The Guardian.  Author: Mark Say.

Advocates of cloud computing often talk of how it offers a new procurement model for IT services, providing both substantial savings and more flexibility in the face of fluctuating demand. Their day is coming with the first procurements for the G-Cloud, the government’s formal channel for procuring cloud services.

However according to Kevin Holland, who has been involved in the G-Cloud programme for two years in his capacity as service management consultant for NHS Connecting for Health (CfH), the outlook is more complex.

While the availability of cloud services can encourage the view that you pay for what you use and it’s the supplier’s job to know about the technology, Holland claims that getting the best out of the cloud is going to demand new skills in service integration that are not yet widespread in the public sector…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Ann Lee.

In recent times, cloud computing has played a dominant role in the industry. Whether you feel positively or negatively about it, it is undeniable that cloud monitoring, like any other component in your network, needs to be monitored – perhaps more than any other. To more old-fashioned solutions for monitoring, the cloud creates a number of obstacles: you do not have ownership of its hardware, it is not run on your network and when problems or glitches occur you have no control over them.

Today there is a wide range of utilities to help you to manage your cloud computing, and the majority of these are able to respond to the disappearance of instances by starting up new ones with just a little direction from you. But how can this be integrated into your existing monitoring?…

Grazed from ITWire.  Author: Stuart Corner.

The company says it is collaborating with Equinix "to become a one-stop shop for global enterprises that require best-of-breed data centre services…such as co-location, managed hosting and cloud computing services…Enterprise customers can expect a complete approach to service management with a single point of accountability for the company’s network and hosted computing infrastructure."

Nick Lambert, managing director, wholesale, mid-markets and global markets, at C&W Worldwide, said: "Equinix is the ideal company for us to collaborate with because its footprint of data centres closely aligns with our global network. Both companies share a complementary vision to deliver reliable, on-demand services that will enable some of the largest organisations to transit into a world-class cloud computing and communications environment."…