IDG Contributor Network: Cloud war collateral: What the rise of AWS, Azure has meant for data centers

When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in the fall of 1908, he likely didn’t comprehend the full scope of events he would set in motion. Come 1914, and Ford’s production line had reduced assembly times from 12 hours to less than two and a half hours, slashed the going price of an automobile, and redefined the working wage of factory employees, ultimately putting more than 15 million Model T’s on the road and igniting the entire automotive industry in the years to come. Competition often leads to innovation and progress for other industry players. One modern equivalent of this can be seen in the rise of public and private cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft.  AWS’ sales numbers recently topped $12 billion, up nearly 55 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to push ahead and is projected to reach $20 billion in annual cloud revenue by June 2018. As these powerhouses and others like Oracle and Google continue to see widespread adoption across industries, other players have stepped in to consume their piece of the $204 billion-dollar cloud infrastructure pie, leading to an ecosystem of cloud and data center partners that continue to push Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud war collateral: What the rise of AWS, Azure has meant for data centers

When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in the fall of 1908, he likely didn’t comprehend the full scope of events he would set in motion. Come 1914, and Ford’s production line had reduced assembly times from 12 hours to less than two and a half hours, slashed the going price of an automobile, and redefined the working wage of factory employees, ultimately putting more than 15 million Model T’s on the road and igniting the entire automotive industry in the years to come. Competition often leads to innovation and progress for other industry players. One modern equivalent of this can be seen in the rise of public and private cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft.  AWS’ sales numbers recently topped $12 billion, up nearly 55 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to push ahead and is projected to reach $20 billion in annual cloud revenue by June 2018. As these powerhouses and others like Oracle and Google continue to see widespread adoption across industries, other players have stepped in to consume their piece of the $204 billion-dollar cloud infrastructure pie, leading to an ecosystem of cloud and data center partners that continue to push Continue reading

Worth Reading: Creating an IXP in Denver

The word Internet is short for internetwork. It’s just a network of networks. So the more places you can connect those networks, the more robust the whole system is. That’s what Internet Exchange Points (“IXPs”) are. They’re the connection points where networks can connect to each other, and they’re a crucial part of the infrastructure of the Internet. In Europe, IXPs have traditionally been independent and are often run as nonprofits, whereas in North America, they’ve typically been owned and operated by commercial colocation facility operators or Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In the last several years, though, there’s been a movement in the US to build more independent, community-focused IXPs. IX-Denver is part of that movement. —The Internet Society

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Google Cloud exec talks courting enterprises, competing with Amazon and Microsoft

Tariq Shaukat doesn’t have the typical background you’d expect from someone leading the sales and professional services division at Google’s Cloud. Before becoming president of customers, Shaukat was chief commercial officer for Caesar’s Entertainment, the vast hotel and casino chain. As Google is attempting to court enterprise clients, Shaukat is bringing a customer-centric view to the business. And by the way, he’s no tech novice: He’s got undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT and another graduate degree from Stanford.Analysts who track the IaaS cloud computing market give Google high marks for innovation and infrastructure backbone. But in last year’s Magic Quadrant, Gartner noted that Google was in the “rudimentary stages” of interacting with enterprise clients. The hiring of VMware co-founder Diane Greene in early 2016 was seen as a turning point for Google being serious about pursuing the enterprise market. Shaukat is continuing that work. In a market dominated by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, how will Google reach out to enterprise clients? That’s Shaukat’s job.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Beta Docker Community Edition for Google Cloud Platform

Today we’re excited to announce beta Docker Community Edition (CE) for Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Users interested in helping test and improve Docker CE for GCP should sign up at beta.docker.com. We’ll let in users to the beta as the product matures and stabilizes, and we’re looking forward to your input and suggestions.

Docker CE for GCP is built on the same principle as Docker CE for AWS and Docker CE for Azure and provides a Docker setup on GCP that is:

  • Quick and easy to install in a few minutes
  • Released in sync with other Docker releases and always available with the latest Docker version
  • Simple to upgrade from one Docker CE version to the next
  • Configured securely and deployed on minimal, locked-down Linux maintained by Docker
  • Self-healing and capable of automatically recovering from infrastructure failures

Docker CE for GCP is the first Docker edition to launch using the InfraKit project. InfraKit helps us configure cloud infrastructure quickly, design upgrade-processes and self-healing tailored to Docker built-in orchestration and smooth out infrastructure differences between different cloud providers to give Docker users a consistent container platform that maximises portability.

Installing Docker CE for GCP

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Leaked docs suggest NSA and CIA behind Equation cyberespionage group

Purported CIA documents leaked Tuesday appear to confirm that the U.S. National Security Agency and one of CIA's own divisions were responsible for the malware tools and operations attributed to a group that security researchers have dubbed the Equation.The Equation's cyberespionage activities were documented in February 2015 by researchers from antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab. It is widely considered to be the most advanced cyberespionage group in the world based on the sophistication of its tools and the length of its operations, some possibly dating as far back as 1996.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Leaked docs suggest NSA and CIA behind Equation cyberespionage group

Purported CIA documents leaked Tuesday appear to confirm that the U.S. National Security Agency and one of CIA's own divisions were responsible for the malware tools and operations attributed to a group that security researchers have dubbed the Equation. The Equation's cyberespionage activities were documented in February 2015 by researchers from antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab. It is widely considered to be the most advanced cyberespionage group in the world based on the sophistication of its tools and the length of its operations, some possibly dating as far back as 1996.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google touts its enterprise chops in cloud keynote

