Back in August, the New York Times published an article written by Ellen Messmer out of IDG’s Network World, titled: Security Start-Up Rohati Extends Access-Control Gear to the Cloud.
In it, she says that John Burke of  Nemertes Research stated:

….Nemertes in its research has found that fewer than 5% of organizations today have any type of funded cloud initiative.

Interesting to see how fast that’s going to change. In only a couple short months analysts have predicted that spending on cloud services will account for 10 percent of IT budgets by 2013, making up a whopping $44.2 billion in total IT spend (not that the $9 billion to be spent this year is chump change). This was pointed out by Dave Rosenberg on his CNET blog ‘Software Interrupted, where he wrote:

If public cloud services will be 10 percent of all IT money spent [by 2013], that represents a blisteringly fast growth rate. And while we certainly don’t wish the recession to continue, it’s interesting to see how companies have adapted their IT plans to take advantage of services that require far less capital expenditure.

CNET Graphic Showing Cloud Computing IT Spend by 2013

Evolution of the “Cloud” – 1.) Buzzword, 2.) Chris Hoff is snatched up by Cisco, 3.) Obama open’s Cloud store, 4.) $44 billion by 2013, 5.) Reality

Other thoughts recently thunk: I thoroughly enjoyed Forbe’s Lee Gomes’ led coverage of the next Silicon Valley God Rush – Virtualization. I especially enjoyed the Nemertes contribution from Andreas and John: The Virtualized Desktop. As a PR guy with a special interest in the intrigue of digital security, I also enjoyed Andy Greenberg’s piece: Virtualization’s Real Security Problem: Sprawl.

Couple new blogs I’ve added to my roll lately:

Gary’s Blog (Nimsoft CEO Gary Read)

Tales from the Si Valley Front (Ken Rutsky)

Posted by Joe Franscella –

Read an interesting blog post by Larry Dignan at ZDNet Between the Lines blog this morning, IBM targets Google Apps for business, undercuts pricing and touts reliability. One paragraph really caught my attention:

The LotusLive iNotes launch, set to be announced on Monday, pushes reliability in a big way. Taking a jab at Google’s outages, IBM said it’s imperative that cloud computing “is ready for the enterprise when it’s designed for the enterprise, by the enterprise, and of the enterprise.” Word of IBM’s iNotes move began to surface late Thursday and Big Blue has had a LotusLive iNotes site live for days.

It begs a couple questions: 1.) Who measures reliability? Do you leave that to that to the vendor or should you use a third-party app to provide a neutral perspective; 2.) What about seurity? How is access being managed, monitored and audited? (Note to Larry – Take a look at my email offer to provide some perspective – please, please, please!)

ThreatPost.com Editor Ryan Naraine talks about his new gig during RSA Conference 2009.

ThreatPost.com from Joe Franscella on Vimeo.

IT security solutions vendor Kaspersky Lab specializes in reducing risk, ironically though, it has thrown its hat into the most risky industry of the day – news. A few weeks ago at RSA Conference 2009, Kaspersky launched ThreatPost, a news and community network for the broader IT security neighborhood.

Is Kaspersky worried about backing a news venture during an era when major outlets are shutting doors, laying off and cutting back? The answer seems to be no.

Editor and Kaspersky Lab Evangelist Ryan Naraine is confident in ThreatPost’s potential for success. Unlike traditional news outlets that rely on the ad/subscription model for revenue, ThreatPost will enjoy the backing of a corporation committed to the project.

Randy Drawas, Chief Marketing Officer of Kaspersky Lab Americas said, “Part of our mission as a company has always been to keep our customers informed about the latest threats that exist and partake in the public discourse concerning the issues our business revolves around. ThreatPost provides us the opportunity to drive the public discourse and from the top on down we are committed to the success of the site. We also know the only way a site like this one can be successful is to keep it open and trusted and are committed to ensuring that line is never crossed.”

ThreatPost ‘s plan for success is unorthodox. Rather than try and compete with other IT security news outlets through the “loyalty” model, it plans to attract readers by providing a mix of original and aggregated content along with a guide to other sites’ IT security news. Naraine explained that he and editor Dennis Fisher are providing the site’s original content and that other sites and contributors are providing the rest. The end-result is a space where readers can get a “snapshot” of current security issues and then directed internally or externally to where they can read about them, according to Naraine.

“It’s very difficult to expect readers to go to one place and stay there all day and that’s why the ThreatPost aggregation concept of sending them away to bring them back is a big part of what we do,” said Naraine. “Corporations have seen the value of using this kind of community-based social media to hit the target audience.”

Naraine and Fisher aren’t concerned that Kaspersky’s ownership of the site could taint its objectivity. Naraine emphasizes that there is clear “church-state separation” and that it is a legitimate media site.

Neither Naraine nor Fisher are rookies to the IT security news industry. Prior to ThreatPost, Naraine covered infosec for eWeek and ZDNet. Fisher, also a Kaspersky evangelist, did the same at Tech Target and eWeek. Between them, they bring two decades of IT news coverage experience to the publication.

Public relations and marketing professionals salivating over the notion of a new news site should take note, Naraine says that the site is absolutely not — under any circumstances — covering product announcements, news or doing any reviews.

“We draw the line at products, we don’t cover product news, we don’t do product reviews or any of that stuff,” said Naraine. “We cover anything data security related — threats, trends, malware issues, anything around social networks that can put users at risk … we run the gambit.”

Posted by Joe Franscella