Maneuver Warfare in IT: A Cheerleading Pundit

Why the Cloud? Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination

By G C Network | October 23, 2008

So why is the intelligence community so interested in cloud computing? Three letters: PED (Processing, Exploitation, Dissemination). Take these two real life examples from the publishing industry. Jim Staten of…

World Summit of Cloud Computing: “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group

By G C Network | October 22, 2008

To leverage attendees of the World Summit of Cloud Computing, a kick-off meeting of the “Enterprise Cloud Computing” work group will be held near Tel Aviv, Israel on December 3,…

Cloud Package Management

By G C Network | October 21, 2008

In his post “Missing in the Cloud: package management“, Dave Rosenberg highlights a critical issue in the adoption of cloud computing by government agencies. “I dare say that a standard…

PlugIntoTheCloud.com

By G C Network | October 20, 2008

Information Week has just launched PlugIntoTheCloud.com as their cloud computing destination. In his Non Linear Thinking blog, Bill Martin calls it a movement aimed at “providing a source and forum…

Is the cloud computing hype bad?

By G C Network | October 17, 2008

From Gartner “Why a little cloud hype might be useful“: “It’s too simplistic to say cloud hype is bad . If we are technically expert is might irritate us with…

Stop the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) !!

By G C Network | October 16, 2008

Dan Morrill! Count me in !! In his excellent article, “Cloud Computing is Scary – But the FUD Has to Stop“,  Dan makes some excellent points: It is time to…

IBM, Microsoft and Google

By G C Network | October 15, 2008

On October 6th, IBM launched their cloud services initiative. This is a:  “[C]ompany-wide initiative that extends its traditional software delivery model toward a mix of on-premise and cloud computing applications…

Government in the Cloud

By G C Network | October 13, 2008

Back in mid-September, there was quite a thread in the Google Cloud Computing Group on the use of cloud computing by the federal government.  Some of the interesting comments were:…

CloudCamp Partners With SOA-R !!

By G C Network | October 10, 2008

I’m proud to announce that the final SOA-R Cloud Computing Education Event will be held in collaboration with CloudCamp. Now dubbed CloudCamp:Federal, the event will be held as an “unconference” to help…

Federal Cloud Computing Wiki

By G C Network | October 9, 2008

With the fast growing interest in cloud computing, the Federal Government community has established a Federal Cloud Computing Wiki. This wiki is managed by Dr. Brand Niemann, Senior Enterprise Architect…

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 !!

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G C Network