In addition to writing text at Futurity Media, we’re also doing video and audio. This is an example of a recent podcast that we did with Orange Business Services in Herndon Virginia. We were talking to Current Analysis analyst Amy Larsen DeCarlo about cloud computing from an enterprise viewpoint. Where is the technology heading? What applications are suited to it? How are early adopters using it?

Cloud computing is a staggeringly popular topic. Huge swathes of the work we did in 2009 related to cloud computing services and the trend looks set to continue into next year. Just about all parts of the information communications technology (ICT) industry are positioning themselves to take advantage of the predicted stratospheric growth. Although all hyped technologies will get their comeuppance at some point, cloud computing is unlikely to make much headway in enterprises if it they are worried about security.

Enterprise concerns over security are perfectly understandable: as a shared medium, how can they be sure that their data isn’t leaking into their competitors environment, and in fact are they even able to tell were their data is even stored. The latter issue can have a major regulatory impact in a number of areas, such as PCI-DSS compliance. Hackers are already reportedly rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of hacking cloud computing environments. At the recent Black Hat conference, speakers demonstrated how to attack the cloud and a Trojan keylogger was reportedly found on Amazon’s AWS site only this week.

Given the importance of security to cloud computing’s success there’s little surprise that the industry is making solving the issue a priority. Here are some interesting resources & articles:

• The European Network and Information Security Agency has published a report on the risks of cloud computing;
• The Jericho Forum famous for its work on deperimeterisation published a white paper on cloud computing security earlier this year;
• In June, Jericho Forum and the Cloud Security Alliance joined up to address security. I was expecting to see a result on this collaboration in the autumn, but I haven’t seen anything yet;
• Ariel Silverstone suggests some metrics for measuring the security of your cloud computing providers;
• ISACA has published a white paper that looks at some of the security issues;
• The CSA and Novell are running an interesting looking webinar on Cloud security next week.

Data center operators, and those that use them, are under increasing pressure to go green. Demand for data center capacity is being driven up by a number of factors that make driving efficiency through green principles a complex process.

But, the introduction of new emissions laws, such as the UK Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme makes the greening of the data center inevitable. The CRC has been causing great concern for data center professionals, who also need to save money on energy bills – as higher energy use may have tax levy implications, strengthen their green credentials to customers or reinforce a corporate social responsibility stance on climate change.

The European Union Emission Trading Scheme, and the US cap and trade carbon emissions schemes show that the greening of the data center is fast becoming a global concern.

In the meantime, demand for data center capacity remains locked into a continual growth curve, driven by a lack of consolidation of major users,such as Microsoft and Yahoo, the advent of services such as Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing, and the lack of power availability to key strategic locations such as London’s Docklands. These issues are in turn driving demand for ever more supply, heading towards a period where the gloomy predictions of analysts some years agoabout data centers running out of power no longer look unrealistic.

This is particularly the case where technical advances such as smaller hardware footprints, blade servers and high-speed processing density coupled with a greater need for storage capacity are quite literally sucking the life out of the power grid. As power consumption increases, so does the need to dissipate the heat generated by processing, which increases air conditioning costs – which also require their own power supply to deliver benefits. It’s easy to see how power, heat and cost are closely related and could easily spiral out of control.

Fortunately, data center practitioners can adopt a practical pathway to greening their data center or checking out the green credentials of their supplier, if they bear in mind several golden rules.

To read the rest of our guide to greening your data center, go to Orange Business Live: http://blogs.orange-business.com/live/2009/11/top-tips-for-greening-your-data-center.html