Three initiatives meant to enhance government IT security are languishing from funding challenges, yet CIOs are asked to deliver at the promise of shared services. 6 Cool Apps From Uncle Sam (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) The Obama administration has made an unprecedented commitment to creating government data driven. It has also made cybersecurity a centerpiece of its IT strategy. However it now finds itself mired in controversy on both fronts.   The less-than-stellar rollout of the web site designed to support the Affordable Care Act was a tremendous embarrassment, while the revelations surrounding NSA surveillance methods has cast doubts on the administration’s commitment to privacy as a keystone of national policy. These two story lines symbolize among the many challenges the administration faces in balancing the federal government’s IT investments: It must maintain public support for a sturdy cyberdefense without losing specialize in the civilian agency systems which are the general public interface with “e-government,” but which also must be made safer.   They... Read More »

People who claim Gmail violates anti-wiretapping laws must pursue their claims individually instead of as a set. 10 Great Google Apps Tips (Click image for larger view.) Google on Tuesday won a meaningful victory in a legal conflict that threatens Gmail and the company’s data mining practices. US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., denied class-action status to plaintiffs who claim that Gmail’s automated content scanning violates state and federal anti-wiretapping statutes. As a result, Gmail privacy claims will proceed individually, all alone merits. Not facing the possibility of an immense aggregated damage claim, Google could possibly reach settlements more easily or prevail outright. The ruling is way more favorable than the only issued by Judge Koh last September, when she denied Google’s motion to dismiss the claims. Google argued that its automated processing of email content falls under allowed “ordinary process business” exemptions and that the plaintiffs consented. The judge rejected the primary justification, saying Google must show its email interception was... Read More »

Cloud services changed the IT ops game, but performance was more iffy than lots of people realized. Google’s Cloud Platform got to benefit from its predecessors. In December, Google announced general availability of its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) Google Compute Engine. Compute Engine is among the three pillars of the Google Cloud Platform. The alternative two are App Engine (Google’s platform-as-a-service) and cloud storage (Google’s SQL, NoSQL, and object storage). These pillars comprise a totally large-scale compute and storage infrastructure for a diversity of scalable service offerings that Google developers make heavy use of internally and that Google makes available for public consumption via software as-a-service (SaaS) and well-defined programming interfaces (APIs). Many within the blogosphere have discussed the value-performance and particular features of Compute Engine that set it except for its competitors. Last March, GigaOm published a test drive of Compute Engine by Sebastian Stadil and his team at Scalr, a front-end cloud management firm, comparing Google Compute Engine to Amazon Web Services. Google’s writes to... Read More »

Cloud services change how federal agencies acquire, fund, and use IT services. IT managers must realize they’re buying a service, not technology. Cloud computing has introduced a brand new model of acquiring hardware and software. In fact, you are not acquiring anything physical, and far of the worth of moving to the cloud is driven by the transition from using physical resources (hardware, software, and labor hours) to the consumption of online services (infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, and software-as-a-service) that deliver similar functions.  While the technical aspect of this transformation seems to capture all of the headlines, the financial and governance aspects are only as important — but turn out at the back burner. Unfortunately, the mandatory changes in management policy, acquisition processes, and organizational behavior rarely get the planning they deserve or get executed properly upfront. This disconnect can quickly derail any cloud transition. Government IT managers must accept that cloud computing means the acquisition of a service, not the acquisition of technology. This usually represents... Read More »

Microsoft-sponsored survey of two,000 IT pros says private, on-premises clouds and personal, hosted services represent the hybrid clouds of the long run. 8 Data Centers For Cloud’s Toughest Jobs (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Hybrid and personal cloud deployments have emerged not just as cost savers but additionally stimulants for prime-line business growth, in accordance with Hosting and Cloud Go Mainstream: 2014, a Microsoft-commissioned study conducted by 451 Research. The study, which surveyed greater than 2,000 IT professionals in 11 countries, found that greater than 45% of organizations have moved beyond cloud pilots, and that just about one third have integrated formal cloud computing plans into their overall IT and business strategies. In an interview, Marco Limena, VP of Microsoft’s Hosting Service Providers business, said corporate cloud adoption is “accelerating 12 months prior to a two-year prediction” established by earlier research. [Is Microsoft SQL Server 2014 right in your business? Read Microsoft Release In-Memory Ready SQL Server 2014.] Michelle Bailey, a senior VP... Read More »