![IT in Europe • july 2012 6
home
Editor’s
Letter
Advanced
Analytics
Tools Slow
to Catch Fire
Securing NoSQL
Applications:
Best Practises
for Big Data
Security
SIPCOM Cut
Costs With
Storage
and Server
Upgrade
Unified
Storage Goes
Mainstream
Rural
Broadband—
Should
Residents Pay?
Additional
European
Resources
Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire
hitters [on those products] are no
longer,” he said. “The growth is in
databases that are more attuned to
high-speed analytics. Hadoop, for
example, is being used more by big
organisations.”
Although enterprise BI vendors
are moving into most, if not all, of
the emerging advanced analytics
technology markets, by no means
are they all there yet. This situa-
tion, analysts warn, risks leading
to a jumble of point products in
organisations, resulting in rising
costs and a possible breakdown of
enterprise master data manage-
ment strategies.
“There is a quick bang for the
buck in data visibility from ad-
vanced analytics,” said Eddie Short,
a partner specialising in data ana-
lytics at consultancy KPMG. “But
the big challenge is a proliferation
of niche solutions.”
In some cases, though, advanced
analytics tools can be easier to
deploy than conventional BI and
data warehouse systems. One rea-
son, although it might seem illogi-
cal at first sight, is that data quality
is often less of an issue for analyt-
ics professionals than performance
is, according to Gallagher.
In real- or near-real-time applica-
tions, for example, “you don’t have
the luxury of extracting data to a
data warehouse overnight,” he said.
“In the traditional data warehouse,
you have time to cleanse the data,
but in real-time [systems] with
information fed from satellite feeds
or market data, you cannot.”
To assess the required levels of
data quality, “you have to ask what
type of questions you are trying to
answer,” Gallagher said. For some
organisations, he added, “the quali-
ty of the data is not as important as
the trends and patterns that come
out of it.” n
Stephen Pritchard is a journalist and broad-
caster based in London. He has covered the
technology and IT industries since the mid-
1990s and has contributed to publications
including Computer Weekly, The Independent,
The Financial Times and CNBC Business and
SearchDataManagement.co.UK.
Data Analysis and Business
Intelligence Tutorial
Everything you need to know
about business intelligence and
data management. This guide
includes information on business
data usage, data quality and
business analytics.
“There is a quick
bang for the buck
in data visibility
from advanced
analytics.”
—Eddie Short,
Partner, KPMG.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/itineuropefinal-13549033918593-phpapp02-121207120345-phpapp02/85/IT-In-Europe-6-320.jpg)
![IT in Europe • july 2012 13
home
Editor’s
Letter
Advanced
Analytics
Tools Slow
to Catch Fire
Securing NoSQL
Applications:
Best Practises
for Big Data
Security
SIPCOM Cut
Costs With
Storage
and Server
Upgrade
Unified
Storage Goes
Mainstream
Rural
Broadband—
Should
Residents Pay?
Additional
European
Resources
Unified Storage Goes Mainstream
for its gateway products.
Feature support among the ven-
dors [CE1] is extensive, with typical
options including thin provisioning,
policy-based file management and,
increasingly, data deduplication.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are avail-
able from most vendors and can be
exploited fully using thin provision-
ing and automated storage tiering
technology.
Finally, we should mention that
there are a number of newcomers
to the unified storage marketplace,
including startups Starboard Stor-
age Systems and Tegile Systems.
Both companies have developed
technology that specifically targets
the I/O profile of a mixed file and
block workload. These devices are
easier to deliver today because of
the advances in processor speeds
and integration of I/O protocols
further into processor chipsets.
Over time, we will likely see more
of these solutions emerge that truly
bring multiprotocol together in a
single device. Now let’s examine
the major vendors’ updates to their
unified storage lines over the past
year.
n EMC. Early in 2011 EMC
announced its unified platform, the
VNX, as a replacement for the pre-
vious Clariion and Celerra product
lines. This converged product fam-
ily combines block and file proto-
cols in a single platform, managed
by the new Unisphere management
software.
VNX hardware combines file and
block protocols (delivered in sepa-
rate enclosures), providing file I/O
using X-Blades—hardware blades
that were known as data movers
in the previous Celerra solution.
The VNX models start at the entry-
level VNX 5300, which supports
a maximum of 125 drives; up to
the VNX7500, which supports
1,000 drives, including flash, SAS
and nearline SAS devices. Protocol
support includes NFS, CIFS, MPFS,
pNFS, FC, iSCSI and FCoE.
There is a range of additional
functionality available with the
VNX, including Fully Automated
Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools
(FAST VP) auto-tiering technol-
ogy, Fast Cache (enhanced cache
performance for random I/O work-
loads), data compression and thin
provisioning.
EMC also offers the VNXe,
Dutch University Wins Atos Olympic IT Challenge
(Read the full story)
Solid-state drives
can be exploited
fully using thin
provisioning and
automated storage
tiering technology.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/itineuropefinal-13549033918593-phpapp02-121207120345-phpapp02/85/IT-In-Europe-13-320.jpg)
![IT in Europe • july 2012 16
Rural Broadband—Should Residents Pay?
home
Editor’s
Letter
Advanced
Analytics
Tools Slow
to Catch Fire
Securing NoSQL
Applications:
Best Practises
for Big Data
Security
SIPCOM Cut
Costs With
Storage
and Server
Upgrade
Unified
Storage Goes
Mainstream
Rural
Broadband—
Should
Residents Pay?
