Digital Walkabout

The role of certification in Cloud adoption

The principal concern for enterprises in adopting Cloud Computing, particularly Public Cloud, is the security of mission-critical data - both in-transit and at-rest -  being off-premise and beyond the control of their IT. Hybrid Cloud providers such as Terremark, Savvis, CSC, IBM, Rackspace and others, as well as the Telcos (AT&T, Telefonica, Verizon, etc.) have made their mark by providing a rich set of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for securing such data, and for a degree of attestations as to who can enter their network or servics. Yet the majority of Public Cloud providers have no such thing, which is an obstacle to anyone with privacy and security concerns.

As a measure to address this impass, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recently released a certification scheme to promote secure Cloud - the Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) - which would ensure service providers and professionals have demonstrated the skills and understanding along with assuming the necessary responsibility required to secure Cloud-related services.  

Per Jim Reavis, executive director, the CSA would provide a low-cost certification that establishes a robust baseline of cloud security knowledge. "When combined with existing certifications, CCSK provides necessary assurance of user competency in this important time of transition," said Reavis. "We're also thrilled to have the European Network and Information Security Agency's support and its agreement to join our certification board,” he added. “What a certification will help you do,” said Reavis, “is break down some of those barriers that prevents transparency and understand that the provider is able to give you what you really need to match with your business.”

Certifications would measure a variety of different areas of the provider, such as background checks on the employees working at the cloud provider - the need to know who is handling the data of enterprise customers, and their level of responsibility and confidentiality - as well as audit management - how are auditable assets archived and encrypted? In an environment of muti-tenancy, confidentiality and isolation of data are crucial. And as beneficial as certifications are to customers, they would also help providers by providing a stamp of approval for their services.

Online examinations for the CCSK would be available from 1 September 2010, with discount pricing for the course of $195 (£125) for the rest of the year, with regular pricing of $295 beginning in 2011.

Apple updates iMacs with Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 chips

This week, Apple announced a “refreshed family that now contains Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processor options, not to mention discrete ATI Radeon HD GPU options, IPS panels, an SD slot that understands the complexities of SDXC and an SSD option on the 27-inch machine,” Engadget reported. The computers run from a low-end iMac with an Intel Core i3 and 21.5” screen retailing for $1,199 to $1,999 for an Intel Core i7 with a 27” screen.

In preliminary tests of the entry-level iMac, ComputerWorld said, “We found that the new system was a little more than 20% faster, overall, than the Core 2 Duo system it replaces, and just about 9% faster than the previous [higher-end] $1,499 3.2GHz Core 2 Duo model. We saw impressive improvement over the previous 21.5-inch systems in processor-intensive tasks, like MathematicaMark (40%), Cinebench (25%), and Compressor (11%).”

The refresh also included Apple’s high-end MacPro desktops. The top of the line MacPro is a true beast, boasting twelve cores from a pair of six-core Intel Xeon processors (meaning, with Hyperthreading, you’d get 24 “virtual” cores) and up to a terabyte of SSD storage—which will set you back a cool $5,000.

Though the prices may seem high in this era of the $299 netbook, Apple is apparently selling Intel-powered iMacs and MacBooks by the truckload: the San Jose Mercury News quoted an analyst from Piper Jaffray who said Apple sold more than 3 million Macs in the second quarter, accounting for $3.76 billion in revenues.

Canonical/Ubuntu - floating the Cloud

Cloud Computing continues to gain traction and adoption amongst consumers and businesses alike. The principal differentiation in adoption style is with enterprises - any organisation that has managed its own IT for any length of time is not going to trust its key applications and workloads in the present-day Public Cloud, no matter how facile or inexpensive that may be. Enterprise requirements continue to drive Private Cloud, as they need to operate their own Cloud within their controlled environment, and off-load specific workloads into the Public Cloud utilities on demand.

 

Canonical, with their Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud offering, seeks to meet this demand for Private Cloud, by providing on-premise Cloud appliances, with partners including Intel, that can satisfy the strict security, reliability, availability and serviceability requirements of the enterprise, inclusive of highly-regulated industry and government. If early results with UEC are any indication, there is no lack of demand for Private Cloud in the enterprise.

 

 "According to Matt Asay, who joined [Canonical] back in February as chief operating officer, the company has more than 12,000 deployments of UEC, and it's seeing about 200 downloads per day at this point."

 

Clearly, this statistic can be subject to error in converting downloads and deployments to actual use.  We know at least some of the downloads were only made to examine the materials, while some of the deployment were likely in a sandbox to evaluate the operational experience.

