Webremix Articles

Financial Services Focus on Security: Survey

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:26:23 GMT

After years of slashing IT budgets in a down economy, most financial services firms are now investing in identity management and other security applications.

OIN sponsors mobile ID management research

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:23:00 GMT

The Open Invention Network patent pool is dipping its toe into sponsoring research in the field of mobile device identity management and has acquired related key intellectual property from Arizona State University...

Nigeria: Galaxy Backbone's Nationwide Identity Management ICT Infrastructure Inaugurated

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:39:58 GMT

Director General, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Dr. Chris Onyemenam has commended Galaxy Backbone for completing and commissioning the first phase of a nationwide national identity management ICT infrastructure network.

Air India cancels costly deal with Australian firm for image makeover

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:59:53 GMT

'Following a review of the brand and identity management plans, the project with Cato Purnell Partners has been annulled,' an Air India spokesperson said.

Radiant Logic Announces ID-Connect and Context Browser Client Applications

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:20:14 GMT

Radiant Logic , a provider of virtual directory solutions for identity management and enterprise information integration, has unveiled two new web-based client applications ID-Connect and Context Browser for its RadiantOne VDS Context Edition version 5.3. The apps are supposed to offer a social networking interface based on identity virtualization ...

CA Technologies Executes on Its Cloud Strategy

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:15:00 GMT

CA Technologies on Wednesday announced new product, customer and partner proof points of how its identity and access management (IAM) technology supports use of cloud applications by enhancing security, helping to ease compliance efforts, and automating processes for improved operational efficiencies in managing the IT supply chain. The announcement includes the availability of new CA Identity Manager capabilities that extend identity management to cloud applications; it highlights how a customer has leveraged the CA SiteMinder portfolio to control access to its SaaS applications; and it features how CA Technologies is providing IAM as a service from the cloud. It also includes technology integration to streamline Identity Governance processes, and help ensure security policies are followed, and access and entitlements are appropriately granted and certified.

Planet Eclipse: Wayne Beaton: Eclipse is… a Community

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:36:16 GMT

Summer madness has force me to leave a gap in the delivery of my award-winning “Eclipse is…” blog series. But I’m back now. In this series, I walk through the many different aspects of Eclipse, starting with the definition that most people are comfortable with: Eclipse is a Java IDE. But, as the series discusses, Eclipse is more than that. Technology-wise, Eclipse is a platform for building IDEs, tools, applications, runtimes, and more. Eclipse is open source projects. Lots and lots of open source projects covering a vast array of topics from modeling to identity management and object-relational persistence.

It’s certainly true that great technology is an important part of what makes Eclipse what it is. However, technology alone isn’t enough. Technology needs to have a community. And at Eclipse, we’ve got community. At Eclipse, we bring the community together to do great things.

Community is about coming together to do things as a group that no single person can do by themselves. Whether it be chasing snakes from a local watering hole, or building great technology and support.

Eclipse is actually a collection of communities that intersect. The Eclipse Development Process defines three different communities: users, adopters, and contributors/committers. Each of these communities has different requirements and expectations from Eclipse.

The first community, users, tends to regard of Eclipse primarily as a consumable product. They are primarily concerned with using an Eclipse-based IDE to build solutions. We estimate the size of this community to be between four and six million in size; though the fact that more than a million downloads of the new Helios packages occurred in the first month of availability leads me to believe that the community is even larger than our estimate.

The adopter community contains individuals and organizations that build solutions based on Eclipse technology. This can be as simple as providing a plug-in that runs in an Eclipse IDE, or as involved as basing an entire product on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) or Rich Ajax Platform (RAP). It also includes those individuals and organizations who base a business on providing development assistance and support for Eclipse technology. One way or another, adopters tend to be building Eclipse plug-ins to provide solutions that directly or indirectly leverage Eclipse technology (though this is not necessarily the case as some Eclipse technology–like EclipseLink, and EMF–can be leveraged in plain-old-Java application). We don’t even try to estimate the size of the adopter community; it’s just too hard to do. There are more than a thousand “solutions” in the Eclipse Marketplace. This is really just the tip of the iceberg; it doesn’t include, for example, the bajillions of in-house applications (some of these are captured in case studies) that leverage Eclipse technology.

The contributor/committer community contains that group of individuals and organizations who contribute directly to Eclipse projects. These are the individuals who provide patches and/or contribute new functionality to the various Eclipse projects. Contributors tend to participate directly in an Eclipse project by providing code, ideas, answers to questions in the forums, and more. Committers are a subset of the contributors with write access to the resources maintained by a project (committer access is provided on a project-by-project basis). The idea is that over time, a contributor is invited to become a committer and elected into that position based on credibility established over a period of time. At last count we had almost a thousand committers and thousands of contributors (more than 11,000 individuals have contributed at least one patch to an Eclipse project).

Developing a community is an important part of being an Eclipse project. In fact, an integral part of the Eclipse Development Process. As part of a review process, a project is required to demonstrate their community-building activities, like blogging, speaking opportunities and more.

The graphic on this slide attempts to show that the various communities interact with each other. Users consume the software produced by the contributors/committers and the adopters, and provide feedback. Some subset of those users will provide feedback and other input into the project. Adopters also provide feedback and input. Some number of adopters may become contributors and ultimately committers. Projects with large communities have greater potential to have very diverse committer communities and broad consumption by adopters. There’s really more to it, but I’ll leave this discussion for a later post.

At this point in my presentation, I usually stop and ask the audience how many of them already have Eclipse Bugzilla accounts. Then, noticing that a large number of people haven’t put up their hands, I facetiously marvel that so many people have managed to use Eclipse for so long without ever having encountered any sort of problem. I use this opportunity to tell people that it’s okay to open bug reports (I once tried to use Erich Gamma’s bug-reports-are-like-love-letters analogy but decided that that wasn’t my style).

So, Eclipse is a community. A big community. A growing community. A diverse community. More than a community, though, Eclipse is… an Eco-System.

On a side note… committers: get your talk proposals for Eclipse Summit Europe in today!

