At the RSA Keynote a few weeks back, Amazon’s Security Lead, Steve Riley participated on a panel with other security leaders of the industry. We were impressed with the openness of all of the participants, and particularly excited with the new concepts coming from at Amazon. Riley used a term that is being used within his part of Amazon, the “Think Cloud”. As we understand it from the discussion on stage, a Think Cloud is a “body of knowledge” that is a real-time information base of Amazon cloud that can be pivoted all the way down to the threads and individual data concurrency. It would be an index that acts like a control point that helps define movement of data through a servers and compute tasks. Looking at the journey from the data point of view, including data about the environment itself and how to repair itself when damaged and keep data concurrency in tact. Sponsor Here’s the RSA cloud security keynote to get a bit of inspiration to benefits of portable (cloud) computing. In this 30 minute discussion, there are several notable considerations from the contributors on how cloud security challenge can be thought of as a big opportunity and that perhaps now is time to debunk the myth that security is not a part of the cloud. We picked out a few of Riley’s comments that we believe are leading towards the idea of the Think Cloud and why Amazon may be there first. I/O Amazon knows it is critical to be able to have good inputs and outputs. And emphasizes ease of use even more than data portability standards themselves. Riley described a great use case where an un-named customer used Amazon for compute, another cloud provider for data processing, SalesForce for crunching, and then pushed the results to Facebook. Interconnection is happening and applications are already “using all the clouds out there”. In this case, all the way down to the consumer. When we look at this pattern, it we see parts that mimic the history of web in the enterprise. Back-end systems moving data around, optimizing, and passing it to the a web portal. And, the portal demanding “real time” updates for key pieces of data, while relying on batch for others. We can see that idea of a Think Cloud may come into this pattern to help set boundaries and checks so that when a piece of data passes through an Amazon, it is returned reliably, ever time. Perhaps a Think Cloud is a registry that does part of what a smart Enterprise Services Bus does when registered new applications for master data, that is keeps track of activity. In a way, we need to solve the cloud-equivalent “floating point” problem in the CPU of generations past in the computer itself. On the CPU math co-processor, the question was, “Does it know how to do math correctly every-time under all conditions?”. Perhaps the question in the cloud may be “Are all my customers still in the database even though that thread died?”, or “Do we have encryption set on every cpu that this user’s information is stored in memory or on disk”. Solving that problem of interchange the role the concept of Think Cloud might lead. Many legacy applications won’t make it to the cloud. At least, not as-is. Riley comments that “servers are disposable horsepower, they come, they go”. In other words, Since applications sit on top of servers, and servers are sinking into the cloud, applications will sink or swim based on how they migrate to this model. So, the first movers are “the rats” that have jump ship as it started to sink. Follow the rats, or drown. The tear-down of the server into the n-resource cloud breaks-or-suboptimizes server based applications in a fundamental way. Thinking back, this is very similar to web services revolution in the enterprise, where just because an application can export its data model, doesn’t mean it is optimized for web services, or API level interaction. We find this almost a reverse-trend to server virtualization, which has expanded the physical compute space. Perhaps we are finding that there is some new turf to be claimed on where the cloud reaches and virtualization ends. We like to think of it as “smart service bus” meets “smart application” on infinite resources. Infinite, or course, equaling the credit in your PayPal (or other) form of payment collection required by either, or both parties. As reported by The Register’s Cade Metz, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer recently pointed out that this is a potential opportunity with Microsoft and Azure. Where, instead of “only” focusing on infrastructure clouds, the company is working towards a new programming model, Steve said on March 4, 2010. “I think Azure is very different than anything else on the market. I don’t think that anyone else is trying to redefine the programming model” When we look at the services recently in our post, Is Amazon’s Computing Fabric a New Economy , we noted a series of services outside of core computing that start evolving Amazon quickly down the path of a new development paradigm. Abstracting storage, network, monitoring, and perhaps in future security, in raw terms gives rise to new opportunities to bind them back together. Security is the topic for RSA. Compliance is the reason to get it right. If the computing model wants to be secure, it needs to know the assets and their relationships. As reported by Search Cloud Computing , Amazon’s Riley also tipped the audience at RSA that Amazon is weighing in on encryption as a service offerings. This is another example, where that now Amazon is supporting a new services such as Virtual Private Cloud, it moves one step closer the knowledge point for all the key assets, including their peers within the corporate network. We find this area, as well as certificate management, to be an area ripe for the type of thinking we see at Amazon. The problem to be solved isn’t a better routine, but is how to apply it tandem with the moving assets and data that is ever changing in demand. Perhaps We Needed to Get to Random, to Get to Secure We wonder if Amazon’s Think Cloud is something new, and if so, is a path towards solving the collision of the major parties in the network. If it joins network, storage, person, and server resources together, perhaps it is the brains of the next generation Internet. The winner will be the one that makes it simple, because as Devo on Chatroulette is proving, demand is asymmetric, and access control is from the eighties. Photo credit: RSA , Devo , Inc. Discuss

