Maria Spínola

Perhaps by now, after you have read the: - Cloud Computing, in Plain English, to IT Directors, VP's, CIO's and CEO's - Why Should IT Directors, VP's, CIO's and CEO's Care About Cloud Computing? - Cloud Equals SaaS, Grid, Utility Computing, Hosting...? - What Exactly is Cloud Computing? - Why Large Public and Private Sector Organizations (not just SMB's) Are Seriously Considering Cloud Computing? you may be asking the following questions, among many others: • Where is my data? • How does my data securely enter and exit the cloud? • How is my data protected in transit? • Who has access to my data? • Who is accountable if something goes wrong? • What’s the disaster recovery plan, including response to a pandemic? • How to comply with Export and Privacy laws? • Will my data disappear when m... (more)

The Five Characteristics of Cloud Computing

In the previous article Cloud Equals SaaS, Grid, Utility Computing, Hosting...? I made the following statement: "SaaS is one of the three possible Cloud Computing delivery modes; however, to be considered Cloud Computing, any of those delivery modes must have certain specific characteristics" So, in this article we will look at those specific characteristics that define exactly what is Cl... (more)

Cloud Computing Implementation Road-Map

Cloud Expo on Ulitzer Step 1- Determine the Bad and Good "Candidates" for the Cloud First, start by taking a broad look at the applications and other IT resources and systems under your "control" (both existing ones and planned ones); categorize them into mission-critical (i.e., if it goes offline your company will not "survive") and non-mission-critical. Both mission-critical and non-mis... (more)

Rushing To Cloud Computing Can Be Bad

Business managers know that in spite of the benefits of every new technology/business model, there are also risks and issues like trust, loss of privacy, regulatory violation, data replication, coherency and erosion of integrity, application sprawl, and dependencies, among others. Therefore they realize that rushing things when it comes to Cloud Computing can be a very bad decision. Howeve... (more)

Cloud Computing Challenges and the Balance Between Risks and Benefits

In the previous article we looked at some Cloud Security Advantages. Now let's now look at some Cloud Challenges. Cloud Challenges • Trusting vendor’s security model • Customer inability to respond to audit findings • Obtaining support for investigations • Indirect administrator accountability • Proprietary implementations can’t be examined • Loss of physical control; Data dispersal and internatio... (more)