10 Steps to Moving to the Cloud

Virtualization and cloud computing increase efficiency and flexibility in providing data and applications to users, yet managing performance of applications and transactions in the cloud is neither simple nor easy. When you add another layer, particularly one that is highly dynamic in nature, assuring a high quality user experience gets trickier when applications misbehave. It’s harder to determine where an application or transaction was working when the failure or slowdown occurred, since virtual machines are provisioned and decommissioned continually according to business priority and demand. You can no longer monitor an application in the context of its server.

1. Think End-to-end
The traditional server-centric monitoring approach is no longer relevant. Focus on applications and transactions instead.

2. Fix First
Application problems don't go away in the cloud; address them before making the move.

3. Prioritize
Map out your business priorities by application so you can focus on infrastructure and monitoring.

4. Establish Baselines
Set performance baselines before migration, so IT can accurately characterize user issues in the cloud.

5. Define Metrics
Establish core metrics for the cloud, such as response time for critical transactions.

6. Monitor QoS.
Watch for degradation of quality of service during and after migration.

7. Watch for Contention
Resource contention on virtual machines is a common problem that IT should monitor.

8. Balance Java Clusters
Beware that adding nodes/capacity to an unbalanced cluster has detrimental effects.

9. Weigh Performance
Compare the performance history of your app in the cloud to the performance history while the app was "on iron".

10. Optimize Staff
Deploy IT staff according to business priority so you don't under-staff a critical application.

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Fixing Data Breaches: Tracking the Cost and Damage Toll

 

The average cost of a data breach keeps going up for the organizations that have to clean up the resulting mess. The costs rose to more than $7 million in 2010, compared with $6 million in 2009. There are other factors in place that can make the data breach more expensive, such as rate of response (apparently slow is better), number of compromised records (size matters), industry sector (communications, financial and pharmaceuticals), type of breach (criminals are expensive) and whether it was the first time. According to Ponemon Institute's sixth "Annual Study: U.S. Costs of a Data Breach," companies are moving faster to notify affected users, which in turn makes customers more nervous and often prompts them to leave. What's worse, responding quickly means organizations are likely to rush through the investigation and over-notify to be on the safe side, which will cause even more customers to panic and leave. Organizations should be prepared with a strategy and proper forensics tools to conduct a thorough investigation, know the exact compliance requirements, and resist the urge to err on the side of caution. Know the extent of the breach before taking action, the study recommends. The following are some numbers from the Ponemon Institute study about data breaches in 2010.

Total Cost: $7.2 Million

The total cost of a data breach has gone up 7 percent to $7.2 million. This includes cost of investigating and resolving the breach, notifying affected individuals, covering remedies such as credit protection services, and paying fines in a regulatory environment.

 

Per-Record Cost: $268 vs. $174

Speed apparently doesn't pay, not when it comes to data breaches. Companies that responded rapidly to a breach paid $268 per compromised record, as compared with companies that moved slower, which paid $174 per compromised record.

 

Cybercrime: 31 Percent and $318

For the first time since Ponemon Institute started the survey, malicious or criminal attacks were the most expensive cause of data breaches, accounting for 31 percent of all data breaches in 2010. Breaches that were the result of a malicious or criminal attack cost an average of $318 per compromised record.

 

Lost Business: $4.5 Million

The cost of lost business, such as lost sales as customers leave or lost productivity because employees were distracted or diverted from regular tasks, stayed relatively the same, at $4.5 million. However, it accounted for a smaller proportion of total breach costs, at 63 percent of total cost in 2010 compared with 69 percent in 2008.

 

Costliest Breach: $35.3 Million

The most expensive data breach included in this year's study cost a company $35.3 million to resolve, compared with the least expensive, which cost $780,000. The cost of the data breach is directly proportional to number of records compromised.

 

Customer Turnover: 4 Percent

Customers tend to leave after a data breach because they are leery of the company's IT security. Abnormal churn rates stayed at 4 percent, although pharmaceuticals and health care (both heavily regulated) inched up to 7 percent turnover. Public sector organizations had less than 1 percent churn rate.

 

Most Frequent Cause of Breaches: Negligence, 41 Percent

Negligence remains the most common reason for a data breach, accounting for 41 percent of the surveyed breaches. Third-party breaches, such as business partners and cloud service providers, accounted for 39 percent.

 

Cost to First Timers: $326 Per Record

Companies that had never had a data breach before paid the highest average costs. An organization's first data breach averaged $326 per compromised record.

 

Cost of Detection: $455,000

Organizations spent more to become more proactive in detecting and remediating data breaches in 2010. On average, detection and escalation activities cost $455,000, up 72 percent from 2009.

 

Compromised Records: 4,200 to 105,000

The "2010 Cost of a Data Breach" study examined 51 organizations that experienced a data breach across 15 industry sectors. The breaches in the study ranged from 4,200 records to 105,000 compromised records.

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15 Companies That Made Waves at Cloud Connect 2011

 

Cloud computing-related conferences are en vogue in IT right now and deservedly so. There is so much to learn and discuss about this truly disruptive form of IT. This is because there is still a great amount of curiosity, misinformation and misunderstanding about what cloud computing entails. Several recent research reports that indicate that nearly half of the IT decision-makers in the United States haven't even considered moving any of their IT to the cloud yet—even though a large number of Web-based services have been available for use since the late 1990s. Trust is the major issue here. Business data, the lifeblood of any enterprise, must be kept secure at all times, and if business data is maintained outside a company's firewall, a measure of control is—by the very nature of the cloud—lost. Many people are still uncomfortable with this. In any case, the third annual Cloud Connect conference at the Santa Clara Convention center March 7-10 was a sold-out event that focused a lot of attention on cloud security problem-solving. Here are some companies—some already well known, others not so well known—with interesting products and services at the event.

