psilva's prophecies: March 2012

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Surfing the Surveys: Cloud, Security and those Pesky Breaches

While I’m not the biggest fan of taking surveys, I sure love the data/reports that are generated by such creatures. And boy has there been a bunch of recent statistical information released on cloud computing, information security, breaches and general IT. Since this prologue is kinda lame, let’s just get into the sometimes frightening, sometimes encouraging and always interesting results from a variety of sources.

2012 Verizon Data Breach Report: If you haven’t, read Securosis' blog about how to read and digest the report. It’s a great primer on what to expect. An important piece mentioned is that it’s a Breach report, not a cybercrime or attack report. It only includes incidents where data was taken – no data loss, not included. And with that in mind, according to the report, there were 855 incidents with 174 million compromised records, the 2nd highest data loss total since they’ve been tracking (2004). This coming after a record low 4 million lost records last year. The gold record of stolen records. While hacktivism exploded, accounted for 100 million of that 174 mill of stolen records and 58% of all data theft along with untraditional motives; credit cards, intellectual property, classified info and trade secrets were all still hot targets. 81% of the breaches used some sort of hacking with 69% involving malware. 79% were targets of opportunity meaning they had an exploitable vulnerability rather than being ‘on a list.’ 96% of the breaches were not that difficult and 97% could have been avoided using simple to standard protection mechanisms. Unfortunately, organizations typically don’t discover the breach until weeks later. As Securosis points out, don’t be flustered by the massive increase in lost data but focus on the attack and defense trends to help protect against becoming a statistic and as Verizon mentions, ‘this study reminds us that our profession has the necessary tools to get the job done. The challenge for the good guys lies in selecting the right tools for the job at hand and then not letting them get dull and rusty over time. Evidence shows when that happens, the bad guys are quick to take advantage of it.’

BMC Software Survey: Conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of BMC, ‘Delivering on High Cloud Expectations’ found that while 81% of the respondents said that a comprehensive cloud strategy is a high priority, they are facing huge challenges in accomplishing that task – mainly complexity. Even with cost reduction as a top IT priority, 43% reported using three or more hypervisor technologies as they try to reduce complexity. CIOs are concerned that cloud technologies offer an avenue for groups to circumvent IT which may hinder IT’s ability to meet overall business expectations. When groups deploy unmanaged public cloud services without IT involvement it can add to the complexity that they are trying to avoid. While 79% of respondents do plan on supporting mission-critical workloads on unmanaged public cloud services over the next two years, only 36% allow this today. No surprise that hybrid-cloud deployments, at 37%, was the most desired deployment. The full study results will be announced on Thursday, April 26, 2012 at 11 a.m. CDT as part of a BMC webinar.

CSC Cloud Usage Index: Late last year, Independent research firm TNS surveyed more than 3,500 cloud computing users in eight countries around the world to find answers to cloud usage, expectations, attitudes and other cloud related questions. The survey focused on capturing user information about outcomes and experiences rather than predictions and intentions. In an interesting shift from the typical ‘cost savings’ and ‘business agility’ usually cited as a top motivator, one-third of respondents cite their need to better connect employees who use a multitude of computing devices as the number one reason they adopt cloud. 17% claim agility and only 10% indicate cost savings as a top reason for cloud adoption. 82% of respondents said they saved money on their most recent cloud project but 35% of U.S organizations reported a payback of less that $20,000. In terms of overall IT performance, 93% of respondents say cloud improved their data center efficiency/utilization and 80% see similar improvements within six months of moving to the cloud.

Zenoss 100 Best Cloud Stats of 2011: Admittedly, this came out last year but it is still a great statistical overview of Cloud Computing. It starts with data growth stats, like 48 hours of video uploaded to youtube every minute; that 74% of Data Centers have increased their server count over the last three years accounting for 5.75 million new servers every year yet 15% do not have data backup and recovery plans; that, on average, cloud users report saving 21% annually on those applications moved to the cloud; that a delay of 1 second in page load times equals 7% loss of conversions, 11% fewer pages viewed and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction; that Agility is the top driver for cloud adoption and Scalability the top factor influencing cloud use; that 74% of companies are using some sort of cloud service today yet 79% do not have an IT roadmap for cloud computing and a whole slew of others. All the stats appear to be attributed and run the gamut from storage to cloud to apps.

Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) study: As enterprises continue to embrace cloud adoption, it is important for service providers to understand motivators for cloud adoption to ensure those services are being offered. This study, USA Cloud Adoption & Trends 2012 shows that smaller U.S. companies indicate that flexibility as their main driver for cloud adoption while large enterprises cite cost savings as their main reason for cloud deployments. This survey also noted that ‘Cloud’ is no longer a nebulous buzzword with 76% of polled organizations already using some sort of cloud computing for at least one service. Organizations are happy about it also – 98% said they were satisfied with the results of their cloud services with 94% expecting to increase their use in the next 12 months. Data security and data privacy were tagged as the top concerns with 56% and 53% respectively.

By no means an exhaustive list of all the recent survey results pertaining to cloud and/or IT security, but they do offer some interesting data points to consider as organizations continue to strive to deliver their available applications as fast and secure as possible.

Technorati Tags: F5, survey, personal cloud, cloud computing, Pete Silva, security, business, data breach, technology,application delivery, cloud, mobile, infrastructure 2.0, web, internet

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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Kids and their Dot Coms

My daughter likes to glue pictures in a composition notebook – Disney Princesses, giraffes, fairies, Barbie scenes, herself and many other things a kindergartener gravitates towards. Usually she asks for certain characters or a particular animal and I go find and print. This weekend, however, as she was asking for some Barbie pictures and a basketball player, she specifically said, ‘you need to go to barbie.com and basketballplayer.com to get the pictures.’ Oh really? She’s known about ‘dot com’ for a while, especially buyslushymagic.com but this was one of the first times she’s requested, rather instructed me to visit specific sites for her crafts. She is good at a keyboard and knows how to search for youtube videos, which is becoming the norm for 5 year olds.

I totally understand that each generation, due to whatever technological advancements, grow up in different era's with different ways of doing things and many conversations start with, ‘When I was growing up…’ or ‘When I was a kid…’ We didn’t have TV; we only had black & white TV; we had to get up to change the channel on our TV; we didn’t have cable TV; we had square TVs; we didn’t have HDTV; our TV wasn’t hooked up to the internet; we didn’t have streaming movies to the TV and soon it’ll be, ‘we didn’t have TVs that watched us when I was a kid.’ It’s fun to live during a time of so much technology innovation and growth and to work for a company, F5, that is an integral part of how it all works.

And as is usually the case when I’m contemplating some nostalgia related topic, I came across this infographic:

Then vs Now: How Things Have Changed from 1982 to 2012

Isn’t it fun to look back and remember what we were doing last century?

Technorati Tags: Pete Silva, F5, security, history, nostalgia, 1980, education, technology

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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Hey You, Get Off-ah My Cloud!

Who would have thought that a Rolling Stones song written almost 50 years ago could become a technology cliché (or battle cry) a half-century later. Yesterday, research firm Gartner Inc. said that by 2014, The Personal Cloud will replace the Personal Computer as the Center of the Users’ Digital Lives. The Cloud has come a long way in a few years – quickly going from some nebulous thing based on virtualization that everyone tried to define to the Center of our Digital Lives. This does not necessarily mean the death of the PC, personal computer that is, it just means that the focus will be on the devices, leveraging each device strength, how we use various/different devices daily and deliver the content based on that context. Since we’ll be able to get to our stuff, all our stuff, on whatever device we have at the time, we’ll be happier and more productive.

OK, what’s the bad news? This will require IT to completely rethink how they deliver applications and services to users yet again.

According to Gartner’s Press Release:

Several driving forces are combining to create this new era. These megatrends have roots that extend back through the past decade but are aligning in a new way.

