Not every week goes by that i do not get pitched by a hot new cloud service hoping to distinguish itself. Maybe it’s unique features, better customer service, lower costs, a more flexible pricing model or some combination of the above that makes it superior to the masses which have come before. Excuse me if i am not impressed. i am not saying cloud services, whether raw infrastructure-as-a-service compute cycles or full-blown software-as-a-service applications, don’t still have somewhat the technology Wild West occurring. There are few set product definitions and only loosely defined categories, so every entrepreneur who thinks he has a higher mousetrap is wrapping that world-altering idea in a cloud-related business model, whatever how tenuous the relationship. Part B of the pitch: Visit great lengths to show how this new idea is totally different from and higher than hundreds of predecessors. Webcasts More >> White Papers More >> Reports More >> The difficulty is, because the titans of the cloud industry expand their... Read More »

Traditionally, enterprise data security has trusted a “fortress defense” approach: keep all assets within a company castle and build towering walls to maintain out the enemy. However, with an evolving threat landscape that comes with targeted attacks, social engineering and spear phishing, the model leaves numerous vulnerable attack points. With increasing employee mobility, IT professionals are challenged to expand their security practices to “armor” employees individually as well as the fortress. Consequently, IT budgets are stretched thinner, leading to the necessity to examine the return of investment of popular security practices. Within the battle against data breaches, which practices – “fortress defense” or “armored defense” – provide the best ROI? 1. Identity and access management (IAM). The drawbridge of the fortress defense is IAM: only people with preapproval can access the company castle and management decides where they are able to go once in. IAM provides a powerful defense against data breaches, but requires a major period of time and energy to be deployed right.... Read More »

8 Great Cloud Storage Services eMeter is a 200-employee unit of Siemens that produces software for electric, natural gas and water utility management systems. Its EnergyIP platform is intended to permit a utility to mix information from smart meters with information at the grid’s operation to higher serve customers. With portion of its development in India and part in Redwood City, Calif., eMeter turned to Bluelock cloud data centers in Indianapolis and Las Vegas to store the recovery copies of its systems. Under a Bluelock service launched in early May, virtualized copies of first-tier production systems were created and stored in a Bluelock data center, with a continuing data feed from production systems associated with the identical data center. Within the event of a disaster, the sleeping virtual machines can be woken up and information fed into them reflecting the last known point of knowledge integrity. That became necessary, recalled Pat O’Day, CTO of Bluelock, when an eMeter customer in India botched its try to... Read More »