Additional
European
Resources
for Penrith and the Borders, has
been one of the cheerleaders of
rural broadband, and as such has
worked with a number of com-
munities to find the best answer
for getting connections to remote
areas.
Current government schemes
have focused on a central pro-
curement process by local coun-
cils from large telecoms com-
panies and have cost millions of
pounds. However, Stewart has
been involved in trials which cost
significantly less by using more
innovative technologies and get-
ting residents to invest in their own
infrastructure.
“The assessments vary, but it
costs between £10bn and £40bn
for centralised procurement to
deliver fibre to every home,” he
said. “The government has decided
to spend £550m.
“Communities such as Great
Asby [a village in Cumbria which
has run its own broadband
scheme] have dropped this cost
dramatically to £60,000.”
“The very sad thing here is while
enormous progress has been
made…to get broadband [that
was] unimaginable to these com-
munities a few years ago…it is still
a problem getting this tiny sum of
money from government to fund
it.”
Funding Rural Broadband
Connections
It seems the only way these
schemes have got off of the ground
is by local residents digging their
hands in their own pockets to pay
for the infrastructure. But is it right
for them to pay their own way
when it comes to broadband, or
should both the public and private
sector be providing funding for
rural parts of the country?
Chris Conder, founding mem-
ber of B4RN (Broadband 4 Rural
North), admitted there was little
money left in government coffers
to increase its contribution and that
these areas were not commercially
viable for companies such as BT.
People in rural areas should have
the same rights of access to the
Internet as the rest of the popula-
tion. However, rather than resi-
dents paying up front to make the
broadband roll-out happen, she
believed in a suggestion raised by
Stewart of a “soft loan” from the
System Monitoring From a Single Source
(Read the full story in German)
People in rural
areas should have
the same rights of
access to the Inter-
net as the rest of
the population.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/itineuropefinal-13549033918593-phpapp02-121207120345-phpapp02/85/IT-In-Europe-16-320.jpg)
![IT in Europe • july 2012 17
Rural Broadband—Should Residents Pay?
home
Editor’s
Letter
Advanced
Analytics
Tools Slow
to Catch Fire
Securing NoSQL
Applications:
Best Practises
for Big Data
Security
SIPCOM Cut
Costs With
Storage
and Server
Upgrade
Unified
Storage Goes
Mainstream
Rural
Broadband—
Should
Residents Pay?
Additional
European
Resources
public sector to get the ball rolling.
The idea is government could
lend the money to communities to
get set up, and each household that
signs up to the scheme can pay it
back over a long period of time with
little interest. This removes the risk
from spending taxpayers’ money
on unproven technical innovations,
but enables rural areas to go ahead
with plans that could otherwise be
delayed indefinitely while money is
raised.
“There would have to be some
community participation to keep
the costs down to an affordable
level,” Conder said. “Communities
will do it if they believe in the proj-
ect; they don’t expect anything for
nothing and they will contribute,
but there is a limit.
“Soft loans that spread the
load over many years would be a
great incentive and very ‘big soci-
ety’. Some members of rural soci-
ety wouldn’t be able to contribute,
either health-wise or [due to] pov-
erty, but others will, and it gives a
great feeling of satisfaction to help
each other.”
Equal Rights to Internet Access
Fellow B4RN committee member
Martyn Dews said it should not
be down to citizens to pay for this,
saying that “people in rural areas
should have the same rights of
access to the Internet as the rest of
the population”.
However, he accepted that with
the lack of commercial viability and
the relatively small amount of gov-
ernment funding, it was a case of
“putting up with what is provided
or doing it themselves”.
“If it’s done right and there is
enough support, the community
will get the payback in the medium
to long term,” said Dews. “Imagine
a deeply rural community with a
1,000Mbps connection—one of
the best in the world. That is what
B4RN is delivering now. Think of
the possibilities that will open
up.”
BT is keen on communities
getting on board with their own
deployments but said residents
should be more active in seeking
out the set-up costs from govern-
ment.
“We’ve always been very clear
that we believe that local com-
Cisco Opens the Era of Programmable Networks
(Read the full story in French)
“There would have
to be some community
participation to keep
the costs down to an
affordable level.”
