Cloud computing - Sizzle to Fizzle?

What is the #1 concern of IT pros regarding cloud computing? It's security. 53% of the folks who responded to the Information Week Analytics Cloud Computing Survey cited this as their #1 concern. The concern occupying the #2 and #3 spots? Performance (33%) and control (31%). Until these numbers get a lot closer to zero it is going to be difficult to achieve cloud lift-off.

As pointed out in the article:

18 percent of the 456 business technology professionals surveyed said they were using cloud services, compared with 34 percent who have no interest. More than half said they are very concerned about security, with performance, control, and concerns over vendor lock-in and support rounding out the top five worries.

The security, performance and control concerns have to be alleviated. If not, then I think we're looking at another one of those groundhog day type moments: "It's the year of cloud computing!"

Know what I mean?

Technorati Tags:
cloud computing, security

Best buy for the Quest One Identity Solution, 5 stars for Defender

As awarded to us by SC Magazine in the February, 2009 issue for the Quest One Identity Solution.

Top drawer product, easy to manage, and a real value for the money. We rate this as our Best Buy for the month. We find this product to be a great value for the money based on its solid capability and ease of management.

We also got 5 stars for Quest Defender, our two-factor authentication product.

The Defender v5.3 from Quest Software provides strong two-factor authentication through a variety of token options. This solution is all-inclusive delivering both client-side and server-based functionality and management.

Not bad!

Technorati Tags:
Quest Software, identity management, QSFT

Highlights from the US Army Symposium at Microsoft

I thought I would jot down some mental notes from a few of the sessions I saw today here at the U.S. Army Symposium at the Microsoft Conference Center:

Some of the highlights from Bob Muglia's keynote session:

• Not surprising to see significant discussion by Bob around virtualization supporting on-premises and cloud services workloads. "Applications themselves need to support these concepts. There's a lot of complexity in existing applications. There's a lot of work still to do here." - How true!
• Bob talked about his use of Microsoft Direct Access (part of Win7) while he is traveling. DA leverages IPSec, IPv6 and strong authentication to enable an end-user to access corporate resources without the use of a VPN. - Cool technology but is every data center Windows only?
• I twittered that I was surprised that I didn't hear Bob once mention "identity management" despite the fact that it was listed by LTG Sorenson (Army CIO) as a key priority (along with federation).

RADM Elizabethe Hight who is the Vice-Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency presented the "DISA Enterprise". Some interesting comments from her...

• Social networking is becoming more and more important as a communications mean between the armed forces and NGOs (non-goverment organizations) so they can share information. You can imagine that the NGOs all use Twitter, blogs and instant messaging yet our armed forces don't have that capability. I thought this was cool to see the embracing of social networking as a tool to help communicate with the outside world in times of crisis.
• Also interesting to see the launching of the military's source forge to support open source development within the services.
• Oh, and more comments about the importance of identity to the overall mission!

A very interesting set of presentations and a very different view on IT from our friends at the Army. I'm glad I was able to attend!

Technorati Tags:
Quest Software, Microsoft, identity management, federation, QSFT, MSFT

Temporary relocation of the Reality Tour - to Paris!

My wife and I are moving to Paris for 3 months! So, from approximately April 15-July 15, 2009 I'll be authoring my blog posts from there. Hopefully, most of my posts will be written sitting by La Seine, or in the various cafés around our apartment.

We've started another blog to share our Paris experiences here in case you want to follow along. And, of course, if any of you happen to be passing through Paris while we are there I'd love to hear from you. I'll buy you a pression (draft beer) or a café au lait. À bientôt!