Internet2 meets the industrial-strength cloud

Last week, we traveled to Raleigh, N.C., to announce our partnership with Internet2. This partnership will facilitate, develop, and ultimately provide a secure, high-performance cloud computing platform to universities nationwide. The platform will draw upon SHI's experience in building the industry's first industrial-grade cloud.

The three-day conference was sponsored by the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN) as part of the organization's annual community day.

Internet2 is the world's most advanced networking consortium that actively engages the community in the development of new and important technologies for higher education, government, and the research industry.

The theme for this fall's member meeting, “Creating the Future: Collaborations and Connections," created great opportunities for conversation and networking during the tutorials, workshops, forums, and working groups.

Just another day in Cloudville

SHI Cloud CLOUDVILLE Cartoon by Dave Blazek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at blog.shicloud.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://blog.shicloud.com.

How LABVANTAGE Solutions takes advantage of the SHI Cloud

Jeff Vannest of LABVANTAGE Solutions Inc. says that launching his company's apps on the SHI Cloud platform has had one huge benefit: He can take his mind and money off IT issues, and put the focus where it should be -- on the products and services that drive his business.

Our blogging team caught up with Jeff at VMworld 2011, right after he spoke on a panel about the SHI Cloud. The discussion centered around the ways cloud computing is supporting Jeff's business, the types of applications he's deployed in the cloud, why he moved elements of LABVANTAGE Solutions to the cloud, and more. Watch to see everything Jeff had to say about working with a cloud solutions provider.

Transparency in cloud computing is 3D

Reading that headline, you probably think that my saying “transparency is 3D” is a contradiction in terms. When it comes to the relationship you have with your cloud services provider, however, transparency really does have three dimensions.

I introduced you to the notion of transparency, and showed you why transparency is essential to a good cloud services partnership, in my last post. I also documented the risk to companies that depend on cloud services when transparency is lacking in their vendor relationship.

Transparency is not a monolithic thing. It’s not just about honest communications. In the world of cloud computing, transparency has three dimensions: security, design and architecture, and communication. Most cloud service providers offer one dimension of transparency. Some offer two. Few offer all three.

You need all three to minimize your risk and maximize your ROI.

1. Transparency in Security 
2. Transparency in Design and Architecture 
3. Transparency in Communications

I’ll start with Transparency in Security, because that’s the most important dimension for most organizations, and the one nearly every provider gets wrong.

Every cloud service provider, with varying degrees of sophistication and success, monitors its services and data centers for security risks and incidents. But not all use independent, specialized third-parties to augment the security monitoring of the environment to ensure the highest level of preparedness and responsiveness. And almost no cloud providers in the market today then extend critical information and alerting relating to the security of their infrastructure to the customers who depend on that infrastructure to support business applications and protect corporate data.