“Cloud” – Secure AND Green

Jul 7, 2010 by admin

Two articles caught my eye over the last couple of days, for different reasons.

Cloud Is More Secure

Denis Martin wrote a very good article about how it is possible, using layered techniques, to build an enviroment using Cloud technologies which is more secure that would be possible in-house. Here’s the summary:

Cloud Is More Secure
— Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides compelling cost and strategic benefits. These include scalability with reduced capital expenditure, more efficient use of IT resources, and the ability for an organization to focus on their enterprise’s core competency. Despite fears to the contrary, many well-established security technologies and procedures can be applied cloud computing and provide enterprise-class security. In many cases the cloud vendor may even provide better security in a virtualized environment than the individual enterprise can achieve in a purely physical architecture.[1]
The most effective security is a comprehensive, layered defense based on a framework. A cloud platform can leverage specialized tools to protect the integrity of virtual machines and Internet communications. Virtualization creates logical abstraction layers that allow for multi-tier security policies in order to provide true defense in depth. Enterprises with limited IT resources may not be able to afford the same security measures as a cloud provider and remain competitive. Deploying cloud-based IaaS represents an opportunity for the enterprise to build in security from the ground up.

Carbon Neutral On-line Service Provider

One of the ways I’ve been talking to hosters about how to position their On-live Services (“Cloud”) platforms is the reduction in energy costs to run a virtualised platform over physical ‘room heaters’ running at 5-10% capacity. Last week, CloudSigma announced that it was “Carbon neutral” as an organisation and was therefore offering the most environmentally friendly services available claiming that it’s “carbon neutral cloud services are the first of their kind in the industry.”

Of course running a datacenter isn’t the only aspect which consumed energy and leaves the dreaded ‘Carbon footprint’ but the independent organisation which evaluated CloudSigma, myclimate, have concluded that the organisations approach of “avoid, reduce and offset” has worked. OK, Switzerland does have one of the ‘greenest’ electricity supplies in the world available to it so they had a bit of a head-stert there, but it shows that this IS something to be taken seriously and it will become a factor in the decision =making processes of environmentally aware businesses and organisations.