Megatrend No. 1: Consumerization — You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
Gartner has discussed the consumerization of IT for the better part of a decade, and has seen the impact of it across various aspects of the corporate IT world. However, much of this has simply been a precursor to the major wave that is starting to take hold across all aspects of information technology as several key factors come together:

Users are more technologically savvy and have very different expectations of technology.

The Internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users.

The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users.

Users have become innovators.

Through the democratization of technology, users of all types and status within organizations can now have similar technology available to them.

Megatrend No. 2: Virtualization — Changing How the Game Is Played
Virtualization has improved flexibility and increased the options for how IT organizations can implement client environments. Virtualization has, to some extent, freed applications from the peculiarities of individual devices, operating systems or even processor architectures. Virtualization provides a way to move the legacy of applications and processes developed in the PC era forward into the new emerging world. This provides low-power devices access to much-greater processing power, thus expanding their utility and increasing the reach of processor-intensive applications.

Megatrend No. 3: "App-ification" — From Applications to Apps
When the way that applications are designed, delivered and consumed by users changes, it has a dramatic impact on all other aspects of the market. These changes will have a profound impact on how applications are written and managed in corporate environments. They also raise the prospect of greater cross-platform portability as small user experience (UX) apps are used to adjust a server- or cloud-resident application to the unique characteristics of a specific device or scenario. One application can now be exposed in multiple ways and used in varying situations by the user.

Megatrend No. 4: The Ever-Available Self-Service Cloud
The advent of the cloud for servicing individual users opens a whole new level of opportunity. Every user can now have a scalable and nearly infinite set of resources available for whatever they need to do. The impacts for IT infrastructures are stunning, but when this is applied to the individual, there are some specific benefits that emerge. Users' digital activities are far more self-directed than ever before. Users demand to make their own choices about applications, services and content, selecting from a nearly limitless collection on the Internet. This encourages a culture of self-service that users expect in all aspects of their digital experience. Users can now store their virtual workspace or digital personality online.

Megatrend No. 5: The Mobility Shift — Wherever and Whenever You Want
Today, mobile devices combined with the cloud can fulfill most computing tasks, and any tradeoffs are outweighed in the minds of the user by the convenience and flexibility provided by the mobile devices. The emergence of more-natural user interface experiences is making mobility practical. Touch- and gesture-based user experiences, coupled with speech and contextual awareness, are enabling rich interaction with devices and a much greater level of freedom. At any point in time, and depending on the scenario, any given device will take on the role of the user's primary device — the one at the center of the user's constellation of devices.

"The combination of these megatrends, coupled with advances in new enabling technologies, is ushering in the era of the personal cloud," said Mr. Kleynhans. "In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared in the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself."

Of course I immediately thought of Pigpen with his cloud of dust following him around or that we will all have those ‘thinking’ balloons around us wherever we go.

At least we can keep the acronym.

Resources:

Technorati Tags: F5, gartner, personal cloud, cloud computing, Pete Silva, security, business, consumerization, technology, application delivery, cloud, mobile, infrastructure 2.0, web, internet

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Friday, March 9, 2012

RSA2012 & Pulse2012 Video Outtakes/Bloopers Double Feature

What better way to spend 5 Minutes or Less on a Friday than watch someone else’s flubs. Here are the video bloopers, outtakes, mistakes and laughs while we shot video during the RSA2012 conference. Enjoy.

RSA2012 - The Video Outtakes

Pulse2010 - The Video Bloopers

The Videos

(in reverse order)

Pulse2012

RSA2012

Technorati Tags: F5, video, Pete Silva, security, business, big-ip, rsa, pulse, outtakes, bloopers, humor

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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Pulse2012 - That's a Wrap

Wrapping it up from the IBM Pulse2012 show and expresses thanks to F5ers Ron Carovano, Nojan Moshiri, Brian Tully, Charlie Nath and Courtney Peddicord. Also thanks to Brian Pfeffer of PhoneFactor and Leo Reiter of Virtual Bridges.