Cloud Computing

607 posts

Graphs of performance analytics on a laptop screen, illustrating analytics, mobile, cloud and social applications

Analytics, Mobile, Cloud, Social Applications Drive Future IT Development

It’s clear by the increasing use of analytics software that companies are struggling to get their hands around the huge amounts of data it takes to run a successful business.  But  developing social, mobile, cloud computing and other applications are also driving the need for new technical skills. Those were some of the key trends found in IBM’s 2011 Tech Trends Report released today that surveyed 4,000 IT professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries […]

A colorful sound wave on a black background, illustrating steganography hidden in VoIP traffic

Hiding Steganographic Messages In VoIP

Researchers have devised a new scheme for hiding secret data within VoIP packets, making it possible to carry on legitimate voice conversations while stolen data piggybacks on the call undetected, making its way to thieves on the outside. Called transcoding steganography or TranSteg, the method calls for setting a larger-than-necessary payload space in VoIP packets and using the extra room to carry covert messages. In their experiment the researchers could send 2.2MB of covert data […]

A large stone fortress sitting on top of a hill, illustrating cloud computing security strengths

Cloud Computing’s Security Strengths

Cloud computing has flunked a security test, reports Tim Wilson at Dark Reading. That probably doesn’t surprise you. Conventional wisdom says clouds are inherently insecure. But are they? Or are clouds actually more secure than conventional IT environments? A growing number of technologists are making that argument. And they’re not cloud vendors or marketers or startups who have placed their bet on the cloud. They’re some of the senior-most technology officials in government, including those […]

Water drop causing a ripple on a water surface, illustrating the essence of cloud computing

The Essence of Cloud

The industry roils with definitions and explanations of cloud. These definitions come from product vendors cloud-washing their products, cloud providers positioning their cloud infrastructure, IT teams attempting to cloud-paint their efforts in virtualization, and even from consultants writing articles like this. This article will examine the essence of cloud and will provide a solid working foundation against which progress toward the cloud can be objectively assessed. The Cloud Deployment Model Cloud computing is essentially a […]

Wind turbine emerging from fog at sunrise, illustrating environmental benefits of cloud computing

The Environmental Benefits of Cloud Computing

A new report released by the Carbon Disclosure Project in London has found that blue-chip companies can reduce their carbon emissions by 50% if they move their data storage operations to the cloud. The study focused on major IT companies in France and the United Kingdom. These are the same companies which are also developing such “cloud” technologies and services. The release of the report follows an announcement that the use of cloud services may […]

A wooden rubber stamp resting on an open legal document, illustrating legal issues in cloud computing

New Buzzword, Old Legal Issues

As an observer of the information technology and Internet industries for several decades, I watch with great amusement as new buzzwords surface for old IT concepts. I was rewarded not too long ago, when the term “cloud computing” appeared on the scene. The technology concept behind cloud computing has been around for more than 50 years, and the legal issues are equally old. Those concerns remain unchanged, despite the new buzzwords. Dartmouth Time-Sharing – 1964 […]

A close up of a control panel with buttons and switches, illustrating cloud control and privacy

Cloud Control

A survey recently carried out for IBM found that 77 per cent of respondents believe that?adopting?cloud ­computing makes protecting privacy more difficult, while 50 per cent are concerned about data breaches or loss. Indeed, when it comes to security the question now is often framed in terms of: where will my data be, who will be able to access it and how can I be assured of this and know what is really happening? When […]

A rack of servers in a server room, illustrating primary server virtualization hypervisors

Primary Server Virtualization Hypervisors

Server virtualization is perhaps not as pervasive as many believe, and customers are not as locked into any particular hypervisor as many companies peddling this magic software layer might hope. This info comes from the latest V-Index survey from Veeam Software, a maker of add-on management tools for VMware’s ESXi hypervisor, which is conducted on a quarterly basis in the US, UK, France, and Germany. The survey only talks to fairly large companies – those […]

A computer screen displaying system information in a terminal window, illustrating virtual machines improving cloud security

Virtual Machines Can Boost Cloud Security

While conventional wisdom says virtualized environments and public clouds create massive security headaches, the godfather of Xen, Simon Crosby, says virtualization actually holds a key to better security. Isolation — the ability to restrict what computing goes on in a given context — is a fundamental characteristic of virtualization that can be exploited to improve trustworthiness of processes on a physical system even if other processes have been compromised, says Crosby, a creator of the […]

A sign post with several street signs, illustrating the federal roadmap for cloud adoption

Feds To Speed Cloud Adoption With New Roadmap

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released for public comment a draft “roadmap” that is designed to foster federal agencies’ adoption of cloud computing, support the private sector, improve the information available to decision makers and facilitate the continued development of the cloud computing model. n February 2011, the government issued the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy* that describes cloud computing as a “profound economic and technical shift (with) great […]