Articles in “January 2010” from Datamation Blog

The total number of dollars rushing toward cloud computing is massive. The various top research firms - IDC, Gartner, et al. -- all have eyebrow-raising forecasts about the growth rate of cloud-based computing services. 

But are you seeing a lot of headlines about safety? No, not really, though the worries are out there. The vendors don't seem to broach the issue much, but clearly security concerns are one of (many) reasons firms are dragging their feet about adopting cloud services. 

Plenty of IT managers see the cloud as a security black hole, in which sensitive company data is pilfered/copied/tampered with by any number of remotely-based nameless IT villains. These worries aren't unfounded. 

Among the potential dangers of this emerging technology: 

With cloud computing, your priceless data will be monitored (at some level, at least) by staffers outside the enterprise. Non-employees could conceivably have full access to it. 

Even aside from Sarbanes-Oxley, companies are held responsible for an exacting level of data monitoring and archiving. Even if a company contracts with an external cloud-based provider, these regulations hold the company itself responsible. 

Certainly cloud providers use SSL to protect data as it travels, but as it sits in storage it may share a "virtual locker" with data from other companies. Could your data even be mingled with that of a competitor? 

In theory, you don't have to worry about your data disappearing when using a cloud provider - it's easy for these providers to redundantly mirror your data in various locales, providing peace of mind against a system crash.

But will your staff have access to the data, 24/7? What if the virtual pipes are clogged? Say, some kind of internal snafu within your provider puts a hours-long brick wall between you and your critical data? Big cloud providers have suffered outages. 

The truth is, any cloud computing vendor that's worth their salt should be willing to address each of these concerns. 

But here's the point: make sure they do. Get all the answers -- and get it all in writing. Your data will thank you. 

by James Maguire

Having spoken with many security experts over the years, I've been amazed by tales of security carelessness. One common practice among the cubicle class: writing their password on little sticky notes pasted to their monitor. 

But that's downright encrypted compared with the passwords people create. Researchers from Imperva analyzed 32 million hacked passwords from the recent breach at RockYou.com. They found the most common password is -- drum roll, please -- "123456".  

Wow, seriously? That's as original as you can get? Just type the first six numbers in succession? 

But guess what? Even that shows more effort than the No. 2 most popular password: "12345". I guess adding the "6" was too much effort. 

At No. 3 were a group of users who were far more industrious, if no less careful: "123456789". 

For your reading amusement, here are the rest of the Top 20 Most Popular Passwords -- not a popularity list you want to be on: 

4) Password

5) iloveyou [I appreciate these folks. They clearly believe in the power of love. But I'm worried about their family savings accounts.] 

6) princess

7) rockyou

8) 1234567

9) 12345679

10) abc123

11) Nicole

12) Daniel

13) babygirl

14) monkey [My personal favorite highly hackable password. I mean, really, monkey?] 

15) Jessica

16) Lovely

17) michael

18) Ashley

19) 654321 [Tricky, huh? It's the numbers...backwards! No one will ever figure that out!] 

20) Qwerty

Two factors are heading toward each other, like freight trains charging toward an explosive crash: 1) The password cracking software used by hackers is getting ever more sophisticated, and 2) Users keep creating weak passwords, year after year. The Impreva findings cited two studies ten years apart that showed no improvement in passwords.

This mix of automated software and poor passwords means that "In just 110 attempts, a hacker will typically gain access to one new account in every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1,000 accounts," Impreva states. A sobering thought. 

In fairness, it's a hassle to create a truly strong password. It should be at least 7 characters long, contain no complete dictionary words (or your name or pet name) and contain a mix of upper and lowercase, numerals and  symbols. For instance: 

A*t34eO4>u

But who can remember that? I'd rather just use "monkey". 

And yes, I own an iPhone. Which means, yes, I spend more on my cell phone than do most people. But it's worth it. The sexy handheld is the ultimate tech thing. It helps me do everything -- watch a movie, find a restaurant, shoot a video, answer email. It fits in my pocket and prompts envy when I pull it out. It's no wonder that a staggering 33 million have sold since its '07 debut. 

And now comes the tablet. Hmmm...I don't know. Even for someone who salivates for Apple on command, the gadget lust just isn't kicking in. I mean, I have an iPhone, which travels everywhere right in my pocket. I've got a laptop, which is a portable full-fledged work machine. 

Am I the only Apple aficionado wondering why -- in hard times -- I need to part with a major chunk of cash for....a smaller laptop? Do I really need a third device, after a cell and a notebook? 

Where do I carry it? If I have my backpack I have room for my laptop, so am I going to bring both? Without my backpack am I supposed to carry it my hands the whole time? 

The tablet is presumably Apple's push into the scorchingly hot netbook market. The problem is, netbooks are exciting because they're so bargain basement cheap -- sub $350 gets you in the game. But Apple won't sell a keychain for sub $350. Rumors about the tablet say it'll retail for about a cool grand to start. Ouch. Then the price will (if forecasts are correct) fall to $750. Still high. 