— Chris Conder,
founding member, B4RN](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/itineuropefinal-13549033918593-phpapp02-121207120345-phpapp02/85/IT-In-Europe-17-320.jpg)
IT In Europe
- 1. ITinEurope july 2012, volume3 Gain a complete overview of European IT in today’s marketplace. Innovations with BI Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security + SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broad- band—Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources
- 2. IT in Europe• july 2012 2 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources editor’s letter managing a business is tough even at the best of times, but even more so in an economy as difficult and unpredictable as most of Europe is facing. The Eurozone’s troubles bring new challenges to senior execu- tives every day. The situation puts a premium, more than ever, on timely, accurate, insightful deci- sion-making. It’s no exaggeration to say that one bad decision in a down economy could make the difference between survival and failure. Making good decisions means having the right information to hand, when you need it. For IT lead- ers, that means delivering business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools into the hands of decision-makers —and increasingly that extends beyond the boardroom and onto the desks and smartphones of employees making important deci- sions as part of their everyday work and in every interaction with cus- tomers. For any organisation that deals with consumers or a large cus- tomer base, you need demographic data about your clients; you need behavioural data about what they are doing, and why and where they are doing it; and often you need that information in real-time to react faster than the competition. Today we also have the emer- gence of so-called “big data”— tools to handle and analyse enor- mous datasets, searching for the needle in the haystack that gives the extra piece of insight that leads to a vital business decision. In this month’s IT in Europe, we examine the issues of turning data into business decisions, the chang- ing demands on IT managers to deliver the latest tools, and the technologies that are available. Understanding the best practice in BI and analytics might just turn out to be the best decision your business ever makes. n BRYAN GLICK Computer Weekly Editor in Chief Innovations With Business Intelligence
- 3. IT in Europe• july 2012 3 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire urveys of chief infor- mation officers regularly place data analytics among the top priorities for IT investment. For example, in Gart- ner’s 2012 CIO Agenda Survey, conducted worldwide late last year, the 2,335 respondents ranked ana- lytics and business intelligence (BI) tools as their No. 1 technology pri- ority for this year. But things aren’t as simple as they used to be for CIOs or their BI and analytics teams. Over the last few years, the spotlight has shifted from “conventional” BI tools to predictive analytics and other advanced analytics technologies. New demands from business users—such as the need to process ever-larger volumes of data more rapidly, particularly in “big data” environments—are also forcing companies to look again at their BI and analytics capabilities. Most BI systems can be plausibly called backward-looking, with a focus on systems of record and histori- cal data. The range of analytical technologies has expanded rapidly, offering organisations powerful new tools for mining data and mod- elling future business scenarios, but also stretching their IT resourc- es and analytics skills bases. And so companies often face a consid- erable challenge in updating their capacity to support advanced ana- lytics applications. As a result, the take-up of ad- Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire CIOs are avid for advanced analytics offered by in-memory and in- database analytics and open source big data technologies like Hadoop. But take-up of advanced analytics remains low. By Stephen Pritchard S The spotlight has shifted from “conven- tional” BI tools to pre- dictive analytics and other advanced ana- lytics technologies.
- 4. IT in Europe• july 2012 4 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire vanced analytics software remains relatively low, in part because of its complexity and cost and in part because of the immaturity of some of the technologies on offer. Gartner expects advanced ana- lytics to eventually become widely adopted. But a survey carried out by the IT research and consult- ing company in March 2011 found only a quarter of the respondents had made “significant progress” towards deploying predictive ana- lytics systems. Those that had done so typically started with a small project and built out their capabilities from there; none of the projects Gartner surveyed was IT- led. Recent comments from Gart- ner analysts indicate they haven’t seen a significant increase in usage levels since the survey was done. Neil Miller, head of Accenture’s analytics consulting practice in the UK and Ireland, suggests the advanced analytics field is even less mature than Gartner’s data makes it out to be. “Very few com- panies really compete on analyt- ics—there are maybe 15 to 20 glob- ally that use sophisticated analytics and have a strong BI and leadership ethos,” Miller said. However, he also thinks inter- est in advanced analytics is likely to pick up as businesses are able to invest more in IT than they can in the current economic climate, and there are more examples of companies driving higher revenue and profits from analytics projects. Miller said IT and BI teams “need to deliver business value” on analyt- ics investments to justify additional spending. Analytics Data Blowing in the Wind One company that has bought into advanced analytics is Vestas Wind Systems, a Denmark-based maker of wind turbines. Vestas is using IBM’s Hadoop-based InfoSphere BigInsights software and other ana- lytics tools to help prospective cus- tomers evaluate possible locations for its turbines based on wind and other weather-related data from today back to the year 2000. “Our analysis tools make it pos- sible to answer the question of whether a location is a profitable Jaspersoft: Where Big Data Grows (Read the full story in Italian) “Our analysis tools make it possible to answer the question of whether a location is a profitable site to develop.” —Lars Christian, vice president, Vestas
