Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest – A Social Media Checklist For Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC]

Social media has a pretty steep learning curve, and when you’re a brand using these tools for the first time the wealth of information in how to best leverage platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest, as well as blogs and video, can be overwhelming.

This is especially true for marketing. Where do we begin?

Appreciatively, help is at hand, courtesy of this infographic from The Whole Brain Group, which provides a handy, printable, social media checklist for businesses. While the tips and recommendations here are not hard and fast – few things are in the very art-meets-science world of social marketing – it’s a good place to start for companies of all sizes who have heard great things about social networking but don’t know where to start.

(Source: Mediabistro)

Security Challenges of Cloud Storage

Cloud-based storage as a service includes inherent vulnerabilities, but they need not prevent a business user from taking advantage of its economies and flexibilities. Here are the five most important ways to address data security in cloud-based storage infrastructures.

• Data Leakage: Many businesses that would benefit significantly from using cloud storage are holding back because of data leakage fear. The cloud is a multi-tenant environment, where resources are shared. It is also an outside party, with the potential to access a customer’s data. Sharing storage hardware and placing data in the hands of a vendor seem, intuitively, to be risky. Whether accidental, or due to a malicious hacker attack, data leakage would be a major security violation. The best strategy is to assume from the start that the cloud vendor is compromised and send only encrypted files to the cloud. Use the strongest encryption that you can; anything less is not worthwhile. Don’t depend on the cloud provider or an intermediary to encrypt those files for you – then they’ll be able to decrypt them as well, and you’ll have to rely on trust. With the cloud, all data and metadata should be encrypted at the edge, before it leaves your premises. The only person to trust is yourself.
  
  
• Cloud Credentials: Even encrypted data can be vulnerable if your files are pooled in with those of another customer. Access to a given pool of storage is based on credentials, and if you are lumped together with another set of customers and share the same credentials, there is a risk that one of them could obtain those credentials and access your data. They would not be able to decipher it, assuming it is encrypted, but they could delete the files. By securing your own unique credentials, however, your files will be separate. No one else will be able to log into your account and delete your data.
  
  
• Snooping: Files can be vulnerable in the cloud, but there are also risks during data transmission. Encrypted files do not need to be sent over a secure line – this amounts to double encryption. But it is best to assume the worst and guard against any measure of snooping by only sending and retrieving data over a secure line. This prevents against someone seeing cloud metadata. Data and metadata should be completely opaque on the wire and in the cloud. Nothing – no file names, time stamps – should be decipherable once it leaves your premises.
  
  
• Key Management: This has to be addressed properly because if you botch key management, there is a risk that users will not want to activate the cryptography, which then compromises security. Key management should be so simple that users are not even aware of it: Encryption should be automatic. There should be no way to turn it off. This way, if there is no insecure mode, then there is no chance of someone accidentally sending unencrypted, vulnerable data to the cloud. Keys should also be securely escrowed, and difficult to retrieve, so that no one can obtain that key to access your data. 
  
  
• Performance: A strong security strategy is a necessity, but it should not seriously impact performance. Encryption of data being sent to the cloud, and decryption of files called back from the cloud, should happen with little or no impact on the user experience. Ideally, it should all happen without the user noticing a thing.

Source - Nasuni

Indian Cloud Market: Growth and Constraints

According to market advisory firm Zinnov Management Consulting, “The overall Indian market for cloud - both public & private - has grown steadily to reach USD 860- 912 million in calendar year 2011”.

Key moves of Indian cloud industry:

• The 'Public Cloud Opportunity in India' study highlighted that, the public cloud market comprises 20-22 per cent of the share, while the remaining 78-80 per cent is accounted for by private cloud.
• The public cloud market has rapidly evolved in the last two years in India with significant traction across SaaS, PaaS & IaaS (software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service). With the current market of USD 160 -192 million in 2011, public cloud in India is at a very nascent state of the market and may not have hit the inflection point yet, indicating significant future potential.
• SaaS market in India is largely dominated by email, collaboration tools, CRM and ERP which stood at USD 123-143 million for 2011. The SaaS market has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 per cent from USD 56-67 million in 2009 until 2011. It is expected to grow more in future.
• The PaaS and IaaS markets in India, on the other hand, are rapidly growing, though from a small base, the study added. The PaaS market in India is at USD 1.5-2.5 million in 2011, having grown at a CAGR of 75 per cent from USD 0.5-1.5 million 2009.
• IaaS market in India, on the other side, stands at USD 38-47 million. This segment has seen a promising growth of CAGR 84 per cent from a market share of USD 11-14 million in 2009. Because of emerging partnerships, it expected to grow at jet speed.