 

This is acknowledged in "All the company can say is that 12,000 customers are actively using UEC, and based on the engagements where it has been involved, there are anywhere from two or three to hundreds of server nodes in these initial clouds."

 

Read more at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/26/ubuntu_server_drilldown/

Cloud and Product Lifecycle Management

Product lifecycle management (PLM) at most companies is no longer the invention of new ideas within a large vertically federated R&D department.  It is now more likely to be accomplished by networks of geographically dispersed companies and consultants that offer the necessary skills and expertise to impact a products competitive advantage or time to market. 

Firms are now rethinking their traditional approaches to innovation and are seeking more collaborative forms of product development.  Enter Cloud Computing, and the concept of Private Cloud, which simply are proprietary computing infrastructures that provide self-service, on-demand services to a users behind a firewall of an organisation or enterprise.  By definition, Cloud-based PLM is simply employing the internet to provide a comprehensive information infrastructure that coordinates all aspects of a product from initial concept to its eventual retirement. 

As such, the obvious barriers to Cloud-based PLM are security, availability, and predictability. 

Cloud-based PLM must function like an electric utility company - as electricity is available to light your home when you need it, Cloud based PLM needs to always be there offering ready and secure access to your data whenever (and whereever) you need it.  It also needs to offer predictable service levels with no ebbs and flows based on competing traffic or Cloud use.  Security remains paramount - enterprise PLM prevents unauthorized access from the outside. In a virtual world, a physical perimeter no longer exists, thus businesses must assume that all data transferred may potentially be intercepted.  Encryption technologies, long been used by militaries and governments to facilitate secret communication, are now being used to help secure PLM data, by transforming its high value information using encryption algorithms, making it readable only to those possessing special knowledge. If the encryption keys themselves are lost or comprised, so is the data itself. Thus, cloud based PLM security remains a top concern.

Cloud based PLM and Intel technologies

Top concerns in cloud based computing remain security, predictability and availability.  Let’s look at how Intel technologies can help overcome these potential barriers.

• Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT): TXT for safer computing, is a versatile set of hardware extensions to Intel processors and chipsets that enhance the digital office platform with security capabilities such as measured launch and protected execution. Intel Trusted Execution Technology provides hardware-based mechanisms that help protect against software-based attacks and protects the confidentiality and integrity of data stored or created on the client PC. It does this by enabling an environment where applications can run within their own space, protected from all other software on the system. These capabilities provide the protection mechanisms, rooted in hardware, that are necessary to provide trust in the application's execution environment. In turn, this can help to protect vital data and processes from being compromised by malicious software running on the platform. To learn more about Intel TXT visit these URLs: Trusted Execution Technology Overview (PDF 83KB), Trusted Execution Technology Architectural Overview (PDF 184KB)
  
• Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) In an IDC report titled Optimizing Hardware for x86 Server Virtualization, they stated that “virtualization offers a myriad of benefits to an enterprise.” Beyond the obvious CAPEX and OPEX savings from server virtualization and consolidation the high availability, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, and workload balancing offered by this technology can help deliver a resilient cloud based solution.

The next generation of virtualization brings in advanced management tools for greater automation and orchestration of the datacenter and promises to further reduce operational costs and improve service levels. These new technologies will help you rapidly save, copy, and provision a virtual machine that enables zero-downtime maintenance and supports new "go live" initiatives.  Dynamic sharing of idle resources across server platforms will improve performance and use while eliminating stovepipes.  Seamless failover when a virtual server component fails will lead to higher system availability.  Net/Net with Intel virtualization technologies your PLM cloud computing solution will deliver predictable service levels.  Here is a cute video on virtualization I am sure you will enjoy - Intel Virtualization Technology for servers.  To learn more about Intel VT visit this URL: http://www.intel.com/technology/virtualization/technology.htm.

·      Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) FlexMigration - Flexible migration technologies enable cloud service providers to easily move workloads across multiple generations of processors without disrupting services. Performing live migrations from a newer generation processor with a newer instruction set to an older generation processor with an older instruction set carries the risk of unexpected behaviors in the guest. In 2007 Intel helped solve this problem by developing Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) FlexMigration. By allowing virtual machine monitor (VMM) software to report a consistent set of available instructions to guest software running within a hypervisor, this technology broadens the live migration compatibility pool across multiple generations of Intel Xeon processors in the data center. This reduces the challenges to IT in deploying new generations of hardware, enabling faster utilization of servers with new performance capabilities as they become available.

