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IBM today released the results from its annual X-Force 2010 Trend and Risk Report, identifying more targeted phishing, spam and mobile attacks. The report also finds cloud security continuing to evolve. "From Stuxnet to Zeus Botnets to mobile exploits, a widening variety of attack methodologies is popping up each day," says Tom Cross, threat intelligence manager, IBM X-Force. "The numerous, high profile targeted attacks in 2010 shed light on a crop of highly sophisticated cyber criminals, who may be well-funded and operating with knowledge of security vulnerabilities that no one else has. Staying ahead of these growing threats and designing software and services that are secure from the start has never been more critical." more
In September 2009, the Obama Administration announced the Federal Cloud Computing Initiative. As the government's CIO explained, cloud computing "has the potential to greatly reduce waste, increase data center efficiency and utilization rates, and lower operating costs." The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) addresses the key elements of a cloud computing framework for federal agencies. more
Research from Infonetics shows that last year was a strong year for data centre network equipment sales, due to a rebound from bare-bones 2009 spending levels and, more importantly, fundamental trends favouring investments in the data centre, such as the explosion of content and traffic, use of virtualization, and increasingly, cloud-based services and architectures. more
Images of clouds have been used when discussing networks for quite some time. When traditional telecoms companies were selling point-to-point circuits a drawing of a cloud was sometimes used. The cloud symbol helped indicate the provider?s domain of responsibility, effectively hid the internal complexity of the network and focused on the end user. This was all fine when the product offered was an end-to-end circuit. more
The importance of online presence continues to grow exponentially. More and more of our personal and professional endeavors are conducted online. Because of this, the ability to ensure a good experience for our online friends and customers also is increasing rapidly. At its core, load testing is nothing more than ensuring your online presence is ready for the number of visitors you expect. It's simple to explain, but historically it's been anything but simple, or easy to afford. more
Bill St Arnoud blogs that he is a big advocate of using commercial cloud services rather than rolling out a do-it-yourself cloud for a number of reasons... The cloud market is intensively competitive and innovative, where scale can make a huge difference in terms of reliability and accessibility. It is much easier to develop a set of common contractual service and interface requirements with commercial suppliers in regards to privacy, reliability etc. more
This year's Cisco Collaboration Summit was a step up from last year, and I say that for good reason. Last year's event was good -- all of Cisco's events are good -- but the venue was too small and it took away from the messaging. For 2010, Cisco went out of town to the classy and classic Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. They don't build them like this anymore, and to me, this setting did far more justice for what Cisco has to say about collaboration. more
There are many big questions in telecom these days, and this is one that's on my mind right now. Over the past few months, I've participated in events or briefed with leading vendors in our space, namely Avaya, ShoreTel, BroadSoft, Aastra, Metaswitch, Mitel, Interactive Intelligence, and this week Cisco. Every analyst has their own core circle of vendors they stay close to, but I'd say that's a pretty fair representation of who's driving telecom. To varying degrees, all of these vendors have a cloud story, and the more I hear it, the more I start to wonder what it really means. more
Earlier this month, Avaya held a new type of customer event in Toronto, called Evolutions. They have been looking for better ways to bring customers together, so aside from their global event, they've put together Evolutions, which has a regional focus. The first one was recently held in Mexico to great success, and my understanding is that Canada was the next trial event, and that's what I attended in downtown Toronto... I'm almost certain I was the only Canadian analyst invited, so this may well be the only place you'll hear about Evolutions. more
The ongoing Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has also had a significant impact on some of the developments in our industry -- for example, cloud computing. It looks as though the GFC is the key reason that developments in cloud computing have not happened more quickly. Industry evidence suggests that shifting to the cloud saves 20%-50% off current IT deployments, and, according to its advocates, it can be many times more than that. more
Google just published its Q3 financial results. So, what is Google spending on IT, and how much servers would that buy? This is one of their best kept secrets. In this post I give ballpark estimates based on back-of-the-envelop calculations, similar to the 'guestimates' I made 5 years ago. more
As the industry-wide paradigm shift to cloud computing and software-as-a-service gradually continues to make the transition from buzz to reality, security and availability continue to emerge as the main barriers to customer adoption. A recent ISACA survey of over 1,800 US IT professionals found that only 17 percent believe the benefits of cloud computing outweigh the risks. Only one in 10 respondents said they would consider using software-as-a-service (SaaS) for mission-critical applications. more
Recently Bitcurrent conducted a cloud performance test commissioned by my client Webmetrics, a business unit of Neustar. Bitcurrent describes itself as part blog, part analyst firm and part resource site for the web community. The research project was led by Alistair Croll, a well-known name in the space and program chair for the Cloud Connect conference. more
Do you know how big your web site will be in a year? You probably can guess, or even estimate how much traffic will hit your site in a year. You can also use millennia proven methods such as Crystal Balls, Animal Entrails or even Coffee Stains. But seriously, it is no easy task evaluating site growth in this volatile, ever changing economy. A key element in the scaling of any web site is the Application Delivery Controller (ADC). more
As Reddit recently learned it's not a great idea to use the Amazon EC2 cloud to host mailservers. There are a number of reasons for this, most of them related to the reputation of mail coming from EC2 servers. When you're using machines in the cloud, changing IP addresses is as simple as initializing a new server. Spammers discovered this almost as soon as the EC2 cloud became public. more
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