UAE’s Cloud Computing as Security on an Upward March according to Latest Analysis

Despite ranking as one of the telltale recipients of spam, en masse, on the planet, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has faced all odds and championed the cloud like no other country in the Gulf. A reputable research agency, on tech matters, has provided the latest details on this progress, to the effect that cloud computing security is taking a life of its own in the UAE.

Reports show that the  nation’s gross returns on the security wing, alone, inside the cloud industry was about $8.7M in 2012, and projections indicate this might rise manifold, to hit over seventy two million dollars, by the turn of the current decade. The upshot growth of the security subsector underlies the fact that an aggregation of companies in the logistics and wholesale niches has plunged into the sector, with staying power. There are even hints that as the anti-spam and other safety-in-the-cloud campaigns, take center stage, there may even evolve a ‘cloud as a service’ framework that will be an industry preferential to safety matters for organizations.

Though, the United Arab Emirates with Dubai and Abu Dhabi being its computing hotspots, is still lagging in its unilateral embrace of the cloud. However, the fact that the industry has survived and even shown handsome returns, even in its small scope and amid a fusillade of web threats, means it may yet prove an attractive prospect for the majority. The major tags that are predisposing this future inclination are the benefits the industry brings forth, including the pay-as-you-use flexibility and big data storage provision, besides retailers’ technologies, all accessible in a click.

Impressive, too, for the country’s improvement in the cloud security niche, is the fact that large companies that form the very lifeline of the country’s economy are also in the fold. From gas multinationals to petroleum giants and from financial institutions to government corporations, the tide is turning all the way to the cloud atop the UAE’s Internet.

New Threats for Corporations

Amid the growth of the safety offering of cloud computing in the UAE, there is now evidence that this growth is coming, hand in hand, with grim prospects. Social networking by corporate workers of companies may yet prove the means by which information-phishing, ID thievery and other data hijacking limitations may proliferate into the country’s cloud. Inversely, however, it might also be the means of strengthening the industry. According to the latest survey figures, there will be corporations that will turn external environment’s weaknesses, such as, the social networking sites that their staff access, into ways of appropriating new security apps. Indeed, this is already happening as major organizations start to comb the developer and even in-house markets for the latest stats that can nip web threats in the bud.

Scores by Neighboring Countries

Despite being another high performer on the negative spam list of the world, India, to the south of the UAE, has also made gains in the cloud. Vaunting one of the biggest markets for IT firms among emerging economies that include Russia and China, the country has now a projection for 2013 that traces an ongoing growth margin of 36%, in the cloud market. This will amount into $443M, an increase of $127M from the 2012 figures. This is hardly a surprise because the cloud market is a highly scalable one, like most IT dispensations, and thus can grow manifold. However, how is the security factor faring, in the mean time?

Reports for 2013 show that, with some 11% of the market, the cloud security factor in India just manages to inch at the bottom of its top five cloud priorities. The leader is Software as a Service (SaaS), but what astonishes is that advertising comes before the safety factor. Still, the country may expect an improvement, in coming years, for most companies now combine management with their security wings, meaning a close priority for the latter in any management task.

Thus, as UAE takes a leap forward in the cloud security offering, India is experiencing a hike in general cloud growth. The fact that both countries are spamming receiving ends of the world does not seem to check the improvements and may even turn the dice, in their favor, as they seek applications to overturn the newest security threats. This is why many corporations in the United Arabs Emirates are going a step further by actually marketing their very security prowess, to assure their clients.

By John Omwamba

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Big Data Analytics for Small Businesses

The ever expanding internet data coupled with social and mobile infrastructure expansion has made big data analytics a buzz word, especially looking at the fact that ninety percent of the world’s internet data is created in the last couple of years. However Big Data is the name of a problem, not a solution. The solution is the advanced algorithms running on large platforms crunching data and numbers to generate useful information. It could be termed as data recycling to obtain packets of information from a dense knowledge and data clouds. Naturally, most solutions involving big data are based on huge processing clusters to handle the load of processing bulk information making it prohibitive for small and medium level business which cannot cope with the barrier of entry investment. In the last few years, large enterprises have invested their resources to generate analytics and harvested tremendous gains in business by streamlining marketing and streamlining products to user needs. However cloud computing platforms have opened this market for small and medium sized business that can now leverage the available processing power of the cloud to dive into the immense analytics market. There are numerous lucrative opportunities in commercial transaction systems, website traffic monitoring and social media analytics besides others that are waiting to be explored.

