Our network provider is very security conscious and monitor's all outgoing traffic, turning off switch ports if a device starts exceeding a connection per second threshold. The idea here is that such an event is most likely a bad guy using one of our computers to launch an attack on someone else (you know, the zombie army scenario) and by turning off the port that attack get's shut down.
So we had a DNS mis-configuration that we didn't catch and it ended up generating enough network traffic to trigger the security filter. As it turns out, this particular switch port is where all our authentication traffic flows out to the authentication servers. So, nobody could log in to any of our services......
I have no knowledge of other sites, but I know that this is not the first time that a security measure has self inflicted a wound. I am beginning to wonder if all these fancy traffic monitors and protections have actually prevented more damage then they have inflicted on us. This is rather hard to measure. As an example of how hard it is, you can tell that my asteroid collision shield has been working quite well. In fact, I think you should all send me some money to help defray my costs of preventing the earth from being destroyed.
And this comment leads me to a quote from another blog post that I mentioned on a twitter earlier today. The blog is Lev Gonik's from Case Western Reserve University and the URL is:
http://blog.case.edu/lev.gonick/
Top 10 IT Trends for Higher Education in 2009
The post starts off this way "What happens when tough economic times combine with fatigue across the campus community hyping the latest 'killer app', and the growing intolerance of disruptions to services occasioned by security-related activities." So I think you can sort of see the relationship to my story above. This hyping of the latest killer app also rang a bell because today I also read another blog post from the Burton Group. I won't put the URL for this one since it's behind a pay wall. But the topic was a pithy dialog between Vitruvious, famous Roman architect and Socrates, famous Greek philosopher about the death of SOA. Seems like SOA is the IT architect's latest killer app.
Despite the cynicism about trendy technology, it seems we cannot stop holding up the flag of the latest technology and leading the charge. Gonik believes that clouds are the real deal. I tend to believe it as well. I think that tough economic times will result in one of two reactions within IT:
The first kind reaction will be retrenchment, stop projects which hold risk because they use newer technology and make our old tried and true (and already purchased) technology last a few more years.
The second kind of reaction will be done by the few, mostly smaller entities, and they will see an opportunity to take a risk and change the competitive landscape by using a transformational technology.
And that leads me back to clouds and why we will be seeing an uptick in cloud computing despite the downturn. I think the last really transformational technology in IT was the PC and it's getting pretty long in the tooth now.
We are starting to see embedded computing in the consumer market taking advantage of broadband services. We have DVD players, gaming consoles and now TV's themselves that can connect to the Internet and stream movies and television shows. We see lot's of creativity surrounding the iPhone and other broadband capable phones and devices. You can go to Best Buy and get an Internet Radio. Digital cameras will soon all have WiFi and GPS built in and will be able to stream up to the web.
What will drive all these devices is basically services built and hosted in the cloud. I watched as the PC transformed IT shops, and it was not because of those of us in the inside, it was because employee's acting as consumers could bring the technology in house themselves. And that phenomena is exactly what is driving cloud services right now, employee's acting as consumers are bringing in the end points of the cloud services right now to your organization.
So that's the main reason why I think cloud computing can be the next transformational technology in IT, because organized IT is not driving it!
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