Nigeria: FG to Begin Implementation of National ID Card

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:45:55 GMT

The two firms approved by the Federal Government to carry out the new National Identity Management system for Nigeria have given their commitment to ensuring a more robust, secure and efficient identity card system using the most modern technologies for the country.

Nigeria: Govt Signs Contract for New ID Card Project

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:42:08 GMT

The Board of the National Identity Management Commission has signed an agreement with Chams Consortium and One SecureCard Consortium to provide data capture and related services for the national identity management system for the country.

Oracle Offers New Identity Management Suite

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:00:24 GMT

Oracle Identity Management 11g is designed to "radically" simplify application security.

Oracle Announces Advances in App Security with Identity Management 11g

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:55:00 GMT

To help organizations simplify application security, Oracle announced Oracle Identity Management 11g -- an integrated and open set of best-of-breed components built on a common platform and engineered to deliver unparalleled integration both within and across the suite through a series of common components. As the industry's first Service-Oriented Security architecture, Oracle Identity Management 11g provides developers with shared services for identity administration and password management, strong authentication and authorization, workflow and auditing, thus radically simplifying application security. This services based architecture is also designed to naturally extend to cloud computing environments, providing a single point of control for on-premise and off-premise applications and systems.

Localeze Set For More Social-LBS Deals Soon, Looking To Go Global

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:34:37 GMT

Localeze, the business listings identity management provider for local search, have a lot in the pipeline for the near and longer-term future. We spoke to them in a resolutely future-oriented conversation and this is what you can expect. Read on.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Likewise Joins the NetApp Alliance Partner Program

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:09:55 GMT

On Thursday Likewise announced membership in the NetApp Alliance Partner Program as an Advantage Alliance Partner. The collaboration provides NetApp customers with identity management and authentication software for secure access control of NetApp unified storage systems. Likewise joins desktops and servers running Linux, Windows and Macs to an organization's existing network using Microsoft Active Directory. This provides a single, secure framework for authentication and access control in heterogeneous networks. Likewise supports more than 180 variations of Linux, Mac, Unix and virtualization technologies, in addition to NetApp unified storage systems.

Identity management top security priority in Gartner survey

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:00:00 GMT

"The No.1 priority is now identity and access management,” says Gartner research director Vic Wheatman, noting the analysis is based on a close look at what IT security professionals at 308 companies are telling Gartner about their overall information spending and specific IT security projects.

Local Search Localeze Launches Business Registration Manager To Boost Customer Confidence

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:01:27 GMT

Localeze, the business listings identity management provider for local search, has launched its Business Registration Manager service that validates ownership of a business' online identity.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Planet Eclipse: Wayne Beaton: Eclipse at Google I/O

Tue, 25 May 2010 15:16:46 GMT

Ian and I represented Eclipse in the Google I/O Sandbox. We used the Open Social support being developed in the E4 project as our hook. I estimate that less than 50% of the folks who dropped by the booth were familiar with Open Social. A lot of folks just dropped by to tell us how happy they are with Eclipse.

The conference was thick with Eclipse-love, starting with multiple mentions during the keynotes on Tuesday. It was clear that everybody that was on stage assumed that everybody in the audience knew about Eclipse.

We received a steady flow of guests at our booth in the Sandbox. Most of the visitors knew about Eclipse. Well… they knew at least something about Eclipse. Most knew about Eclipse, the IDE. Ian and I took the opportunity to broaden horizons wherever we could. “Yes, Eclipse is a Java IDE. But would it surprise you to learn that Eclipse is really an integration platform? A platform for building tools? The most comprehensive set of open source modeling tools and runtimes anywhere? A runtime platform? Would it surprise you to learn that Eclipse has entered the runtime space? Heck, we have more than 200 different projects cover everything from IDEs to identity management, and object persistence” (it’s always a challenge to come up with a good pithy gamut for Eclipse).

A lot of our visitors use Eclipse to build applications with Google Web Toolkit (GWT); they came to us with both kudos and questions about the GWT Tooling. I was a little embarrassed that I have not spent any time with GWT development, but still took the time to tell them about recent efforts to provide EMF support for GWT, providing me with ample opportunity to introduce vast numbers of modeling rednecks to a brave new world.

Perhaps the lion’s share of the visitors to our humble booth use Eclipse to develop applications for Android. Again, there were kudos and questions. As is often the case with questions about Eclipse, the first challenge is to determine who is the right group to field the question. Since the Android SDK is based so heavily on Eclipse, it’s difficult to know if the Android SDK project, or the Java development tools (JDT) project, or the Eclipse Platform project, or some other source is the right place to go for help. Most of the questions were pretty solidly the domain of the Android SDK team, but the exercise highlighted the fact that finding help is still a big challenge. Frankly, I think that Eclipse Forums are an excellent place to find help; but I also quite like Stack Overflow (especially for questions that venture outside the domain of Eclipse projects). A couple of visitors asked about building Android apps with native code. Thankfully, Doug took interest in this topic some time ago, so we have an answer for this.

There were a lot of folks who just wanted to come by and bask in Eclipse greatness. I love the whole fan-boy thing. Some folks just want to say how much they love Eclipse. Others came to challenge me to show them something that they hadn’t already seen. For some, “CTRL-1″ did the the trick. For others, I pulled out Mylyn. Nobody left disappointed.

My main take away from the conference is that Eclipse is very much a part of Google’s tool strategy. My sense is that there is a lot of opportunity for other Eclipse technology; like every other audience of Eclipse technology, our task is to leverage the love of Eclipse-based IDEs into broader knowledge of Eclipse as a whole. I think we made some excellent progress on that front last week.

I also managed to take away two phones: a Nexus One and an HTC EVO (with a month of voice and data service that actually works in Canada). Both are very nice (though the EVO is a little bulky). They have inspired me to spend a little more time with the Android SDK. Let’s see what other Eclipse technology we can shove in there…

How Secure is Your Sudo?

