Maneuver Warfare in IT: A Cheerleading Pundit

SOA is Dead; Long Live Services

By G C Network | January 7, 2009

Blogger: Anne Thomas ManesObituary: SOA“SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession. SOA is survived by its…

2009 – The Year of Cloud Computing!

By G C Network | January 6, 2009

Yes, everyone is making this bold statement. In his article, David Fredh laid out the reasons quite well: The technological hype has started already but the commercial breakthrough will come…

Salesforce.com and Google expand their alliance

By G C Network | January 5, 2009

In a Jan. 3rd announcement, Salesforce.com announced an expansion of its global strategic alliance with Google. In announcing the availability of Force.com for Google App Engine™, the team has connected…

December NCOIC Plenary Presentations

By G C Network | December 31, 2008

Presentations from the NCOIC Cloud Computing sessions held earlier this month have been posted on-line in the Federal Cloud Computing wiki. The event featured speakers from IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, HP,…

Booz|Allen|Hamilton Launches “Government Cloud Computing Community”

By G C Network | December 30, 2008

As a follow-up to a Washington, DC Executive Summit event, BoozAllenHamilton recently launched an on-line government cloud computing collaboration environment. In an effort to expand the current dialog around government…

Is Google Losing Document?

By G C Network | December 29, 2008

John Dvorak posted this question on his blog Saturday and as of Sunday evening had 52 responses! This is not a good thing for building confidence in cloud computing. Or…

Cryptographic Data Splitting? What’s that?

By G C Network | December 26, 2008

Cryptographic data splitting is a new approach to securing information. This process encrypts data and then uses random or deterministic distribution to multiple shares. this distribution can also include fault…

Now really. Should the Obama administration use cloud computing?

By G C Network | December 23, 2008

It’s amazing what a little radio time will do! Since Sunday’s broadcast, I’ve been asked numerous times about my real answer to the question “Will ‘Cloud Computing’ Work In White…

NPR “All Things Considered” considers Government Cloud Computing

By G C Network | December 21, 2008

My personal thanks to Andrea Seabrook, Petra Mayer and National Public Radio for their report “Will ‘Cloud Computing’ Work In White House?” on today’s “All Things Considered”. When I started this blog…

HP Brings EDS Division into it’s cloud plans

By G C Network | December 18, 2008

The Street reported earlier this week that Hewlett Packard’s EDS division has won a $111 million contract with the Department of Defense (DoD) that could eventually support the U.S. military’s…

The Twitter conversation between Christofer Hoff and I went like this:
Christofer – I haven’t formally blogged a resp. (yet) to @Kevin_Jackson on his ‘maneuver warfare in IT’ Not just a cultural shift but a huge tech. one
Kevin – @Beaker I’m looking forward to your comments.
Christofer –  @Kevin_Jackson I want them to be constructive, so I’ll do my best. I’m having trouble with the reality distortion field vs. unicorns 😉
Kevin – @Beaker LOL
I strongly recommend that you read his response titled “Cloud Computing Security: (Orchestral) Maneuvers In the Dark?”. It begins:
“I enjoyed Kevin’s piece but struggled with how I might respond: cheerleader or pundit.  I tried for a bit of both.”
The challenges he had with my article, include:
  • Mixing tenses in some key spots seemed to imply that out of the box today, Cloud Computing can deliver on the promises Kevin is describing now.  Given the audience, this can lead to unachievable expectations
  • The disconnect between the public, private and military sectors with an over-reliance on military analogies as a model representing an ideal state of security operations and strategy can be startling
  • Unrealistic portrayals of where we are with the maturity of Cloud/virtualization mobility, portability, interoperability and security capabilities
His last couple of paragraphs, however, really brings it home:
“It’s absolutely a cultural issue, but we must strive to be realistic about where we are with Cloud and security technology and capabilities as aligned.  As someone who’s spent the last 15 years in IT/Security, I can say that this is NOT the “…dawning of a new day in IT security,” rather it’s still dark out and will be for quite some time.  There is indeed opportunity to utilize Cloud and virtualization to react better, faster and more efficiently, but let’s not pretend we’re treating the problem when what we’re doing is making the symptoms less noticeable.
I am absolutely bullish on Cloud, but not Cloud Security as it stands, at least not until we make headway toward fundamentally fixing the foundational problems we have that allow the problems to occur in the first place.”
Please read his post and comment.  This is a GOOD conversation !!

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network