Enterprises: Google wants you. That's the message coming out of the first keynote address at the company’s Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. The tech titan's cloud team really wants enterprises to know that it's serious about serving their needs.Diane Greene, the senior vice president of Google Cloud, showcased a suite of partnerships and customer announcements that provided concrete results for the enterprise-focused strategy that Greene kicked off when she joined Google in 2015.Google hasn't always focused on the enterprise. The announcements showcased on Wednesday show that the company's initiatives to make its G Suite productivity service and public cloud platform offerings have been resonating with customers it may not have reached in the past.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to manage introverts and extroverts

The tech world can be a haven for people who enjoy solitary, focused work, and it often attracts people who gravitate toward the quiet end of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. For managers, the challenge is how to make the most of introverts’ and extroverts’ strengths. Team diversity can be a tremendous asset if companies are prepared to accommodate divergent work preferences.Another approach is to create speaking roles in meetings, says Shobhna Upadhyaya, senior manager, business operations, at LinkedIn. “Given that introverts may not speak up in meetings on their own, carve out a role for them to participate in meetings, [for example] have them present a certain section if they are up for it.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Leaky Abstraction: An Example

The paper in question is from 2008, and the remedies have already been implemented in every BGP implementation I know of (in fact, getting rid of the scanner is something that just went into FR Routing). The paper can be found here, and a presentation based on the paper can be found here. They use a different example than mine in the paper—it’s a bit more subtle.

In this case, the abstraction is treating an AS as a single “thing” to provide stability in the larger routing system. But any time you have an abstraction, including summarization and aggregation, there is always some possibility the abstraction will leak. Here the leak is an internal route metric change “leaking” into an actual change in the path through the network, although both paths still exist. There are more subtle changes, such as a route metric change causing an update to be sent even though the path itself hasn’t even changed, but I chose this example to make it easier to understand.

The post Leaky Abstraction: An Example appeared first on 'net work.

Like in PCs, Microsoft and ARM look to topple Intel in servers

Intel's TV marketing campaign says the company is driving 98 percent of the cloud. That statistic will come under attack with some chip and OS announcements on Wednesday.The most significant announcement: Microsoft's Windows Server OS now running on ARM chips. The OS was exclusive to x86 chips, but now customers can consider ARM chips to run Windows Server.Microsoft did not announce an official date for an ARM version of Windows Server, though the software company is using such systems internally. The announcement was made on the opening day of Open Compute Project's U.S. Summit in Santa Clara, California.At the summit, Qualcomm showed a new 48-core 1U server running its Centriq 2400 ARM chip. The server is based on Microsoft's Project Olympus server design and was shown running Windows Server. It was designed for the Azure cloud at Microsoft. The Centriq 2400 chip isn't available commercially but is still in testing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A note about “false flag” operations

There's nothing in the CIA #Vault7 leaks that calls into question strong attribution, like Russia being responsible for the DNC hacks. On the other hand, it does call into question weak attribution, like North Korea being responsible for the Sony hacks.

There are really two types of attribution. Strong attribution is a preponderance of evidence that would convince an unbiased, skeptical expert. Weak attribution is flimsy evidence that confirms what people are predisposed to believe.


The DNS hacks have strong evidence pointing to Russia. Not only does all the malware check out, but also other, harder to "false flag" bits, like active command-and-control servers. A serious operator could still false-flag this in theory, if only by bribing people in Russia, but nothing in the CIA dump hints at this.

The Sony hacks have weak evidence pointing to North Korea. One of the items was the use of the RawDisk driver, used both in malware attributed to North Korea and the Sony attacks. This was described as "flimsy" at the time [*]. The CIA dump [*] demonstrates that indeed it's flimsy -- as apparently CIA malware also uses the RawDisk code.

In the coming days, biased partisans are going Continue reading

Fears of election hacking spread in Europe

France has followed the Netherlands in placing its faith in paper-based voting systems ahead of key elections later this year, following allegations that Russian hackers influenced last year's U.S. presidential election. The French government will not allow internet voting in legislative elections to be held in June because of the "extremely elevated threat of cyberattacks." The move follows a recommendation from the French Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI), it said Monday. The move will only affect 11 of the 577 electoral districts voting, those representing French citizens living outside their home country. These expatriates had previously been allowed to vote over the internet in some elections because the alternative was to require some of them to travel vast distances to the nearest embassy or consulate with a ballot box.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fears of election hacking spread in Europe

France has followed the Netherlands in placing its faith in paper-based voting systems ahead of key elections later this year, following allegations that Russian hackers influenced last year's U.S. presidential election. The French government will not allow internet voting in legislative elections to be held in June because of the "extremely elevated threat of cyberattacks." The move follows a recommendation from the French Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI), it said Monday. The move will only affect 11 of the 577 electoral districts voting, those representing French citizens living outside their home country. These expatriates had previously been allowed to vote over the internet in some elections because the alternative was to require some of them to travel vast distances to the nearest embassy or consulate with a ballot box.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Talos warns of new Cryptolocker ransomware campaigns

A number of reports are warning businesses and consumers alike that a new round of ransomware based on the infamous Cryptolocker (aka TorrentLocker or Teerac) code is making the rounds.Today Cisco Talos wrote: “Crypt0l0cker has gone through a long evolution, the adversaries are updating and improving the malware on a regular basis. Several indicators inside the samples we have analyzed point to a new major version of the malware. We have already seen large campaigns targeting Europe and other parts of the world in 2014 and 2015. It seems to be that the actors behind these campaigns are back now and launching again massive spam attacks.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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