Practical Technology

for practical people.

April 22, 2013
by sjvn01
0 comments

The CIA and the cloud

If your company mistrusts the security of the cloud, it might want to take a look at what The Company is doing.

“The Company” is a term that insiders have long used to refer to the CIA. Is there any organization that takes security more seriously? Perhaps, but probably not within the Fortune 500. And yet the CIA appears to be moving to the cloud.

Seriously. According to FCW, a publication that tracks the intersection of government and technology, the CIA has agreed to a cloud computing contract with Amazon that may be worth up to $600 million over 10 years. Specifically, Amazon Web Services will help the intelligence agency build a private cloud infrastructure.

What? You expected the CIA to put its secrets on the Amazon EC2? I don’t think so!

The CIA and the cloud. More >

April 18, 2013
by sjvn01
0 comments

OpenStack gains in maturity and popularity

No, it’s not your imagination. You have been hearing more and more about OpenStack in recent weeks and you’re only going to be hearing a lot more as time goes by.

 

First, for those of you who haven’t met it yet, OpenStack is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing open-source software stack. It’s made up of seven core components: Compute, Object Storage, Identity, Dashboard, Block Storage, Network and Image Service. Put them together and you have everything you need to run a public or private IaaS cloud on Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS).

 

Of course, I could rattle off a whole laundry list of other IaaS cloud software stacks, but OpenStack is getting a lot of ink from the technology and business press recently. There are several reasons it’s getting so much attention.

 

At the top of the list, of course, is that OpenStack recently released a new version of its software stack, Grizzly. And as Forrester Research’s principal analyst for infrastructure and operations, James Staten, recently pointed out, with this release “Cisco, Red Hat, Rackspace, IBM, Intel, HP, and many other traditional enterprise suppliers concentrated much of their efforts over the past six months to hardening OpenStack and ensuring it would deliver against enterprise expectations and requirements.”

 

As Citigroup software analyst Walter Pritchard said in a note to clients, “In three short years, the open source OpenStack initiative has reached broad-based industry support towards an ambitious goal of providing a complete cloud-based infrastructure offering… there is simply too much momentum behind OpenStack development for the base case to not be at least moderate success.”

OpenStack gains in maturity and popularity. More >

April 4, 2013
by sjvn01
0 comments

There’s a new bear in the clouds: OpenStack releases Grizzly

If you like open source in your cloud, you have to be happy that the OpenStack Foundation has just released the latest version of its popular open-source Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud, Grizzly.

 

OpenStack, the so-called Linux of cloud computing, was founded by NASA and Rackspace software developers. Today, it’s supported by numerous companies and organizations. With Grizzly, Rackspace no longer dominates code changes. Red Hat, IBM, Nebula, and HP are also now major contributors.

 

While OpenStack lacks a strong single leader, a la Linux’s Linus Torvalds, the Foundation has been successful in keeping to its six-month release cycle. Grizzly comes after September 2012’s Folsom release, which was widely regarded as the first production-grade version.

 

So without further ado, let’s see what this latest version has brought us.

There’s a new bear in the clouds: OpenStack releases Grizzly. More >

April 4, 2013
by sjvn01
0 comments

Intuit brings Mint to your bank

Intuit, makers of Quicken and QuickBooks, is making its popular online personal finance service Mint available to financial institutions. As Ron Shevlin, senior analyst at Aite Group, told American Banker, “I’m surprised it took so long“.

Indeed, you could see this move coming at least three years ago when Aaron Patzer, Mint’s founder and then Intuit VP and GM of personal finance said, “Quicken Online will be going away, and we’ll be migrating to Mint“. At the time, he also suggested that Intuit “will have desktop products for at least another five years, simply due to comfort level more than anything else”. We’re two years away from that deadline. Could this be the first step to putting an end to desktop Quicken?

That would be premature.

Intuit brings Mint to your bank. More >