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This Week in Cloud, May 5, 2011: AWS post-mortem, Forrester on cloud economics and planning for hybrid cloud, are we heading toward a cloud security standoff? And more…
Feature article
Cloud Providers vs. Cloud Consumers – Survey results point to impending security standoff
By Matthew Gardiner
CA Technologies and the Ponemon Institute recently released the results of the second part of our two-part cloud security survey. The first survey focused on the security views of cloud consumers; this survey focuses on the security perspectives of cloud providers. Taken together the two surveys provide a stark contrast of the state of cloud security.
To put it plainly, cloud providers and cloud consumers do not currently agree when it comes to security. One of Ponemon's more provocative conclusions is that, "...the focus on cost and speed [by cloud providers] and not on security or data protection creates a security hole." Read the full article.
Cloud News
- Amazon Web Services released a detailed post-mortem on its recent outages, which were caused by a configuration error during a network upgrade. This Computerworld article has more detail. Meanwhile, VMware’s new Cloud Foundry service, which is still in beta suffered two outages, as described in this Network World article.
- This Network World slideshow identifies 5 things to love and hate about cloud management tools from RightScale, Cloudkick and Tap In Systems.
- Red Hat introduced a database for cloud computing platforms. The JBoss Enterprise Data Grid extends cloud scalability to the data layer and speeds access to data, according to this GigaOm blog.
Cloud Views
- Exploring the economics of cloud: Forrester’s James Staten recently published a report on the three stages of cloud economics. The latter two stages involving turning savings into profits and enabling new revenue opportunities to be exploited. Staten shares some of this thinking in this blog entry. This ZDNet article also cites research from Staten around the challenges of calculating cloud cost savings – and identifies some potential gotchas.
- How to Plan Now for Hybrid Cloud Management: Forrester’s Galen Schreck outlines how to prepare for three likely hybrid cloud scenarios, specifically virtualization platforms become the core, system management suites extend to the cloud and third-party cloud tools excel in specific areas.
- In this InfoWorld article, David Linthicum shares 3 dirty little secrets about cloud computing: some public cloud providers are failing and will fail, public cloud don’t always save you money, and using cloud can get you fired.
MSP Corner
- Renee Bergeron identified 10 make-or-break questions that MSPs should ask their cloud vendors, in this MSP Mentor article.
- MSP Internap plans to offer a public infrastructure-as-a-service cloud built on the OpenStack platform, beginning the third quarter of this year. Customers will also have the option to run applications on VMware-based virtual infrastructure. Read this GigaOm blog for more detail.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- Closer 2011: 1st International Conference on Cloud Computing & Services: May 7 – 9, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands
- TMForum Management World: May 23 – 26, Dublin, Ireland
- Forrester’s IT Forum, May 25 – 27, Las Vegas, Nevada
- Cloud Expo East, June 6-9, New York City
- The Business of Cloud Computing: June 13 – 15, San Diego, California