Sat, 22 May 2010 21:44:53 GMT

Please log in to download this paper. Don't have an account? Register now for free access to all of LinuxMagazine.com Unix/Linux OS users have passionately embraced either implementing open source privileged identity management solutions , commercial solutions that are more user friendly, or not implementing anything at all.

How Secure is Your Sudo?

Sat, 22 May 2010 20:08:48 GMT

OASIS Forms ID-in-the-Cloud Group

Sat, 22 May 2010 02:45:00 GMT

OASIS, the standards consortium, has formed a new group to address the security challenges posed by identity management in cloud computing. The new OASIS Identity in the Cloud (IDCloud) Technical Committee is supposed to identify gaps in existing identity management standards and investigate the need for profiles to achieve interoperability in current standards. Committee members will do the risk and threat analyses on collected use cases and produce guidelines for mitigating vulnerabilities. The 451 Group anticipates that the IDCloud profiles that result will enable a consistent set of policies that do the job of encapsulating business logic across multiple domains.

Novell Offers Cloud-Based Identity Manager

Fri, 21 May 2010 21:49:57 GMT

With this new release, Novell's identity management tools/framework cover the move of services and identity floating in the clouds, and more tools for access and security on the way.

Novell Offers Cloud-Based Identity Manager

Fri, 21 May 2010 10:36:36 GMT

With this new release, Novell's identity management tools/framework cover the move of services and identity floating in the clouds, and more tools for access and security on the way.

Cloud-based identity management gets a boost

Wed, 19 May 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Giving network managers a way to provide access, single sign-on and provisioning controls in cloud-computing environments got a boost today from both Novell and a much smaller competitor, start-up Symplified.

ForgeRock Extending Sun's OpenSSO Platform

Wed, 12 May 2010 20:03:59 GMT

With a gaggle of Sun veterans on staff, ForgeRock is looking to expand the OpenSSO single sign-on and identity management platform, rebranded as OpenAM.

Versant Releases Lightning Fast db4o v8.0 RC

Wed, 12 May 2010 16:04:15 GMT

The primary theme of the 8.0 release is performance. This release introduces a fundamental change to the identity management system which significantly improves the I/O characteristics of the db4o server. These changes constitute advances in db4o's performance as shown in Poleposition benchmarking and, at the same time, paves the way for improvements in areas such as I/O clustering, defragmentation management, and object evolution.

eSecurity Company WISeKey Raises $20M At $200M Valuation, Plans IPO

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:39:39 GMT

Information security and identity management software and services firm WISeKey has closed a $20 million financing round at a $200 million valuation. The investment comes from a group of undisclosed institutional and private backers in both Europe and the United States. With the extra capital, WISeKey plans an accelerated expansion in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). WISeKey also marks itself an IPO candidate, saying that it will file to go public as soon as the market stabilizes.

SmartSynch, AuthenTec team up in strategic smart grid security relationship

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:02:22 GMT

You could probably see this one coming, but now it's official: Smart grid infrastructure player SmartSynch has signed a deal with AuthenTec to add what it is calling "carrier-grade" open security standards to its product line. AuthenTec's security -- which covers everything from identity management to touch...

Symplified CEO to Present at Cloud Expo East

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:15:00 GMT

Although there’s much talk about securing cloud computing environments at the infrastructure layer, that’s really the tip of the iceberg. The bigger challenge facing organizations is controlling user access and enforcing security policies across the cloud to Software as a Service applications (SaaS). Unlike the past, when user identities and access control could be managed within the enterprise network, enterprises that deploy SaaS must manage user access to applications that reside outside the firewall. Access control and identity management have always been a difficult problems to solve; with the disappearing perimeter it has become even more complicated. In his session at the 5th International Cloud Expo, Eric Olden, Founder & CEO of Symplified, will cover the technical and organizational challenges that must be addressed to manage how enterprises control provisioning, access, authentication, single sign-on, auditing, compliance and integration of enterprise systems to cloud-based services.

Back to MySQL

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:36:00 GMT

Yes, it's been a while. I did not blog for quite a long time. In April, I posted an article on MySQL on Solaris, and with that article I meant to go back to my regular blogging, i.e. writing an article every week or so. Soon after that article, I took responsibility of the European Presales team for Sun Software, Application Server Platform to be precise. APS included MySQL, the Identity Management software, SOA products, Glassfish and Java. This job was very similar to what I used to do between 1998 and 2002 and I was really excited to work with a large team again.Now that we are part of Oracle, I am back to my original role MySQL, in the European Presales team, now called Sales Consulting.It's really nice to be back. I really missed the excitement and the hands on that characterises the MySQL business. APS was a fantastic place to work and the incredibly talented people I've met are genuinely one of the best team I have ever worked with. But my soul is with databases and even more with OSS. I like the way we go to market, we approach users and customers and we design solutions. I like the debates and the passion behind important topics. In one sentence, I feel like I fit well and I am looking forward to enjoying this new ride with Oracle.So, next call, the User Conference. I can't see a better way to start.Glad to be back!

Mobile Operators and the Broadband Boom

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:56:00 GMT

With $72 billion invested in mobile broadband it would be hard to argue that this market is suffering from a lack of investment.

More than half of this is taking place in Asia. Over the last two years close to 300 mobile operators in 120 countries have launched mobile broadband networks (using the 3G HSPA technology) and some 70 of these are already planning the next upgrade of their networks using the LTE technology—the first $5 billion of investment money has been committed to that technology.

The two countries that are ahead of the pack in this are—where else but in Scandinavia?—Sweden and Norway.

Japan and Korea are also moving in this direction but they are using different technologies.

Within that same short time period over 200 million subscribers have embraced mobile broadband and, as reported previously, this has caught many mobile operators unprepared. They were still peddling their mobile portals while the apps available on smart phones almost instantly overtook a market that the mobile operators had been trying to build up for ten years.

Because of the success of this market mobile operators are now scrambling to keep up with an enormous demand for mobile broadband access. They are eager to get at least their share of the access market and competition is driving them to charge ever less for simple broadband access. As a result of this the margins available for mobile operators are being squeezed more and more.