Here's the real challenge: isn't Apple cannibalizing its own product line? Whereas the iPhone added an entirely new customer base, the tablet essentially competes with Apple's low-end laptops. Are there that many Apple fanatics who will buy a $750 tablet and a $999 laptop? Don't think so.

Unless, of course, Apple is expecting Tablet-mania to be so overwhelming that it inspires Windows users to switch. Doubt it. 

So I'm curious as to the public reaction upon unveiling. Apple has been aggressively empire-building these last couple years, with the unstoppable iPhone conquering the ultimate market, mobile. But the tablet? Napoleon may have just entered Russia.  

James Maguire is senior managing editor of Internet.com's IT Management channel.

I just listened to a great Webinar about virtualization given by Gartner analyst Tom Bittman. Bittman is a deep expert on the topic. 

Some quick takeaways:  

Myth: "Virtualization is widely deployed." 

Fact: Only 19 percent of workloads are running in virtual machines. (About 25 percent of the global 500 are deploying virtualization.) 

Myth: "Virtualization is primarily about saving money." 

Fact: Large firms start virtualization to save money. But later on they realize that agility is a key benefit. 

Myth: "Virtualization is a commodity." 

Fact: Yes, you can get a hypervisor for free. But effective, truly beneficial virtualization is about much more. "So don't be caught up in offerings that focus on the short term," Bittman advised. Think five years out and plot your virtualization strategy carefully. "The solution you choose will be more and more like a private cloud for you," he said. 

Private cloud is the buzzword du jour. "Private cloud computing is one of the fastest growing trends," Bittman said. "More money will be spent on building private clouds than public clouds," in the years ahead.  

Virtualization adoption has been slow, but SMBs are now jumping on board. The wave is coming: By 2012 Gartner forecasts 58 million virtual machines. 

VMware's share is shrinking, but the pie is getting bigger, so no need to shed tears for the current market leader. "The vast majority of VMwware's customers will stay with them," Bittman said. But Microsoft is grabbing a very large share of the newcomers. 

 

Meanwhile, virtualization vendor Citrix is a force to be reckoned with and is not tied only to open source. "They can help you migrate" between solutions, Bittman said. 

On the other hand, Oracle, having acquired small fry Virtual Iron, is not a market leader in virtualization. "We don't expect Oracle to expand their influence [in virtualization] beyond the Oracle stack," he said.  

As the Webinar drew to a close, Bittman looked at the long list of questions sent in as he spoke. So many were about cloud computing that he decided to speak about the trend in general. 

Gartner predicts an exploding number of new cloud services providers to come on the scene. Not large generalists like Amazon, but small, vertically-focused players focused on niches like healthcare or finance. They'll be more expensive than larger providers yet their industry-specific knowledge will offer real value.

"Cloud computing is going to be relevant for every enterprise," Bittman concluded.   

Call it a case of "Office envy." Google eyes Microsoft's dominant share of the office productivity market and wants a piece of it. A big piece, in fact -- and wants it badly. 

But Office is the 500-pound gorilla. Microsoft has struggled in some key areas - its mobile initiatives haven't taken the industry by storm, for instance, and it was late to market in virtualization. But Office? The redoubtable suite remains the default standard for cubicle workers in fine office parks across this land. 

In contrast, Google Docs feels nascent. Have you ever heard anyone say, Wow, Google Docs just blows away Microsoft Office! No, I haven't either. 

Sure, Google Docs is a perfectly workable suite, if nothing that generates great admiration. (I've always wondered: Google is richer than Croesus. Can't it hire a team to develop an office suite that inarguably equals Office? I mean, office productivity software isn't rocket science. How hard can it be?) 

Google's effort to unseat Office has one major factor in its favor: hybrid users. Plenty of businesses -- and this is backed up by market research -- use both Office and Docs. Office is the workhorse, the foundation for really important business communication. But Docs offers online collaboration that's invaluable. 

This collaboration is a key driver in Google's effort to own cloud computing, and just might be the deciding factor. With workforces increasingly spread across the country and globe, a free, easy-to-use collaborative office suite is a game changer. 

Of course, Microsoft isn't blind. Understanding the threat, it offers Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Yet it hasn't -- and probably can't afford to at this point -- offered so much functionality that users don't also use Google Docs. 

Google, aware of the competition, is giving a big hug to third party developers who extend Docs' functionality. For instance: 

Manymoon offers a project management tool. 

Syncplicity helps automate backups and manage a variety of files. 

Memeo Connect -- this is a big one -- enables users to sync and send data between Docs and Office. 

Of course, online office tools still suffer from fears of Internet outages. But those fears won't be enough to slow down the adoption of such tools. May the best online suite win.  

