Proactive is interested in engaging with technologists and architects involved in cloud systems and solutions. We would like to share our thoughts and ideas on cloud forensics, cloud migration, cloud analytics, systems design, and operations.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Computer Forensics



Computer  Forensics:  It’s Not Just for Law Enforcement and Legal Discovery Anymore

 Businesses are being faced with an ever increasing need for Computer Forensic support. Anytime digital evidence may be used to support a corporation’s myriad HR challenges, the imaging and analysis needs to be done completely and correctly, based upon methods from organizations like the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners.

Business owners and executives know that employees are distracted by the many vices of the internet and looking over an employee’s shoulder may be the first step towards an internal disciplinary hearing.  However, the issues may be deeper, hidden on the desktop hard drive.  Further compounding the problem are data breaches and security problems that hit businesses on a daily basis.  Forensic analysis of network information, rogue software, and employee carelessness may uncover root causes averting potentially disastrous consequences.
  
Businesses try to implement policies and procedures, but they are not enough to control the use and abuse of a companies IT infrastructure.  This is when professional forensic support is required.  A Computer Forensic Examiner is capable of reconstructing past events and activity that occurred on an employee’s computer, protecting the company and its intellectual assets.

The "Cloud" as we know it only complicates matters further. Computer Forensic Examiners must now deal with elastic or fluid environments of services and applications in the cloud. Data stored and accessed by employees can be between servers, data centers, or across boarders. The new breed of Forensic Examiners are redefining themselves as quickly as the cloud adapts to new services. Are forensic applications capable of keeping up? Can the contain the "cloud-based" investigation? Will new methods, procedures, and services adapt? The time to look at these issues is here and now. 

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Cloud Risk Management and Migration Services…and New SLAs?

In the facilitation of migration efforts with respect to CRM/ERP platforms like Siebel, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and Workday…there is a seemingly strong underlying relationship between what is perceived as a the performance  of the cloud "system" and the risk reduction designs within software development to get that migration to “work”.

Currently, more and more legacy applications are being situated in a private/hybrid cloud environment. Typically requiring custom integration and development efforts. When measuring current private/hybrid environment, an approach similar to standard CRM/ERP migration is typically established. This is done by creating a QoS baseline and data ETL, then ensuring that any custom functionality is preserved.  Interestingly, this approach can not only be used for application migration but in can help in determining disaster recovery and architecture costs when utilizing cloud resources.

Proactive feels there is a close knit relationship between CRM/ERP migration efforts and risk management. By leveraging the extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) connectors and high performance cloud measurement tools/analytics, there can be methods and processes at the ready to reduce the risk of blind faith migrations of strategic applications away from a local datacenter. Establishing a Quality of Service (QoS) baseline for performance in the cloud can be taken well beyond the simple measurement of uptime defined in most service level agreements. Disaster recovery (DR), cost optimization, and enhance end user experience performance can be new metrics tied to SLAs.

So...in the end, is simply saying “the server is up” a reasonable key metric in an SLA. Businesses must perceive their migration enhanced their operations. Bad connections, intermittent behavior, or out-and-out lost service issues will be issues of focus going forward. Is it possible that cloud service provider SLAs of the future include the perceived user experience, impacted operational costs, and disaster recovery? It’s just a matter of time…

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Analytics: The missing influence in cloud migration

It’s an interesting time to be in computer related technology services today. One can see cloud technology and services constantly being advertised on television to a variety of businesses and consumers. The perception of the cloud can almost be summed up as a subjective interpretation of what a person wants to envision as an ideal world of mobility and interoperability. Consumers are bombarded with concepts of instant access to deep and varied vaults of content, information, or conveniences. Of course, many of those consumers are directly or indirectly members of the cloud product community or consumers of cloud products.
So we, the technology based consumer, are confronted by the concept of the cloud. More specifically, cloud migration. We are left to consider what is this concept and is it beneficial. What will it bring to us in the form of productivity, savings, or competitive advantage? Do we consider it a visionary move? Is it something driven by the economics of change? Could it be classified as merely a trend or some form of a perceived need driven by a compulsion to compete in a given market space?
From a casual vantage point, cloud migrations are happening for all of these reasons and more. The constant corporate bombardment of solutions, products, and services is reaching a fevered pitch. With the economy in desperate times and companies searching for new methods of survival, the cloud seems like a new “Eldorado” of operational fortune. Companies are jumping on the concept and boldly claiming to be visionary or advancing ahead of their competition.
Cloud migrations done for these reasons may be fraught with mistakes. Whether driven by some form of technical insecurity or arrogance, migrating software or applications for the sake of migration is reactive methodology indicative of mismanaged resources. Cloud migration should and must be done because it makes sense for a business from a financial perspective and from an operational perspective. A clear and targeted roadmap that maximizes performance as well as getting the best ROI is crucial. Further, in order to achieve both, a business must not only be knowledgeable in the benefits of cloud services, but must also know exactly what can migrate to the cloud and what should not. Knowing exactly what resources make sense to migrate justifies the effort of migrating.
Migration analytics seems to be a silent topic in the cloud discussion.  Tools that interactively operate with data and applications to find out how much improvement can be gained seem to be below the collective radar of cloud “consciousness”.  It seems like the enormous white elephant in the room, or maybe sitting in the cloud. Cloud pundits promote the known advantages but are not openly divulging what it really takes to reap the best benefits available. They will never tell you “it may not be appropriate to migrate everything to the cloud”. Unless a company is truly savvy and analytical about its systems and services, a business will be confronted with a critical leap-of-faith that has a expensive repercussions if it fails. Turning back from the cloud may cost more in time, lost services, and spent resources that originally migrating to the cloud.
It is our belief that just as in real estate that it’s all about “location, location, location”…Cloud migration is all about “analytics, analytics, analytics”. Knowing exactly how applications and services are used day-in-and-day-out as well as how those targeted elements work within the framework of the operational functions of a company is the key to migration. Cloud migration should not be an all or nothing venture. It also shouldn’t be a subjective event supported by surveys, check-lists, or interactive spreadsheets. Leveraging data based on measurable performance values should be the foundation of cloud migration. There is an immediate need to bring cloud analytics and measurement to the front of the line of the consciousness of the cloud community. We see this as a void that needs to be filled.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Persistent Systems and Proactive Partner to Offer Intelligent, Economical Migration to the Cloud