·      Accelerating I/O performance and enabling more efficient migration Virtualization solutions are inherently challenged in the area of network I/O because the guests on a host server all end up sharing the same I/O resources. Moreover, many I/O resources are emulated in software for consistency and decision-making (e.g., network packet routing from the shared I/O resource is often done in software).

Intel improves availability through a number of technologies that accelerate I/O performance. This enhances the ability to deploy I/O intensive workloads (beyond simple consolidation) and increases efficiency in Virtualization 2.0 usage models such as load balancing, high availability, and disaster recovery (all of which extensively rely on data transfer over the network). Intel’s I/O technologies for improving data transfer include:

§  Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) for Connectivity - (Intel VT-c) provides unique I/O innovations like Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) that offloads routine I/O tasks to network silicon to free up more CPU cycles for applications and delivers over 2x throughput gains on 10 GbE.

§  Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d) delivers scalable I/O performance through direct assignment (e.g., assigning a network interface card to a guest) and enables single root input/output virtualization (IOV) for sharing devices natively with multiple guest systems.

Privacy and Policy

Intel recognizes that many aspects of successful policy implementation depend on software and hardware development from third party providers whose implementations are outside Intel’s direct control. Intel believes adherence to these or equivalent policies is critical to delivering the full benefits of Intel Trusted Execution

Technology and other complementary security technologies, and will vigorously encourage Intel's  fellow travelers in the industry to internalize and implement these policies. For details on these policies visit http://www.intel.com/technology/security.

MeeGo goes for a ride with IVI

The Linux Foundation - who hosts the MeeGo platform - announced the GENIVI alliance has chosen MeeGo as the basis of their next reference release for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) applications.

“This is a critical milestone for MeeGo adoption across the compute continuum, including tablets, handsets, TVs, and IVI implementations,” said Doug Fisher, leader of Intel's Systems Software Division in the Software and Services Group. “Intel’s ongoing contribution to open source MeeGo will provide a highly optimized software platform capable of delivering value for both end users and GENIVI members in this important market for Atom.”

“We selected MeeGo as the open source basis for our platform because it is technically innovative and can provide the cross architecture build support we require for our references,” adds Graham Smethurst, president and general manager of GENIVI. MeeGo-based IVI devices will provide Internet-based features such as rear-seat entertainment, navigation, and entertainment, with the potential for social networking, hands-free interaction, and other multimedia.

GENIVI is a non-profit industry consortium with founding members BMW Group, Wind River, Intel, GM, PSA, Delphi, Magneti-Marelli, and Visteon. This adoption by a major auto consortium is a testament to the cross-device, cross-architecture advantages of the MeeGo platform.

Read more about  here.

‎7 Cool Intel Projects You May or May Not Know About (by Chip Chick) http://www.chipchick.com/2010/07/top-7-intel-projects.html

Security vulnerabilities by the numbers

According to Secunia's Half Year Security Report 2010, 10 technology vendors account for 38% of all vulnerabilities disclosed over the past five years, a percentage that has remained relatively stable during this period. Yet, the number of vulnerabilities affecting PC users has been rising rapidly, thanks largely to increasingly vulnerable third-party applications. If the trend continues, Secunia predicts 760 vulnerabilities by the end of the year, almost double the 420 vulnerabilities detected in 2009, and approaching four times as many as the 220 vulnerabilities detected in 2007.

In the ranking of the ten vendors with the most vulnerabilities in their products, Apple overtook Oracle during the first six months of the year. Oracle dropped to second place, followed by Microsoft, HP, Adobe, IBM, VMware, Cisco, Google, and Mozilla.

Secunia says that the security of these vendors' products cannot be judged by vulnerability counts alone and that one must consider changes in the types of vulnerabilities reported, code quality, handling of vulnerability reports, update mechanisms, and other factors to fully assess security.

Indeed, one need only to look at vast amount of malware targeting the Windows platform to see that while users of Apple software may face largely theoretical risk, users of Windows (some of whom may be running Apple's iTunes or Safari) software face clearly demonstrated risk.

Secunia says that its report supports the perception that high market share correlates with a high number of vulnerabilities.

At the same time, the report notes that the security efforts by the top vendors haven't had much success in reducing vulnerability counts.

"Despite increased investments into the security of their products, none of the seven vendors who occupied the Top-10 group in 2005 as well as in 2010 managed to decrease the number of vulnerabilities discovered in their products," the report states. "On the contrary, the vulnerability count of each of these seven vendors has increased to reach in 2009 between 136% and 440% of the 2005 count."