Does that mean that mobile operators will be relegated to becoming pipe suppliers? Not necessarily. They have a number of very powerful tools that they can use. They know mobile customers better than anybody else and they are able to provide a very reliable and secure service—so much so that banks are using their networks to deliver financial services. This has built a powerful trust relationship between operators and some very key service providers. The mobile operators are the only ones who have a very secure identity management service on their networks that can be used by these financial institutions, and (if the mobile operators permit) by others also.

Furthermore, mobile networks are excellent for mobility applications such as GIS, location-based navigation, etc. Again, the mobile operators are currently the only ones who have access to this user information.

It then comes down to whether the mobile operators will be able this time around to also develop business plans that are going to make it attractive for other providers to utilise the network. This will require open networks, wholesale, MVNOs, etc. The question is will they indeed this time around do change their business models, or will they again wait for others to eat their lunch.

Mobile operators and their supporters all talk about a range of essential services such healthcare, education, public safety and so on. Lessons learned from the past will hopefully encourage operators to open up their networks to these public sectors. It is not too difficult to predict that, if this does not happen and consumers want to make more use of mobile broadband infrastructure for such services, regulation will be used to force the operators to open up to these new social and economic opportunities.

What might change their attitude this time is the fact that they now nearly all operate in saturated markets. There are very few new users that can be connected—certainly in the developed markets. So today there is certainly more urgency among the mobile operators to change their business models to cater for the new opportunities. Also, it will only be a matter of time before OTT providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, Skype and others will have more sophisticated applications in competition with the mobile operators.

One of the main problems still being experienced by operators at the moment is a lack of sophisticated middleware that would allow them to deliver these new applications more efficiently and effectively. For instance, the many BSS/OSS systems within the mobile operators' organisations are making it very difficult to deliver real-time and on-demand services.

Who will win?

The judges are still out on this. There are the smart device operators like Apple, with their proprietary applications; companies like Google and Microsoft, with devices based on Operating System (OS) innovations; and the mobile operators, who recently formed an alliance to also develop their own apps stores. This broad level of competition will drive innovation and those who are able to deliver the best customer experience are going to be in the lead here.

Over the next few years the mobile market will pass the $1 trillion revenue mark. The stakes are high, the rewards are great, and the future looks very bright indeed. So may the best one win.

Written by Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication

Microsoft Hops Into Infrastructure 2.0

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:45:00 GMT

Microsoft Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for Systems Center (DIT-SC) is hopping forward, literally, into the network. With or without established standards, this dog is going to hunt.

It takes time to develop standards, something we often overlook. When the foundational standards upon which the Internet were being developed there were (almost) no users, no broadband, and no real urgency to get something available. The adoption of disruptive, highly volatile technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing result in an environment in which today’s standards groups are not afforded the luxury of time. Organizations want, nay they need, standards now and if they aren’t forthcoming vendors and customers alike will move steadily forward with their own implementation.

The myriad “cloud APIs” submitted to various standards organization indicate this pattern of behavior has already begun and will continue until the dust settles and one (and hopefully only one) API comes out on top. Microsoft may have come “late” to the cloud computing table, but it’s certainly making up time by moving forward with its Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center.

The Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center is a free, partner-extensible toolkit that will enable datacenters to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage resources to enable IT as a service. Whether you’re an enterprise customer, a systems integrator, or an independent software vendor, the toolkit will help you create agile, virtualized IT infrastructures.

-- Microsoft Cloud Computing Infrastructure solutions

What’s a bit different about Microsoft’s Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center (DIT-SC) is that it’s not focusing on standardizing the interface to the cloud, a la Yet Another Cloud API, but rather it’s focused inward, on operations, much in the same way the cloud API of Yahoo! is highly focused on internal rather than external operations.

HOPPING into the NETWORK

The DIT-SC provides a framework – not an API but a framework – that allows partners and customers to manage resources, including infrastructure such as load balancers, firewalls, and other network-hosted services. By providing a framework Microsoft can leave the implementation up to vendors and customers which is of course cost-effective on their part but also provides the means by which those infrastructure solutions that are not yet Infrastructure 2.0 enabled can still be supported.

Assume for a moment a device, X, does not have a standards-based control plane accessible for automation and remote control. This does not mean it cannot be automated, it simply means alternative methods of communication and control must be used. Holistic identity management systems used this technique extensively to manage accounts on operating systems and applications for which there was no programmatic interface, and administrators have used remote scripting playback to automate tasks for what seems like eons. Using PowerShell the integration of both Infrastructure 2.0 and non-enabled systems can be accomplished, resulting in unified data center management of resources via System Center. load balancing is one of the planes of control, and will be primarily enabled through the existing Infrastructure 2.0 capabilities of various vendor implementations such as F5, Citrix, and Cisco.

Microsoft is approaching Infrastructure 2.0 and the integration of network-hosted resources in a very implementation agnostic way. Rather than simply lay the entire responsibility at the feet of individual vendors, it has taken a more “standardsy” approach in that the definition of the PowerShell interfaces to network and application delivery network infrastructure will be normalized across similar component functionality. Standardized, essentially, into a common task and model-oriented set of interfaces that can be used to basically plug-in any vendor solution in a particular data center niche. This “normalization” is very close to “standardization” and thus it is not inconceivable that in the future we may see the model and interfaces developed to support the DIT-SC framework proposed as a standard in much the same way other vendors have put forth their models and interfaces as potential “cloud” standards.

Not the framework, mind you, but rather the collection of infrastructure and resource control that result from ongoing efforts to integrate infrastructure and network and systems’ resources into a unified dynamic management system.

That’s the target of Infrastructure 2.0 standards efforts; the definition of a model and interfaces unified across the network and application delivery network as well as “interclouds.”

DE FACTO STANDARDS are INEVITABLE

The problem is that there’s no one really to “blame’ for what’s almost certainly going to happen: the rise of de facto standards. Certainly some vendors and organizations are counting on that happening, and for others it’s just going to happen because, well, that’s the way things work in a rapidly evolving environment. Standards are not forthcoming fast enough at this point to address the rapid evolution of data center operational needs. Given the scope of the task at hand – developing a set of standards that will ensure interoperability of infrastructure and cloud computing environments – it’s no surprise that it’s taking some time. At least it’s no surprise if you expect that such standards will be long-lived, well-thought out, and as future-proof as standards can be.

