Big data and data analytics are rapidly changing business, open government and citizen services, security and privacy. Whether it’s easily mapping a bus route using Google Maps thanks to open access to data provided by your local transit provider, discovering correlations between magnesium deficiencies and migraines, or uncovering a breach in your organization’s security infrastructure, big data is here to stay and will have dramatic impacts on us in the future.

But what is Big Data? The core aspects of big data to consider are that:

(a) It is increasingly easy to gather, store and manage very large datasets
(b) Using data analytics and correlation engines we can extract value from these datasets in ways to drive new opportunities
(c) If you can do it for good, others can do it for evil

Big data and data correlation are being used for good in a number of ways. Have you recently had a credit card cancelled by the issuer without reporting fraud yourself? Most people are not aware that the majority of credit card related breaches are not discovered by the consumer, merchant or transaction processor, but by Visa, Mastercard and American Express. Those three companies have huge datasets and correlation capabilities that enable them to see patterns in fraud and relate them back to the specific sources of a breach, usually becoming aware of these problems before the troubled organizations. Gathering more data, and finding ways to sift through that data is incredibly important to the future of security.

In the Enterprise, we see security event and incident management tool (SEIM) deployments as the front line of this approach. By aggregating system logs and looking for anomalies, and over time being able to sort out the wheat from the chaff, an organization is able to take a more effective stance as it relates to security events. Often, when organizations have failed to put effective logging techniques in place, it is nearly impossible to actually determine the source or cause of a breach, infection or data loss. But when the tools are in place and properly used, over time organizations are able to become more aware of when incidents are occurring as they occur, and reduce the impact and spread of events, thus the costs associated with them. The Rotman survey we do annually shows that organizations who invest in log and SIEM tools consistently experience improved security outcomes.

However, the bad guys also have access to these same tools. In addition to the huge databases of stolen credit card numbers and other personal information available on the web for small change, criminals are increasingly using big data techniques to correlate individual pieces of information on victims into richer profiles, which can be sold for higher values. Bringing together a credit card number with address, name, date of birth and mother’s maiden name results in a much richer profile for an identity thief to wreak havoc. Researchers have also used data correlation techniques to bring together public voting records, land records, anonymized health care studies and social security or insurance numbers to reveal information that was never intended.

If your organization is responsible for verifying identity in order to establish credit, provide access to resources, sell services or other reasons, it is important to keep in mind how easy, and cheaply this information can be gathered for malicious purposes, and develop effective countermeasures to prevent fraud. That fraud has costs both to your organization and the individuals who suffer the identity theft.

So, keep in mind the value of data, how easily it can be gathered, tools available for analysis, and find ways to use it for your advantage and to offset the risks to your organization.

Michael Argast, TELUS Security Solutions

In my previous blogs we talked about why you would need a business case when moving to the Cloud and how you could allocate your budget. Today, in the final blog within this series I will talk about whether buying on-demand resources and capacity to run your IT has the potential to be less expensive.

3 reasons why Cloud should save you money

Every conversation on cloud I have with CIO and sourcing decision makers eventually turns to a discussion of cost and the assertion that cloud computing is less expensive. From a technology perspective, there are at least three key reasons why a well-run third-party public Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) provider should be able to deliver compute resources less expensively than a typical internal IT organization:

• Load aggregation. By combining the highly variable compute loads from a pool of organizations, it should be possible to achieve better utilization levels.
  
• Cost of power and electricity. By locating datacentres in areas with low-cost power, hosting and IaaS providers can lower their cost of compute resources. Given that power can often represent 35% of operating costs, this advantage is significant.
  
• Labor utilization. Compared with a typical IT organization operating a Public IaaS platform that is standard and heterogeneous IT infrastructure and delivered in a one-to-many model is much more streamlined, efficient and cost-effective.
  

