Last Week in Performance Industry - April #1 Edition

Security Threats: Individual Enterprises vs. Public Clouds

At GigaOm, David Linthicum discusses the security issues with enterprises, compared to public cloud computing, i.e., which is better, security within the public clouds or security within traditional enterprise systems. "According to Alert Logic’s Fall 2012 State of the Cloud Security report, the variations in the threat activity are not as important as where the infrastructure is located. The report finds that anything that can be possibly accessed from outside, whether enterprise or cloud, has equal chances of being attacked because attacks are opportunistic in nature," Linthicum explains. While this is a complex issue, it seems that, in some instances, cloud computing actually provides better security, Linthicum draws from the Alert Logic report (see image below).

Read the full article from GigaOm.

Find the Alert Logic report here.

Is Cloud the Next Big Thing in Education as well as Job Opportunity?

John Omwamba writes for CloudTweaks: "Now there is a better chance to make use of the learning systems to tap into the fourteen million employment opportunities that the cloud will deliver in three years’ time." He brings examples of giants such as Microsoft and IBM that have both already developed technologies to leverage learning the modern way, and about - cloud. "Such technologies bring resources closer to the desktop so that learners can enter into the employment sector with computing skills that matter to the contemporary world," Omwamba continues. Also, jobs in cloud sectors are expanding, and organizations now need to hire CIOs, vending personnel, infrastructure builders and so on. "The secret to all these jobs is that they need educated minds who understand the practical rather than the hyped side of the cloud."

Find the full article on CloudTweaks.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) at OpenStack Summit

The date of the OpenStack Summit in Portland, Oregon, is approaching, April 15-18. The Summit is actually a four-day conference for developers, users, and administrators of OpenStack Cloud Software. "HP's strong presence at the show will come at a critical time. Like IBM, Dell and other rivals, HP is building its public cloud atop OpenStack, the open source cloud platform," Panettiery reports for Talkin' Cloud.

Expected attendees will include:

• Saar Gillai, SVP and GM, HP Converged Cloud: Gillai is set to keynote
• Roger Levy, VP and GM, HP Cloud Services: A key person on the public cloud strategy
• Margaret Dawson, VP, Product Marketing and HP Cloud Evangelist: An expert on how HP Cloud Services products run atop OpenStack
• Eileen Evans, VP and associate general counsel, HP Cloud Computing and Open Source: A key source who works closely with the OpenStack board and community

The OpenStack Summit is said to focus heavily on ISVs (independent software vendors) and corporate adopters.

Find the full article here.

Find more info on the OpenStack Summit.

Regulating the Cloud: EU, Law & Data in the Cloud

"When a European company signs up to a cloud service, although the cloud vendor is handling the company's data, it is the company that retains responsibility for how the cloud vendor does so," writes The Guardian in consideration of the cloud computing and EU law.

There are tight controls on processing personal data, whether this involves regular or cloud vendors. "European law requires appropriate technical and organisational measures to be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss destruction of, or damage to, such data," it continues. Thus, the article proposes some issues for the companies to regard before putting personal data on the cloud, such as:

• Would the cloud vendor's security meet European law requirements?
• Where would the data be stored?
• Do you have rights to audit the services?
• Will the cloud vendor provide back-ups, disaster recovery and business continuity procedures?
• How will you secure the return of your data at the end of the contract?

Find the full article from The Guardian.

CDNs Drive Cloud Adoption

Internap brings a piece on how including a Content Delivery Network (CDN) makes it possible for the cloud to meet the performance expectations of end users. Also, to increase the competitive advantage of a company. They list six obstacles that CDNs successfully address:

• security: CDNs help ward off DDoS attacks
• availability of service: with CDN you can control for how long a piece of static content will remain cached
• data transfer bottlenecks: content is delivered through multiple egress points with CDN
• performance assurance: lower latency with CDNs
• scalable storage: CDNs offer flexibility options that scale as needed
• scaling: CDNs reduce the risk of web servers becoming overwhelmed

"Using CDN and cloud together," they say at Internap, "can address these challenges and create the right IT Infrastructure for an optimal online user experience."