Cloud Products and Services

Cloud products and services are only in its infancy but new and exciting technology is being released at an incredible rate. One example of something new is Kim Dotcom’s newly launched Mega cloud storage service with its free 50GBs of storage. What really got my attention with this announcement was that the data would be stored encrypted, which is nice to see security being built into the offering from the beginning. There are a few bugs that are being reported, but hopefully the start of the push to secure the cloud.

Evaluating Clouds

When evaluating clouds there are three major criteria that are used first before we get into the nitty gritty of how the system works. The criteria is not always in writing but it is in the back of everyone’s mind and in many cases are nebulous to define. Herein, I will try to look at those criteria in order to aid others in making the same decisions I have had to make lately while evaluating clouds.

How Good an Idea to Virtualize XenApp?

How good an idea to Virtualize XenApp? There were a number of benefits identified way back then: hardware abstraction allowing easier image management and OS upgrades; options for higher availability and faster recovery; even fail-over. Virtualization enabled silo consolidation and importantly enabled better management of user capacity on servers. However, there is a price. Reduced density and performance. Not all applications will benefit. That said, the flexibility that virtualization of XenApp offers is likely of greater benefit to many organisations.

Virtualizing Business Critical Applications – Integrity & Confidentiality

Recently I discussed Virtualizing Business Critical Applications and security, which includes availability, confidentiality, and integrity. However, that discussion was more about visibility into the environment for security operations. I purposely left off the discussion of gaining integrity and confidentiality of the data housed within those business critical applications.