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Thursday, October 6th, 2016
| Time | Event |
| 6:29p | Reports: VMware, AWS Join Forces in Battle for Enterprise Cloud Market In what may be the boldest step yet in VMware’s recently announced overhaul of the business strategy around cloud services, the company has partnered with its once arch rival in the cloud market, Amazon Web Services, multiple tech news sites reported, citing anonymous sources close to both companies. Amazon and VMware are planning to announce the partnership next week in San Francisco, according to Fortune and SiliconAngle. Details about the nature of the partnership have not been revealed, but if the deal is similar to the one VMware recently struck with IBM, it will create a disruptive combination that will make it a lot more difficult for AWS rivals, who are already far behind in terms of cloud market share, to catch up. The partnership with IBM is to provide VMware’s ubiquitous data center virtualization software stack as a service on IBM’s cloud. If the new reports are true, combining the most widely used enterprise infrastructure software stack with the world’s biggest cloud (AWS) will create a dominating force in the battle for the lucrative enterprise cloud market. After attempting for several years to carve out a portion of the enterprise cloud market as a service provider in its own right, VMware in August announced it would no longer pursue that strategy. Its new game-plan is to partner with cloud market leaders and combine its technology with their services. VMware and its cloud business have recently gone through some major changes. Last month, the company became a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, the giant that was formed after Dell acquired EMC, which owned 80 percent of VMware. Earlier this year, Bill Fathers, who ran VMware’s cloud business, left the company, and so did Simone Brunozzi, VP and chief technologist for VMware Hybrid Cloud. Also recently, VMware sold its government cloud business to data center service provider QTS Realty Trust, which used to act as a partner, selling the services to government agencies and operating the infrastructure that hosts them. QTS announced the deal this week. VMware’s new cloud strategy has a name: VMware Cloud Foundation. The foundation combines its vSphere, Virtual SAN, and NSX (software for server, storage, and network virtualization, respectively) into a VMware cloud stack sold as a service, either on-prem or in service provider data centers. The idea is to enable enterprises to combine their existing VMware environments with cloud services in as seamless a way as possible. If VMware and Amazon manage to make it quick and easy for customers to extend their on-prem VMware infrastructure into AWS, their cloud rivals Microsoft and Google will have a lot to think about, given VMware’s enormous enterprise install base. |
| 6:35p | Massive Hack Hits Continuum MSPs, End Clients  Brought to you by MSPmentor Continuum is tightening security and warning managed services providers (MSPs) to be on the lookout for malicious activity after a massive cyberattack penetrated the software vendor’s IT management systems and compromised an unknown number of end-user client servers, the company confirmed today. MSPs were notified in early August that a breach originating with a legacy IP scanner tool had spread, resulting in unauthorized administrator accounts being created inside customer networks. More than two months after the hacking attack was initially discovered, the full extent of the damage remained unknown. “We identified several clients who had administrative superuser accounts created within their Windows active directory without our knowledge,” said a Continuum partner who asked not to be identified. “These accounts were created and active for several days prior to us being notified of the breach, so unidentified intruders had full access to our clients’ systems and data long before we found out about it.” “We have identified login events within server logs which confirm unauthorized access to our clients’ servers from dozens of IP addresses around the world,” the partner continued. “We still have no way to know what sort of malicious software or gateways may have been left behind nor what data has been stolen, which absolutely could lead to additional problems and liability concerns for us in the future.” Continuum officials said they have responded aggressively to the cyberattack. “When we learned that our partners might have been compromised, we responded quickly and forcefully,” the vendor said in a statement. “Among other things, we immediately engaged a top forensic firm and the FBI.” “Our engineering team worked around the clock to write new software to flag suspicious activity, disable suspicious accounts and build tools to respond to the potential threat,” the statement went on. “We also communicated regularly with our partners and published a set of guidelines to help all partners strengthen the security at their end clients.” In an Aug. 4 email, Continuum Managed Services CEO Michael George advised affected partners to close any non-essential ports and continue checking for fraudulent administrative accounts, system accounts or accounts with elevated privileges at client sites. “We have a list of known suspicious accounts posted and we are running a script to disable known suspicious accounts,” the communication said. “We have also created a script to display all users across all of your sites so you can review and validate each more easily,” the email continued. “In some cases, we have observed open RDP (remote desk protocols) access and other security settings that should be tightened immediately.” Such attacks are “increasingly part of the digital world we live in,” George’s email said. The Continuum partner who spoke on condition of anonymity said that MSP is investing a great deal of effort to prevent and detect further unauthorized access. “We have suffered strained client relations as a result of notifying our clients about this breach,” the owner explained. “The scariest part of all of this is what we still don’t know, and what could happen in the future.” This first ran at http://mspmentor.net/msp-mentor/massive-h |
