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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
IP telephony encompasses a set of technologies enabling voice, data and video over existing IP-based LANS, WANs and the internet. Using voice over IP (VoIP) as the enabling technology to transport phone calls allows firms to eliminate legacy circuit-switched (TDM) systems and lower equipment costs by converging applications onto a single infrastructure, while browser-based interfaces can simplify system management. Software upgrades are also much easier to implement, as are adds, moves and changes (AMCs). At […]
You are not alone if you are confused about cloud computing – recent research has shown that nearly half of those not using cloud computing don’t know what it means. Whether you are worried about security or how you would access your data without internet access read on and see my answers to the common questions which people ask me about cloud computing. 1. Is there a difference between ‘The Cloud’ and ‘Cloud Computing’? Isn’t […]
If your organization doesn’t actively manage E911 location information you are increasing the odds that an emergency responder may not be able to find a 911 caller in need quickly enough to help. It’s that simple. What should be a no-brainer component of an enterprise workplace safety plan is too often overlooked or, worse, consciously passed over. This isn’t a technology problem; a wide range of hardware, software and cloud-based E911 solutions exist to address […]
The issue of success or failure in moving your company data, IT storage, servers or software to the cloud is often driven by technical issues, including performance, bandwidth, security and total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) considerations. While many of these factors are key criteria for selecting cloud solutions, they usually don’t align with the bigger picture that C-level executives must consider when adding new IT solutions. How IT can help sustain or create a competitive advantage has never […]
Thin-client devices soldier on in the battle to unseat entrenched PCs as the device of choice for both task and knowledge workers. Thin-client hardware devices are gaining processing power, codec smarts and management tools that combine with speed boosters from virtual desktop platforms and are mounting a serious challenge to the PC refresh treadmill. Even more extreme slimming called a “zero client” is stripping out any local operating system, thus reducing the attack surface, power […]
For today’s CIO, the perceived barriers to cloud computing remain security, regulation and compliance. The danger that data loss poses to brand equity, customer trust and share price is just the same whether data is stored in a cloud computing or traditional infrastructure model. The severity of the issue is reflected in legislation like the recent Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which states that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) now has the authority to levy […]
Historically, business telecommunications has been a highly exclusive club of well-financed service providers who have been highly dependent upon business models that are pegged to over-subscription, product bundling and oligopolistic market control. Telecommunications infrastructure has been a world of very expensive, highly proprietary equipment and telecom applications such as voicemail, conferencing, three-way calling and caller ID have been developed exclusively within the doors of the large service providers who intended to put them in the […]
IBM, HP, and other established vendors entering cloud computing are often already outsourcing partners to the firms that are now frequently looking for an infrastructure service provider. But that doesn’t mean they have an inside track on the business. They do not. Established vendors are going to face stiff competition for outsourcing business from the new infrastructure providers: Amazon, Rackspace, and others, according to a report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Traditionally, IT works in a break-fix […]
Telefonica and Verizon will become the first operators to offer Android phones running VMware’s mobile hypervisor, the companies announced on Wednesday at the VMworld 2011 Europe conference in Copenhagen. VMware has previously said that Verizon would offer the service, without disclosing details about timing, but this is the first time Telefonica has said it plans to offer phones with the hypervisor. Users of phones with the VMware product will find two profiles on their devices: […]
After a decade of enormous budget increases the American intelligence community’s budget will probably decline by billions of dollars, Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said here. Clapper told more than 3,000 people at the annual Geoint conference that the intelligence community’s budget had been handed in to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. “We are all going to have to give at the office,” Clapper said. The bulk of the cuts will […]
By definition, Cloud computing is Web-based computing, whereby shared resources, both software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand through an Internet connection. Instead of having to buy, install, maintain, and manage these resources on your own computer or device, you access and use them through a Web browser. One of the major advantages to businesses using Cloud based technologies is that it saves time. Rather than managing technology in-house, you pay […]
Over the past 24 months, the interest in cloud computing – a general term for software deployed through hosted, managed services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) models – has continued to grow. As a result, the movement of more business applications into the cloud is becoming more prevalent. This popularity is made clear when you consider the recent report from ARC Advisory Group, which revealed the supply chain management market grew 7 per cent in the last […]
A commonly held belief is that cloud computing—a utility model for computing capacity, software and business functionality—is a phenomenon whose value resides primarily in reducing IT costs. In fact, the flexibility that the cloud makes possible for infrastructures, services and processes means that it is also capable of driving significant innovation. This is a key finding of new research from the London School of Economics and Accenture, based on a survey of 1,035 business and […]
More and more enterprise IT shops – as they get comfortable with virtualization practices in their own private clouds – are considering a jump to the public cloud. But before making that leap, consider these pieces of advice from those that have already jumped. 1. Make sure your provider has VM-specific security “Hypervisors were never really designed to be running in a public environment,” says Beth Cohen, senior cloud architect for Cloud Technology Partners, a […]
The future belongs to a virtualized IT world, which functions on the basis of business processes. In fact, fifty-nine percent of European CIOs surveyed by IDG Research Services for a recent ‘CIO2CIO Perspectives’ report on Optimizing Virtualization Investments indicated that their companies are actively investing in virtualization initiatives. Additionally, they confirmed that virtualization technology is increasingly showing its influence in business-critical services. More than half those users plan to virtualize business-critical services as part of […]
The restart-only availability level allows for failure of a component such as a host or storage array. Failures generally manifest as the equivalent of a “blue screen” for the virtual desktop. Consider what happens when one of your physical desktops crashes — do the users generate a help desk ticket or do they simply restart their system? A key advantage of virtualization is the ability to decouple an operating system from its hardware layer. This […]
Researchers from North Carolina State University and IBM have developed a new, experimental technique to better protect sensitive information in cloud computing – without significantly affecting the system’s overall performance. Under the cloud-computing paradigm, the computational power and storage of multiple computers is pooled, and can be shared by multiple users. Hypervisors are programs that create the virtual workspace that allows different operating systems to run in isolation from one another – even though each […]
Few organizations have moved to cloud computing — the delivery of computing as a service from remote centers — and of those that have, many are disappointed with the results, a survey published on Tuesday found. Fewer than one in five organizations questioned have outsourced the hosting of their applications to cloud computing providers, with two-thirds in early discussions, in trials or not considering a move, said computer security firm Symantec. Many firms are looking […]
You are a small business, therefore, you need an easy way to communicate with your customers and vice versa. Picking a phone system that you can rely on is a complicated, tricky business, and not really something you want to hassle with at the end of the day. Ultimately, the choice comes down to two options. A traditional phone system relies on phone lines that are connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), on […]
In a new survey, access-management vendor Imprivata forecasts that health care will move ahead of other industries in the adoption of desktop virtualization. Imprivata, a provider of access-management tools, has released the results of a survey showing health care poised to take the lead in desktop virtualization adoption in the next 12 months. For the report called “2011 Virtualization Trends in Healthcare,” researchers interviewed 477 IT managers in multiple industries, including health care and financial […]