I was referenced in a CSO article recently titled "Four Questions On Google App Security." I wasn't interviewed for the story directly, but Bill Brenner simply referenced our prior interviews and my skepticism for virtualization security and cloud Security as a discussion point.
Google's response was interesting and a little tricky given how they immediately set about driving a wedge between virtualization and Cloud. I think I understand why, but if the article featured someone like Amazon, I'm not convinced it would go the same way...
As I understand it, Google doesn't really leverage much in the way of virtualization (from the classical compute/hypervisor perspective) for their "cloud" offerings as compared to Amazon. That may be in large part due to the fact of the differences in models and classification -- Amazon AWS is an IaaS play while GoogleApps is a SaaS offering.
This post dovetails nicely with Lori MacVittie's article today titled "Dynamic Infrastructure: The Cloud Within the Cloud" wherein she highlights how the obfuscation of infrastructure isn't always a good thing. Given my role, what's in that cloudy bubble *does* matter.
So here's my incomplete thought -- a question, really:
How many of you assume that virtualization is an integral part of cloud computing? From your perspective do you assume one includes the other? Should you care?
Yes, it's intentionally vague. Have at it.
/Hoff