| 7:47p | AT&T, AWS Partner on IoT, Security  Brought to You by Talkin’ Cloud Amid rumors of a tie-up between Amazon Web Services and VMware, AWS is taking the wraps off a new alliance with AT&T which will span cloud networking, mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), security and analytics. According to an announcement on Thursday, the collaboration will initially focus on three main areas, including business cloud networking, IoT and threat management. “Customers of all sizes are quickly migrating to the AWS Cloud to reduce their data center footprint, become more agile and take advantage of innovation in areas such as IoT, Big Data and Analytics,” Terry Wise, Vice President of Worldwide Partner Ecosystem, AWS said in a statement. “Advanced connectivity and network solutions are critical to enabling our customers to get the most out of our services. We are excited to expand our alliance with AT&T and deliver new solutions designed to enable customers to accelerate their journey to the AWS Cloud.” The partnership comes as AT&T has announced its LTE-M network technology pilot in San Francisco, slotted to start in November, which will make it cheaper to connect IoT devices to the network. On the cloud networking side of the AT&T and AWS partnership, the companies said they will work together to identify new solutions beyond AT&T NetBond ecosystem, which has seen four fold growth in connections to AWS and eight fold in traffic over the last year. AT&T and AWS will launch AT&T IoT-connected sensors and devices that are pre-configured to securely connect to AWS cloud. Plans include integration with the AT&T IoT Starter Kit and IoT Data plans, which will allow customers to build their own solutions using AT&T IoT and AWS IoT. Lastly, on the security side of things, “AT&T and AWS plan to employ their respective expertise and knowledge in security to help customers prevent, detect, and respond to threats faster and more efficiently.” This first ran at http://talkincloud.com/iaas/att-aws-part |
| 8:01p | With More Data Than Ever to Manage, Storage Gets Smarter  Brought to you by IT Pro When Rob But after performance is handled, the conversations have changed: Now, his customers want to find out how to automate routine tasks and spend more time thinking about how to drive their organizations forward.
Barkz has been heavily focused on that platform, particularly with scripting tools that allow them to automate the more tedious processes while focusing on more strategic goals. And to make it easier for anyone to get up to speed, Pure Storage now offers both PowerShell (just updated this week) and Python scripting for its storage solutions.
That’s particularly important, Barkz said, as IT professionals are increasingly expected to be able to cross easily between domains.
This is particularly true with DevOps teams that are working to stay agile and bridge the divide between cloud and on premise, or teams that have seen the convenience of the cloud but want the security or cost management of on-premise. That’s easier than ever. Particularly since Microsoft has enabled hybrid cloud solutions with Azure ExpressRoute, enabling enterprises to build their own cloud with Azure and customer owned own hardware, which PureStorage moved to support earlier this year.
Easier self-service offerings also means that internal teams are less likely to go outside of IT to have their compute needs met.
These latest evolutions help put IT back in charge, more nimble than ever. This first ran at http://windowsitpro.com/cloud/more-data-e |
| 8:17p | Russia Weighs Replacing IBM, Microsoft With Open-Source Software (Bloomberg) — Russia is taking another step to reduce dependence on Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. technologies in the country’s $3 billion software market amid political tensions with the U.S. The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, is drafting a bill to restrict government agencies from buying licensed software, giving preference to open-source software. This would complement legislation that curbed state purchases of foreign programs last year, restricting the choice to about 2,000 local software makers. “Many local software firms are offering products based on foreign frameworks such as IBM’s WebSphere or Microsoft’s ASP.net,” said Andrey Chernogorov, executive secretary of the Duma’s commission on strategic information systems. “We are seeking to close this loophole for state purchases as it causes security risks.” See also: The Open Source Data Center The end of IBM’s partnership with Russian vendor Lanit last year created a potential vulnerability for the government’s website zakupki.gov.ru, which is based on a proprietary IBM platform, according to an explanatory note to the draft law. Additionally, license fees that Russian software makers pay foreign partners inflate their products’ cost of use. Some Russian regional administrations already started switching from Oracle to free database software adapted for their needs by local programmers, according to Duma documents. Russian President Vladimir Putin is urging state entities and firms to go domestic amid concerns over security and reliability after U.S. firms shut down paid services in Crimea following Russia’s 2014 annexation. Tensions between Russia and the U.S. have escalated recently over failed Syria peace talks and Kremlin’s suspension of a treaty meant to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation. |
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