Transformation Infrastructure

Strategies And Technologies for Cloud Computing Interoperability (SATCCI)

By G C Network | March 4, 2009

As I alluded to in an earlier post, a major cloud computing interoperability event will be held in conjunction with the Object Management Group (OMG) March Technical Meeting on March…

Government Cloud Computing E-zine Launched

By G C Network | March 3, 2009

Today marks the launch of a new electronic magazine dedicated to addressing cloud computing within the government space. Over the last year during my personal exploration of this marketspace, I’ve…

NCOIC Plenary: Cloud Computing Working Group

By G C Network | March 2, 2009

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in the NCOIC Cloud Computing Working Group. Led by Cisco Systems Distinguished Engineer, Mr. Krishna Sankar of Cisco Systems, the meeting purpose…

2nd Government Cloud Computing Survey – A Sneak Peek

By G C Network | February 25, 2009

This month, we’re in the middle of collecting data for our 2nd Government Cloud Computing Survey. to peek your curiosity (an to entice your participation) here is a sneak peek…

Government could save billions with cloud computing

By G C Network | February 23, 2009

In a recent study, published by MeriTalk, Red Hat and DLT Solutions, the Federal government could save $6.6 billion by using cloud computing or software-as-a-service. “Looking at 30 federal agencies,…

Cloud Games at FOSE 2009

By G C Network | February 19, 2009

ONLINE REGISTRATION NOW AVAILABLE Booz Allen Hamilton is launching its Cloud Computing Wargame (CCW)T at FOSE March 10-12, 2009 in Washington, DC. The CCW is designed to simulate the major…

IBM and Amazon

By G C Network | February 16, 2009

According to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) site, you can now use DB2, Informix, WebSphere sMash, WebSphere Portal Server or Lotus Web Content Management on Amazon’s EC2 cloud. “This relationship…

A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | February 13, 2009

Yesterday, Berkeley released their View of Cloud Computing with a view that cloud computing provides an elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale, that is unprecedented in…

Cloud Economic Models

By G C Network | February 11, 2009

One of the most important drivers of cloud computing in the Federal space is its perceived “compelling” economic value. Some initial insight on the economic argument is now available on…

Cloud Computing In Government: From Google Apps To Nuclear Warfare

By G C Network | February 10, 2009

Today, I want to thank John Foley of InformationWeek for an enjoyable interview and his excellent post, Cloud Computing In Government: From Google Apps To Nuclear Warfare. Our discussion covered…

Hybrid IT enables a composable infrastructure which describes a framework whose physical compute, storage, and network fabric resources are treated as services.

Resources are logically pooled so that administrators need to physically configure hardware to support a specific software application, which describes the function of a composable architecture.

This type of transformative infrastructure is foundational to contemporary agile business because a hybrid IT environment, private clouds, public clouds, community clouds, traditional data centers, and services from service providers must be integrated and interconnected.

Composable infrastructures can build new revenue-generating products and services faster while simultaneously addressing the key inhibitors to change, which include the following:     

  • General concerns regarding lack of adequate hybrid infrastructure security     
  • The false impression that cloud cannot support the operational/performance requirements of critical applications (e.g., SAP and Oracle)     
  • Management challenge presented by multi-cloud environments contracts that will include varying levels of governance and service-level agreements (SLAs)     
  • The need to match employee management skills across various cloud platforms 

Composable infrastructure architectures have two major functions. They must be able to disaggregate

and aggregate resources into pools and compose consumable resources through a unified API.

Fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks will significantly enhance the current mobile network environment. These new networks will use multi-access edge computing (MEC) to extend composable enterprise infrastructures to the network edge, a capability broadly referred to as edge computing.

To support this future IT-operating environment, enterprise content and application developers need to collaborate with telecommunications network operators to gain access to edge services.

Using this architecture, “Internet of Things†(IoT) applications can respond in real time to local events and use cloud capabilities for all other data processing functions.

Edge computing application design development model has three locations:     

  • Client    
  • Near server     
  • Far server  

An end-to-end IT service designed to operate in an IoT environment follows this model also but with different reference names or components:      

  • Terminal device component     
  • Edge component(s)     
  • Remote component(s) 

The IoT architecture emphasizes the distribution of components. In this environment, network services (i.e., routers, firewalls, load balancers, XML processing, and WAN optimization devices) are replaced with software running on virtual machines.

To ensure secure operations, key cybersecurity tasks include the following:     

  • Securing the controller as the centralized decision point for access to the Software Defined Network (SDN)     
  • Protecting the controller against malware or attack     
  • Establish trust by protecting the communications throughout the network by ensuring the SDN controller, related applications, and managed devices are all trusted entities     
  • Creation of a robust policy framework that establishes a system of checks and balances across all SDN controllers     
  • Conducting forensics and remediation when an incident happens in order to determine the cause and prevent reoccurrence  

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) establishes a virtualized networking environment dedicated to providing different network services. If NFV is used, the SDN can also act as a hypervisor for NFV virtual machines.

Approaches for implementing cybersecurity protections include the following:     

  • Embed security within the virtualized network devices     
  • Embed security into the SDN servers, storage, and other computing devices 

The Zero Trust security model is centered on the belief that organizations should not trust anything inside or outside their perimeters. This model requires verification of anything and everything trying to connect to its systems before access is granted. The Zero Trust approach uses existing technologies and governance processes in securing the enterprise IT environment.

When designing and deploying transformational solutions across enterprise, cloud, 5G networks, MEC environment, and the Zero Trust paradigm must be extended to include all associated SDNs.

Read more about digital transformation and transformation infrastructure: grab a copy of my new book, Click to Transform, out today!

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