OpSource, Santa Clara, Calif.

OpSource provides cloud and managed hosting solutions that enable businesses of any size to accelerate growth and scale operations while controlling costs and reducing IT infrastructure support risks. At the conference, the company launched new bundles that add hardware-based security and networking to its cloud servers offering to deliver secure cloud computing to more businesses.

 

UnboundID, Austin, Texas

UnboundID describes itself as the first true virtualized identity management infrastructure and the first and only VMware-certified directory service. It offers identity management infrastructure for cloud service providers and enterprises consuming cloud infrastructure. UnboundID gives cloud service providers the elastic scalability needed to grow or shrink identity management capacity on demand.

 

Terremark Worldwide, Miami, Fla.

Terremark is a global provider of IT infrastructure services that uses its own worldwide data centers. Terremark serves government and enterprise customers a comprehensive suite of managed solutions, including managed hosting, collocation, disaster recovery, security, data storage and cloud computing services.

 

StrataScale, Sacramento, Calif.

StrataScale offers secure server and cloud IT infrastructure and hosting solutions for businesses of all sizes. With StrataScale hosting, users can build, manage and scale entire cloud, dedicated and hybrid server environments in minutes from anywhere, at anytime via its advanced Web portal.

 

SoftLayer Technologies, Dallas, Texas

SoftLayer Technologies describes itself as the largest hosting company in the world. SoftLayer enables customers to create dedicated, cloud, or seamless hybrid computing environments, leveraging world-class data centers in Dallas, Houston, Seattle and Washington, D.C. SoftLayer automates all elements of its platform and claims complete control, security, scalability and ease of management.

 

ScaleOut Software, Beaverton, Ore.

ScaleOut Software develops in-memory distributed data grid software for storing, managing and analyzing data in both cloud and on-premise deployments. Its flagship product, ScaleOut StateServer, accelerates application performance with linear scalability and enables automatic data migration to/from the cloud.

 

Nimbula, Mountain View, Calif.

Nimbula has developed a "cloud operating system" that combines the flexibility, scalability and efficiency of a public cloud with the control, security and trust of an advanced data center. Nimbula was founded by the team that developed the industry-leading Amazon EC2 public cloud service.

 

CloudOptix, Boca Raton, Fla.

CloudOptix has a service called MeghaWare, which gives users a single portal to view and manage the entirety of their Web identities—from Google Apps to Netflix to Amazon S3. The service works not only with S3 but also with Windows Azure, Google Storage and AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service.

 

Intel Application Security Products & Cloud Builders, Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.

Mega-chipmaker Intel has developed a 2015 vision for federated, automated and client-aware cloud capabilities based on interoperable, multi-vendor solutions that embrace industry standards. Thus, Intel has created Intel Cloud Builders—a cross-industry initiative aimed at making it easier to build, enhance and operate cloud infrastructure.

 

IBM Blue Cloud, Armonk, N.Y.

IBM, as one might imagine, either has—or can get you—anything under the sun for a cloud deployment. The company said March 10 that it expects to earn $7 billion in cloud-related revenue by 2015, so it must be doing something right.

 

Gluster, Milpitas, Calif.

Gluster delivers an open-source software platform that simplifies storage and management of unstructured data. Gluster Virtual Storage Appliances use a unified global namespace to virtualize disk and memory resources into a single shared pool that is centrally managed. Gluster provides scale-out NAS for virtual machine and cloud environments.

 

CoreSite, Denver, Colo.

CoreSite develops network-rich data centers that optimize and secure mission-critical IT assets of large and midrange enterprises. CoreSite offers private data centers and suites, cage-to-cabinet collocation and interconnection services, such as Any2, CoreSite's Internet exchange. The company's portfolio comprises more than 2 million square feet, including space held for redevelopment and development, and provides access to more than 200 network service providers via 11 data centers in seven key U.S. economic centers.

 

Cloudsoft Corporation, Edinburgh, Scotland

Cloudsoft is a venture-backed software company helping enterprises apply the benefits of cloud computing to the large-scale, distributed, transactional systems that underpin their business. Cloudsoft’s Monterey Spring Edition is an intelligent application mobility platform and the only product that lets users logically partition Spring transactional applications into discrete components. The platform is geographically aware and automatically optimizes infrastructure utilization and governance based on policies.

 

Cloupia, Santa Clara, Calif.

Cloupia, a new cloud automation and management software provider, offers a suite of cloud computing products and solutions that enables organizations to build their own internal private clouds as well as manage public and hybrid clouds using a so-called "single pane of glass." Cloupia helps organizations to smoothly evolve from static data center or virtual environments to private and public cloud environments with the necessary management and automation tools.

 

Cloud Cruiser, Roseville, Calif.

Cloud Cruiser, a venture-backed company that provides cost-optimization software for enterprise cloud deployments, launched on March 1. Cloud Cruiser claims to solve the most critical problems in the cloud market: cost visibility, next generation chargeback and optimization across heterogeneous IT environments.

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