Most experts have learned over time that taking scratch notes or relying on excel sheets alone will not make them competitive. They have to take advantage of systematic skills in data management with advanced technologies which can process large amounts of data and make sense from it. The pay as you go model in cloud platforms is ideal for small companies that can pay little, especially in terms of infrastructure and human resource overheads. The time savings and quick testing also makes sense for companies that wish to touch the base before diving full throttle. Hence the availability of cloud resources is opening new venues of business expansion for small companies that can quickly take up a specialized analytics opportunity to improve internal business or provide reporting to other enterprises. At the same time, small companies can take advantage from new cloud-computing based tools that are already leveraging new techniques to mine analytics and generate trend reports. These tools can capture behavior and impressions of prospective and previous customers to produce predictive models and forecast future actions. By spending small sums on these reports, some time just a few hundred dollars, a small company can get a grasp of user needs or information and technology flow. However, the overwhelming information can be a pitfall for small companies that may collect more than they need. Hence it is crucial to decide on the factors that value your business the most as well as concentrating on fewer but complete tools to achieve better accuracy and convergence.

By Salam UI Haq

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Move Over Brick and Mortar, Education-As-A-Service Is Taking Over

As Bob Dylan once said, “the times they are a-changin’.” Its a verse that sticks like glue in the back of my mind when I reflect on the technology landscape today. Just a few years ago, data analytics services were few and far between and cloud computing unheard of. For example, cloud-related spending was only 4 percent of the total IT market in 2009, but according to IDC this is expected to increase by 12 percent — equaling $55 billion — by 2014.

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace. What is innovative today will become old news before you can bat an eye. Systems like the cloud will continue to evolve and adapt as technology advances. As businesses strive to remain competitive, it is the IT specialists supporting the transition from old to new technology that are the hamsters caught spinning the wheel. How do you as an IT professional stay up-to-date with the newest technology while retaining a firm understanding of past software? 

If you’re working in IT, one thing you can be sure of is your job will never get boring. With a career devoted to keeping networks and systems humming, you’ve dedicated yourself to a lifetime of continuous learning to stay on top of the latest trends and technology.

Fine-tuning skills and brushing up on certifications has always been part of the IT job description, but in recent years this is becoming less of an option and more of a requirement. To give some perspective: imagine getting your B.A. degree to find out three months later you have to go back to earn another degree and yet another six months after that. IT jobs demand the ability to grasp new technology quickly, and hiring managers are clamoring for people that can master this challenge.

According to the Department of Labor Information, technology employment is expected to grow between 18 to 26 percent for all occupations through 2014. There is a massive growth opportunity in IT that shows no sign of slowing down. Yet, hiring managers struggle to find skilled candidates that are versed both in legacy systems and new technologies like the cloud.

Until recently, the options for IT professionals to hone their skills were limited and often expensive. It’s a challenge that has plagued professionals in the industry for years: how to keep up with a constantly evolving field while juggling a full-time job. In the past, the only answer was time-consuming seminars and costly brick-and-mortar courses. Fitting a career, family and other obligations into the mix make these options less than desirable.

Lately, we’ve seen several companies break down traditional education barriers to provide a viable solution. Lynda.com, Treehouse and my own company TrainSignal are transforming the very foundation on which technology education is built — after all, shouldn’t education be just as innovative as the technology it supports? The flexibility and affordability makes online options appealing, but it’s the real-time capabilities that make it ideal for those working in technology.

