Government IT Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance for Myth-busting – Great Government through Technology

Government IT Forecast: Cloudy with a Chance for Myth-busting – Great Government through Technology

So now the Gov should be making a big impact on this industry. Get ready for GovCloud

CloudBursting for Elastic Applications in a Hybrid Cloud Architecture

What happens when Google Docs fail.

Guess what sooner or later you will see this instead of your document.

And it raises some serious questions.


I know many folks in SMEM, CrisisData, and heck anyone using - cloud documents for that matter- all have come accustomed to it being there now.  I myself have laughed at the notion of of using some old fashion local stored documents. And, of course  back, in the day "prefacebook"   I would have never considering having my core documents stored outside of a firewall let alone the application running or my whole infrastructure for that matter.


So here we are today and for the project this was coordinating many people are now sitting around waiting for Google.

I have gone about the process of alerting customers services~ as you will  have to do. Overall it seems pretty simple. Now we wait. .

I don't know yet what others on non Google clouds have faced in similar situations. If anyone knows of one please leave a comment with a link or some details.  So far IMHO if you are dealing in a crisis or mission critical part or your work entails collaboration on cloud as part of the plan.  Be prepared is all I can say.

"We are going to need to have backup plans in place for blackholes on the cloud".  

Document, app, software cloud just disappear so we need to arranged for some kind of Cloud Backup as soon as your rely on the cloud to host, provide or be of  service. This is advisable for most business and all emergency responders that use these tools to serve the public. 

Note>

So far not impressed with Google's response to this we have sent three different notices and not even one reply form them that they got, looked at it or even know this issue exist. We even gotten on their twitter feed @googledocs.  IDK maybe they're all at #SXSW.  I see them tweeting about it. 

Well this sure makes the cloud a bit more interesting

The convergence of cloud computing and connectivity is fundamentally changing how IT is delivered and how information is consumed. Powerful trends like consumerization, cloud computing and connectivity are redefining the way people live, businesses operate and the world works. Traditional on-premise, proprietary computing resources are gradually being complemented and even replaced by the massive, agile and open computing resources of the cloud. Meanwhile, the cloud is combining with mobility to create ubiquitous connectivity.   

HP just threw their hat up into the Cloud.   This is a very impressive roll out from HP and if your worried about security from within and on the cloud there approach is going to be a model that others will have to follow.  The fact that they understand that we'll have Hyrid systems and that companies will need the hand holding that a company that HP can bring to the table.

Here is the three key areas of HP's

• HP announced it intends to leverage its position as a leading provider of cloud technology to develop a portfolio of cloud services from infrastructure to platform services. HP also signaled it plans to develop and run the industry’s first open cloud marketplace that will combine a secure, scalable and trusted consumer app store and an enterprise application and services catalog.
• HP intends to build webOS into a leading connectivity platform. As the world’s No. 1 maker of PCs and printers, HP has the potential to deliver 100 million webOS-enabled devices a year into the marketplace, and HP plans to use that scale along with leading development tools to build a robust developer community that is eager to access every segment of the market and every corner of the globe.
• At the event, highlighting an increasing focus to bring innovation to market faster, HP demonstrated a new “big data” appliance, leveraging the unmatched performance of HP computing power mated with real-time, high-speed analytics from Vertica Systems, which HP recently announced its agreement to acquire. HP expects to close the acquisition in its second fiscal quarter and have the HP-branded appliance ready for market immediately thereafter. The proposed HP Vertica solution will offer a choice of delivery options – from appliance, to software, and in the cloud.

So keep your eyes on HP's open cloud marketplace and the Clouds

Crisis Data: Who's Cloud are you on?

Crisis Data: Who's Cloud are you on?: "'Within an hour, more than 1,200 tweets a minute were coming from Tokyo. By the end of Friday, American time, a total of 246,075 Twitter pos..."

Data is the new oil

There is something happening that only a very few folks are aware of directly; IMHO either because of little expousre or legal|swore oaths to not talk about it.

Indirectly most do know the amount of data that is being pumped out by users is astronomical! Those that have the ability generate this data or get their analytics on it are making new markets with revenue streams erupting off of their data's richness.

Recently while attending CloudCamp in Baltimoretowncenter I heard this great quote and figured it should get a mention here and once I get the name I'll post it and any links if possible

Data is the new OIL

So what does that mean. It means that data is a new world currency. Money as it turns out is really just bits of data as most of us don't carry hard currency around these days. To those that do know they are participation in a 3 wave evolution of data becoming a currency. Ownership of large chunks of this now is not just data storage it's a real store of value.

Kinda of funny to think about our money. According to Wiki and my college Econ teachers it's~

The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value;

Egro~ without the data there would is no value. And without the raw computing power of the cloud and ability to cluster or hash your data with other clouds public and priviate your data is useful only to you and it is not part of this new economy.

Think about this~ 100 percent of your social media and 95 percent of email is NOW It needs to be on the cloud. If I said either of those things would happen in 2003 most folks would have laughted or just stare back with a blank expression.

Who's Cloud are you on?

Info Loss: Virtualization and Security

Info Loss: Virtualization and Security: "As I am planning to lead my MIS445 class into virtualization and cloud computing in the coming weeks, I am pulling together a list of the fu..."

I'd say the list is pretty much on target.

What is left out is what we don't know. So I don't have a specific name for it. Yet.....something is telling me that we are going to learn soon of new conditions because of the size of the data that is now already on the cloud.