The key issue however is not the cost of delivering IT compute services as such. For IT buyers, the issue is comparing the price of acquiring a public IT cloud service versus the cost of providing it internally. Pricing is a function of market conditions, seller motivation, and buyer requirements. In mature industries, cost and price are usually highly correlated. The cloud computing market is in a period of rapid expansion, affecting both providers and their service offerings. Pricing varies from very short-term contracts, literally minutes of usage, to multiyear contracts with associated discounts. The scope of the public IT cloud service offerings varies even more widely.

The long-term outlook is that public IaaS has the potential to reduce the cost of IT delivery. However, there is no guarantee, even likelihood that any particular project or application will certainly be hosted more effectively with hosted or IaaS resources. As with most complex technical questions, the answer is a function of many variables. Nevertheless, IDC believes that public IT cloud services will evolve rapidly into a major IT platform, and for that reason, IT organizations should continue to explore new options and applications.

For midsize and larger projects, IDC recommends IT leaders and other business executives rely on the proven business case methodology factoring the relevant components, including direct resource costs (equipment, software, and services), assurance costs (such as monitoring, patching, and maintenance), and indirect costs (including buildings, energy consumption, taxes, and IT management), and comparing them with external options (also fully encumbered with all relevant costs including assurance and IT management).

This is the final blog in a 3 part series on the business case for Cloud.    In addition to the blogs, IDC in partnership with TELUS developed a Cloud workbook based on a 2011 IDC survey with Canadian businesses to determine how they can take advantage of the flexible, on-demand way to access infrastructure and applications via Cloud.  Highlights from the workbook include:

• Use cases detailing how companies of varying sizes across verticals are deploying Cloud
  
• Types of Canadian Cloud providers and their offerings
  
• Key consideration questions to assess infrastructure-based Cloud services as part of your IT strategy
  

You can get full access to the workbook here

Mark Schrutt

IDC Canada

TELUS Talks Business correspondent Etan Vlessing recently attended a TELUS presentation, in association with Autonomy, an HP company called "Data Protection in a mobile world". This blog summarizes why Cloud-based backup technology is important for mobile data protection.

No blue-sky thinking here: Cloud-based backup technology allows users to store and retrieve data via the Internet from anywhere in the world, anytime.

It turns out even a data storage guru can face a blank computer screen just before a big keynote speech.  Stephen Spellicy, director of enterprise data protection at Autonomy, a division of HP, on Wednesday recalled last year waking up in a San Francisco hotel room and powering up his laptop computer, only to discover his entire hard drive had been wiped as he slept.

“I had no access”, he remembered, “Hours before he was to make a key trade show presentation”.

IT had pushed down a new security patch across the network, which placed encryption software on the hardrive, Spellicy said of the IT mishap back at corporate headquarters.  So did Spellicy panic? And was he able to recover his presentation in time for his conference address?  It turns out organizations are today crawling with mobile employees dealing with the very same challenges of data storage, loss and recovery.  And that threatens IT departments scrambling to secure and protect company information and apps on employee-owned mobile devices and tablets that access corporate networks from remote locations.  Organizations routinely used cumbersome and manually intensive external USB backup drives and rewritable CD/DVDs to backup data and protect against viruses, power failures and accidental deletions.  But what about data protection at the edge, with on-the-go employees like Spellicy in his San Francisco hotel room?  Today’s on-the-go employees are armed with laptops, smart phones and tablets, and may need to recover and access corporate information from remote locations due to any number of disaster scenarios.

“Our IT departments are struggling with how to manage information as it grows in the wilds”, Spellicy told a panel on data protection in a mobile world in Toronto.  “After all, no organization has a walled garden in today’s fast-changing mobile world”.

“Information is spreading out to the edge, and we’re losing control of information, and we have to bring that control back in”, Spellicy added.

CLOUD-BASED BACKUP

Recall our data storage guru and his lost presentation in San Francisco.  Too busy to make sense of the data loss, Spellicy recalled rushing down to the hotel lobby and purchasing a Netbook with a Windows operating system.