Skills that might take months to grasp in classroom curriculums, can now be mastered in a matter of weeks or even days with online platforms. These courses are up-to-date and can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection. That means a cloud engineer can brush up on the latest VMWare or Microsoft fundamentals during a moment of free time at work or during a long commute.

If you are a technology professional, the cloud is not just where you work, it’s where you can learn everything you need to know to have a successful career. Whether you are looking to learn how to build an app, spruce up your design skills or take a refresher course in virtualization, online resources are becoming widely available in all areas of technology. It won’t be long before we see that “the times they are a-changin” towards a more skilled, self-educated workforce across all industries.

By Scott Skinger,

CEO & Founder, TrainSignal

Scott’s passion for IT education began when he passed his first certification to become a Novell CNA. Scott went on to teach at several technical schools where he realized traditional IT education was not providing students with the skills they needed to succeed. In 2002 Scott founded TrainSignal, a leader in IT education providing training courses to professionals worldwide. Scott earned a degree from Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL and serves on the advisory board of Salute Inc.

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Identity And Access Management From The SaaS Application Perspective

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has taken the enterprise by storm as the go-to delivery model for applications, and the cloud service is here to stay…for better or worse. Enterprises look to its benefits including dramatic cost savings, app availability from anywhere, and seamless updates and upgrades pushed to users from the SaaS provider.

There’s certainly no trepidation surrounding the benefits that the cloud rains down on enterprises, but what makes CISOs uneasy about SaaS delivery of apps is the lack of control and visibility into who has access to them while floating around in the cloud. Enterprises can obviously call the shots when data and apps are stored on-premise, but the fear of data breaches is amped up when applications and data, and who controls the access to them, is out of the hands of the enterprise and in the hands of the SaaS provider.   

So what should a SaaS application developer or provider do so enterprises can govern their identity and access issues effectively? There are three key Identity and Access Management (IAM) areas that deserve close attention.

Authentication

SaaS apps can take several routes for authenticating users. The first is independent authentication with a private user directory and independent user account management. This is a poor choice because it forces the SaaS application to manage passwords and forces users to remember separate credentials for the SaaS app.  In addition, from an enterprise perspective, supporting joiners, movers and leavers (who’s moving in and out of your organization) here becomes difficult.

A variant of the independent option is internal authentication with a private user directory synched to an external user repository, usually Active Directory. While this approach may seem to be fine for a single application, as the number of applications scales, IT administrators have trouble managing the synching, and the risk of a breach goes up significantly when credentials are transmitted outside the perimeter.

The ideal authentication setup for a SaaS app is token-based authentication and SSO based on directory federation. SAML (Secure Access Markup Language) tokens issued by corporate identity providers fit the bill perfectly. Why? A single corporate username and password enables access across multiple SaaS applications. The process is intelligent, too, because user attributes relevant to authorization can be delivered in the token, and “just-in-time” provisioning (automated account setup for a first-visit user) can be supported.  While this approach requires the management of trust relationships between individual enterprises and the SaaS application in question, and at least basic user account management, the headaches of syncing and having hundreds of passwords are off the table here.

Entitlements

So your users have been authenticated to your SaaS apps. That’s the easy part, but effective management of entitlements – what your users can do within those apps at a fine-grained, nitty-gritty level, is far more difficult.

Most SaaS applications come with their own entitlement model, with internal administration of entitlement policies and an application-specific user interface for defining who gets what entitlements within the application. From an application developer’s perspective, this approach seems convenient, but in reality, it provides poor support for enterprise identity and access lifecycle management and compliance.  Setting up joiners and movers or de-provisioning leavers requires manual intervention, and tracking “who has access to what” often means the creation of application-specific reports.

The best option here is for SaaS applications to support an entitlement model that includes pre-defined application roles, and an API that supports the collection of current user-role and user-entitlement bindings as well as the provisioning or de-provisioning of user-to-role and user-to-entitlement bindings.  With this approach, administering user-to-role policies is done by each enterprise outside of the SaaS application, while the runtime authorization enforcement based on provisioned user bindings or user attributes is done within the SaaS application. Leaving policy administration out of the application and up to the enterprise makes change management and compliance much easier.

