IT Departments

You are currently browsing the archive for the IT Departments category.

Is the Cloud as the vendors are claiming?

August 28, 2009 in Events, IT Departments, News, Technical by pcalcada | No comments

IT news from Australia is presenting a work made by the UNSW School of Computer Science. In this study they try to verify if the Cloud is as the Vendors are claiming that it is: elastic, reliable, dynamic, fault tolerant, high available..

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/153451,stress-tests-rain-on-amazons-cloud.aspx

These are very interesting points and independent tests are fundamental to create trust among Cloud users and providers.

Although I think this kind of test should be more focused on specific applications. As  studies show, some of the potential problems found on the Cloud could be solved by the developers.

Using these ideas as starting point I’m working on a project that should be presented as a parallel event on the CloudViews.Org Cloud Computing Conference – 2010. This project, and the whole CloudViews.Org Cloud Computing Conference 2010 will be presented very soon, but If any one is interested in these topics, feel free to contact me directly.

Share/Save

Tags: ,

Amazon introduces the AWS Private Cloud, and the question that arises is if this new service enables the deployment of real Private Cloud..

August 26, 2009 in IT Departments, News by pcalcada | No comments

Amazon has introduced today the new AWS Virtual Private Cloud service, more details on it could be found here: http://aws.amazon.com/vpc

On the follow up of this new service, some doubts have arisen about the real type of the cloud built with this new service, and also if this kind of cloud could even be difined as Private Clouds.

Using the NIST definition:

” Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. ”

It’s very clear, a Private Cloud could be on premise or off premise. The next question is what should be considered the premises of the cloud. Should it be the wall of the datacenter, the box of the server or the VM where the OS is running? For one company their premises could be a single room, whereas to another it could be the entire building, in the cloud computing paradigm the private cloud is, in my perspective, a sandbox, which has boundaries well definite and on which we trust. These boundaries are the set of features that are available (CPU, network, storage, development API, etc) and the trust comes by means of contracts, cloud provider reputation, etc…

It’s easy to understand that this kind of definition are not closed to discussion, but in my prespective, the service introduced by Amazon should be consider a very interesting tool to build effective Private Clouds.

Share/Save

Tags: ,

White Paper: An Essential Guide to Possibilities and Risks of Cloud Computing

July 19, 2009 in Basic Views, CloudViews, IT Departments, Interoperability, News, Technical by Maria Spínola | 1 comment

Cloud Computing is quite possibly the hottest, most discussed and often misunderstood concept in Information Technology (IT) today.

In short, Cloud Computing proposes to transform the way IT it’s deployed and managed, promising reduced implementation, maintenance costs and complexity, while accelerating innovation, providing faster timeto-market, and the ability to scale high-performance applications and infrastructures on demand.

But business managers know that in spite of the benefits of every new technology/business model there are also risks and issues (like for example: trust, loss of privacy, regulatory violation, data replication, coherency and erosion of integrity, application sprawl and dependencies, etc.) and that rushing things when it comes to Cloud Computing can be a very bad decision, but blowing off Cloud Computing all together because you think you can secure your own stuff better than a service provider or because many claims, made about Cloud Computing, have lead you to the point of “irrational exuberance” and unrealistic expectations, isn’t smart, either.

The goal of this White Paper is to provide a realistic perspective of the possibilities, benefits and risks of Cloud Computing; what to look for, what to avoid, and also some tips and best practices on implementation, architecture and vendor management strategies. It is important to consider all those aspects before you decide either to move (but without putting the carriage before the horse) or not to move your systems, applications, and/or data to to the “Cloud”, in a “hype free” approach.

Click here to download the White Paper (or click on the image at left side)

Thanks and please let me know how I can help you.

P.S. And of course your comments, feedback’s and thoughts are always welcome.

Share/Save

Tags: , , , , , , ,

The CloudOS’s

June 25, 2009 in Basic Views, IT Departments, News by rcosta | No comments

I never truly believed that true cloud OS could “appear” and specially be truly usable. Jolicloud was already mentioned here (although I do not consider it a true cloud OS), but what make me a believer was g.ho.st and specially eyeOS.

Share/Save

Tags:

Cloud antivirus

June 24, 2009 in IT Departments, News by hugo.mag | No comments

Panda Security launch a Cloud Antivirus (in beta).

Do check their blog. It has a video explaining how it works.

Share/Save

Tags: ,

Increasing the control over the Cloud – Reducing the EDoS danger

May 21, 2009 in IT Departments, News, Technical by pcalcada | No comments

As it has been discussed in the Cloud Computing Google Group (Cloud Forum), the Cloud Computing paradigm has an ever growing underlying attachment. As I’m sure you can guess, I’m talking about the security threats that have emerged, one of them being the Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS). The EDoS attack has as its main goal to make no longer viable the business model of Cloud providers. The majority of Cloud Computing business models have as its basis the notion of elasticity and the pay as use. In this business model, clients pay as use, or as its clients use (for those who are selling services based on Cloud providers). This flexibility and elasticity is one of the greatest innovations that have sprung from Cloud Computing but it could also be a danger for the users of this model. Without the proper control technologies Cloud Computing clients could easily be exposed to fake usage, and because they are paying as the platform is used, they cloud be suffering the EDoS and their business cloud be seriously affected.

One of the control technologies that will definitely reduce the dangers of the EDoS is the new Auto Scaling from Amazon. With this technology Amazon clients will be able to define boundaries that would limit the elasticity of its platforms. With these boundaries they will always control how their platforms will grow and therefore they will no longer be exposed to the EDoS. This new feature of the AWS platform should be used with the also new Amazon CloudWatch which adds to the Amazon platform the ability to be full motorized by their costumers.

Share/Save

Tags: , ,

The largest IT department on the World is changing to Cloud Computing

May 18, 2009 in IT Departments, News by pcalcada | 1 comment

As we can read on the recent CROSSCUTTING PROGRAMS document presented by the Obama administration, the Cloud Computing paradigm is considered a priority tool to reduce the costs and increase the efficiency on the IT platform of the Us government. As the following quote shows, their commitment to the Cloud Computing paradigm is definitely undoubted.

“The Federal Government will transform its Information Technology Infrastructure by virtualizing data centers, consolidating data centers and operations, and ultimately adopting a cloud-computing business model,”

Share/Save

« Older entries