cloudIMPACT has created a chart for its clients to use in determining whether a business, vendor or person is considered a Business Associate under the new rules for HIPAA that were updated on Feb. 17, 2010. This chart is merely a guide and clients should contact cloudIMPACT for more information.
Provided by cloudIMPACT. Copyright (c) 2010 cloudIMPACT. All rights reserved.
Jun 13
The impact of cloud computing on healthcare and other organizations that are covered by HIPAA Law is great. No longer do organizations need to limit themselves to computing resources that take a long time to provision, validate and secure. Services are available that allow a company to quickly provision deployments that are not only secure but also comply with HIPAA laws.
In the coming weeks, cloudIMPACT will be highlighting some of these services and how they can be leveraged to not only save you time but also meet the needs of your internal compliance requirements. Through a series of online seminars, podcasts and community conference calls, cloudIMPACT will highlight the key areas you will need to consider when selecting solutions and providers for moving your data, systems and processes to a cloud based environment.
If you wish to learn more about the upcoming seminar series, please send an email to HIPAA@cloudimpact.com.
Nov 14
View the Cloud Camp Santa Clara presentations and panel discussion recorded on November 4, 2009. You can see the video at http://www.cloudimpact.com/cloudcamp.
If you have never been able to attend a Cloud Camp, this will allow you to see how they are conducted. To learn more about Cloud Camp, visit http://www.cloudcamp.com.
CloudCamp Announces “CloudCamp in the Cloud” – First-Ever Virtual Unconference
October 5, 2009 – CloudCamp, organizer of the community-based cloud computing unconference series, today announced that it’s taking its popular event series virtual with the forthcoming “CloudCamp in the Cloud
There are a number of opportunities to get involved with CloudCamp in the Cloud:
• ATTEND – Attending CloudCamp in the Cloud is free, fun and informative. Register now at http://bit.ly/UKbc1.
• PRESENT – CloudCamp in the Cloud encourages community presentations. If you have a cloud-related topic to discuss, visit the http://bit.ly/2NNh5l page to submit a proposal.
• SPONSOR – CloudCamp depends on corporate sponsors who provide financial assistance and other valuable donations. Current CloudCamp in the Cloud sponsors include Citrix, Enomaly and Appistry. If you would like to sponsor CloudCamp in the Cloud, please contact Reuven Cohen.
• ORGANIZE – CloudCamp is a non-profit, volunteer-driven organization. If you’d like to help facilitate CloudCamp in the Cloud, letting us know about your interest by emailing cloudcamp@googlegroups.com.
• SPREAD THE WORD – Help share the news about CloudCamp in the Cloud, by retweeting this announcement (hashtag: #cloudcamp), blogging about the event, and linking to the main information page at http://bit.ly/3wBgyI.
Related Links
[1] http://bit.ly/UKbc1 [CloudCamp in the Cloud Registration]
[2] http://twitter.com/cloudcamp [CloudCamp on Twitter]
[3] http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10128776220 [CloudCamp on Facebook]
Contacts
Program
• Dave Nielsen, (415) 531-6674, dave -at- platformd -dot- com
Sponsorships:
• Reuven Cohen, (212) 203 4734 x102, ruv -at- enomaly -dot- com
Media:
• Sam Charrington, (415) 727-1850, sam -at- appistry -dot- com
About CloudCamp
CloudCamp was formed in 2008 in order to provide a common ground for the introduction and advancement of cloud computing. Through a series of local CloudCamp events, attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative and supporting environment, advancing the current state of cloud computing and related technologies. CloudCamp has served over 5,000 CloudCampers in more than 50 events all over world, in cities like Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bangalore, Berlin, London, New York, San Francisco, Stockholm and Singapore.
Interesting video on findings from a survey on Cloud Computing taken by Applied Research.
Provided below are two quotes, one from Larry Ellison of Oracle and one from Andy Isherwood of HP (both from 2008 so maybe their perspectives have changed). Not everyone, even those that would be serving this new Cloud Computing environment, are convinced that Cloud Computing is a new and improved way to do business. In fact, these two are claiming that they are already doing it. Luckily for us, not everyone is of the same mindset as these two but clients do have concerns and in some instances, rightly so.
“The interesting thing about Cloud Computing is that we’ve redefined Cloud Computing to include everything that we already do. . . . I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of Cloud Computing other than change the wording of some of our ads.”
Larry Ellison, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2008
“A lot of people are jumping on the [cloud] bandwagon, but I have not heard two people say the same thing about it. There are multiple definitions out there of “the cloud.”