The benefit of having application roles is that it’s far easier to track and change user access to SaaS apps when each application’s access can be described in terms of tens of application roles and a few out-of-role entitlements, versus  thousands of entitlements.

It’s likely that a standards-based protocol will emerge someday for the API referenced above, but SPML (Secure Provisioning Markup Language) fell short, and SCIM (Simple Cloud Identity Management), while useful for account and user profile provisioning, doesn’t help with entitlements.

Auditing

Your users have been authenticated and can wield the power they’ve been given by individual application roles and entitlements within SaaS applications. But are you taking notes on every move they make within your organization? Probably not!  Automated logging of user activity for each SaaS app is crucial to both the audit trail needed when the auditor comes knocking and the real-time alerting required by enterprise SOCs (security operations centers). If a subset of the application roles and entitlements for a SaaS app is considered sensitive or privileged, it is up to the SaaS application developer and provider to ensure that the use of this privileged access can be closely and continuously scrutinized.

It is important to note that mobile and cloud computing is causing the Identity and Access Management industry to adopt new models and consider new standards.  OpenID Connect and OAuth, for example, are very promising standards, but SaaS applications targeted for broad-based enterprise use can’t rely exclusively on them today.

While SaaS applications, being outside the perimeter, aren’t inherently ideal for meeting enterprise identity and access lifecycle management and compliance initiatives, SaaS app developers and providers should look to these areas as the first action items when rolling out cloud-based applications across the enterprise.

By Deepak Taneja,

Contributor Deepak Taneja is Founder and CTO of Aveksa, provider of the industry’s most comprehensive Business-Driven Identity and Access Management platform.  By uniquely integrating Identity and Access Governance, Provisioning and Authentication, Aveksa enables enterprises to manage the complete lifecycle of user access for SaaS and On-premise applications and data.  Learn more at www.aveksa.com.

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Addressing Cloud Security through Encrypted Gateways

There is absolutely no doubt left in Cloud’s increasing penetration into the enterprise. CIO’s often see the move to the cloud as control being taken away from their hands. A silent tussle between COO and CIO pursues and this naturally leads to resistance over what to choose and what to migrate vis-à-vis Cloud. Perhaps the primary concern is security. COO sees Cloud as a means to boost productivity and reduce infrastructure and maintenance costs while CIO sees it as inflated threat to enterprise information. Encryption gateway is one way to address information security concerns when moving to the Cloud. I will briefly discuss how and why.

First, gateways are nothing new. There are numerous vendors, big and small, out there selling gateway appliances. However, what’s new and innovative in encryption gateway is the robustness and seamless flow of data in and out of the enterprise.

Data encryption is a compute intensive procedure which may lead to increased query time and reduced application performance. This is one of the primary factors why encryption is not as much prevalent as it should have been. However, recent advances in hardware based encryption for example, Intel’s new instructions which speed up AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption on the hardware and gKrypt SDK which offers hardware accelerated encryption on commodity processors including latest manycore GPUs, have removed the “performance-tax” barrier in data encryption. With gKrypt for example, you can achieve throughput of up to 80Gbps for AES-256 encryption on a single GPU. Such advances have enabled encryption appliances to offer seamless data security without impacting application (or Cloud application in our case) performance.

One key factor to look out for while deciding on implementing data security in the Cloud is where to put your keys, because, as the saying goes, ‘your data is only as safe as the strength of your key’. What it implies is that it does not really matter how strong your encryption scheme is unless you take good care of the key lifecycle. This ‘key lifecycle’ includes key generation, usage (for encryption/decryption) and disposal. The key should never leave your premises, the reason being that once it leaves your premises, you cannot guarantee the safety of your data no matter how awesome your SLA with your cloud provider is. Do not confuse key-management with data-encryption or encryption-gateways, something which first timers often tend to commit. There are vendors who just sell key management appliances which can be plugged with any encryption gateway appliance. Some appliance makers also sell both as a turn-key solution, however, when making a decision, always gauge the strength of your key manager separately from the encryption appliance.