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Future: Amazon’s ‘Think Clouds’ are Data Aware

In the wake of the financial meltdown, a new set of financial regulations proposed by Senator Christopher Dodd aimed at plugging the “too big to fail” loopholes could have some negative side effects for the angel investment community. According to a report from the Seattle-based site TechFlash , Dodd’s bill would require that angel investments be approved by the SEC, a process that could take as many as 120 days to complete. Sponsor But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The enormous reform bill (some 1300+ pages) also gives the SEC the ability to delegate regulatory authority to state governments on investments it deems too small in size or scope. Angel investors themselves could be place under the regulatory microscope as well; the bill wants to raise the income level it takes to become an accredited investor, perhaps even doubling the requirement. Not only would this bill make the process of attaining seed-stage funding more difficult, more expensive, and more time consuming, it goes against the government’s goal to create jobs in America. If these regulations become law, fewer startups will get funding because they won’t want to deal with the lengthy SEC filing process. Instead, more innovative ideas will go by the wayside, startups will not get funding, and jobs will not be created. Furthermore, by raising the requirements to provide angel funding, the pool of investors will shrink, which will only exacerbate the problems facing the nation’s already floundering venture capital industry that is only recently seeing signs of recovery . In a letter sent to Senator Dodd earlier this month, Mark Heesen, President of the National Venture Capital Association, and Marianne Hudson, Executive Director of the Angel Capital Association, together outlined their grievances with the bill and its danger towards the VC industry. “Venture capitalists often invest in companies that were supported by angels, so ensuring that regulations for accredited investors do not harm this capital source is important,” said Heesen and Hudson. “In addition, as more and more venture capital firms co-invest with angel investors and angel organizations, the state preemption of securities regulations could extend to a large number of businesses, from start-ups to others that need capital for growth.” What do you think of this bill? It seems to me the sections mentioned above will be in direct conflict with the Startup Visa movement which most of the startup community seems to be on board with . The distinction seems obviously clear: encouraging foreign entrepreneurs to start their companies in America will create jobs, and this new bill from Senator Dodd will prevent the creation of jobs by thinning out angel investments. Let us know your thoughts below in the comments. Discuss

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Proposed Financial Regulations Could Cripple Angel Investing

At times it feels like the concept of cloud computing is as ephemeral as a towering cumulus cloud on a summer day. It passes by, changes shape and looks different to every person who views it. But like those clouds in the sky, there’s a lot of complexity out there, especially as it concerns how data is managed in a multi-tenant environment. The issue keeps coming up. First off, there are no existing standards for moving data in the cloud. Third party vendors like CloudSwitch are providing ways to “drag and drop,” data from on-premise to a cloud environments. But there is just no standardized way to move information between cloud networks. Sponsor But there are some ways to manage the complexity. Informatica’s David Linthicum wrote a blog post yesterday on the topic. We agree with Linthicum to some extent but his declarations don’t entirely reflect the current reality. Linthicum outlines some of the inherent issues that come with data integration in the cloud. The biggest issue comes down to the cloud computing providers. They do not provide syncing back to the customer’s on-premise environment. Linthicum points out that Salesforce.com is the exception to the rule in this regard. So, according to Linthicum, what should the customer consider? Backup: This is the first and foremost issue for Linthicum. You need to have an on-premise backup in case of cloud computing outages,cloud service providers going out of business or to prevent the headaches that can happen when the new owner of your cloud computing provider decides that it’s really not interested in that business at all. Data Movement: It’s the data integration that drives processes between systems that may be in the cloud or on-premise. How do you manage all this information that may be dispersed over geographically distant platforms? It’s a different world than dealing with systems that exist in one data center. We agree to a point but there are lots of various options to these issues. First off, it’s often a matter of what cloud computing platform you choose. The large service providers offer the safest bet. They are vested in the future of cloud computing and are developing ecosystems that consist of third-party partners. A number of these partners specialize in cloud-based application deployments. And cloud-based security is making advances that make data loss as rare as if the data is on-premise. Linthicum does offer some sound advice that may seem more like common sense but it is worth noting: “First, consider the overall requirements of the business. Sounds obvious, but many who deploy cloud computing systems do not have a complete understanding of the overall business requirements. Second, focus on the holistic architecture, on-premise and cloud-delivered, including how they will and should exchange data to support the core business. Finally, select the right data integration technology for the job, and do so only after taking everything into account. You’ll find that there are both on-premise and on-demand options, and in many instances you may have to mix and match solutions.” There are a lot of options out there. We do not necessarily agree that the hybrid approach is the best way to go. There is no one formula. Standardizing on the cloud has its advantages. But, still, the over riding issue is really how data passes between systems. Without standards for managing data transfer, the issues Linthicum points out will never go away. Discuss

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How Do You Handle Data Integration in the Cloud?