- 5. IT in Europe• july 2012 5 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire site to develop,” said Lars Christian Christensen, a vice president at Vestas. “The data we have is the digital equivalent of a map of gold mines.” Predictive analytics and data mining software are the most prominent advanced analytics technologies, but others are gaining footholds in organisations as well. In-memory analytics tools claim to offer significant speed improve- ments over conventional BI and analytics systems that need to pull information from data warehouses for analysis. In-memory products are available at various price points and performance levels, but large BI and enterprise applications ven- dors such as SAP, Oracle and, most recently, Microsoft, have all intro- duced high-end offerings. Analytical databases and in- database analytics tools offer alter- native approaches that can be less costly than in-memory technology, but faster than systems that rely on migrating data to a separate analy- sis system or data warehouse. And then there are open source technologies such as Hadoop, MapReduce and NoSQL databases, which target the challenges posed by big data. They’re finding favour in cloud-based IT environments and at organisations that mine vast amounts of unstructured data, such as Web server logs or information gleaned from social media. Also available to aid in that process is text analytics software that can be used to look for keywords and language patterns in social media posts and other forms of text data. Currently, advanced analytics tools are available from three main sources: large BI and data ware- house vendors, niche players and startups specialising in particular fields, and companies set up to commercialise open source tech- nologies, especially Hadoop. New Analytics Options Add Complications Because of all the different options, businesses have to familiarise themselves with new vendors as well as new tools, said Steve Gal- lagher, director of the BI practice at PA Consulting Group. “There’s a set of existing tools for day-to- day BI and historical reporting, but the companies that were the big Predictive analytics and data mining software are the most prominent advanced analytics technologies. Bull Adopts Jaspersoft for its Business Intelligence (Read the full story in French)
- 6. IT in Europe• july 2012 6 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire hitters [on those products] are no longer,” he said. “The growth is in databases that are more attuned to high-speed analytics. Hadoop, for example, is being used more by big organisations.” Although enterprise BI vendors are moving into most, if not all, of the emerging advanced analytics technology markets, by no means are they all there yet. This situa- tion, analysts warn, risks leading to a jumble of point products in organisations, resulting in rising costs and a possible breakdown of enterprise master data manage- ment strategies. “There is a quick bang for the buck in data visibility from ad- vanced analytics,” said Eddie Short, a partner specialising in data ana- lytics at consultancy KPMG. “But the big challenge is a proliferation of niche solutions.” In some cases, though, advanced analytics tools can be easier to deploy than conventional BI and data warehouse systems. One rea- son, although it might seem illogi- cal at first sight, is that data quality is often less of an issue for analyt- ics professionals than performance is, according to Gallagher. In real- or near-real-time applica- tions, for example, “you don’t have the luxury of extracting data to a data warehouse overnight,” he said. “In the traditional data warehouse, you have time to cleanse the data, but in real-time [systems] with information fed from satellite feeds or market data, you cannot.” To assess the required levels of data quality, “you have to ask what type of questions you are trying to answer,” Gallagher said. For some organisations, he added, “the quali- ty of the data is not as important as the trends and patterns that come out of it.” n Stephen Pritchard is a journalist and broad- caster based in London. He has covered the technology and IT industries since the mid- 1990s and has contributed to publications including Computer Weekly, The Independent, The Financial Times and CNBC Business and SearchDataManagement.co.UK. Data Analysis and Business Intelligence Tutorial Everything you need to know about business intelligence and data management. This guide includes information on business data usage, data quality and business analytics. “There is a quick bang for the buck in data visibility from advanced analytics.” —Eddie Short, Partner, KPMG.
- 7. IT in Europe• july 2012 7 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practices for Big Data Security osql database sys- tems are designed to provide real-time performance while managing large vol- umes of data. This performance, coupled with the no-cost philoso- phy behind many NoSQL products, has led many companies to take a look at NoSQL. However, companies should not rush to implement NoSQL without first evaluating the security impli- cations of switching from a rela- tional database management sys- tem (RDBMS) model to a NoSQL model. So what are the secu- rity implications for any company thinking of deploying a NoSQL database? Who Uses NoSQL? NoSQL can be an important tool for any company that has big data. Big data is simply any data set that has grown too big to be efficiently worked on in real-time with tradi- tional database tools. NoSQL is a broad class of data- base management systems that are not traditional relational database management systems. They do not use SQL as the primary query language, nor do they typically require fixed table schemas. Also, NoSQL is not a single-vendor prod- uct (many NoSQL implementations are open source), but rather an umbrella term that can be applied to any of the non-RDBMS big data alternative systems. Currently, NoSQL databases are in the evolutionary stage of their lifecycle and, unlike their RDBMS counterparts, such as DB2, MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server, the attack vectors for NoSQL databases are not well mapped out. And it’s likely new attack vectors will emerge that will target NoSQL data stores in new ways. securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practices for Big Data Security NoSQL is great for big data, but security is often lacking in NoSQL applications. By Davey Winder N