This small concept image describes the data security layout from a bird’s eye-view. The encryption appliance sits in between the corporate network and the Cloud. The Cloud could be private or public. Your organization may be utilizing SaaS apps on the cloud without worrying about the security of the data which leaves your premises. Anything which goes out to the Cloud is encrypted behind-the-scenes and anything which comes in is first decrypted before being consumed by your enterprise workers.

By Salman UI Haq

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Delivers Mobile Data Management Suite for Comprehensive Device Security in the Enterprise

First File Sync and Share Vendor to Offer Native Remote Wipe, Encryption, Trusted Device and Two-Factor Authentication Features

LONDON, UK – May 22, 2013 – Egnyte, the leader in enterprise file sharing and synchronization, today announced its Mobile Data Management Suite, giving enterprises comprehensive control over corporate data through a variety of new device and file management strategies. This new offering enables sophisticated management of the full range of end user devices in the workplace while allowing IT departments to efficiently and seamlessly maintain complete control over corporate data.

Employees are increasingly integrating their own laptops, smartphones and tablets into work routines to share, edit and review documents both in and out of the office. A recent Gartner report states that by 2017, half of employers will require employees to supply their own device for work purposes.* Additionally, industry analyst firm Ovum Research found that over 57.1% of all full-time employees use a personal device to access corporate data.** This increased use has led to a corresponding increase in worker productivity.

But this Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has also raised serious security concerns with respect to controlling where corporate data resides and who has access to it – the same Ovum report found that almost 80% of BYOD activity is still going unmanaged in the workplace.  And while Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions have arisen to tackle the adoption of smartphones and tablets, the approach can be heavy-handed, resulting in securing the entire device instead of just its corporate data.

In addition, significant corporate sensitive data resides on employee laptops, which can translate into big headaches – and big costs – when an unencrypted laptop is misplaced or stolen. A Ponemon Institute Study*** reports that 70% of the more than 86,000 laptops lost in 2011 were not encrypted, and that the average cost of each unencrypted lost laptop to an organization was $56,165. Costs associated with a data breach represent 80% of the total cost of a lost laptop, compared to 2% for replacing just the computer. Encryption can reduce the cost of a lost laptop by more than $20,000, on average.

Egnyte Mobile Data Management Suite

The Egnyte Mobile Data Management Suite gives enterprise IT departments the ability to allow employees to use their own laptops and mobile devices in the work environment while enabling them to maintain tight control over corporate data and minimize costs. New management features include:

·         A Device Control Panel that provides an integrated, central view of all end user devices connected to a company’s account.  Administrators can view information about the user, device type, last time of access etc. and can take corrective actions such as disconnecting or wiping a device from the control panel in the event the device is compromised. And users can view their own devices, allowing for self-service when needed.

·         Local File Encryption on smartphones and tablets prevents data from being accessed directly from the mobile file system, by limiting access to authorized users using the Egnyte application.

·         Two-Step Login Verification enforces a second factor for login in addition to username/password verification. The second factor can be sent in the form of a phone call, passcode sent via text message or push notification to a smartphone. This two-step login can be enforced whether the user is logging in from a laptop, smartphone or tablet.

·         Certificate Based Device Trust allows only laptops, phones and tablets with a valid security certificate to access the company’s file sharing service, preventing access from unauthorized devices.

·         Remote Wipe of Files from the device control panel enables the initiation and verification of a remote wipe of all Egnyte file contents in cases where a device is lost or stolen.

“The Advanced Mobile Security Mobile Wipe Feature takes the risk out of BYOD and makes it easy for us to keep track of where our sensitive files are and who is viewing them,” said Orlando Castillo, Bulova Corporation. “Our employees are productive and get to use the devices they prefer while we can control our data instead of the entire device.  Management is happy because we have a way to ensure that we can keep company data secure.”