But if the major vendors aren't seeing a reduction in vulnerabilities as a result of their efforts, at least they're doing better than third-party vendors.

According Secunia, third-party programs are almost exclusively to blame for the increased risk to end-users when using the Internet. The firm says that a typical PC with 50 applications installed had 3.5x more vulnerabilities in 24 third-party programs than in 26 Microsoft programs installed. And that ratio is expected to shift to 4.4x by the end of 2010.

The report calls for wider deployment of automated patching mechanisms, something Secunia just happens to be working on, in the form of its Personal Software Inspector (PSI) 2.0. 

Ranking the Cloud

The emergence of Cloud Computing as a dominant model for consumers, small-medium business and the enterprise - at least in mindshare - has come amid a dizzying array of providers, services and vendors. This has made it difficult at times for end users and developers to understand who provides, services and builds what. Into this fray has entered BTC Logic, a Cloud/Web consultancy, with a report ranking the leading services and providers from a total of more than 500 organisations, comparing them amongst categories including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS; management, security and network services; mindshare and market presence. 

The top ranked performers in this report include Amazon, IBM, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, RedHat and VMware - all names which are more than familiar to any engaging the Cloud - yet BTC Logic's approach has been to provide a level of qualitative comparison, such that end users and developers can better understand which providers, services and vendors meet which broad categories of capabilities, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and other differentiators of importance to them. 

Also of interest is how the Cloud market is split between established service providers and enterprise software vendors, and independents. Likewise, companies such as Cisco and RedHat have grown in importance in the market through growing their depth and breath of service offerings, through acquisition of a number of successful independents. 

For the complete report, see BTC Logic's Cloud rankings.

What is Intel Hybrid Cloud?

Intel announced a Cloud solution for SMBs, known as the Intel Hybrid Cloud. The pillars of this offering are the following:

•  Ease of use, flexibility, and pay-as-you-go cost structure of the cloud
• Peace of mind of having your data on-premise, managed by an MSP

Think of this as a “best of breed” that merges the traditional IT-managed  data centre with the cloud paradigm shift, distributed through various channels.

 

Just the facts

Intel’s Hybrid Cloud is a data centre solution developed by Intel that enables an MSP to turn on, turn off, and remotely manage multiple virtual appliances, including popular Microsoft server applications and other server apps for small businesses.  It runs on a headless server without a keyboard or mouse that is managed from another PC such as a remote laptop. Intel Hybrid Cloud will be available on special SKUs of Lenovo’s ThinkServer TS200v as part of a pilot program beginning in July.

Lenovo’s TS200v is the ideal server for Hybrid Cloud because in addition to solid reliability and energy efficiency, it has Intel Active Management Technology which enables powerful remote management for the MSP. The Hybrid Cloud Server will be available in a couple of configurations, depending on the performance needs of the small business, and these will come pre-installed with the Hybrid Cloud software stack which offers:

• A simple user interface for choosing which appliances to run on the box, and for managing the server remotely.
• The Intel Hybrid Cloud Catalog, a list of pre-configured virtual appliances, including Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 and 2008, and Windows 2008. Other pre-installed appliances include firewall, backup, disaster recovery, and IP PBX.
• Support for applications from well-known SMB Nation ISV friends including Level Platforms (LPI) for client monitoring/management and Vembu for data storage. If a Level partner, think of this as the ideal Onsite Manager appliance – one box for everything!

 

Why does Hybrid Cloud matter?

Intel’s Hybrid Cloud Server is turning IT acquisition on its head, offering a subscription model and a catalog.  The subscription model is unique in this space in that the user can “subscribe” the entire server solution for a monthly fee. That makes this blended on-site/cloud server solution an operating expense, not a capital expense. Furthermore – the user can subscribe to third-party productivity applications being used on this server and pay only a recurring subscription fee. In many cases, this could mean one can use an application to burst up for a discrete project and then “return” the application and lower your operating expenses. The small business only pays for the months in which they use an appliance.

The other concept that is exciting is the catalog. While not quite an iStore yet, the catalog is a marketplace to shop for applications you’d like to download and deploy in a virtual machine scenario.

The future is here
At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) and onward, Intel is engaging with selected partners in a pilot program as they carefully scale the infrastructure to support this solution for a future broad market release.

Videos on Hybrid Cloud:

Introduction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkx_G6Qo4Rw
Intel Hybrid Cloud @WPC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNzd7r5gdNE