With the long weekend looming (well, technically starting today) I thought I would do a nice light post about the state of third party security and virtualization. I still have this debate once and awhile about what is better, vendor integrated solutions such as vShield, or third party solutions from security vendors. So what are the arguments for each side? Continue reading
virtualization
Spock. This child is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do….spank it?
Have you ever suddenly realized that there is a whole part of the community that you sometimes forget exists? For me it’s the school system. Firstly, as someone with no kids, and having said goodbye to University years ago (taking 8 years to finally finish my degree was enough for me!) I have really not much connection to how the education system has evolved over the last 5 years. What kinds of things can be done with cloud to make our education system more effective? I have a few ideas. Continue reading
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
It may come as no surprise that I read a lot about cloud and security. I mean A LOT. My Twitter feeds are rammed with representation from all things cloud. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.”. So when I’m not doing my day job, I’m busy writing this daily blog, writing for another awesome Canadian blog, http://cloudbestpractices.net, some vendor sites, and writing whitepapers for various conferences, doing research with the Cloud Security Alliance and the like. I do this so that I can help educate the market, particularly the Canadian market, on cloud. Continue reading
To ensure ongoing quality of service, your death may be monitored for training purposes. Thank you.
I was recently attending a cloud conference and had the chance to talk to several of the key technology vendors that were in attendance. One of the major vendors seems to be working closely with just about everyone in the cloud and virtualization space, and it made me question what kind of benefits to solution providers and other vendors these types of relationships provide. Suddenly the main cloud players are building partnerships to develop solutions for attached security, storage, asset management, performance monitoring and other operational technologies within virtual environments. But what benefit is there to have such tight integration with one or two key cloud platform vendors? Continue reading
My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
I came across a great article from CSO Online that talked about how cloud has created a new movement called DevOps. Normally when you think about how cloud is affecting the way businesses operate from an IT perspective, the usual culprits at the centre are the security folks, and maybe the IT infrastructure guys. What we tend to forget is that these groups aren’t the only ones who are looking at how cloud can make business processes more nimble. The DevOps movement is showing organizations how changing the way they run development can lead to some astounding results. Continue reading
I’m a leaf on the wind…watch how I soar!
I recently met with a Canadian cloud innovator, DataGardens, to provide some input on how their solutions would benefit different market segments, and be used for different key continuity and security functions. If you haven’t heard of DataGardens (I have to admit, I wasn’t familiar with them either) or their flagship solution, DataGardens WAVE, you might want to take a look at them again. Especially if you have need for virtualization or cloud business continuity services. Continue reading
Well, all the jokes can’t be good. You’ve got to expect that once in a while.
Organizations are busy working on creating cloud migration paths for their current applications and data stores, assuming that these systems can easily be ported. What is often overlooked is that most applications weren’t created with the cloud in mind, so expecting them to scale to cloud environments isn’t realistic. Unless you have the team to rewrite these applications for running in virtualized or cloud environments, the movement to a cloud model will need to be done in several steps up a steep learning curve. Continue reading
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
Do you feel like no matter how much you invest in IT security, you are losing the battle? There has been a lot of talk that security specialists are facing an uphill battle for the foreseeable future thanks to the speed of mobile device evolution and cloud development. Personally, I feel the pain of security folks. Virtualization has made things more complicated, and now with tablets and smartphones, it’s never going to return back to the network security days. But there is something that cloud is bringing to security that will make it easier for security folks, and that is Big Data. Continue reading
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
I stumbled upon a post via Twitter the other day from Scott Lowe of Tech Republic on IDV (yes, I thought at first I was getting a mild case of dyslexia, but no, it is IDV) and the difference between VDI and IDV. IDV stands for Intelligent Desktop Virtualization and although it essentially delivers the same idea as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) it’s actually not just more efficient, it’s really quite brilliant. Continue reading
Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.
It seems like the in the last few years, every single service provider has been scratching their head and thinking “how do we sell to the SMBs?”. I’m not talking just cloud providers, but most businesses in general. Part of it is that in Canada, while there are some significantly large enterprises, the majority of organizations fit into the traditional SMB definition. But the question is, will cloud help us finally get enterprise-class solutions to those customers? Continue reading
Tinder Stratus 