“Egnyte offers our customers the option of using Egnyte in conjunction with their MDM solution or using our new capabilities as a MDM-light solution,” said Vineet Jain, Egnyte CEO. “With the native security and management capabilities, IT departments can reduce costs by getting everything they need in one place. More importantly, they can be confident their files and data are safe.”

Analyst Reports:

*Gartner, Inc., Bring Your Own Device: The Facts and the Future, David A. Willis, April 11, 2013.

**© Ovum, Multi-Market BYOD Strategy Results: The BYOD Management Gap, Richard Absalom, October 31, 2012

***Additional information can be found in the report: “The Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Problem Benchmark study of U.S. organizations.” This report was independently conducted by Ponemon Institute LLC and Sponsored by Intel  Publication Date: 30 September 2010

About Egnyte

Over 1 billion files are shared daily by businesses using Egnyte´s unique technology, which provides the speed and security of local storage with the accessibility of the cloud. Users can easily store, share, access and backup files, while IT has the centralized administration and control to enforce business policies. Founded in 2008, Egnyte is based in Mountain View, California and is a privately held company backed by venture capital firms Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Floodgate Fund, and Polaris Venture Partners. For more information, please visit http://www.egnyte.com or call 1-877-7EGNYTE.

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Does Cloud Computing mean the End of Traditional Storage Networks?

Technically Yes! With cloud’s scalability options attracting SMBs and large businesses towards it and cloud becoming secure with each passing day; we are near to say goodbye to the traditional ways we used to store our data over the network. Though networking is quite difficult to understand especially when one has expertise in building business, let’s check out how things were traditionally and how the cloud is slowing replacing it.

What comprised a traditional storage network?

Storage network or storage networking as the word says is the high speed networking of shared storage devices. This storage network connects to data servers so the data is accessible from anywhere across the network. As your requirements grow, you can connect hundreds of server machines to hundreds or even thousands of storage devices locally (LAN) or over the WAN (Wide Area Network).

How cloud storage works:

As for the cloud storage, you upload your data via a secure internet connection on a 3rd party data center. This 3rd party which is the cloud provider maintains your data and allows you to retrieve it any time by connecting to the server. While these servers require maintenance or repair occasionally or might even fail in an extreme case, the cloud provider stores your files on multiple servers, which is called redundancy so you can access them anytime.

Why companies love to join the cloud?

The reason is simple. The cloud allows you to access your data from anywhere around the world using the internet. Also not just your own enterprise can access but you can easily share with who you want and even work in collaboration with anyone around the world connected through internet. And the best thing is companies especially that of small and medium size now don’t have to worry about developing an in-house IT structure. No worry about buying servers and storage and deploying them making sure that it can cater the business needs nor have to pay for specialized IT experts who look after your network. They can launch their cloud from anywhere within minutes and transfer all their data there while its security is taken care by the vendor.

Where will it go further:

At least we know that this isn’t the end to the tussle between the traditional computing and the cloud. With the internet connection getting better and better and the coming of SSDs in cloud storage it is thought that the cloud will completely make the traditional storage obsolete.

By Pere Hospital,

Pere Hospital (CISSP & OSCP) is the CTO and co-founder of Cloudways Ltd. He has over two decades of experience in IT Security, Risk Analysis and Virtualization Technologies. You can follow Pere on Twitter at @phospital, or learn more about Cloudways at www.Cloudways.com

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The Future Of The Personal Computer Is In The Cloud

The predictions that the PC is about the go the way of the dinosaur (or the pager, or the fax machine) have largely come from the financial sector and rabid Apple fans. Both of these groups have seen declining computer sales, especially the recent 14% drop, as proof of their theories. Microsoft’s huge recent faux pas, Windows 8, is just further proof that personal computers will be crowding the landfills and we will all face the sunset, singing “Kumbaya”, reading the lyrics from the screens of our iPads and iPhones.

How many of these reports were written on a touch screen, and how many were composed on the more familiar personal computer configuration of screen and keyboard?

