VMWare VDI Gets Some Love from Brian Madden

I've long followed Brian Madden for all things VDI. It's a technology that I'm really hoping will mature beyond data center hosting of the client. Security, of course, is absolutely critical, and it appears that VMWare has upped the game. 

In a recent posting, Gabe Knuth summarizes the new network security capabilities as leveraging VMWare's NSX virtual networks.

The quick explanation here is that with this combination of technologies, you can have applications run on specific networks dedicated to them, reducing their security footprint and firewalling that traffic from the rest of your environment.

Rather than merely adding a checkbox for an ROI financial pitch, this improvement is definitely the direction for rationalizing a VDI implementation. I can't do better than the summary "Today, we can make it more secure than physical desktops."

Social Media Guidelines for US Federal Workers

The US Office of Government Ethics has published their guidelines for using social media. The direction is not for a government account, but "as a general matter, this requirement limits the extent to which employees may access and use their personal social media accounts while on duty." One large section is whether or not a job title can be included in a posting. Another is on how recommendations should be considered. In any case, now that there are guidelines, it's to be noted that this is not the final word:

"In light of the ever evolving nature of social media, the foregoing advice is not intended to be comprehensive. OGE expects to issue additional guidance in the future addressing questions outside the scope of this Legal Advisory. Designated Agency Ethics Officials with questions regarding the application of the Standards of Conduct to social media may contact their assigned OGE Desk Officers."

AWS vis a vis Azure Marketshare

Really interesting analysis on Azure and AWS footprint sizes in Forbes. Spoiler alert, AWS is still leaving Bigfoot puddles as it walks through the competition. The call out items, to me, are (1) it's a zero profit platform for anyone building for the cloud; (2) Microsoft is still tethered to it's own, proprietary, infrastructure;  (3) despite AWS's prowess, Azure is gaining a lot of clients. My read is that a lot of the direction for cloud technology will be centered on the desktop and mobile. We are moving from just the transition of back office functions (databases, SaaS, etc.), into the client. It sounds like a non sequitur, but an enterprise that manages desktops with group polices, et al., needs Active Directory.

Splunk Cloud on AWS

Splunk has released their analytic cloud tool set on AWS that will soon include AWS GovCloud for U.S. government agencies, contractors and businesses.

Here's a sandbox for orientation:

https://www.splunk.com/page/sign_up/cloudtrial?redirecturl=/getsplunk/onlinesandbox