Andy Isherwood, VP at HP quoted in ZDnet News, December 11, 2008
Like with any “new” paradigm or shift in power from one environment to another, you are going to have concerns. Customers are no different. As a matter of fact, their concerns are even more heightened since they are turning over their environments and infrastructures to companies many of them will never even visit. It is one thing to rely on your local power company for power, and even if they fail, you have mechanisms like UPS systems to augment power until they get back on line. When you are turning over your entire environment to a third party provider, you are at the mercy of that provider.
So the top concerns for most companies are Security, Availability, Integration and Customization. Valid concerns, and a great opportunity for providers to offer services and products to ease their stress.
Gartner is also stressing to clients that they need to evaluate providers and service providers to ensure that their decisions to move to a Cloud Computing environment is the right one for them and their shareholders.
“Organizations potentially can gain a competitive or cost advantage through selective adoption of cloud computing, but not without first taking a comprehensive look at the associated risks, ensuring that they are consistent with business goals, along with the expectations of regulators, auditors, shareholders and partners.“
– Gartner, Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing Jay Heiser, Mark Nicolett, 3 June 2008.
Clients are not blind to these issues and you can see by this chart that their concerns map exactly to what we have been discussing as concerns with Cloud Computing. Here is some data provided by IDC where they held an Enterprise Panel.
Even though clients themselves are concerned with Security, Availability and Integration, they are still making significant plans to invest in Cloud Computing. This chart below shows that today, and over the next three years, customers will be moving to Cloud Services. If you take a closer look at this chart you will see that IT Management Apps, Collaborative Apps and Business Apps have and will continue to have strong growth in spending over the foreseeable future.
“Cloud computing moves from “unheard-of” to “must-do” much faster for IT professionals than I’ve seen with previous platform shifts.” Bernard Golden, CEO HyperStratus
The data from Forrester Research below shows what types of Cloud Computing environments clients are leaning towards. For example one quarter of the respondents stated that they plan to spend or are spending on IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). It appears that the lure of savings and efficiency is more attractive then the issues raised earlier.
Forrester Findings
•Of the enterprises responding to the Forrester survey, about one quarter of enterprises plan to spend or are spending on IaaS via an external service provider •Firms are slightly less interested in internal clouds than in external IaaS
•Firms are interested in an internal cloud or an external cloud but not both
•Larger firms are more interested than smaller firms in leveraging external IaaS capability
•Interest in production app placement in external clouds is nearly as high as for test/dev
The fact that companies are also moving straight to production application deployment onto external clouds as quickly as they are with test/dev applications is also an indicator that companies get it. Cloud Computing is not only a cost savings avenue but it is also safe in their opinion.
Outages in AWS, AppEngine, and Gmail
Service and Outage Duration Date
S3 outage: authentication service overload leading to unavailability 2 hours 2/15/08
S3 outage: Single bit error leading to gossip protocol blowup. 6-8 hours 7/20/08
AppEngine partial outage: programming error 5 hours 6/17/08
Gmail: site unavailable due to outage in contacts system 1.5 hours 8/11/08
Google App Engine erroneous network mapping 1 hour 5/14/09
Source: University of California at Berkeley
Availability. Cloud-computing proponents say a system run by a large service provider that has money and redundant equipment should offer more availability than an infrastructure run by a small or even mid-sized company.
Application integration and support. The systems generally use SOAP, the Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and other nonproprietary Web service protocols, many XML-based. This enables easy interaction with and support of legacy resources and other infrastructure services.
Flexibility. Most cloud-computing vendors don’t require contracts and let users work with their services as needed. This makes cloud computing a good way to get the extra resources needed for activities such as testing new services or products.
Scalability. Cloud distributed processing and access make it easier for organizations to scale dynamically without the costs and delays.
We have started to monitor cloud services at various providers by firing up our first Hyperic HQ server. More to come.
Cloud based email services are not new but the adoption of these services within large organizations, borh private and government, is on the rise. Just this week the NZ postal system announced that it has agreed to move all of its Microsoft applications to Google. The savings are definitely there but privacy concerns may be something that will raise concerns for NZ citizens. All of the data will be stored on US based clouds. Several large pharmaceutical clients have also made the switch to Google and even Microsoft online offerings. In total over 110,000 email clients have moved from pharma corporate systems to online cloud based systems for just email and scheduling alone.
Over the coming months, cloudIMPACT will be following the success of some of these implementations and providing the results.
Jul 22
“By embracing Amazon Web Services to power this offering, Adobe combines its comprehensive enterprise solution with a cloud environment that knocks down barriers to productivity for enterprise developers worldwide,” said Kumar Vora, vice president and general manager for LiveCycle at Adobe.
Check out the full artice http://ajax.sys-con.com/node/805801
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