Most Comfortable Interface

Touch screen mobile technology may indeed prove to be the most common computing experience, but for the foreseeable future, it simply has not, and likely will not, taken the place of the keyboard and screen interface, especially in the work place.

Users who have access to both tablets and full sized computers find that the two technologies are complimentary rather than competing. Tablets and touchscreen technology are gaining more usefulness in the workplace on a daily basis. Text and email are becoming as accepted as voice for business communication, but many people, especially those sending professional emails, are loath to compose on a touch screen. University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Sepinwall finds “any extensive email writing, word processing or power point work on my iPad, and find even web surfing easier on my PC than on a tablet.”

Mobile technology is closely tied to Cloud computing, and as Cloud applications improve, the traditional roles of the keyboard and screen personal computer may transition to mobile. Google, who is working hard to stake a claim in the Cloud game, also realizes that Cloud applications, whether mobile or PC based, require ever faster broadband connections.

The need for faster broadband is the impetus for Google’s recent forays into city wide fiber-optic networks. In April, Google announced that it would expand fiber-optic service to Austin, Texas. Last year the search giant began providing high-speed Internet service to Kansas City. Although every Internet and Cloud application will benefit from the higher speeds, Google’s emphasis seems to be on Chromebooks.

The Cloud As OS

Google Chromebook computers are personal computers in the sense that they are a keyboard and screen interface, but the laptops, manufactured by Samsung, Acer and Google are loaded with the Chrome OS, which is not so much an Operating System as it is a glorified web browser. The Chromebook is designed to run more on Cloud applications than with software actually loaded onto the computer itself.

Will the Personal Computer go the way of the dinosaur? Very likely, but even standing on a pile of iPads, we cannot see that day on the horizon.

By Pete Knight

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Why Your SMB Should Relocate to the Cloud

The number of decisions small business owners must make is seemingly endless. They are the authority on whom to hire, how to run the business and with whom to do business with, so choosing tech tools may not always be at the top of their priority list. With the use of the cloud on the rise, small business owners are more eager than ever to take advantage of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions – essentially software that is delivered and maintained over the internet rather than running on a server in the office. For those that are considering a move to the cloud but haven’t made the leap yet, here is a brief overview of the multiple reasons to relocate.

For many small businesses, resources are already stretched thin and owners cannot afford to spend money that is not directly related to business development and results. The cloud is an ideal solution because it’s less expensive than on-premise options. With lower subscription and maintenance costs, small businesses can focus their resources on developing their companies, not buying software and infrastructure. Many SaaS applications give users free trials or accounts, which lets businesses test out different solutions. Small businesses can try out various options until they determine which ones best fit their company and employee needs. Companies that invest in on-premise solutions may find that the tools do not align with their business activities and they can ultimately lose money from unused solutions.

Plus, it’s quick and easy to get started with the cloud. Small businesses don’t have the time to be held back by IT issues. In many cases, transferring to the cloud is as easy as logging on to a website and signing up with an email address. With cloud-based offerings, small business owners don’t need to spend resources hiring IT employees, who are critical for businesses that implement on-premise solutions. Using cloud solutions means employees don’t need to worry about backups, server upgrades or security. Instead, they can focus on their main responsibilities within the company.

The flexibility of the cloud is especially helpful today when it’s common for employees to work from home or locations other than the business’ central office. With employees located across various regions and continents, collaboration is crucial. For businesses that have new employees in different offices, the cloud helps make training easier. A cloud solution allows employees to access notes, documents and updates at any time, regardless of where they are.

New small businesses are increasingly adopting cloud tools to ensure operations run smoothly. Cloud tools can help companies in all aspects of operations from email marketing to customer relationship management (CRM) to finance to security. For young businesses, a web-based CRM solution can save time (some businesses have seen productivity gains of 20 percent), money (some companies have saved $5,000 per month using a CRM), and increase sales. Employees can access this information from any device, from any location and at any time. As more consumers become social media savvy, businesses can turn to social CRM solutions to monitor customer inquiries and comments across the web in a timely manner. Similarly, a cloud-based email marketing solution allows businesses to save time by sending out messages automatically. The cloud makes daily tasks easier for both business owners and employees. Employees can share information without backing it up and owners can save resources for business development instead of spending money on costly on-premise solutions and IT services.