It may be that efforts such as DIT-SC will, in fact, be helpful to creating “accepted” standards in the future. Anyone who was involved in IT before TCP/IP rose to the top of the standards heap and became the accepted industry standard, beating out Novell’s IPX/SPX and IBM’S SNA will recall that there was a time when it was not clear which “standard” would ultimately “win”. A similar situation will almost certainly arise in the arena of cloud computing, if not at the cloud API layer, then internally, at the operational layer. By tossing the infrastructure models developed to support vendor and provider frameworks into a hat it may be that a unified set of standards can be developed that make the internal integration (collaboration) required to orchestrate IT operations and allow organizations to fully realize the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing.

In the meantime, Microsoft has (somewhat quietly) joined the Infrastructure 2.0 movement by ensuring the means by which network and application delivery network infrastructure can be automated and orchestrated through a centralized “cloud management” system with DIT-SC. That’s certainly a leap forward in the right direction.

Related blogs & articles:

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,infrastructure 2.0,standards,Microsoft,DDA,dynamic infrastructure,dynamic infrastructure toolkit for System Center,DIT-SC,yahoo,API,cloud computing

Microsoft Hops Into Infrastructure 2.0

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:45:00 GMT

Microsoft Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for Systems Center (DIT-SC) is hopping forward, literally, into the network. With or without established standards, this dog is going to hunt.

The Dynamic Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center is a free, partner-extensible toolkit that will enable datacenters to dynamically pool, allocate, and manage resources to enable IT as a service. Whether you’re an enterprise customer, a systems integrator, or an independent software vendor, the toolkit will help you create agile, virtualized IT infrastructures.

-- Microsoft Cloud Computing Infrastructure solutions

HOPPING into the NETWORK

That’s the target of Infrastructure 2.0 standards efforts; the definition of a model and interfaces unified across the network and application delivery network as well as “interclouds.”

DE FACTO STANDARDS are INEVITABLE

Related blogs & articles:

Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,infrastructure 2.0,standards,Microsoft,DDA,dynamic infrastructure,dynamic infrastructure toolkit for System Center,DIT-SC,yahoo,API,cloud computing

$1 billion takeover bid may mean the end of Novell's makeover addiction

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:42:19 GMT

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Yesterday's surprise $1 billion buyout offer for Novell from the New York-based private investment group Elliott Management came with a letter, made public yesterday, spelling out the investors' goal for the company. "Novell is a long-established company that we have followed closely for a considerable period of time," the firm wrote. "Over the past several years, the Company has attempted to diversify away from its legacy division with a series of acquisitions and changes in strategic focus that have largely been unsuccessful. As a result, we believe the Company's stock has meaningfully underperformed all relevant indices and peers."

If by "the past several years," Elliott meant "the dawn of time," it may very well have been accurate. Novell is a company that, in many people's minds, is defined by its propensity towards strategy shifts. Elliott Management's members collectively own 8.5% of Novell common stock. If their proposal ends up being approved, Novell's strategy could shift again -- this time, very dramatically. And if you can interpret their message as a signal of disappointment in Novell's inability to focus on its fundamentals, then you may see the possible result of all this: a divestiture of Novell's stake in SUSE Linux, the world's #2 Linux distribution.

Getting rid of what Novell execs may perceive as excess ballast, but what the world may perceive as valuable property, has become a periodic ritual for this company. Every few years since the mid-1980s, about as regular as the next Olympics, those who have had the interesting fortune of being Novell chief executives -- Ray Noorda, Robert Frankenberg, Eric Schmidt, Chris Stone, Jack Messman, Ron Hovsepian -- have come forth with their vision for the company. Everything is fine, fantastic, copacetic. Nothing to worry about, each one typically began. But the future will be altogether different. And to understand what that bright future will become -- 1996, 2002, 2006, and beyond -- close your eyes, if you will, and imagine an entirely different world...

Last December, Novell outlined what it called a holistic solution (are you keeping your eyes closed?) to the problem of automating the modern information workforce. From this point forward, company executives said, Novell would be devoting itself to a new model of enterprise marketing called intelligent workload management. It defined the concept as nothing short of a top-to-bottom re-envisioning of enterprise network resourced, using a model based, it would appear, on Newtonian physics.

"Intelligent Workload Management is a new and more effective model of computing that enables IT organizations to manage and optimize computing resources in a policy-driven, secure and compliant manner across physical, virtual and cloud environments to deliver business services for end customers," reads last December's announcement. "A workload is a portable, self-contained unit of work built through the integration of the operating system, middleware, and application. With Intelligent Workload Management, organizations can build, secure, manage and measure workloads."

The technology behind this concept may not be as psychedelic as it sounds on the surface. As distributed applications become less bound to an instance of an operating system, SUSE Linux or Windows Server becomes not so much their "environment" as their "provider." Virtualization has made it possible for OS instances to traverse processor boundaries without affecting workflow. Now, it's foreseeable that applications, or the components of them, can traverse those same boundaries independently of the operating system, removing one more layer from the process. However, those freed applications will need to be administered the way operating systems are today, and Novell foresees a need for tools to that end.

That makes sense. But it seems that somewhere along the way in the marketing process, Novell felt it necessary to justify all the identities it had tried to assume in the past -- the office applications producer, the infrastructure architect, "the identity guys" -- in order to make it appear this new 2010 strategy is the single thread that pulls everything together like lacing ones boots.

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But the need to characterize a practical strategy as some kind of holistic vision, an inspiration heard in the whisper of the trees when spending a week alone fly-fishing in the wilderness, has become a kind of disease that afflicted Novell, starting in the mid-1990s. The company was already making headway with its Novell Directory Services, the innovative registry of network resources that was its first truly successful product line after NetWare (NOS). But CEO Robert Frankenberg wanted to take that concept further, not so much with a technology as a vision, which he introduced at COMDEX in 1994.

