Focusing on Cloud

After the summer break and the updates from the recent VMworld in Barcelona, GURU advisor is back with a new issue, new columns and an update sysadmin’s glossary.

This fall issue focuses on Cloud services with an entire article about a comparison of products and providers for email solutions for business scenarios: we have crafted a comparative table with the two main providers -Microsoft and Google- and some competitors which include pricing, versions of the services and related products. We also talk about Stellar Cloud Servers, a 100% italian product for the outsourcing of IT infrastructures specifically conceived to offer scalability and Enterprise-grade reliability.

Then we introduce ZAP, an open source software by OWASP dedicated to penetration testing and vulnerability assessment, with a more technical article. ZAP is a very powerful tool that provides plenty of data and information regarding attack simulations and outcomes that can be hard to interpret, so it’s really suitable for pros only, yet it’s an interesting starting point when analyzing your own Web app or Website.

Remaining in the Internet services and products sphere, our legal advisor will talk about security and privacy in terms of Internet of Things devices. As more and more wearable and domotic devices can collect and transmit sensitive information about ourselves and our habits, the risk that these information are not handled properly in the context of the actual regulation rises.

The importance of being updated

Inevitably, the cover of this issue of GURU advisor is dedicated to WannaCry, the ransomware that in the last weeks hit, in an unprecedented and unexpected mode, thousands of users all around the world. The WannaCry attack had such an impact that it was covered also by mainstream news channels and not only by those belonging to the IT world, as it plagued hospitals, transports, universities and companies. Because of that, we have dedicated a whole article to the ransomware where we have tried to analyze the first phases of the diffusion and the modalities of infection and attack.
Those of you that hasn’t secured your own infrastructure yet, you can find all information and references to the updates provided by Microsoft and some interesting information about which exploits have been used to realize all of that.

The importance of patches, updates and regular checks on devices is further highlighted by attacks like the one of a few weeks ago. In this edition we have dedicated an extended article to the Cortado Corporate Server software, a platform aimed to MSP and companies for the MDM management of mobile devices, from where you can control each aspect of terminals, be it a BYOD and a COPE (Corporate Owned - Personally Enabled) context.
The decision of using a platform instead of another represents a delicate phase of the experience of an IT professional: to help you with the choice, after the introductive article to XenServer on the previous issue, we went deeper with a step-by-step guide to the installation and first use of the “alternative” hypervisor to two giants like VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V.

This issue features a particularly rich Columns section, as it has been happening by the beginning of the year, with bulletins about Cloud, Security and CMS. Beside these 3, we have an interesting article by our lawyer which deals with a very delicate topic: providers’ liability, in the case of third parties operate illegally using services provided by the Provider.

Security before anything else

This summer issue of GURUadvisor is about security, be it about IT infrastructures or specific platforms like the renowned CMS WordPress.
In an ever connected world where the barrier between physical and digital gets shallower every day, it’s fundamental to understand the risk one is exposed, so that it’s easier to build an effective defensive system.
Therefore we have dedicated three articles to the matter, starting with a practical guide on how to secure devices of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), which are getting more and more used, and to one of the most used Websites platform: WordPress.

In terms of IT systems for enterprise and business contexts, we have tested on the field the new product by GFI -LanGuard-, a real asset manager to manage patches and updates not only on an operating system level but also for third-party applications.

We will also cover the new FreeNAS release and how the long-awaited release 10 “Corral” had to make way for the successive release 11. We then go on with our monthly bulletins on Cloud and Datacenter, Security and CMS, and our lawyer will talk about Data Breach and the new regulamentation that will be effective with the turn of the year.

The challenge of Cloud

Those of you follows the market of Cloud solutions’ providers will have noted for sure certain phenomena and behaviours that emerged dramatically in the last years.

