Application Vulnerability Scanning comes in from the Cloud

the Cloud is increasingly being used to provide external security testing services (such as AVS, Application Vulnerability Scanning). The argument of the proponents of such services is that security threats come from the cloud, and thus it makes most sense to embed the AVS in the cloud. However after very detailed examination of the options we have come to the conclusion that the Cloud it isn’t necessarily the right answer for many enterprises, and that the AVS service may best be delivered inside the datacenter.

Development Tools and Application Servers for the Cloud

Development tools like Eclipse and Visual Stuio are being built to ensur applications can be deployed in to the cloud on application servers. Key challenges include the manageability and scalability of application servers. Innovations include the use of non-java languages like Groovy and Jython and even PHP and Javascript on JVMs, and the final demise of SQL as object caches offer more natural scalability.

Eucalyptus/Terracotta a scalable Java Cloud Platform?

We recently received a presentation on a combined solution from Eucalyptus and Terracotta. Initially we were suspicious because they clearly share an investor – Benchmark Capital. Was this a PowerPoint integration dreamt up by two Venture Capitalists over a power breakfast? However, the combined solution was presented by some very plausible techies with a real-live demo and does look as though it starts to provide a generally-useful abstraction over which to deploy scalable applications (specifically Java stacks), and it too works with commodity hardware. It’s not as slick as the 3Tera solution, more of a command-line approach, but it potentially has the edge in scalability.