By Anthony Smith,

Anthony Smith is the CEO of Insightly, a San Francisco-based SaaS CRM application. He built the first version of Insightly in six months from his home in Perth, Australia, after identifying a market need for a CRM solution focused on small business. He has previous experience designing and building CRM software for enterprise use. Prior to Insightly, Anthony worked as a consultant for IBM and as a software engineer for global mining consultancy Snowden.

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Cloud Networking Changes Everything

The public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market is booming and expected to grow by 47 percent, from $6 billion in 2012 to $9 billion in 2013, according to Gartner’s Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q Update. Additionally, the overall public cloud computing market, including software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), IaaS and other related services, will grow from $110 to $131 billion over the same period with a CAGR of 41.3 percent through 2016. While this projected growth is significant, cloud computing still represents less than three percent of the $3.7 trillion spent on IT per year. This begs the question, If cloud computing is so hot, why is it still just three percent of the overall IT industry?

It might be helpful to look back to when cloud IaaS was introduced to the market more than eight years ago by Amazon.com. The primary goal was to provide computing capacity at a lower cost than actual physical servers. Since then, many other cloud service providers have jumped on the bandwagon to offer low-cost, best-effort cloud services. Yet, while a market for these services clearly exists, most don’t meet the enterprise requirements for a more reliable and secure computing platform. The problem lies in the fundamental challenge that end users have in using a server-centric cloud approach to solve problems better addressed by networks.

Red Flags

Security breaches cost U.S. businesses significant amounts of time and money, and carry legal ramifications for strictly regulated financial and medical institutions. As such, it shouldn’t come as too great a surprise that it is the main concern for 71 percent of corporate technology decision makers when evaluating cloud services for business critical workloads, as reported by a recent Intel survey. The same study found that 28 percent of IT professionals have experienced a public cloud-related security breach – which, according to 65 percent of respondent companies, is a greater percentage than with traditional IT infrastructures.

One reason for the significant level of concern about cloud security might be that most providers seem to share the same server-centric approach to cloud architecture. Organizations utilizing these types of cloud environments are often unknowingly making it easier for criminals to gain access to information. When establishing vast, cloud-based data centers that are business-critical by nature, companies must institute the same level or better of perimeter security controls than what is present in privately hosted clouds.

Evaluating the various concerns around public cloud security, the network tops the list as most cloud platforms are only accessible via the network, and it has been proven to be at the core of many security breaches. However, the network is also the backbone of most organizations today. Without a strong and secure network foundation, many − if not all − will find it challenging to deliver services to the market.

Network Evolution

Looking at all the major changes within the technology landscape in the last five years, patterns have changed substantially, and computing fabrics demand more from the network. Coupled with an increasingly mobile workforce and customer base, the need for reliable and secure services that can be scaled-up/down as needed, and hosted pay-as-you-go models is driving the re-evaluation of today’s cloud service providers.

The collaboration, and in some cases the merger, between traditional computing and static network aspects are guaranteed to impact any IT organization. Network services can no longer be viewed in a silo. Like security, quality of service and intelligent routing network services will become essential to delivering elastic cloud services that deliver the promise of true utility computing. Further, the ability to provision services “on the fly” will be impossible without the ability to connect to these services in a safe and secure manner.

Public cloud platforms are not exempt from this trend as additional perimeter control and logical network separation is necessary in providing secure cloud services that bridge the public and private network spheres. The network-centric cloud architecture is inevitable as it is clear that the current service model will have to evolve to provide the required security guarantees. By adopting a network-centric cloud platform, organizations will reap the on-demand provisioning and elasticity benefits of cloud services with security at the core.

By Phillip Spies,

Senior Services Architect, Cloud Services, Dimension Data

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