Frankenberg asked his audience essentially to close their eyes, and imagine a three-dimensional world where users would experience their data and workflow environments using pictorial representations of everyday and household items. He called this vision the "NetTop" (emphasis on the capital "N"), and introduced a type of embedded system called NEST that he said could be implanted into real office resources, such as telephones, televisions, and staplers, so that they could be "NetWare-ready," with avatars of sorts in the virtual world.

And yes, the vision had a catchy title: "Pervasive computing," the then-CEO projected, "is more than connecting information systems and computing devices. It's connecting people with other people and the information they need, giving them the power to act on that information anytime, anyplace."

At that time, Frankenberg's Novell was busy supercharging NetWare and its recently acquired intellectual property in UNIX (or so it had believed) to become ready for this all-encompassing, pervasive environment. The concept was called SuperNOS, but it was actually never to be. In the fall of 1995, after this fusion dream fell apart, Novell entered into its UNIX agreement with Hewlett-Packard and SCO, in the beginning of what was to become the ugliest single chapter in the history of computing.

In that agreement, Novell thought it had divested itself of what it was calling UnixWare (close your eyes and imagine a bigger, brighter UNIX), but all the while enabling UNIX to still become cultivated so that it could support the services for it that Novell was building. But letting go of UNIX made Novell focus its resources on NOS, in a move which would-be partner Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison famously predicted in 1995 would be the decline and fall of the company: "Novell will be less and less important every year," Ellison said. "If they have to treat [NetWare] as a 'star' and spread R&D on it, it's a mistake. UNIX and NT will take share from Novell."

In 1996, in another attempt to remake itself, Novell shed itself of its investment in WordPerfect, selling it to Corel for about a tenth of its value. In 2004, blaming Microsoft for the devaluation, Novell sued Microsoft as part of its effort to re-establish some semblance of its former swagger. But that lawsuit would be terminated in 2007, when another attempt at remaking Novell led the company to shift its attention away from the courtroom, and in so doing, it said, reduce some of the conflict in the world. (Imagine there's no litigation. I wonder if you can.)

In-between those three major strategy makeovers, there were actually two more. In 1999, Novell imagined a re-emergence of NetWare (not NOS, not SuperNOS, but NetWare), after embracing the fact that the Internet would be built on TCP/IP rather than IPX/SPX. This was Eric Schmidt's doing. Imagine a company that didn't always produce big software all the time, but rather constructed a big base of Web services built on eDirectory, and improved incrementally through small releases of standards-compliant code. Again, another good idea, in theory. But the company was so poor at articulating its vision for a global virtual phone book that analysts were comparing the eDirectory vision to that of Yahoo. Isn't there already a big directory on the Internet, they asked?

Schmidt's co-successors, CEO Jack Messman and Vice Chairman Chris Stone, tried to address that problem with a new vision for the company. Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine there are four pillars. We'll call them Nsure, exteNd, Nterprise, and Ngage. These would represent four categories of services, with Nsure representing what would be the company's push into that under-addressed part of the Internet, secure identity management. Novell's goal was nothing less than to become perceived as "the identity company." As Stone described it at the time, "This campaign is intended to address the positioning so that when you ask people next year they'll say, 'Oh, yeah. They're the identity guys.'"

The four pillars would be holding up not so much the Internet as we have come to know it, but rather something Messman in the fall of 2002 as "One Net." Imagine, if you will...well, imagine nothing. No boundaries, because information tends to flow, and you don't want things like boundaries getting in the way.

"With Novell Nsure, Novell exteNd, Novell Nterprise and Novell Ngage, we have the solutions our customers have been telling us they need to achieve One Net -- a world without information boundaries," Messman announced. "Identity is security in a One Net world. Only by knowing who is accessing the network, and what they are entitled to see, can companies effectively manage their disparate relationships in a Web environment."

Novell has never been devoid of good ideas, or even good technology. But it has chronically suffered from an excess of "the vision thing," the need to encapsulate a practical methodology using ill-fitting metaphors. And it may be last December's move by Hovsepian to fold "One Net" into yet another vision of the "intelligent workload" -- once again, exercising the irresistible urge to make a practical concept holistic -- that drove Elliott Management's investors yesterday to finally say, "Enough."

WSO2 debuts SaaS identity management product

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:22:50 GMT

Middleware vendor WSO2 recently released Cloud Identity, which the company said eliminates the need for internal software, dedicated hardware, and systems administrators in identity management. Instead, WSO2 provides enterprise identity management as a pay-as-you-go, hosted service that scales.

Microsoft cranks out new identity management software

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Microsoft announced at the RSA Conference Tuesday that it has begun shipping Forefront Identity Manager 2010, server software for provisioning and de-provisioning user access and privileges for network and database resources.

Microsoft cranks out new identity management software

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Microsoft working with Germans on electronic ID card

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:31:10 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft released its new identity management software at the RSA conference on Tuesday and is testing it out as part of a national ID card system in Germany that is designed to give c...

myOneLogin for Cloud-Based Identity Services

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:15:00 GMT

TriCipher, a leading provider of Internet identity services, announced on Monday that the company is seeing significant traction with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology providers in 2010. Within the last 3 months, TriCipher has signed nearly a dozen new SaaS technology innovators including companies like Advantec, Alkami Technology and NetDeposit. Identity services are an absolute necessity for every SaaS application because of emerging online threats like phishing and targeted password theft schemes. However, resources spent internally implementing identity management technology take critical hours away from innovators building and improving their original product.

myOneLogin for Cloud-Based Identity Services

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:15:00 GMT

AuthenTec Acquires SafeNet's Embedded Security Solutions Division

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:59:58 GMT

AuthenTec , a leading provider of smart fingerprint sensors and solutions, announced today that it has acquired SafeNet, Inc.'s Embedded Security Solutions Division in a cash and stock transaction which further strengthens AuthenTec's offering of security and identity management solutions.

