The IaaS Management Market: Evolution, Vendors and More

A lot has already been said about the false cloud use where the IaaS platform utilized as an hosting extension of the IT organization’s data center and not taking advantage of the elasticity benefits to generate a cost effective and scalable IT operation. Using the public IaaS whether it is Amazon, Rackspace or any other vendor means using a highly dynamic environment which presents an increasing complexity hence loss of control. Checking the list below I can say that cloud (including all its layers IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) control basically contains the same aspects as the good old system management.

What is “System management” ?
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The Cloud Security Part 2: Market Perceptions, Vendors and More

This year, April study conducted by independent research firm Ponemon Institute and sponsored by CA Technologies, surveyed 103 cloud service providers in the U.S. and 24 in Europe representing a mix of cloud service and deployment models. 70% said they allocate 10% or less of IT resources to security and control-related activity.

Who is most responsible for ensuring the security of the cloud resources ?


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The Cloud Security Part 1: For Dummies

cloud security considerationsFrom an attacker’s perspective, cloud providers aggregate access to many victims’ data into a single point of entry. As the cloud environments become more and more popular, they will increasingly become the focus of attacks. Some organizations think that liability can be outsourced, but no, and I hope that we all understand it cannot. The contract with your cloud vendors basically means nothing, the ISVs or should I say the `SaaS providers`  still holds the responsibility, so rather than focusing on contracts and limiting liability in cloud services deals, you should focus on controls and auditability.

“Dropbox, … deceived users about the security ..The FTC complaint charges Dropbox with telling users that their files were totally encrypted” Wired Magazine

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IEEE and DMTF Define Cloud and SaaS Standards

Continue from my last post about NIST, I found the IEEE targets Cloud Interoperability Standards and for that matter the organization established 2 work groups
P2301 – Guide for Cloud Portability and Interoperability Profiles (CPIP): ”This guide advises cloud computing ecosystem participants (cloud vendors, service providers, and users) of standards-based choices in areas such as application interfaces, portability interfaces, management interfaces, interoperability interfaces, file formats, and operation conventions. This guide groups these choices into multiple logical profiles, which are organized toaddress different cloud personalities.”
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