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Vint Cerf Stresses the Need for Inter-Cloud Standards

Vint Cerf in a recent talk has compared the current cloud situation to the lack of communication and familiarity that existed among computer networks in 1973. "At some point, it makes sense for somebody to say, 'I want to move my data from cloud A to cloud B,'" but the different clouds do not know each other, he said. "We don't have any inter-cloud standards," Cerf said. They might even want to have multiple clouds interact with each other in order to take advantage of the computing power offered through such combinations, he said. more»

Cloud Computing Types: Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Private Cloud

It's no secret that I don't very much like this whole private cloud or internal cloud concept... on the basis that while advanced virtualisation technologies are valuable to businesses they are a severe short sell of what cloud computing is ultimately capable of. The electricity grid took over from the on-site generators very quickly and I expect cloud computing to do the same with respect to private servers, racks and datacenters... more»

Malware and Botnet Operators Setting Up Their Own Data Centers

Dennis Fisher of Thread Post reports: "The malware writers and criminals who run botnets for years have been using shared hosting platforms and so-called bulletproof hosting providers as bases of operations for their online crimes. But, as law enforcement agencies and security experts have moved to take these providers offline, the criminals have taken the next step and begun setting up their own virtual data centers." more»

Email Snooping Can Be Intrusion Upon Seclusion

Analysis could also affect liability of enterprises using cloud computing technologies... Local elected official Steinbach had an email account that was issued by the municipality. Third party Hostway provided the technology for the account. Steinbach logged in to her Hostway webmail account and noticed eleven messages from constituents had been forwarded by someone else to her political rival. more»

GNU Founder Richard Stallman Warns Against Cloud Computing

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, says cloud computing is essentially a trap that will eventually pressure more people into buying locked, proprietary systems that will continue to cost them more over time. "It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," says Stallman. Bobbie Johnson, Guardian's technology correspondent says 'his comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticized the rash of cloud computing announcements as "fashion-driven" and "complete gibberish".' more»

Internet Vigilantism

Atrivo (aka Intercage), a Concord, California-based Internet hosting service, disappeared from the Internet for around two days recently. They didn't go bankrupt or suffer a physical catastrophe. Their providers simply shut them down by refusing their traffic. This might very well be the first time in history that the Internet community, a cooperative association of networks with no governing body, has collectively put someone out of business, if only briefly. more»

Cloud Computing and Privacy

There has been a good deal of talk of late on the important topic of security and privacy in relation to cloud computing. Indeed there are some legitimate concerns and some work that needs to be done in this area in general, but I'm going to focus today on the latter term (indeed they are distinct -- as a CISSP security is my forte but I will talk more on this separately). more»

Amazon's S3 Cloud Service Goes Down for Several Hours

Amazon's S3 system, which provides a pay-as-you-use processing service, died briefly at the weekend, and with it went many services that had hung their hat on it -- such as the organize-your-business company 37Signals, image caching by Twitter, and many iPhone apps, reports Charles Arthur of the Guardian. One of the things that makes the online storage service, Amazon S3, particularly useful for start-ups and heavy users is that it ties in with other Amazon Web Services like the elastic computing cloud and its SimpleDB service. Using all three services relieves start-ups from some of the tasks that generally would require significant time and money up front. more»

OTT Threat to Telco's Middleware Opportunities

I recently participated in two Comverse events, and once again the message was driven home to me about the enormous opportunities that lie ahead of the industry in the field of new telecoms applications. The middleware and cloud applications that are now appearing at the edge of the network will of course, be further developed once high-speed broadband becomes available, but already they are having an enormous impact on the telecoms market. The new user experiences that can be obtainable through these applications will enrich fast broadband networks beyond recognition. What we now have is, on the one hand, the Over-The-Top (OTT) applications that have conquered the world... more»

German High Court Says No to Retaining Telecom, Email Data for Tracking Criminal Networks

The highest court in Germany has ruled against telephone and email data retention used to track criminal networks. Melissa Eddy of the Global and Mail reports: "A law ordering data on calls made from mobile or landline telephones and e-mail exchanges be retained for six months for possible use by criminal authorities violated Germans' constitutional right to private correspondence, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled. In its ruling, the court said the law failed to sufficiently balance the need for personal privacy against that for providing security."
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Web Application Delivery: The Challenge of Managing Thousands of Web Applications in the Cloud

Cloud Computing is a hot topic. Some say it is already here, most agree that it will be much bigger in the coming years. It is pushed forward by the economic benefits of virtualization and consolidation. Take a heterogeneous data center, full of many kinds of servers, running a myriad of applications and consolidate it into a uniform farm of virtual machines, where each application is services by one or more VMs and you have a cloud, what is called a private cloud. more»

How IT and Internet Saved Lives in Haiti


Stéphane Bruno writes: "In the first few hours that followed the earthquake, mobile service was completely disrupted. It was almost impossible to place a call, due to the combination of the damages on the cellular networks and the spike in phone calls. However, on some networks, SMS service was still available. People stuck under rubbles started texting to their friends and family (in Haiti and abroad) to tell them they were still alive and needed help. Those friends and family, not knowing what to do, started posting these SOS messages on their social networks, mainly on Facebook." more»

Project Title: Adopt-an-Haitian-Internet-Technician-or-Facility

I circulated this, and its precursors, notes about the necessity for diesel to keep the generators powering Boutilliers Hill NAP on the Hatian-Dominican Republic Border from failing, earlier this month on the North American Operators Group (NANOG) mailing list. Efforts by former ICANN people, in public service and in the private sector, were critical to bringing the continuity of the surviving infrastructure to the attention of the White House, the Department of State, and the Southern Command. more»

Protecting Customer Data

There have been a number of reports recently about customer lists leaking out through Email Service Providers (ESPs). In one case, the ESP attributed the leak to an outside hack. In other cases, the ESPs and companies involved have kept the information very quiet and not told anyone that data was leaked. People do notice, though, when they use single use addresses or tagged addresses and know to whom each address was submitted. Data security is not something that can be glossed over and ignored. more»

Google Energy - Are You Surprised?

Just when you thought Nexus One was the biggest thing coming out of Google this week, we now get word about Google Energy. Well, Nexus One is a big deal, but I say that wearing my telecom analyst hat. Switching to my smart grid hat, Google Energy is something else altogether... As big as that is -- and will be -- Google Energy has all kinds of implications for smart grid. For starters, more»

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