Fair, thorough, enterprising and in context – that’s what we’re looking for in the journalism we read, isn’t it? At a time when shallow ranting takes up so much space in public discourse, a new media evaluation technology offers hope, inspiration and is a lot of fun to use. NewsTrust is a media technology organization funded by the Omidyar Network and MacAurthur Foundation. Yesterday it launched a personalized news filtering tool called MyNews . The tool helps users review the quality of journalism from all over the web and discover high-quality content they and their friends might enjoy. A light-weight, crowd-sourced, personalized recommendation engine that adds value on top of existing content? Sounds like our kind of app! Sponsor When reading content from around the web through NewsTrust, the user is presented with a well-designed interface through which to review the quality of journalism in question. Users are prompted to evaluate stories based on things like how well they were sourced, whether both sides of a controversy were explained and how enterprising the story was. Short and long reviews are supported and it’s easy to review a story in less than 30 seconds if you feel so inclined. The ability to post links to Twitter and Facebook with a single click means that users who already share articles around social networks have an opportunity to pause briefly and add another layer of value by using NewsTrust. The new MyNews product released yesterday leverages that network of reviewers to draw in a stream of high-quality links from around the web, on particular topics. In addition to NewsTrust reviewers, the service also delivers stories discovered and vetted algorithmically and it pulls links shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter into the NewsTrust ecosystem. It’s one thing to get a vote of apparent approval from friends sharing links on social networks, it’s another to peruse those links through a lens of community grading for journalistic quality. The end result is a personalized news reader populated with generally high-quality topical stories that have been reviewed by other readers. It’s a useful product and one that would work well as a mobile app, where browsing through lots of content of variable quality is less appealing. NewsTrust and MyNews aren’t for everyone, though. Only so many people will be interested in a news consumption interface so closely wedded to review activities. Many people will, no doubt, bristle at the prospect (or reality) of amateurs reviewing the quality of professional journalistic product. Some will find the site too left-leaning for their tastes. (Though it tries hard not to be.) Many people will enjoy MyNews, though, and we suspect everyone who follows social software in general will find this project particularly interesting. Projects like this may or may not be able to change the way news producers operate, but the news consumers who use it will likely find MyNews a helpful way to enrich their time on an otherwise all-too often low-quality web of news content. Discuss

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Want to Read Good Journalism? Try NewsTrust’s New Personalized Filtering Tool

Google just launched a new stable version of Google Chrome , the company’s increasingly popular browser, which introduces a number of new features and more advanced privacy controls. Chrome will now automatically detect the language of any site you surf to and offer you to translate the text for you. In addition, Google also added granular privacy controls to Chrome that allow you to turn off cookies and JavaScript on a site-by-site basis. For now, these new features are only available in the Windows version of Chrome. Sponsor Read 52 Languages Starting today, anybody who uses the stable release of Chrome on Windows will see a little bar appear at the top of the window whenever the browser loads a page that features a language that is not the default language of your browser install. Google Chrome uses the technology behind Google Translate to automatically detect and translate 52 languages. Chrome also gives you the ability to selectively turn this feature off for those languages you don’t need it for. One interesting aspect of this technology is that the language detection happens in the browser, while the translation itself happens on Google’s servers. As with all automatic translation algorithms, Google Translate is prone to errors, but it more than good enough to easily get the basic gist of a new article or blog post. Better Privacy Controls In addition to the new translation feature, the new stable release of Chrome also includes a number of new privacy controls. Through the new “Content Settings” option, Chrome users on Windows can manage how they want Google to handle pop-ups, plug-ins, cookies, images and JavaScript code. These new settings, for example, allow you to easily block cookies from some sites. It remains to be seen, however, if mainstream users will be able to understand these relatively complicated controls. What About the Mac and Linux? With multiple release channels and different schedules for every platform, keeping track of Chrome isn’t easy. While these new features aren’t available for Mac and Linux users yet, it’s likely only a matter of time before we will see them on non-Windows platforms. For the time being, Mac users on the dev channel should make sure that they have updated to the latest version of Chrome, which finally brings a usable bookmarks manager to the OSX version of Google Chrome . Discuss

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Latest Version of Google Chrome Adds Auto-Translation and New Privacy Features