“I fired it up and launched a recovery page, and pulled down my required information, as well as my web email, and restored the information I needed for the trade show”, Spellicy explained.

That was fast, not surprising for a techno geek like Spellicy.  But remote access to his corporate data, and online recovery, was made possible by the use of Autonomy’s cloud-based connected technology. In effect, Spellicy was able to remain connected to his corporate network and to instantly and easily recover lost data.

“I needed to be able to recover the information I was working with, which was critical to doing my job at the tradeshow”, he recalled.  Here cloud-based data protection is migrating from traditional desktop servers to the edge of a corporate network, whether that’s mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad, Android smartphones and other browser-enabled mobile devices increasingly in use by mobile employees.  Autonomy’s Connected Backup technology allows mobile devices to find and view protected documents and other corporate data, and securely use that information anytime and anywhere.  Connected Backup means on-the-go workers never have to feel disconnected.

Even as Spellicy’s main laptop computer proved useless at the San Francisco conference, he could still use the Netbook and an SSL VPN as a web browser to securely access his corporate network, and use the backup app to identify and retrieve corporate files.  All that’s needed is a backup subscription service, a secure password and a secure Internet connection. Here the MyRoam technology allowed Spellicy to use any web browser to access files, even in a hotel lobby while using a kiosk computer.

“Go to the computer, fire up Internet Explorer, put in a simple URL to the Connected Backup app, put your username password in and you can literally bring down the content that you’re looking for”, Spellicy explained.  He adds “The Connected Backup technology is purpose-built for tablets. At the same time, the MyRoam feature enables smartphone access to files by tapping into a device’s web browser, if required”.

DATA ARCHIVING

Fast and flexible cloud-based storage and access to business information has more uses than recovering from a hard disk crash. Spellicy pointed to Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) search engine platform, which enables effective records management and archiving for organizations. Why would an organization need IDOL to gather up corporate information, process, store and serve it up on command?  The ability to identify, sort through and retrieve stored information becomes crucial, for example, to complete internal investigations, or outside litigation and regulatory requests.

“When a lawyer gets an email asking for information to be supplied to a court case, data needs to be recovered to remain compliant”, Spellicy explained.  Here the Connected Backup app has a range of options to browse and search protected data using keywords and concept queries. The result is critical corporate information, ­ whether stored contracts, documents or agreements, ­ becomes more easily identified and accessed.  Spellicy insisted Autonomy’s IDOL search and discovery tools may well prove invaluable when top execs and in-house counsel are looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack to meet a litigation or regulatory request.

“We can make sense of the information that we’re storing. And we can leverage that in a litigation request, he said of the IDOL search engine platform.  In effect, IDOL enables a look into the haystack to intuitively spot and retrieve the needle. IDOL learns over time what information is and how it’s being used in the infrastructure”, Spellicy said.

IT DEPARTMENTS

Of course, if corporate IT departments do not encourage mobile employees to back-up and store data in the clouds, then retrieval and access of protected corporate data from remote locations would not be nearly as easy.

“A good IT policy will have devices, typically corporate-owned devices, backed up regularly”, Spellicy insisted. Leveraging the clouds is also about making IT departments more agile and responsive, and very much about the bottom line as virtualization reduces storage costs and risks. That’s help at hand for IT departments increasingly asked to control and protect ever-bigger volumes of corporate data with fewer resources. For one thing, Spellicy argued roughly 85% of data generated by corporate organizations today is unstructured data, or the stuff employees create everyday and which is not stored in the data center.

Cloud-based data protection technologies can allow IT departments to reduce the risks and costs of storing this growing unstructured data burden.

“We need to be able to deal with this growing data load with limited time in the day, limited time to backup data, and with limited bandwidth in remote locations with which to access and use the information”, Spellicy argued.