Nigeria: NIMC - Galaxy Backbone to Start Testing of Connectivity Infrastructure

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:11:52 GMT

As part of the National Identity Management Commission's (NIMC) scheme on infrastructure deployment, Galaxy Backbone Plc has commenced the testing of the connectivity infrastructure which is to be rolled out for the Commission.

WSO2 Debuts Cloud Computing Identity Authentication

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:30:00 GMT

WSO2, the lean enterprise middleware company, on Wednesday announced the debut of WSO2 Cloud Identity. The newest hosted WSO2 Cloud Service helps companies eliminate the complexity of deploying identity management and authentication across multiple SaaS (software as a service) applications as well as internal and traditional systems. By supporting a broad set of authentication and security standards, WSO2 Cloud Identity gives administrators a central identity management system while users gain single sign-on access to different cloud applications. Initial cloud application support includes Google Apps, which is available with today’s beta release of WSO2 Cloud Identity, and Salesforce.com, which will be added at the end of the month.

WSO2 Debuts Cloud Computing Identity Authentication

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:30:00 GMT

Ping Identity to Present at Cloud Expo April 19-21 in New York City

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Just how should enterprise identity management and outsource SaaS applications integrate securely? What are the four basic areas of identity integration with SaaS? In his session at the 5th International Cloud Expo, Patrick Harding, CTO at Ping Identity, will outline these four basic areas – provisioning, authentication, SSO and authorization – addressing these issues from the SaaS provider and SaaS customer perspective as both play roles in the SaaS Identity reference architecture.

Ping Identity to Present at Cloud Expo April 19-21 in New York City

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

CA, Inc. Joins Cloud Security Alliance

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:30:00 GMT

CA, Inc. on Thursday announced it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance as a corporate member to help establish and promote best practices for security in cloud computing. CA will support the Cloud Security Alliance's initiatives and working groups with identity and access management knowledge and expertise, and provide input into the next release of the group'sSecurity Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing. "CA is working with enterprise customers and cloud service providers to securely adopt and deliver cloud services. We look forward to collaborating with the CSA members to deliver guidance for meeting security concerns that challenge cloud adoption," said Dave Hansen, corporate senior vice president and general manager of CA's Security and Compliance business unit. CA demonstrated a portion of its cloud security capabilities at the Burton Catalyst conference last July. By incorporating identity and access management technologies, CA is helping its customers securely use the cloud. This includesCA SiteMinder, CA Federation Manager, and CA SOA Security Manager for various access management scenarios, and CA Identity Lifecycle Management products for provisioning, role management , and other identity management capabilities. CA also provides protection at the heart of a cloud infrastructure by controlling access to virtualization servers (hypervisors) withCA Access Control, and Internet-scalable log and event reporting with CA Enterprise Log Manager.

CA, Inc. Joins Cloud Security Alliance

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:30:00 GMT

How identity governance solves the compliance challenges left by provisioning technology

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:00:00 GMT

The identity management landscape is changing. The need for stronger auditing controls is giving rise to identity governance tools that are supplanting ID provisioning solutions as the centralized management layer for identity.

How identity governance solves the compliance challenges left by provisioning technology

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Introducing Telco 2.0 'Best Practice Live!'

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:31:00 GMT

We are delighted to give our readers a preview here of Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live!

This is a new service from the Telco 2.0 Initiative (and partners), created in response to requests from our community. Telco 2.0 'Best Practice Live!' provides what will be the first carefully curated, online, video-based, interactive knowledge bank of cutting-edge 'Telco 2.0' services, business models and solutions from around the world.

It opens on 28-30 June 2010 with live online broadcasts of case studies to three geographic regions, each incorporating interactive discussions and panels, and supported by a major online exhibition. All materials are available afterwards 'on-demand' and then updated every six months via a new live broadcast and exhibition.

Below are details of the objectives, rationale, participants and agenda. If you would like more details of how to get involved, please email us. A website will be available next week too.

Event Objective
To identify and showcase best practice and next practice case studies from around the world which demonstrate the value of developing Telco 2.0 businesses. The case studies will come from both developed and emerging markets, be replicable and identify practical steps for moving towards Telco 2.0. The exhibition will complement this with a showcase of the technologies and solutions that underpin the development of the 2-sided business models that sit at the heart of the Telco 2.0 concept.

Why We've Created Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live!
Telcos around the world are embracing Telco 2.0 and the 2-sided business model concepts. As a result there is an ever-growing pool of inspiring and very real examples of telco 2.0 services or how to move towards them. The problem is that while these exist, they are not seen or understood by the broader telco industry. We have therefore designed this virtual environment to bring the very best examples to the attention of a global audience in a single place, accessible by all.

In June we will be looking at:

*Keynote Sessions: These concentrate on four areas that are central to the development of Telco 2.0 business models. Each session lasts for an hour and includes case study presentations and interactive Q&A sessions with the presenters. Each will also be accompanied by a moderated chat session.
The case study presentation will follow a template designed by us to demonstrate the Telco 2.0 principles used, the value these create, the level of control the telco has over the business model and therefore the sustainability of that model.

The keynote sessions will cover: Corporate Growth Strategies; Machine-2-Machine; Consumer Data and Behavioural Advertising; Mobile Broadband cost structures.

*Streamed Sessions: Each session focuses on an area of telecoms industry development that is both hot and has potential for growth. Again, each session lasts for an hour and includes case study presentations and will be accompanied by a moderated chat session with the speakers.
The topics covered are: Entertainment and Content Distribution; Mobile Money; Mobile Marketing; AppStores and Developer Communities; Cloud Computing; Carrier Services; Devices; IT/OSS/BSS; Network Technology.

Participants
We expect up to 4000 people to participate (2000 in June and another 2000 following): senior executives and decision makers from telcos, media and technology companies who are involved in strategy, new business development and product development and procurement. CTOs and technical teams involved in the development of the structures and solutions that support two-sided business models. Plus those involved in strategy, operations, new business and IT from 'upstream' industries in Advertising and Media, Entertainment and Broadcasting, Financial Services, Applications and Software Development and Enterprise Solution Providers, along with M2M sectors such as automotive, logistics, health and energy.