Think of all the big bad competitors that Microsoft has dispatched over the years. Think of all the changes it's navigated to remain King of the Jungle. 

Heck, think of Vista -- what the tech punditry class did to that OS wasn't pretty. (Was it really so bad? Who cares -- once the chattering class smelled blood, it was all over.) Yet Microsoft rallied and came back with the spiffy Windows 7. A real lion always fights back. 

But now, think about a small mouse that is (or should be) causing big fear in the lion's heart. Yes, the lowly netbook - eek! - so small, so humble, but such a treacherous threat to the brave lion. 

The problem is, the things are so cheap. My wife's HP laptop crashed over the holidays, and she needed a replacement -- fast. She had deadlines pending. We were resigned to spending a painful chunk of cash on a fat laptop. But lo and behold, it wasn't necessary. There on Christmas Eve at the local Best Buy sat a $275 HP Mini netbook. It saved the day. She worked on it until we got home and got her laptop repaired. 

Now, it turns out the cute little box is more than a second stringer. She loves it. It gets a lot of use, from Hulu viewing to serious note-taking. It will travel with her. 

The threat to Microsoft is that, as the popularity of netbooks keeps cresting, the company's revenue from OS sales is taking a mauling. When the unit costs so little there's less room for a full OS mark-up. Pressured by the threat of Linux on netbooks, Microsoft let Windows XP go for a mere $15 a copy (if industry estimates are correct). 

Clearly, in an iSlate world -- coming soon to a mall near you -- there will be a chaotic profusion of handheld devices. Someday soon, people will be monitoring their data centers on their handhelds. The hulking desktop is a has-been. Even those muscular 2004-era laptops are looking pale. 

Dell at CES this year, showing no loyalty to Microsoft, even flashed a 5-inch handheld running Android. Ouch!

Microsoft's 10-Q filing from last January conceded that smaller units were costing them revenue: 

"The decline in OEM revenue reflects an 11 percentage point decrease in the OEM premium mix to 64%, primarily driven by growth of licenses related to sales of netbook PCs, as well as changes in the geographic and product mixes." 

So what's a giant to do? The world is falling in love with netbooks and that's squeezing the bottom line. 

What would you do if you were Microsoft? 

The recent Barron's magazine cover story, Sky's the Limit, reports on the headlong rush among tech companies to get into cloud computing. The concept of the cloud, once limited to IT geeks, has become so fashionable that every last tech firm is now a cloud vendor -- or at least they play one on the Internet. 

The article starts with a breathless quote from Riverbed Technology CEO Jerry Kennelly: 

"If you don't have a 'cloud story,' you better get one." 

Goodness, that's a definitive statement. Apparently it's no longer enough to provide best-of-breed tech service. Now you have to do it remotely over the Internet. Bulking up your own in-house data center is just so 2006.

How about this gem from the Barron's piece: "'The notion of cloud is a technology architecture that cuts across every tech sub-sector,' says David Readerman, a senior investment analyst with Denver-based Marsico Capital Management." 

You know you're in trouble when a financial analysts is really sure about anything. 

All the chest thumping prompts the question: Has cloud computing jumped the shark? Like, say, American Idol after Paula Abdul, or the final season of Love Boat? Has the cloud finally become so saturated, so mindlessly over-hyped, that it's doomed to spiral down into wretched excess? 

Soon, will every last PC box be stamped "cloud capable"? Finally, will even pizza delivery be touted as cloud-based, because the pie is made by a third party and sent from a remote location? 

Leading the pushback is skeptic Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, who Barron's quotes as unloading this torrent of sarcasm in an analyst's meeting: Cloud computing "is the future of all computing, but more impressively, it is the present of all computing and the past of all computing...Everything is cloud computing." 

Wow, and I thought I was smart-aleck. 

Alas, now even Oracle is making joyful noises about the cloud. The database titan touts its Cloud Computing Center and has launched a new, semi-comprehensible acronym: OaaS, Oracle as a Service. (Seriously? OaaS? Someone suggested that in a meeting, and no one giggled?)   

Funny thing is, even amid all the hype, cloud computing is still -- still -- getting bigger. Its trend line is clearly headed upward. As Barron's makes clear, the numbers speak remarkably loud: 

"Gartner predicts that the overall cloud-services market will grow from $70.8 billion in 2010 to $88.8 billion in 2011, a roughly 25% gain, even as technology generally struggles to find new areas for expansion." 

Wow -- 25 percent in a year? In a down economy? Where do I sign up? 

Gartner analyst Tom Bittman -- a leading voice -- forecasts that the U.S. government will be a voracious consumer of private-cloud computing, spending as much as $43 billion on IT plumbing over the next three years. That's serious cash even by government standards. 

So someday, perhaps, cloud computing will jump the shark. But that day is not yet visible on the horizon.