- 8. IT in Europe• july 2012 8 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security Data breaches caused by a NoSQL injection are probably not far away. With some NoSQL implementations being, essentially, authentication-free JavaScript pro- cessing engines, this is inevitable. Indeed, the basics of just such vul- nerability were exposed at Black Hat USA last year when Bryan Sul- livan demonstrated a server-side JavaScript injection attack against one NoSQL implementation that could discover database contents and run basic commands. Is NoSQL Secure? NoSQL has not been designed with security as a priority, so developers or security teams must add a secu- rity layer to their organisations’ NoSQL applications. During the last couple years, many small businesses have been moving into big data territory, struggling to manage ever-increas- ing volumes of business data. So it should come as no surprise to learn that threat-tracking firms have reported increased security researcher and hacker activity tar- geting the NoSQL database sector. Some of this is driven by confusion amongst small businesses about how NoSQL databases can be securely implemented. Too often, these companies ignore NoSQL security measures that would have been implemented by default with traditional RDBMS installations. For example, many NoSQL prod- ucts allow and even recommend the use of a “trusted environment” with no additional security or authentication measures in place. These modes assume that only Business Intelligence and Big Data Channel Coverage n BI Breaks Free of its Binary Chains Traditional business intelligence (BI) tools are pretty good at what they’re designed to do, but it’s an inescapable fact that they are entirely stupid, according to this contributor. n Selling BI in the Context of Other Market Trends Business intelligence vendors and their solutions need to be more agile and adap- tive than ever, says Amro Gebreel. n You Don’t Have to be Big to Want to be Smart BI isn’t the preserve of the corporate, and the emergence of analytics software specifically designed for SMEs is helping the technology penetrate much smaller businesses too, as Billy MacInnes reports. n
- 9. IT in Europe• july 2012 9 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security trusted machines can access the database’s TCP ports. But relying on the network to protect data in an Internet-enabled world is a sure- fire way of inviting a breach of any sensitive information held there. Kerberos authentication mod- ules are now becoming available, which should provide access con- trol capabilities equivalent to the current Kerberos or NTLM (Micro- soft Windows NT LAN Manager) approaches to user authentication. Securing NoSQL Databases Because most of the popular NoSQL databases are open source, IT staff would be wise to devote some time to contributing stronger authentication and encryption sys- tems to their NoSQL implementa- tions, rather than waiting for the publisher of a proprietary database to make changes. NoSQL data stores are basically vulnerable to the same security risks as traditional RDBMS data stores, so the usual best practises for storing sensitive data should be applied when developing a NoSQL- based application. These include: n Encrypting sensitive database fields; n Keeping unencrypted values in a sandboxed environment; n Using sufficient input validation; n Applying strong user authentication policies. Of course, it would be ideal if there were an accepted standard for authentication, authorisa- tion and encryption in the yet-to- mature NoSQL space. Until such a standardised consensus can be reached, the best approach is to look at security in the middleware layer, rather than on the cluster level, as most middleware software comes with ready-made support for authentication, authorisation and access control. For example, if Java is being used, then the JAAS, Oracle Corp. J2EE or SpringSource (a division of VMware) Spring Security frameworks are available for the authentication, authorisa- tion and access control for noSQL database implementations. In closing, the most important tip to take from this brief explo- ration of NoSQL security is this: Beware of jumping on the NoSQL bandwagon until you have made sure the wheels won’t fall off. Rec- ognize that NoSQL databases are inherently insecure. If you decide to proceed, apply your own encryp- tion and authentication controls to safeguard the big data in your NoSQL databases. n Davey Winder is a UK-based freelance writer and former ‘Technology Journalist of the Year’ who has spent the best part of two decades writing about IT security issues. A three time winner of the ‘Information Security Journalist of the Year’ title, in 2011 Davey was honoured to receive the Enigma Award from BT in recogni- tion of his lifetime contribution to information security journalism. Winder is a contributor to SearchSecurity.co.UK.
- 10. IT in Europe• july 2012 10 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade DATA CENTRE sipcom cut costs With Storage and Server Upgrades Hosting provider SIPCOM cut its licensing costs and improved SaaS delivery for customers, thanks to these infrastructure upgrades. By Archana Venkatraman hosting firms searching for ways to cut costs should look no further than the recent moves by SIPCOM. By upgrading its storage and server infrastructure, SIPCOM said it improved software as a service (SaaS) delivery for customers and cut its own licensing costs in half. SIPCOM hosts Microsoft Lync environments for its customers, including system integrators, tele- com providers and resellers. But its existing IT infrastructure used to host the unified communica- tions platform was not capable of supporting its customers’ growing needs. In addition, the distributive IT systems meant high Microsoft licensing costs. “The architecture we were using didn’t have the density or the cores that can help our business scale,” said Daniel Allen, SIPCOM’s chief executive. “Neither was it flexible and standardised.” SIPCOM’s IT team chose Dell PowerEdge R815 servers and Dell Compellent virtualised storage platforms to host the Microsoft Lync environment. It virtualised with Microsoft Hyper-V. “We approached three of the top vendors including HP, but only Dell was offering the server combined with storage capabilities we want- ed,” Allen said. Selecting Hyper-V was a straightforward choice, Allen said. SIPCOM host Microsoft platforms and know their products well, he added. Upgrading Cuts Licensing Costs in Half In addition to helping customers More European content from the TechTarget network