By Etan Vlessing

The Connected Backup solution from Autonomy, an HP company, is the world's leading data protection solution and the service supporting TELUS' Desktop Backup.  www.telus.com/desktopbackup

One of the key success factors in moving to the Cloud is developing a robust business case.  The business case provides the rationale, benefits, and costs, as well as the expected results for investments by organizations.

This is the first in a three-part series on the importance of a business case, budgets; operating vs. capital, and expected results of a successful business case.    Today’s blog will cover the need for business case, followed by a deeper dive into how you allocate your budget of operating (OPEX) vs. capital (CAPEX) and finally, how to determine if you are meeting your business case objectives.

Cloud is another form of outsourcing. The discussion of the ROI should follow a similar thought process as outsourcing, contracting out or for that matter many other IT decisions. This starts with the business case. The business case has established itself as the primary tool in sourcing decisions.

The IT business case typically has seven components: Background, current state and options; financial review; risk management; strategic fit; execution plan; and ongoing management. In addition, there are four major steps in developing a business case: scope identification; data collection; market pricing; and contracting.

Not all business cases need each of the steps. At the very least, though, a financial review commonly referred to as a cost/benefit analysis should be done. The cost/benefit analysis is a comparison of the options a company has to support its IT requirements. The benefits of Cloud-based infrastructure (or Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS) need to be clearly identified and quantified to the extent possible. In addition, one-time costs for activities such as transition need to be included. Last, the financial implications of risk need to be woven into the business case. While the risk (which revolves around security and privacy that is frequently associated with Cloud) should be identified and their probability and priority to the organization needs to be assessed, the financial review focuses on the cost of reducing or eliminating such risk. For Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS (which are virtualized servers, storage and networking hardware delivered as a service) examples include the cost for data replication, mirrored sites and any cost differences for in-Canada solutions that address potential risk and concern.

Regardless of whether a full business case or cost/benefit analysis is done, the exercise really starts with a discussion between the business and IT. The business case is heavily dependent on communication between management, IT leaders and sourcing decision makers. These discussions should focus on a common understanding of the company's future direction and what will be required from IT to meet the corporate goals. These conversations will help form the scope of infrastructure services being considered for the Cloud.

Cloud is one option. And within IaaS there are various choices between Public and Private models. While Public IaaS offers many benefits, such as potential cost savings and the ability to scale, it does provide somewhat limited options on how infrastructure resources can be configured. Public IaaS is a one-to-many model and customization comes at a price. Public IaaS also has to be managed, whether by the service provider or internally. These costs have to be addressed in the ROI calculation. Cloud also introduces the discussion of operating (Opex) vs. capital (Capex).  My next blog will discuss this in more detail.

In the meantime, is your company thinking about moving to the Cloud but you don’t know where to start?  Do you think a business case would be the first step or have you done one already?

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This is the first in a 3 part series about the Business Case for Cloud by Mark Schrutt.  Director, Services & Enterprise Applications.  IDC Canada

Is driving energy efficiency and lower total cost of ownership within your data center infrastructure top of mind? Are you trying to determine how you manage and understand your growing needs, the benefits, risks, and how you’re going to support it? Do you manage your IT infrastructure in- house, through a third party or a mix?  What are your data center options?

At this year’s DatacenterDynamics Conference in Toronto, I was a guest speaker on Next Generation Data Centres.  For those of you that were too far away to attend, here’s what I told the audience:

Your main approach to data centres needs to focus on four fundamental drivers: efficiency, sustainability, reliability and security, not only across the data centre itself (mechanical, electrical & physical building) but the entire end-to-end delivery including WAN, IT infrastructure and applications.  Security and privacy are crucial design elements and, done poorly, can create roadblocks to cloud adoption, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Efficiency, Sustainability, Reliability

The Next Generation Data Centres need to be:

Designed for efficiency

• Efficient mechanical, electrical and IT, minimize overhead (structure, people) and streamline operations.

Designed for sustainability

• Reduce or eliminate overhead where possible to maximize the IT output with the lowest inputs. Efficient cooling design that takes advantage of our climate; reduce building structures where they are not required and of course using hydroelectric generated power to minimize greenhouse gas emissions.