SAN JOSE, CA and BOSTON, MA – November 15 2011 -- Persistent Systems (BSE & NSE: PERSISTENT), the leader in outsourced software product development services, and Proactive Education, Inc. (Proactive), a Cloud solution services and project management firm, today announced a partnership designed to enable small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) to rapidly, intelligently and economically migrate their software and applications to the cloud with confidence. Today’s partnership announcement builds on successful joint customer deployments of Business Intelligence (BI) and custom business solutions utilizing predictive analytics and other advanced database technologies exclusively in a cloud environment.

http://www.proactive-cloud.com/latest-news.html

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Proactive’s Perspective: Offshore Software Services Model in the Cloud

By: Michael Stankiewicz

Much as in the same way that US hard industries embrace globalization in support of their manufacturing needs, the same model has matured with the use of offshore resources for software development.   In fact, the opportunities to utilize a team of offshore software developers whether in India, Eastern Europe, China or elsewhere are now greater than ever.  The keys to success, not surprisingly, are similar to in-house development, and at Proactive we have positioned ourselves to help companies leverage offshore resources while meeting all customer expectations.
Software development was once exclusively an in-house choice and high on the product development value chain of activities.  Software developers protected their code discouraging and precluding partnership with offshore organization; however, today the maturity of the software development discipline with successful reusability and modularity has opened up the need for varied models.
Ultimately financially focused managers realized that the old model does not always fit, especially given the salary levels, attrition, and hiring costs for exceptional high-tech talent.  The goal is to develop high quality software by leveraging offshore resources in the most effective ways.  We all empathize as to its effects on America but realize that the American model needs to change to remain as competitive as ever, striving to do things better, faster, cheaper.  Creativity, design, marketing and sales are where the US has somewhat an advantage.  The software industry must embrace globalization and work within this new model.
There are several success factors that we’ve identified at Proactive with respect to our offshore partnerships.  It should be obvious that positive results just don’t happen by choosing the offshore model, and our managed offshore model is similar to standard 3rd party development.  By embracing a solutions approach, software development must get closer to the business problem and understand the customer’s pains.  By addressing the business technology gap, we continually map requirements to the customer needs.   While an offshore team may not be able to react to changes in project scope or direction or priority, a local project management presence is able to bridge any geographic or cultural concerns.
In speaking with colleagues about offshore projects inevitably the discussion turns to the need to provide excruciating detail to offshore development team in that they will do exactly what you tell them to do.  The average offshore developer is typically given a set of tasks and is expected to deliver code, integration, or other services taking a “black box” approach. 
There are good and bad issues associated with this “black box” reality.  One important point is that when given the details most offshore software development companies provide excellent deliverables.  However, local project partners who continue to manage customer expectations realize a hybrid model that helps to ensure the project success.  One key is to improve project success is to engage the software development team so they have a greater understanding of the project goals and dynamics.  Knowing the project motivations will help them anticipate design requirements, e.g., user interface development.
The final point is that a private cloud makes a great development environment coordinating offshore resources with local project management and support.
So, in summary, how do you ensure the success of offshore development projects?
*Engage with a proven offshore development team.
*Develop a team approach.  Visit and know your team members.
*Utilize a hybrid approach with an organization like Proactive, who completes the business/technology bridge with local project and client management.
*Accept globalization of software development as a viable alternative to your own IT group.
*Provide a private/hybrid based cloud development environment.