- 11. IT in Europe• july 2012 11 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade with better SaaS capabilities, the strategic project has brought ben- efits to SIPCOM’s own bottom line. The IT department has reduced data centre rack space, saving on power costs and minimising oper- ating expenditure. Most importantly, the new archi- tecture has helped SIPCOM reduce costs for Microsoft licensing by 50%. This is because Microsoft software is typically licensed per CPU, Allen said. “The 12 cores—now 16 cores in the latest hardware revisions—in the R815s have enabled us to get high compute power from a rela- tively small number of CPUs,” Allen said. With a standardised and scalable infrastructure in place, SIPCOM’s IT team plans to include backup as a service and desktop as a service to its customers. Seeking Thin Provisioning, Automation and Multi-tiered Platform SIPCOM’s IT team wanted high- density servers and a virtualisa- tion platform that provides higher average hardware utilisation, repeatable deployment with more automation and therefore higher uniformity—all key aspects to deliver better services to its cus- tomers. “Dell Compellent storage with its thin-provisioning virtualised stor- age, and its snapshotting capabili- ties enabled us to deploy template Hyper-V VMs in seconds,” Allen said. The IT team started the project in November 2011 and now, five months later, has an infrastructure with the power and density to sup- port more han 200,000 users with Microsoft Lync services as well as host other SaaS environments, including Microsoft Exchange 2010, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, and backup services—all on a sin- gle platform. SIPCOM’s technology infrastruc- ture project has given the company a versatile storage architecture including automated tiering and thin provisioning. These capa- bilities helped SIPCOM meet the needs of customers with various service requirements, Allen said. Some customers prefer to buy storage in bulk, while others buy storage per gigabyte. The multi- tiered and scalable IT environment allows SIPCOM’s customers to benefit from eliminating wasted capacity and using variable pay- ment models. n Archana Venkatraman is the Site Editor of SearchVirtualDataCentre.co.UK. Zurich East Data Centre Switches on Direct Current Power (Read the full story)
- 12. IT in Europe• july 2012 12 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Unified Storage Goes Mainstream STORAGE unified storage goes mainstream Unified storage has gone main- stream, with full protocol support from the top five vendors. We survey the options available, including single platforms and NAS gateways. By Chris Evans unified storage has come to mean the delivery of block and file stor- age from within a single platform. The initial incarnation of these devices consisted of a block stor- age array with the addition of a file gateway, enabling both file and block protocols to be supported in a single configuration. Today, that’s still an approach that’s common among storage ven- dors, and the only major vendor to offer a truly integrated unified plat- form is NetApp. Its FAS series of devices do not require the addition of separate hardware to provide for file or block. Most other vendors have avoided this route, either by design or because it has been eas- ier to retain separate components following acquisitions. But having a single piece of hard- ware from which any protocol can be enabled through software does have its benefits, in terms of cost and flexibility. However, unless uni- fied technology can manage the different workload profiles of file and block (and, crucially, at the same time), performance problems could be encountered. Over the last 12 months or so, we have seen the major storage ven- dors delivering or enhancing uni- fied storage products that offer the range of typical file and block pro- tocol support, including iSCSI, Fibre Channel, CIFS/SMB and NFS. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) sup- port is also available from NetApp and EMC. In some cases these unified stor- age products are truly integrated, both physically and at the software level. Many solutions on offer are hybrid devices that follow the path of adding a file gateway to a block storage product. Through acquisi- tion, Dell and IBM have added file protocol technologies to existing platforms. Although they are hybrid by nature of being a mixture of file and block hardware, they are being packaged as unified (and therefore fully supported) solutions. EMC replaced its separate Clari- ion and Celerra products in early 2011 with a single product line that combined both former prod- ucts into one platform, the VNX. Meanwhile, HP has partnered with Microsoft to use the Windows Storage Server (WSS) as the basis Spanish Bank Adopts Google Enterprise Cloud Apps (Read the full story)
- 13. IT in Europe• july 2012 13 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Unified Storage Goes Mainstream for its gateway products. Feature support among the ven- dors [CE1] is extensive, with typical options including thin provisioning, policy-based file management and, increasingly, data deduplication. Solid-state drives (SSDs) are avail- able from most vendors and can be exploited fully using thin provision- ing and automated storage tiering technology. Finally, we should mention that there are a number of newcomers to the unified storage marketplace, including startups Starboard Stor- age Systems and Tegile Systems. Both companies have developed technology that specifically targets the I/O profile of a mixed file and block workload. These devices are easier to deliver today because of the advances in processor speeds and integration of I/O protocols further into processor chipsets. Over time, we will likely see more of these solutions emerge that truly bring multiprotocol together in a single device. Now let’s examine the major vendors’ updates to their unified storage lines over the past year. n EMC. Early in 2011 EMC announced its unified platform, the VNX, as a replacement for the pre- vious Clariion and Celerra product lines. This converged product fam- ily combines block and file proto- cols in a single platform, managed by the new Unisphere management software. VNX hardware combines file and block protocols (delivered in sepa- rate enclosures), providing file I/O using X-Blades—hardware blades that were known as data movers in the previous Celerra solution. The VNX models start at the entry- level VNX 5300, which supports a maximum of 125 drives; up to the VNX7500, which supports 1,000 drives, including flash, SAS and nearline SAS devices. Protocol support includes NFS, CIFS, MPFS, pNFS, FC, iSCSI and FCoE. There is a range of additional functionality available with the VNX, including Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) auto-tiering technol- ogy, Fast Cache (enhanced cache performance for random I/O work- loads), data compression and thin provisioning. EMC also offers the VNXe, Dutch University Wins Atos Olympic IT Challenge (Read the full story) Solid-state drives can be exploited fully using thin provisioning and automated storage tiering technology.
