Tenant and Multi-Tenant Security: It's All About Scope

While at InfoSec World 2012’s summit on Cloud and Virtualization Security, the first talk was on Securing your data. The second was on penetration testing to ensure that data was secure. In essence it has always been about the data but there is a huge difference between what a tenant can do and what the cloud or virtual environment provider can do with respect to data protection and security. This gap is apparently becoming wider instead of smaller as we try to understand tenant vs cloud provider security scopes. There is a lack of transparency with respect to security, but at the same time there are movements to gain that transparency. But secret sauces, scopes, legislation, and lack of knowledge seem to be getting in the way.

Onlive Desktop: VDI cannot be DaaS until Microsoft say so.

OnLive Desktop is on the verge of making a game-changing move in the VDI space delivering the hope of a service that a CFO would bite your hand off for. OnLive’s delivery capability is a wakeup call to the ISVs and SPs who are trying to penetrate this market. With the license battle is about to ensue, Microsoft has the heads up display and is the one holding the shotgun, perhaps OnLive can finally convince Redmond that its always more fun in multiplayer mode.

Future Proofing Data Protection

During a briefing of Quest’s new data protection announcements I started to think about the future of data protection. Quest recently announced that NetVault will now work with Exagrid devices and that there is now a Capacity Edition targeting SMBs and SMEs. These changes add some more capabilities to an existing product suite. While, these announcements do not necessarily merge with virtualization backup, the combination of Quest’s tools and partnerships do form an impressive view of the future with respect to Data Protection.

Data Protection In the Cloud

One of the questions I get from time to time is, can I store my data in the cloud? At the NEVMUG, this came up once more. There is currently a lot of uncertainty about cloud storage, specifically when it comes to critical and highly regulated data. Where should I store my data, dovetails nicely with discussions of going to the cloud as well as data protection is a key component of such a migration.

2012 Data Protection Concerns

Data Protection is still an issue with many small businesses and smaller enterprises who virtualize; Specifically around the Data Protection Process and eventually where to store the data. When I speak to people they are struggling with whether or not to place the data on tape, blu-ray, into the cloud, or other disks. Medium and Large Enterprises already have such policies in place, but like everything else, when they virtualized the policies may have fallen by the road side and now need to be recovered, dusted off, and put into practice. The choice of where the data will ultimately reside when disaster strikes is an ongoing discussion in the virtualization community. Ultimately, Data Protection is just that, protecting the data from loss, destruction, and allowing for quick recovery.

Who can outmanoeuvre Citrix Flexcast?

Of all the vendors in the hosted desktop space, Citrix has been delivering desktop virtualisation solutions the longest. As such, perhaps they are the most aware that an enterprise desktop strategy isn’t about delivering a single solution. A solution needs to be flexible enough to present a variety of services to a range of devices. This isn’t just about having different client support, but about delivering applications and data either to different environments: secure and insecure, managed and unmanaged, fat and thin.