I am sure they are some NOC that are dealing with this and other emerging trends because they are the front line of the Cloud and until the white papers, blogs and forums get hit with this 3rd wave convergence by folks that are allowed to even discuss what they have been doing.

We'll just have to wait and watch the cloud drift by........

Greplin using Omnibox allows user to surf all their socmed via an extention

Greplin is announcing they are integrating Chrome Omnibox API directly into your browser. This allow the user to use it without having to go to Greplin’s website to login. 

Check out the extension here and Greplin’s widget in the image to the right.

Widgetbox becomes “cloud” advertising company Flite, raises $12M | VentureBeat

Widgetbox becomes “cloud” advertising company Flite, raises $12M | VentureBeat

There are more companies moving into this space. The question we keep asking is Who's Cloud are you on?

The music business needs to embrace the cloud

This comes down to two issues

1. “safe harbor” provisions of the DMCA.
2. The Music business is really two. Majors and Independent.

This 2nd issue is really a big one and for way too long the agenda driving the whole industry is for the vantage and view point of the major record labels. While they are doing the best they can to kill themselves off. It should stop the Independents.

In 1995 there where 7 majors now there are 3 and 90 percent of new music is being created by independent artist.

IMHO Here is where the opportunity for the independent artists/bands to come together via distributor that understands the reasons why it will pay to be a cloud based entertainment company will have a major advantage over everyone. We know of such a company and will be talking about it more in the future.

The ROI for have this data being run by professional service provides with SOA datacenters is so over whealming that for anyone to think a record label can keep internal servers humming alone. And, the 3 guys (at most) in TECH up-to-date on the latest routers, servers, virus, backups and *.* needs to get an knowledge upgrade.

As for point 1. most Independent Artist are not going to sue their fans so this is mute to them. The fact that the music business has not followed know examples of offering downloads, streams and physical product as a whole shows that these folks in charge, ok it's there lawyers, have complete missed what the consumer wants.

They never said give me my music in one format and it has to be digital.

No the fans want music whenever & however they feel like it. IMHO those that want to be left standing in the New Music Business already know that the cloud is the way to go.

Check out this link to see the extremes the majors will go to protect their own self interest.

So! how secure is your cloud?

There are a couple of point that one needs to consider when making the move to the Cloud.

First off! This is not your machine, code, or technical support staff; So how you have dealt with those in the past is not how they will be handled on the Cloud.

So what is your game plan for taking data or software and your users that normally run locally or in a co-location that will now reside somewhere out in cyberspace. If your migrating this is one set of consideration if your not these issue are how going to have to be addreseed head on. Plus for anyone should they want to backout data/stuff off the cloud. Say..... should your company or organization change their mind or cease to exist.

The first thing is that most end users have no experience and the little they do is with co-location. The cloud providers are going to hand you a SLA and it is going to say - BLAH? And, your or your IT/legal department are going to say we have to look at this a bit. What does this mean will be heard far and wide. So licensing of services, acceptalbe use, suspension & termination, liability limitations, privacy policies, and how and how the Cloud's side interacts with your Cloud foot print in their world where ever that is which is an issue too.

Call us when you get to these details.

So what does Cloud mean to your migration plan beyond on-demand scalability of pooled resources available 24/7/365 even in space. Lets began with some of the obivious issues to consider.

#1 Privacy of your data, who or what do you owe safeguarding of it too? What happens if it's breached?

Let's be blut and understand 1 thing the moment it's digital it is unsecure at the core since it's s copy (((already)) the only way for it to not be copied is for it to not be taken from the of rehlem of thought.

So to start the provider of cloud services don't know what your organization privacy needs are so they don't know what any particular security issues to deal with most of them have a general level of security they provide and if they are dealing with GOV level services they should be designed/built with Federal Information Processing Standards or FIPS or at least to Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) or OpenID standards. If they don't have this then you will need to consider another Cloud provider.

The crux of your decision will be what type of service is needed for your/group personally

1. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
2. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
3. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

There are three different complexities that a group will need to consider and because of the depth of them and this is cutting edge we are going to leave specifics of plan/deploy/admin of them for a later date.

What we do know is that every provider needs to have some of the basics for Authentication and there are vaild considerations that need to be reviewed when picking between providers like Google and Microsoft. We'll blog about this later We know that XML has certain vonabilitites and that Access Control that we think is solidstate now needs to be carried out with eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML).

Why is SAML alone not sufficient? Because it is putting the architecture of a particular cloud resources at the mercy of the designers when we already know that we need to have the capability to adapt users privileges while maintaining control of the overall cloud environment. The providers IDENTITY MANAGEMENT needs to be flexible while controlling proprietary service interfaces and having a strong Hypervisor Complexity.

On the cloud's end they need to be able to tell you how they are going to provide for Data Protection (i.e. Data Isolation & Data Sanitization) and the Availability of their who, what, when and what ifs. From temporary to longer or permanent Outages. What is their plan and what is yours are a MUST. Once you have gone cloud you'll need to being doing both cloud and local backups.

So your staff will need to have points of contact with the cloud. While on your staff the skills that your technical folks will need to hone are a new and their current capabilities need to be reviewed and brought up to speed with todays IT demands. As you can see this is not a simple process and many companies and organization are going to need to bring in some kind of Cloud Migration Manager and so far there are not that many consultants that have even done this so at least for now we are all safe for Cloud Experts.