- 14. IT in Europe• july 2012 14 Unified Storage Goes Mainstream home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources which is aimed at small businesses. VNXe combines block and file sup- port into a single unit, scaling to a maximum of 120 drives on the VNXe3300 model. Although the VNXe is targeted at SMBs, the device does still provide compres- sion and thin provisioning tech- nologies. The VNX range has been upgrad- ed over the last 12 months with faster processors and additional memory. SAS drives are now the standard disk connection. n NetApp. NetApp FAS devices were one of the first unified stor- age devices on the market, sup- porting file and block protocols in a single platform. As discussed earlier, the company’s technology was also unique in that it supported the protocol range within a single hardware device, rather than using block storage with a NAS gate- way. In September 2011, NetApp upgraded its FAS2000 series with the release of the FAS2240. This provides support for up to 8 Gbps Fibre Channel and 10 Gbps Ethernet IP connectivity, covering NFS, CIFS and iSCSI protocols. The higher-end FAS arrays now support FCoE. NetApp unified solutions are only available with Data Ontap 8 7-mode, which retains backward compatibility with previous plat- forms. This limits the size of file shares to 100 TB. Scalable NAS is available using Data Ontap 8 Clus- ter Mode, but this doesn’t provide unified capabilities. n Hewlett-Packard. HP has a range of unified devices across its portfolio. The new X3000 series is based on Microsoft WSS 2008 R2 and runs on standard ProLiant hardware. Microsoft’s WSS plat- form has a number of additional features, including single-instance storage (SIS); file deduplication technology; and file classifica- tion, which delivers policy-based management of files. The X3000 range provides only minimal inter- nal storage and can be connected to external HP arrays including P4000, EVA and XP but is not as truly integrated as solutions from other vendors. The HP P4000 G2 Unified NAS Gateway offers similar functional- ity to the X3000 series in that it uses WSS 2008 R2 as a gateway to the LeftHand P4000 G2 array. The NAS gateway has no usable storage of its own and so has to be deployed in conjunction with the P4000 platform. n IBM. In 2010 IBM announced the Storwize V7000, a new storage platform based on its SVC stor- age virtualisation technology. The V7000 was enhanced in Octo- The VNX range has been upgraded with faster proces- sors and additional memory.
- 15. IT in Europe• july 2012 15 Rural Broadband—Should Residents Pay? home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources ber 2011 to provide file and block protocols through the addition of a separate file module, built on IBM’s existing Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) tech- nology. The V7000 offers a range of additional functionality, includ- ing support for SSD and thin provi- sioning. Data tiering is implement- ed with IBM’s Easy Tiering feature. The IBM Active Cloud Engine tech- nology implements policy-based file management, automating the movement of less frequently accessed data to lower tiers of storage and, where required, the deletion of files. The Storwize V7000 supports Fibre Channel up to 8 Gbps, 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps Ethernet for iSCSI and NAS and a maximum of 240 drives, expandable in 12- or 24-drive bay enclosures for a total capacity of 720 TB in a clustered configuration. n Dell. In 2010 Dell acquired the assets of Exanet, which provided it with access to clustered NAS technology. This technology was released in June 2011 as the Dell EqualLogic FS7500 Scale-out Uni- fied Storage. This combines Equal- Logic storage and the ExaStore file system, rebranded as the Dell Fluid File System. The FS7500 supports iSCSI, CIFS and NFS protocols and is scalable to a maximum system size of 509 TB, with no restriction on the size of a single file share. n Chris Evans is a UK-based storage consultant. He maintains The Storage Architect blog and is a contributor to SearchStorage.co.UK. Networking and communications rural broadband— should residents pay? With government funding and com- mercial plans only reaching 90% of the population, is it the right move for residents to take their broadband connections into their own hands? By Jennifer Scott jeremy hunt’s promise in 2010 that the UK would lead Europe with its broadband infrastructure within five years raised a few eyebrows. No one was against the senti- ment of rolling out broadband to every home in the UK by 2015— even if they weren’t so happy with the minimum speed of 2Mbps—but it seemed like a mammoth task for the government to achieve alone. Hunt expected the private sector to get on board, and while the likes of BT and Virgin Media were happy to continue their deployments of fibre infrastructure across the more profitable areas of the UK, acres of rural locations on this green and pleasant land were left wanting when it came to Internet connec- tions. The past two years have been spent debating what the answer should be to fill in these dead spots across the British landscape and trialling schemes to try to fix the problem, but this week has been about reporting back to the Houses of Parliament on what has or hasn’t been a success. Rory Stewart, Conservative MP
- 16. IT in Europe• july 2012 16 Rural Broadband—Should Residents Pay? home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources for Penrith and the Borders, has been one of the cheerleaders of rural broadband, and as such has worked with a number of com- munities to find the best answer for getting connections to remote areas. Current government schemes have focused on a central pro- curement process by local coun- cils from large telecoms com- panies and have cost millions of pounds. However, Stewart has been involved in trials which cost significantly less by using more innovative technologies and get- ting residents to invest in their own infrastructure. “The assessments vary, but it costs between £10bn and £40bn for centralised procurement to deliver fibre to every home,” he said. “The government has decided to spend £550m. “Communities such as Great Asby [a village in Cumbria which has run its own broadband scheme] have dropped this cost dramatically to £60,000.” “The very sad thing here is while enormous progress has been made…to get broadband [that was] unimaginable to these com- munities a few years ago…it is still a problem getting this tiny sum of money from government to fund it.” Funding Rural Broadband Connections It seems the only way these schemes have got off of the ground is by local residents digging their hands in their own pockets to pay for the infrastructure. But is it right for them to pay their own way when it comes to broadband, or should both the public and private sector be providing funding for rural parts of the country? Chris Conder, founding mem- ber of B4RN (Broadband 4 Rural North), admitted there was little money left in government coffers to increase its contribution and that these areas were not commercially viable for companies such as BT. People in rural areas should have the same rights of access to the Internet as the rest of the popula- tion. However, rather than resi- dents paying up front to make the broadband roll-out happen, she believed in a suggestion raised by Stewart of a “soft loan” from the System Monitoring From a Single Source (Read the full story in German) People in rural areas should have the same rights of access to the Inter- net as the rest of the population.
