Friday 03 September 2010
Cloud computing news we see some of the concerns in adopting this new paradigm, even as some of the largest business and government entities adopt (or seek to provide) cloud computing services. We can easily see vendors like Microsoft, Google, Oracle, HP, IBM, Unisys, and many others jockeying for position. Having worked for a vendor I can state confidently that nowadays they make their moves based on demand, not “build it and they will come” wishful thinking. That demand is coming from your competitors, and sooner or later, those cost savings will show up in the form of more competitive pricing of goods and services making it more difficult to compete for those that don’t adopt these efficiencies.
Using the GSA Storefront, federal agencies would choose infrastructure, Web applications, or other IT services to begin a streamlined procurement process. t’s at the top of the hype charts. It probably won’t save you money, especially in the short term. It needs more standards. And, it’s going to transform the economic model for computing. It, of course, is cloud computing — one of the most powerful business computing trends we’ve seen in years.
In an interview this week with SYS-CON’s Cloud Computing Journal, Rich Marcello - President, Unisys Systems & Technology - described how the company is delivering on the first two parts this year beginning with its Cloud Transformation Services, announced June 30, followed by the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution which will become available on July 31. The size of data sets continues to grow exponentially and once data leaves a client’s data centers, the ability of a cloud provider to meet the client’s security, privacy and compliance requirements becomes a key issue.
It is increasingly clear that the economy has forced enterprises to rethink their traditional cost models and minimize their capital expenditures in favor of pay-as-you-go models; accordingly cloud computing, in any of its forms (internal, external, hybrid) is here to stay. Unisys also plans to deliver “hybrid” cloud technologies that provide what it believes is the best of managed and dedicated services by combining public and private cloud capabilities. Over the next several months, Unisys intends to launch additional solutions that give clients enhanced options in implementing cloud services
I believe that cloud computing will revolutionize the way enterprises obtain business and IT services and change the kind of payback they get from their IT investments,” said Rich Marcello, president, Unisys Systems and Technology. “Our clients tell us that they see great value in moving enterprise applications and data to the cloud. However they have lacked the comprehensive security to make them confident in doing so.” Underpinning this strategy is Unisys Stealth security solution, a data protection technology initially designed for government applications and now available to commercial clients. The Unisys Stealth technology cloaks data through multiple levels of authentication and encryption, bit-splitting data into multiple packets so it moves invisibly across networks and protects data in the Unisys secure cloud.
Using Unisys services and technologies, organizations can create a private cloud within their data centers, a public cloud through secure Unisys-managed cloud solutions, or a hybrid cloud solution combining the best of both private and Unisys-managed cloud services. The Unisys cloud computing strategy enables clients to choose the type of data center computing services that best meet their business objectives, from self-managed, automated IT infrastructures to Unisys-managed cloud services. This allows clients to reap the economic benefits of cloud services more quickly.
- Cloud Transformation Services, a portfolio of advisory and implementation services that help clients assess potential cloud computing options and determine which option best suits their needs or financial objectives.
Unisys also is planning a Stealth solution for data security on storage area networks (SAN) by providing the same cloaking capability for “data at rest” in a virtualized storage environment. Integrated with the new Unisys Secure Cloud Solution, the Unisys Stealth technology enables encrypted “data in motion” to remain invisible as it traverses the infrastructure until it is reassembled upon delivery to authorized users. As client needs or data security requirements dictate, the Unisys Secure Cloud Solution can balance workloads across a global network of Unisys data centers, which are certified to key international standards such as ISO/IEC 27001:2005 for security, ISO/IEC 20000 for service management and the SAS 70 Type II auditing standard.
The new services include Secure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), for provisioning physical and virtual servers that both scale out and scale up; Secure Platform as a Service (PaaS), which provides a Java software stack, with .NET support planned, to make it easier for clients to move their applications to the cloud without making changes; My Secure Application as a Service (AaaS), for automatic provisioning of IT resources to support applications with multi-tier architectures; and Secure Software as a Service (SaaS), which provides access to hosted applications. Unisys plans a “cloud-in-a-box” solution as a comprehensive IT infrastructure package, enabling quick and cost-effective implementation of a private cloud. This solution will include virtualization capabilities, automation of ITIL best practices for service management, and Unisys Converged Remote Infrastructure Management capabilities, with Unisys Stealth solution as an option for extreme security.
Unisys is dead serious about the secure part, taking a technology called Stealth that it developed and deployed for the U.S. Defense Department and NATO to build what it considers the most secure cloud that will be available on the market. Unisys may have not taken over the world as either a system maker or an outsourcer, but it’s a player in both markets and it doesn’t want the move to cloud computing to leave it behind.
Rich Marcello, president of the Systems and Technology division at Unisys, the Unisys Secure Cloud will initially be based on a mix of the company’s ES7000 family of servers, including homegrown big SMP boxes that it co-designed with NEC as well as rack servers it OEMs from Sun Microsystems Oracle and Dell; storage for the cloud will come from long-time partner EMC.
Unisys cloud will support Clear Path mainframes and their MCP and OS 2200 workloads, but when that might happen, Marcello was unable to say. The Unisys Secure Cloud will be plugged into the company’s existing data centers used by its outsourcing business - that means the cloud will have a global reach, which is something you can bet Unisys will tout to position itself against an army of hosting providers who will suddenly go virtual with their servers and start calling themselves cloud providers.
The initial rollout for PaaS will be a Java stack including Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, and MySQL, but in September the PaaS offering will be extended to include a .NET stack running atop Windows and a WebSphere/DB2 stack for customers who like IBM’s middleware and database. An Oracle database and middleware stack is in the works for this year for the PaaS product, as well Sometime around March 2010 the company will sell hybrid clouds, allowing customers to use Unisys tools to manage workloads that will seamlessly span their internal Unisys clouds and the external Unisys Secure Cloud.
Unisys Secure Cloud will also run more traditional software as a service (SaaS) products that Unisys sells, such as hosted collaboration software or virtual desktops that are served from the cloud. Secure AaaS offering mentioned above means taking customers’ existing applications - the legacy stuff that is hard to move mostly because of paranoia about security - and running them on the Unisys cloud.
Upshot of this bit splitting and encrypting is that Client A on a cloud cannot see Client B’s data unless they have both keys. And because the Stealth protocol is performed by an appliance at the end points of a system, you don’t have to modify an operating system or its applications to make use of it If Unisys can partner with Security First to get the Stealth bit-splitting tech (which Security First calls Secure Parser), then it’s reasonable to assume that others can license it or come up with a similar algorithm.
