Friday 03 September 2010
What may be less obvious is the extent to which internal “private” clouds are in the open source camp. At a session at O’Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) this week titled “Private Clouds — Why They Matter,” there was a robust discussion regarding internal cloud computing plans. While few of the attendees had large-scale internal clouds in production, several had some operating cloud infrastructure running in-house, and many claimed to be actively evaluating the technology. To be fair, some of the session attendees were from companies such as SaaS providers or software developers — though their comments were clearly directed toward use of cloud technologies for internal applications (rather than their public Web sites). However, there were several traditional end users there as well.
It quickly became clear that many of these internal private clouds were not just using open source (Linux, MySQL, etc.); they were built on open source. Eucalyptus was most often cited as the base platform for building private clouds, and this was true even when VMware was an organization’s primary virtualization environment.
In-memory data grids store information that applications need in memory across a pool of servers, instead of reading it off disks, resulting in major performance gains. The Coherence product is one of the more mature in a space occupied by offerings from IBM as well as smaller companies like GigaSpaces and a number of open-source projects. Microsoft is also developing a system dubbed “Velocity.” o date, such systems have breathed rarefied air, mostly supporting large-scale Web sites and high-throughput transactional systems, such as stock trading applications. The in-memory data grid market in total generated less than US$100 million in revenue during 2008, according to Gartner, which prefers the term “distributed caching platforms.
But some observers believe that in-memory approaches to data management could eventually gain serious traction in cloud-computing deployments. The technologies would help applications that weren’t originally designed for elastically scalable infrastructure systems like Amazon Web Services to run more effectively, albeit “via some re-engineering,” Gartner analyst Massimo Pezzini said in a recent report. Beyond vendor trepidation, other factors stand in the way of broader customer adoption, such as the complexity of deploying and managing the systems and limited support from systems integrators and ISVs, according to Pezzini.
The confidential information of the Internet goliaths has been exposed once again. This time, Twitter.com has fallen victim. Hundreds of corporate e-mails, financial projections, private meeting notes and other sensitive data became available to a hacker, who then sent his ill-gotten gains to TechCrunch.com which published most of the information. Web sites that handle millions of users daily should learn from this privacy snafu. In reality, there is no such thing as Internet security. Other big names such as Yahoo and Google have fallen victim to the false word “security.” These companies have become incapable of securing sensitive data. Web security is a two-way street. Hackers have begun to target Web sites with weak security, find passwords, and then use them on the more secure sites. While education to the average end-user is important, companies have equal responsibility in today’s new cloud-computing environment.
But is it the technology industry’s fault? Or should we fault the broken model of security in the concept of password protection? In the Twitter case, the hacker gained access simply by cracking an employee’s password stored offsite on a GoogleDocs document. GoogleDocs is part of a new revolution in the computing world, dubbed cloud computing. Cloud computing programs are like traditional applications but they store data on an outside server, making it available anytime. Strong passwords are a necessity with cloud computing applications such as GoogleDocs and Gmail because they are all linked to a central account. If that account has a weak password, the information within it is highly vulnerable.
McAfee’s Total Protection Service 5.0 has also been expanded to 18 languages, said Sal Viveros, a McAfee security analyst. The vulnerability assessment service scans Web sites to see if they’ve been hacked and then can send reports to administrators as to what’s wrong. The service can also check to see if a particular Web site complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which is a set of rules supported by card companies such as MasterCard and Visa. cAfee has also integrated into the latest release technology that came from Secure Computing, which McAfee announced it would acquire in September 2008 for US$465 million. That includes TrustedSource, which was Secure Computing’s intelligence system for collecting information on malware, e-mail and Web threats. It can judge the legitimacy of a Web site or e-mail message based on its reputation, or a set of characteristics that can be analyzed to determine what threat it poses.
The Web filtering in 5.0 has been improved, allowing administrators more control over the Web sites their users can access, Viveros said. For example, Web sites that have only come online in the past week or so could be blocked, Viveros said. Harmful Web sites often are online for less than that time before an Internet service provider takes one down. Total Protection Service 5.0 supports the following languages: Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Dutch, German, Spanish, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Hebrew.
Salesforce.com CRM, the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced Force.com Free Edition, a new offering that provides everything companies need to build and run their first cloud computing app - for free. Force.com is salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud computing platform. It provides everything companies need to quickly build and deliver business applications in the cloud, including the database, unlimited real-time customization, powerful analytics, real-time workflow and approvals, programmable cloud logic, integration, real-time mobile deployment, programmable user interface and Web site capabilities.
Force.com provides companies the fastest way to build and run applications and Web sites in real time without requiring any software or hardware infrastructure. Already, customers and partners have built more than 110,000 business applications on Force.com, from manufacturing, finance, and supply chain management to brand management, claims processing and order management, and much more. Industry research has shown that building apps in the cloud on Force.com is 5 times faster and less costly than on-premise alternatives.(1) Force.com Free Edition will allow companies to further extend their success with salesforce.com by enabling them to build and run their first app or Web site in the cloud for free, for up to 100 users.
Organizations can use Force.com to build and run applications for their internal business processes as well as Web sites on its real-time cloud computing platform. Force.com Sites expands the leadership in cloud computing for the enterprise. With Force.com Sites, customers can now run any Web site in our cloud. We expect the community to unleash entirely new kinds of applications and innovations that realize our vision of ‘The End of Software, said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, of Salesforce.com. The enterprise cloud computing platform provides solution to companies to build and deliver business applications in the cloud, including the database, real-time customization, and analytics, as well as real-time workflow and approvals, programmable cloud logic, integration, real-time mobile deployment, programmable user interface and Web site capabilities.
The company has earlier started customer preview program where more than 80 companies participated, including American Red Cross, Dell, Juniper Networks and Seagate. ts unlimited edition includes up to 1,000,000 monthly page views, however the additional monthly page views are available for $1,000/month for up to 1,000,000 additional monthly page views. The customers and partners have built more than 110,000 business applications on Force.com, such as supply chain management, compliance tracking, brand management, accounts receivable, claims processing and time-off applications.