- 17. IT in Europe• july 2012 17 Rural Broadband—Should Residents Pay? home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources public sector to get the ball rolling. The idea is government could lend the money to communities to get set up, and each household that signs up to the scheme can pay it back over a long period of time with little interest. This removes the risk from spending taxpayers’ money on unproven technical innovations, but enables rural areas to go ahead with plans that could otherwise be delayed indefinitely while money is raised. “There would have to be some community participation to keep the costs down to an affordable level,” Conder said. “Communities will do it if they believe in the proj- ect; they don’t expect anything for nothing and they will contribute, but there is a limit. “Soft loans that spread the load over many years would be a great incentive and very ‘big soci- ety’. Some members of rural soci- ety wouldn’t be able to contribute, either health-wise or [due to] pov- erty, but others will, and it gives a great feeling of satisfaction to help each other.” Equal Rights to Internet Access Fellow B4RN committee member Martyn Dews said it should not be down to citizens to pay for this, saying that “people in rural areas should have the same rights of access to the Internet as the rest of the population”. However, he accepted that with the lack of commercial viability and the relatively small amount of gov- ernment funding, it was a case of “putting up with what is provided or doing it themselves”. “If it’s done right and there is enough support, the community will get the payback in the medium to long term,” said Dews. “Imagine a deeply rural community with a 1,000Mbps connection—one of the best in the world. That is what B4RN is delivering now. Think of the possibilities that will open up.” BT is keen on communities getting on board with their own deployments but said residents should be more active in seeking out the set-up costs from govern- ment. “We’ve always been very clear that we believe that local com- Cisco Opens the Era of Programmable Networks (Read the full story in French) “There would have to be some community participation to keep the costs down to an affordable level.” — Chris Conder, founding member, B4RN
- 18. IT in Europe• july 2012 18 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources Rural Broadband—Should Residents Pay? munities can make a substantial contribution to bring fibre to their area,” a BT spokesman said. “We have publicly encouraged them to engage with their local authority and central government in lobbying for funds.” He said, however, that the funds on offer from both private and public sector contributors would only cover 90% of the popula- tion, leaving the final 10% on their own. The only way BT is going to put up more of its own investment though is if it is the chosen provider for government schemes. “We have indicated we would be willing to invest further funds—of up to £1bn—should we win many of the public funds on offer,” added the spokesman. A number of residents from Alston, another Cumbrian village which has taken on its own broad- band infrastructure, have pledged their support for paying their own way. However it was made clear by both residents and campaign- ers that it would not be their first choice. All believed, as Dews stated, that they should be given the same provisions as the rest of the country, but rather than waiting for more money from gov- ernment and the private sector, it was more beneficial to get on with the task at hand and put in their own money. Neither government, com- mercial operations or campaign- ers will state it is the right thing for residents to pay for their own broadband, but all accept it may be the only way to get everyone con- nected while purse strings remain tight. n Jennifer Scott is the networking editor for ComputerWeekly.com and a contributor to SearchNetworking.co.UK. Neither government, commercial opera- tions or campaigners will state it is the right thing for residents to pay for their own broadband.
- 19. IT in Europe• july 2012 19 home Editor’s Letter Advanced Analytics Tools Slow to Catch Fire Securing NoSQL Applications: Best Practises for Big Data Security SIPCOM Cut Costs With Storage and Server Upgrade Unified Storage Goes Mainstream Rural Broadband— Should Residents Pay? Additional European Resources additional resources n A UK Guide to Govern- ment and Public Sector IT n A Guide to Buying Storage Hardware and Software n A Guide to Embracing IT Consumerisation n How to Comply With the EU Cookie Law n Quick Guide to IT Security n Supplier Profile: HP n Supplier Profile: CA Technologies n Supplier Profile: Oracle n Blade Servers: How to Decide on Unix or Linux n Green Computing Energy Efficiency Guide IT In Europe E-zine is a TechTarget e-publication. Contributors include: SearchSecurity.co.UK, SearchVirtualDataCentre.co.UK, SearchStorage.co.UK, SearchDataManagement.co.UK, SearchNetworking.co.UK, ComputerWeekly.com and Microscope.co.uk. Cathleen Gagne Editorial Director Kayleigh Bateman Special Projects Editor Christine Casatelli Managing Editor Linda Koury Director of Online Design TechTarget 3-4a Little Portland Street, 1st Floor London W1W 7JB www.techtarget.com TechTarget 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466 www.techtarget.com © 2012 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher.TechTargetreprintsareavailablethrough The YGS Group. About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technology professionals. More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deep store of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products and processes crucial to your job. Our live and virtual events give you direct access to indepen- dent expert commentary and advice. At IT Knowledge Exchange, our social community, you can get advice and share solutions with peers and experts. additional resources