What Differentiates Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live! from Webinars and Webcasts?
In short - video and interactivity. It is a complete virtual event that includes everything you would get a physical one and more. It combines the latest technology in webcasting, online chats and video streaming, to offer the elements of trade shows: exhibitor booths, speeches, seminars, distribution of marketing literature and social gatherings. It combines the video interface of a webcast with greater interactivity and social engagement tools. Business collaboration, the exchange of opinions and information is not just supported but actively encouraged and it all takes place in real time. Live group, moderated and one-to-one chats are supported as well as forums, blogs and even Twitter for the Tweeters amongst the visitors.

Agenda:

Event Structure
The event combines a fully interactive virtual exhibition with a video-based, interactive conference. The conference is split into two parts - plenary or keynote sessions for the first half and streamed sessions for the second.

Keynote Sessions
Session 1: Corporate Strategies
This session will feature presentations from telcos that have already developed a cohesive strategy that encompasses multiple examples of telco 2.0 and telco 2.0-like services and business models including carrier services, machine-2-machine and monetisation of telco assets to third parties.

Session 2: Machine-2-Machine
Featuring best practice and next practice examples of Machine-2-Machine deployments that are streamlining enterprise business processes and building new comms-enabled functionality on top of these. These could include but are not limited to:
 Smart Grids - meter reading, facilities management and energy conservation
 E-Health 2.0 - examples could include a wellness monitoring, asset tracking, appointment setting, etc
 Telematics and logistics 2.0 - including deliveries, field service, asset tracking
 Automotive - maintenance, repair, insurance

Session 3: Consumer Data and Behavioural Advertising
Advertising revenue is an important source of revenue for Telco 2.0-type business models and this session will feature new examples of how telcos are looking to expose and monetise their assets to advertisers and focus on their role as the custodians of consumer data. These could include but are not limited to:
 Personalisation
 Identity Management/Multiple IDs
 Creating valuable aggregated data for marketing purposes
 Consumer data protection and security

Session 4: Mobile Broadband
This session will focus on the best and next practices for deploying mobile broadband based on their ability to support both the data traffic and business models associated with Telco 2.0. These could include but are not limited to:
 Using broadband as a market entry/re-launch mechanism - developed and developing markets
 Creating broadband services beyond consumer buckets
 New business models for Internet access only e.g pre-paid access with dongles, Wifi-like pay as you go access
 The economics of traffic management and offload strategies including femtocells, backhaul and DPI, QoS as a service.

Streamed Sessions
Each session focuses on an area of telecoms industry development that is both hot and has potential for growth. Again, each session lasts for an hour and includes case study presentations and will be accompanied by a moderated chat session with the speakers.

Entertainment and Content Distribution
This session will concentrate on the areas in which the telco, media and entertainment worlds are converging and could include but is not limited to:
 Hybrid broadcast/IPTV
 Building telco onto gaming
 Integrated home hubs for telephony, broadband, IPTV/Pay TV, gaming
 Time and place shifting
 Social Networking
 Recommendation and retail

Mobile Money
This session will cover the fast-growing mobile money sector and will concentrate on the role of operators as value-added facilitators of money services not just a distribution network. It could include but is not limited to:
 Money Transfer - building services on top of P2P transfer - bill payments, wages,
 Mobile Payments for physical goods in real and virtual environments
 Mobile payments for virtual goods - in game, social networking etc

Mobile Marketing
This session will focus on the services telcos can offer to media and advertising companies beyond access to their customer base. It could include but is not limited to:
 Media exchange amongst operators
 Ad booking
 Campaign management
 Measurement and metrics

Developer Communities
One of the hottest topics in telecoms, the developers, developers, developers mantra has hit the mobile telecoms world with a band. This session will examine the value created by different developer-engagement strategies. It could include but is not limited to:
 App Store Partnerships
 Device and platform partnerships
 Telco created communities or app stores
 API exposure and monetisation

Carrier Services
Carrier service divisions are almost entirely based on the interconnection or exposure of a telco's assets to a third party. Up until now this has been almost exclusively telco services to other telcos. However, there is the opportunity to build on these businesses, selling telco services to other businesses and other services to telcos. It could include but is not limited to:
 IP Exchange
 Content delivery platforms
 Hub services
 Financial service interconnect and clearing
 Managed service mobile backhaul - carrier ethernet etc

Cloud Computing
Another of the industry buzz terms, almost every application imaginable it is claimed can be put in the cloud. This session will look at the business models associated with telcos playing in the cloud. It could include but is not limited to:
 Public, private or hybrid clouds
 Cloud services for SMEs
 Mobile Cloud Computing
 VAS to Cloud service providers - QoS, security, SLAs

Mobile Devices
The once ubiquitous definition of a mobile communications device is changing beyond recognition. In addition to communication device developments such as smartphones and dongles, there is an emerging genre of devices developing around app-specific services. This session will concentrate on the new business models that are developing around devices. It could include but is not limited to:
 Dongles and pre-loaded data
 E-readers
 Smartphones
 Embedded consumer electronics for M2P or P2M applications

Business and Operational Support Systems
Often overlooked because it is both complicated and far less 'sexy' than many of the other business areas, BSS/OSS does, however, lie at the heart of Telco 2.0. It is where the majority of the assets that could be monetised sit and are enabled from. . It could include but is not limited to:
 Billing
 CRM
 APIs
 Network Management
 Traffic Management

Network Technology (other than Mobile Broadband)
Network technology has always been central to the development of the telecoms industry and while it is no longer the total solution, technology remains a key growth enabler. This session will concentrate on the business models developing around different technologies and could include but is not limited to:
 FTTx
 Carrier Ethernet
 National Broadband Networks
 Optical technologies - RODMS

Exhibition
In the exhibition halls, as attendees you can browse through virtual booths just as you would at a physical conference. And, just like a physical event, you can chat directly with booth reps and other visitors but in addition, you can download content directly to your own Virtual Event Bag. On exiting the event, all contents of the bag are automatically zipped and downloaded to the your desktop.

If you would like to learn more, please email us.