Top 10 Most Overhyped Technology Terms

We have entered a new era of information technology, an era where the clouds are moist, the data is obese and incontinent, and the threats are advanced, persistent, and the biggest ever. Of course with all the paradigm-shifting, next generation, FUD vs. ROI marketing, its important to remember that sometimes we need to balance innovation against misunderstood expectations, vendor double-speak, and relentless enterprise sales guys.

Because contrary to the barrage of marketing, these technologies won’t make you rich, teach you how to invest in real-estate, help you lose weight or grow a full head of hair, it won’t make you attractive to the opposite sex, nor will it solve all your problems, in some cases they can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your operating environment but it requires proper planning, expectation setting and careful deployment…and on that note, I give you the top 10 most overhyped technology terms over the last decade.

Virtual Strategy Magazine: PC Hypervisors Virtually Change Everything

Recently I wrote a guest editorial for Virtual Strategy Magazine, although I have to admit I wasn’t made aware of my goofy picture – look away I’m hideous – until the article was published. You can find the full contents at Virtual Strategy Magazine

Client Hosted Virtual Desktops Part II; Back to Basics

Back 
to 
Basics: 
What 
is a Client Hosted Virtual Desktop (CHVD)?

Client 
hosted virtual desktops 
refer 
to 
the 
combination 
of 
a 
management
 system
 and
 a 
hypervisor 
on 
a
 client
PC,
 utilizing 
the 
local 
resources 
to 
execute 
the 
operating
 system.

Figure 1. different desktop virtualization models segmented by central vs. distributed computing environment support and reliance on operating system

CSO Online Podcast

I recently had an opportunity to discuss desktop virtualization with Bill Brenner from CSO online – you can listen to the podcast (here), you can also listen to the most recent Beyond the Perimeter podcast which focuses on Desktop Virtualization (here)

SC Magazine: Securing the Mobile Endpoint

Quotes from a recent SC Magazine article “Increased Mobile Working Has Caused a Rethink on Endpoint Security” (here) focuses on encryption, cloud-computing and desktop virtualization…

Google Chrome Takes Aim at the Microsoft OS

Google recently “leaked” a cartoon providing information on their upcoming browser named “Chrome” (here) and (here) – personally I will be impressed when the movie comes out and there is a guest appearance by Stan Lee. There has already been a tremendous amount of discussion and opinion on the ramifications of such a release. Most of it centering on Google taking aim at Internet Explorer. Hoff believes this signals Google’s entry into the security market (here), obviously the  acquisition of Greenborder and Postini and the release of Google safe browsing were clear signals that security was a critical part of the equation. But what is most important here, and seems to be missed by much of the mainstream media, is that Google is creating the foundation to render the underlying Microsoft PC-based operating system obsolete and deliver the next evolutionary phase of client computing. Hoff pointed this out in his earlier post (here)

So pair all the client side goodness with security functions AND add GoogleApps and you’ve got what amounts to a thin client version of the Internet.

A highly-portable, highly-accessible, secure, thin-client-like, cloud computing software as a service offering that in the next 5-10 years has the potential to render the standard PC-based operating systems virtually obsolete – couple this with streaming desktop virutalization delivered through the Internet and we are quickly entering the next phase of the client computing evolution. You doubt this? OK, ask yourself a question? If Google is to dominate computing through the next decade can it be done on the browser battlefield of old, fought in the same trench warfare like manner experienced during the Early browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape? or will it introduce a much larger landgrab? and what is larger than owning the desktop – fixed or mobile, physical or virtual, enterprise or consumer – regardless of the form it takes?

On another note I recently posted the “7 greatest Ideas in Security” (here), notice that many of them have been adopted by Google in their development of Chrome, including;

• Security as part of the SDL – designed from scratch to accommodate current needs; stability, speed, and security, also introduces concepts of fuzzing and automated testing using Google’s massive infrastructure.
• The principle of least privilege – Chrome is essentially sand-boxed so it limits the possibility for drive-by malware or other vectors of attack that use the browser to infect the base OS or adjacent applications, which means the computation of the browser cannot read or write from the file system  – of course social engineering still exists, but Google has an answer for that providing their free Google safe browsing capabilities to automatically and continuously update a blacklist of malicious sites. Now they just need to solve the eco-system problems of plug-ins bypassing the security model of sand-boxing.
• Segmentation  – Multiple processes with their own memory and global data structures, not to mention the sand-boxing discussed above
• Inspect what you expect – Google task manager provides visibility into how various web applications are interacting with the browser
• Independent security research – a fully open source browser, that you can guarantee will be put through the research gauntlet.