  • The biggest players, ie Microsoft, Amazon and Google, have an increasingly more sophisticated and complex offer that can fulfill most business needs, thus eliminating the internal infrastructure. Apart from this trio, a very few other players can compete in more than two or three sectors. Who seeks an all-around solution must rely upon one of these.
  • In general the prices of these three giants tend to be higher than the rest of the market, but there are sectors (where economies of scale help) where are definitely cheaper than the average. To the detriment of smaller providers.
  • Who shows up in a more aggressive way on the market and manages to gain success despite the aforementioned three giants, makes it with a very specific PaaS or SaaS architecture, think of Salesforce/Force.com: smart and well architected structured starting from the resolution of a problem in the best way possible.
  • Traditional SaaS solutions like emails or object storage platforms (like Dropbox & Co.) compete with great difficulty with these giants, not in terms of prices but rather in terms of added value that Amazon, Microsoft and Google can offer. Microsoft in particular stands in a predominant position in the SaaS world thanks to the legacy of its past and traditional software: Exchange, Office and Sharepoint. Products that are heavily used in the Enterprise world that suffice to persuade lots of companies to partner with Microsoft, regardless of prices and modalities and times of effective migration.

Hence who -like some of you- wants to emerge in the world of Cloud services must maintain a certain appeal in order not to lose clients. So it makes sense to sell cheap mailboxes, but also to offer a management system that provides an added value and specific services to attract and keep loyal clients. Otherwise you will be replaced by one of these giants.

An aspect not to be underestimated is the extreme management complexity of these platforms and the continue updating they undergo: if you can’t compete with services, then organise and learn how to compete in the management of these platforms. Even experienced IT Managers can experience lots of difficulties in understanding and managing platforms so extended and structured like Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure and Office 365 or Google Cloud Platform. The same difficulties will be faced by companies that don’t have an internal skilled and expert IT department and will, consequently, rely upon partners and consultants.

Advice for a seaside reading

While you are lying on a hot beach (as I hope) or in a lone office updating systems of a client (as I fear), why don’t you stay update reading GURU advisor?

Despite being quite hot, this month too we have prepared plenty of news.
We keep on talking about Managed Service Providers by presenting a detailed coverage of a simple and functional platform for MSP, available for free at least for its fundamental features (Comodo One).

We then deal with one of the most important software for any technicians, sysadmin or company that providers support services to its client: remote control. Although TeamViewer is the leading solution in this sector, there are plenty of alternatives and in some cases they surpasses in terms of ease of use, features and compatibility. We have tried 10 different products that belong to the category and we’ve compared every feature in an all-encompassing table. We hope it can help you to determine whether the product you use is suitable for the purpose: naturally it’s hard to pick a winner, as basic requirements changes according to the type of use you’re going to do and to the number of technicians or sessions you need.

If you are using cloud technologies for your company or are evaluating third-party services, then you’ll have thought for sure about the difficulties you might encounter while evaluating a contract from a technical and, mostly, legal perspective. This month our lawyer tells us what we must be aware of while reading such contracts and which clauses in particular should catch our attention, both in positive and negative. Naturally, from a legal profile, it’s better to look for an Italian provider, as you will see.

Many of you ask us about the hosting world: this month we have taken into account the most used providers in the world and in Europe and compared a basic hosting plan suitable to run a Wordpress website: you will discover prices and the (scarce) technical information available for each service.

Lastly, while waiting for VMworld USA, which starts at the end of this month, we have interviewed Rodolfo Rotondo from VMware and talked about the future and the new “hardware” for our applications: he says it’s called Cloud..

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Word of the Day

The term Edge Computing refers, when used in the cloud-based infrastructure sphere, the set of devices and technologies that allows...

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The acronym SoC (System on Chip) describes particular integrated circuit that contain a whole system inside a single physical chip:...

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The acronym PtP (Point-to-Point) indicates point-to-point radio links realized with wireless technologies. Differently, PtMP links connects a single source to...

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Hold Down Timer is a technique used by network routers. When a node receives notification that another router is offline...

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Issues Archive

  •  GURU advisor: issue 21 - May 2019

    GURU advisor: issue 21 - May 2019

  • GURU advisor: issue 20 - December 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 20 - December 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 19 - July 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 19 - July 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 18 - April 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 18 - April 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 17 - January 2018

    GURU advisor: issue 17 - January 2018

  • GURU advisor: issue 16 - october 2017

    GURU advisor: issue 16 - october 2017

  • GURU advisor: issue 15 - July 2017

    GURU advisor: issue 15 - July 2017

  • GURU advisor: issue 14 - May 2017

    GURU advisor: issue 14 - May 2017

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