Designed for reliability

• From the ground up to IT applications.

Designed  for modularity

• Allow you to add capacity to accommodate growth while taking advantage of technology evolution with each subsequent module.   

In addition, I feel that data centres should be aware of your green footprint or you environmental impact in running the datacentre (i.e. no batteries).

In closing, here’s a checklist to keep top of mind when evaluating potential service providers for your Next Generation Data Centre:

•    Are the four fundamental drivers - efficiency, sustainability, reliability and security - provided.
•    Is there an end-to-end delivery platform including Wide Area Network, IT Infrastructure & Applications 
•    Is it designed around your network with an advanced foundation of security, privacy  and reliability
•    Is there scalability? End to end service capabilities – cloud / network / device? And a platform for the growth?

For additional information watch "The revolving role of IT"

Lloyd Switzer is the senior vice president of network transformation for TELUS.

At a technology conference last summer, Google’s then CEO Erik Schmidt said that we create as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003. Much has been said about the explosive growth of data being generated, consumed and stored. If you’re not convinced, check out this digital universe page from EMC or this cool graphic (which is probably outdated the moment I type this) from Good magazine.

The confluence of internet adoption, digitization of documents and records, pervasiveness of networked devices, data retention regulations and numerous other factors are the backdrop for this phenomenon.

You know this. But chances are if you’re charged with storing your organization’s data (or paying for the infrastructure that will support it) you’re confused about how to evaluate the options at hand and make decisions that support your company’s data storage needs effectively, efficiently and securely.

Over the next five weeks, we'll walk you through how to evaluate the options for cloud storage. While cloud storage isn’t for everyone, the flexibility characteristics of cloud services and the obvious savings in capital expenditures required translated into an increase in adoption of over 300% since 2010 with some industry analysts predicting worldwide spending on cloud storage will reach $1 billion in 2013.

Recognizing different storage needs

Here’s what we know: Not all data is created equal. This massive amount of information being accumulated by users and businesses cannot and should not be stored and delivered using the same level of infrastructure and networks.

Many organizations realize that doing so is both operationally and financially unsustainable, and therefore are adopting a multi-tiered approach to data storage.

A myriad of storage technologies have been introduced over the years to address different levels of data criticality and performance. These solutions, including disk based backup, data duplication, and a number of others that power our three tiered managed storage offering, allow organizations to combine different grades of platforms and choose the one most appropriate for the type of data, its users and the retention period it require.

The next (front)tier of multi-tiered storage

This evolution from single type of storage, to a multi-tier storage approach is now reaching a state in which cost-effective storage services are being considered to complement internal investments in data storage. These capabilities, by virtue of being Internet accessible services, operate beyond the confines of the corporate network, require significantly less ongoing management effort and provide higher levels of flexibility.

As a consumer you can benefit from the flexibility an Internet-accessible storage service such as Dropbox has to offer when you required anywhere/anytime to your files. Home users can subscribe to a backup service such as Mozy and more recently store their music collection on Amazon or Apple. These new kinds of utility type services, together with their benefits and risks are not restricted to consumers as more businesses are now considering cloud storage alternatives for their needs.

Case in point is one of the early cloud infrastructure providers, Amazon Web Services, who has been operating a service called S3 for several years. This multi-tenant storage service has been the foundation for many early stage and cash strapped companies over the years and is one of a few services being considered a cheap and flexible storage alternative for non critical storage in a growing number of organizations.

Internet-accessible and important to mention, multi-tenant, business grade storage services are emerging as viable storage tier for some types of data, projects or applications.

More to come in the next few weeks about evaluating the options for cloud storage, including case studies on cloud storage, the benefits and risks cloud storage and what to consider when choosing a cloud storage provider.

Shawn Myron is the director of products and services for TELUS' hosting and data centres.

Questions about the cloud and whether it's right for your company? Leave a comment here.