Cloud Computing

Critical Role for R&E Networks+Commercial Clouds in US Government “Big Data” Initiative

It is great to see US and European governments undertake initiatives to promote the development of research into Big Data utilizing commercial clouds. Many cloud providers are offering free resources to support these initiatives. R&E networks will play a critical role in linking researchers to the commercial clouds and developing collaboration platforms and portals. more

Europe to Deploy Commercial Clouds to Support Big Science

It is good to see Europe take an important leadership role in recognizing the critical contribution that commercial cloud providers can play in providing solutions for big science through their recent Helix Nebula -- the Science Cloud announcement. It is estimated that 1/3 of the science applications running on expensive HPC facilities could easily run on commercial clouds, freeing up these facilities to focus on true high computational problems. more

Green IT Revolutionizing UK Cyber-Infrastructure via Networks, Cloud, Outsourcing, Finan. Incentives

As readers of my blogs may know I have long argued that advances in research and education through cyber-infrastructure (or eInfrastructure) can be largely justified, if not entirely paid for through the energy savings of using clouds, networks or outsourcing. But a big impediment in adopting cyber-infrastructure in most jurisdictions is the lack of financial incentives. The energy savings of cyber-infrastructure are usually earned by the facilities or estates department or rarely based on to researchers and educators. more

Green Revolving Funds Can Help Fund Costs of Cloud Computing and R&E Networking

There have been some interesting new developments in university Green Revolving Funds (GRF) that I believe could be a significant revenue opportunity for cloud suppliers and R&E networks. In this age of severe financial constraints and cutbacks for universities, new revenue models are needed to sustain advanced cyber-infrastructure in support of research and education. more

Advantage of Commercial Clouds vs. HPC for Scientific Research

The Department of Energy (DoE) recently came out with an excellent report, called the Magellan report, on the advantages and disadvantages of using commercial clouds versus in house High Performance Computers (HPC) for leading edge scientific research. The DoE probably supports the largest concentration of HPC facilities in the world. I agree with the report that for traditional applications such as computational chemistry, astrophysics, etc. will still need large HPC facilities. more

Cloud Computing Traffic Expected to Grow 12-Fold by 2015

Global cloud computing traffic is expected to grow 12-fold from 130 exabytes to reach a total of 1.6 zettabytes annually by 2015 -- a 66% compound annual growth rate -- according to Cisco's Global Cloud Index. 1.6 zettabytes is approximately equivalent to 22 trillion hours of streaming music; 5 trillion hours of business Web conferencing with a webcam; 1.6 trillion hours of online high-definition (HD) video streaming. more

Sovereign Debt Crisis: A Catalyst for IPv6 and Virtualized Network Services

Virtualization of core network services such as DDI has created a lot of controversy over the last couple of years. Perhaps most notably, Infoblox and Gartner have been both claiming that virtualized network services are not on the agenda of larger organizations, nor will they ever be. I'm not sure I have ever seen a convincing technological reasoning for this position. Rather, the logic has always been circular: it's not going to happen because we're not seeing it happening. more

The Coming Cybersecurity Regulatory Revolution

Cybersecurity regulation will take its place alongside environmental regulation, health and safety regulation and financial regulation as a major federal activity. What is not yet clear is what form the regulations will take. FISMA controls, performance standards, consensus standards and industry-specific consortia standards are all possible regulatory approaches. What is not likely is an extended continuation of the current situation in which federal authorities have only limited, informal oversight of private sector cyberdefenses (or lack thereof). more

Federal Cybersecurity Best Practices: FISMA Continuous Monitoring

Studies have found only limited, insufficient agency adherence with FISMA's (Federal Information Security Management Act) continuous monitoring mandates. One survey found almost half of federal IT professionals were unaware of continuous monitoring requirements. A recent GAO report found that two-thirds of agencies "did not adequately monitor networks" to protect them "from intentional or unintentional harm." more

Cloud Is the New Mainframe

Cloud computing, from a business and management perspective, has a great deal in common with mainframe computing. Mainframes are powerful, expensive and centralized pieces of computing equipment. This is in line with their role as infrastructure for mission-critical applications. For these types of applications, mainframes can be fairly efficient, even though they tend to need large teams of support specialists... Cloud computing is a new style of computing... more

Report on Today’s State of DNS Services

The Domain Name System, or DNS, has come a long way since its early days and the constant expansion of consumer activity and security concerns has raised further awareness about the critical role of the DNS. However, as the Yankee Group Research points out in a recent report, "there are more changes coming that are also raising the profile of DNS -- notably the move to cloud computing and the migration to IPv6." Suffice to say this is "Not Your Father's DNS". The report titled, "DNS: Risk, Reward and Managed Services" takes a fresh look at today's state of the DNS and the pros and cons of in-house, ISP and managed service provider DNS management options. more

Critical Data Belongs in the Cloud, Not Under It - Lessons Learned from Irene

"As flood waters from Tropical Storm Irene swamped the Waterbury state office complex, seven employees from the Vermont Agency of Human Services rushed inside to rescue computer servers that are critical for processing welfare checks and keeping track of paroled prisoners living around the state," according to a story by Shay Totten on the 7days blog Blurt. Two of the employees - network administrator Andrew Matt and deputy chief information officer Darin Prail - lost their cars in the parking lot as the river rose but kept on working to assure that our servers were not lost. "We didn't know how much time we had," Matt said, "and our job was to save the servers." more

Cloud Brokerage and Other Business Opportunities

The market for cloud computing is getting more interesting every day. There is still a long way to go, as the success of cloud computing depends not only on high-speed networks, but also on capacity, robustness, affordability, low latency, ubiquity, security, privacy and reliability. Of course, the ideal infrastructure would be nationwide FttH networks, but obviously we can't wait for that... more

EU launches Future Internet Public Private Partnership

Wout de Natris writes to report: "EU Commissioner for the Information Society Neelie Kroes today launched the EU co-funded project for the Internet of the future in which everything will be connected to everyone in the cloud. Here's the link to Mrs. Kroes' speech." more

Unlimited Bandwidth is Disrupting Infrastructure Models

Over the last ten years we have heard a lot about edge-based services. These were needed to enable the operation of applications at the edge of the network, as the lack of available bandwidth capacity made it difficult to do so over the core network. However, with the prospect of limitless bandwidth the design of the network is changing again. more