Although, these numbers are impressive, they indicate just a glimpse of the immense potential and transformation that is possible from adoption of cloud computing technologies. Despite of growth, Indian companies do have certain constraints while adopting cloud. The constraints would be -

• Data security and privacy
• Immature eco-system
• Insufficient development of cloud-ready applications
• Lack of case studies measuring returns from cloud computing investments in Indian scenario
• Erratic broadband availability (connectivity)

Because of global influence, Indian companies would certainly overcome these constraints and presents a remarkable growth in cloud computing era.

Reference: Economictimes, informationweek.

Cloud Computing Trends Affecting Cloud Strategy Through 2015

Continual monitoring of cloud computing trends, with regular updates to the enterprise's cloud strategy, will be essential to avoid costly mistakes or miss market opportunities over the next few years, according to Gartner, Inc. Although the potential for cloud computing is significant, the breadth and depth of the impact, as well as the level of adoption over time, are uncertain and will require frequent review.

"Cloud computing is a major technology trend that has permeated the market over the last two years. It sets the stage for a new approach to IT that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they'll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models," said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "Cloud computing has a significant potential impact on every aspect of IT and how users access applications, information and business services."

Gartner has identified five cloud computing sub-trends that will be accelerating, shifting or reaching a tipping point over the next three years and that users must factor into their planning processes.

• Formal decision frameworks facilitate cloud investment optimization: The cloud promises to deliver a range of benefits, including a shift from capital-intensive to operational cost models, lower overall cost, greater agility and reduced complexity. It can also be used to shift the focus of IT resources to higher-value-added activities for the business, or to support business innovation and, potentially, lower risks. However, these prospective benefits need to be examined carefully and mapped against a number of challenges, including security, lack of transparency, concerns about performance and availability, the potential for vendor lock-in, licensing constraints and integration needs. These issues create a complex environment in which to evaluate individual cloud offerings.
  
  
• Hybrid cloud computing is an imperative: Hybrid computing refers to the coordination and combination of external cloud computing services (public or private) and internal infrastructure or application services. Over time, hybrid cloud computing could lead to a unified model in which there is a single "cloud" made up of multiple cloud platforms (internal or external) that can be used, as needed, based on changing business requirements. 
  Gartner recommends that enterprises focus near-term efforts on application and data integration, linking fixed internal and external applications with a hybrid solution. Where public cloud application services or custom applications running on public cloud infrastructures are used, guidelines and standards should be established for how these elements will combine with internal systems to form a hybrid environment.
  
  
• Cloud brokerage will facilitate cloud consumption: As cloud computing adoption proliferates, so does the need for consumption assistance. A cloud services brokerage (CSB) is a service provider that plays an intermediary role in cloud computing. Interest in the CSB concept increased last year, and Gartner expects this trend to accelerate over the next three years as more  individuals, whether they are in IT or a line-of-business unit, consume cloud services without involving IT.
  To address this challenge, Gartner believes that IT departments should explore how they can position themselves as CSBs to the enterprise by establishing a purchasing process that accommodates cloud adoption and encourages business units to come to the IT organization for advice and support. The enterprise CSB approach can be implemented by modifying existing processes and tools such as internal portals and service catalogs.
  
  
• Cloud-centric design becomes a necessity: Many organizations look first for opportunities to migrate existing enterprise workloads to a cloud system or an application infrastructure. This approach may provide benefits where the workload has a highly variable resource requirement, or where the application naturally lends itself to horizontal scalability. However, to fully exploit the potential of a cloud model, applications need to be designed with the unique characteristics, limitations and opportunities of a cloud model in mind. Gartner advises enterprises to look beyond the migration of enterprise workloads to the creation of cloud-optimized applications that fully exploit the potential of the cloud to deliver global-class applications.
  
  
• Cloud computing influences future data center and operational models: In public cloud computing, an enterprise is acting as a consumer of services, with the cloud services provider handling the implementation details, including the data center and related operational models. However, to the extent that the enterprise continues to build its own data centers, they will be influenced by the implementation models used by cloud services providers. Gartner recommends that enterprises apply the concepts of cloud computing to future data center and infrastructure investments to increase agility and efficiency.

"The trend and related technologies continue to evolve and change rapidly, and there is continuing confusion and misunderstanding as vendors increasingly hype 'cloud' as a marketing term," said David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

Reference: www.itbusinessedge.com