Viewfinity now does privilege management as a service with the simply and aptly named Viewfinity Privilege Management. The company sees technical advantages to the cloud approach. "Most on-premise tools are delivered as a GPO snap-in, or the privileges are managed through scripts in AD," explains Leonid Shtilman, CEO of Viewfinity. "Due to our cloud-hosted platform model, we are able to more easily support multiple AD forests/domains from a single console and mobile and non-domain end users. The customer also has the ability to run reports and propagate policies in real time."
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/15/20130 comments
It's no secret that many SharePoint installs are moving to the cloud. Let's face it: In many cases SharePoint is a tactical deploy, a quick and dirty operation. A team of folks need to gather quickly on a project so the app needs to be up fast, and docs must be moved right away. Who needs to buy a server, load the software and get the licenses, then build an app? Why not let a hoster do all or most of the work? That's just one reason for online SharePoint.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/15/20132 comments
One of the most popular apps to move to the cloud is e-mail. Mail is a hassle to administer and doesn't really offer competitive value. Gmail, Yahoo! mail and even Hotmail long ago proved you can do decent e-mail online, albeit not enterprise-class.
Cloud providers now offer true enterprise-worthy mail tools, so the questions arise: Should you move and how do you do it?
Greg Shapiro from Sendmail ought to know and he gives the whys and wherefores in an article for Enterprise Systems Journal.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/08/20130 comments
The technology world is only going to continue to grow, creating an exponential amount of data. Even today, a small or midsize business is managing "big data." The cloud can manage this growth of storage with on-demand computing. As more data is created, cloud computing resources create more storage space for your files.
As a result of using a cloud grid-computing infrastructure, there is unmatched data resiliency in the cloud. All data is stored online, which allows the user 24/7 accessibility to their entire archive. Rather than wasting time looking through backup tapes or hiring IT services to do so, the cloud makes it quick and easy to search through all means of data (e-mail, files, etc.) at any time and anywhere.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/08/20135 comments
The Cloud Security Alliance is a who's who of important cloud vendors, everyone from eBay to Citrix to Microsoft and VMware. The group, as its name indicates, exists to make cloud computing safer. And a safer cloud is one more customers will go for, which is the profit for this non-profit group.
The alliance has made a couple of recent moves. In one, it publicized guidelines for encrypting data-in-use.
Their main point is "it is critical that the customer, and not the cloud service provider, is responsible for the security and encryption protection controls necessary to meet their requirements," the group says.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/11/20122 comments
I've known Jeff McNaught for years, mostly through his years at Wyse. Jeff was always on the marketing side, but he came off as a product guy -- super knowledgeable and excited. Dell bought Wyse and now Jeff drives strategy for Dell's Cloud Client Computing group.
McNaught recently talked to Bruce Hoard, editor in chief of Virtualization Review, about client infrastructure management in the cloud.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/11/20120 comments
Recently I walked you through how Paul Schnackenburg began to build a private cloud. The system consists of three servers: one a domain controller and the other two a two-node cluster virtualized by way of Hyper-V under Windows Server 2012.
Having 32GB of RAM leaves ample room for software which is the topic of part two of Paul Schnackenburg's build.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/04/20120 comments
GFI is one of many third parties that are now moving on-premises wares to the cloud. In GFI's case, its network server monitoring software and Vipre security software now form what is known as GFI Cloud.
Redmond magazine's Brien Posey recently took a look at GFI Cloud and unlike Wayne and Garth, found it worthy.
The first claim Posey tested is that the software can be set and operational in minutes. Posey set up a trial through the Web and signed up through a wizard which asked for some identifying information then offered the selection of services, and then the download of the management agent began.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/04/20123 comments
There are a million different types of cloud providers and choosing the one that fits your business requires a lot of research. After doing some sleuthing, you should directly ask some direct questions. Virtualization Review blogger Elias Khnaser has six you should start with.
In data centers, data leakage is a huge concern, despite the fact that your own staff is watching over the data. It is that much more of a concern in the cloud where the provider's admins are handling your information.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/27/20120 comments
Every cloud survey I've seen in eons points to security as the biggest concern in moving to the cloud. And on the surface that makes sense. Your data is no longer in your shop but elsewhere in a provider's network. More telling, the data also has to move from the provider over the Internet to wherever it's going.
Logically all this is fraught with danger. But I am not one that is terribly terrified. I don't trust every internal IT person so the data is not necessarily safer in one's own data center. And the security within a data center where that is the vendor's only business should be better, with more modern tools and up-to-date security experts hired as guards.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/30/20120 comments
With hackers in abundance, a loss of physical data ownership clouds can be high risk. That is plenty of exposure. And moving from cloud to cloud, such as private to public and perhaps hybrid (which itself entails toggling between private and public) adds a whole new element of danger. Andrew Hay, CloudPassage's chief evangelist, tackles the issue in a conversation with Enterprise Systems Journal.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/30/20120 comments
The cloud, as vendors tell us, can do nearly everything except wash the dishes. One new area is serving up virtual desktops/PCs over the cloud as opposed to the corporate network. The beauty here is you can get at your virtual PC from nearly anywhere. My fear is when you don't have solid connections across all hops and into wherever you are, your PC runs like you have Windows 1.0 on an 80286.
Pricing and flexibility may make up for the performance up and downs. And according to Atlantis Computing, the savings are dramatic.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/23/20121 comments