In an effort to raise awareness of the security of data stored in the Cloud, Sun distinguished engineer Glenn Brunette has created an interesting project on Kenai. The project, "Crypto Front End to S3 CLIs" (s3-crypto) delivers a simple and intuitive way for people to encrypt their files before automatically storing them in the Cloud.  Similarly, files are automatically decrypted upon retrieval so that the entire process is transparent. 

The keys and encryption process are all handled on the client meaning that the Cloud provider only has access to encrypted content (and not the encryption keys!)  This project offers two utilities: s3-crypto.sh (the ultimate in flexibility and control) and csb (Cloud Safety Box - a simplified interface that accepts all of the default settings).

This software project can be configured to use either the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (on OpenSolaris) or OpenSSL (on OpenSolaris or other platforms), and it has been tested on both OpenSolaris and Mac OS X.  Glenn is also working to make this tool available for the Sun Cloud when it become available.

Glenn has created a project on Kenai for this where you can view the code, downlood the tool and contribute to the project and discussion.  You can access it here.

In his recent Wolfe's Den blog entry, Alex Wolfe of InformationWeek has a video that he did with Lew Tucker at CommunityOne East in March.  Although the news around for the video is about recent news about Sun (which I won't comment on).  Here's the video in which Lew and Alex talk Cloud Computing.

Also, there will be tons of opportunities for this type of information at CommunityOne West in June.

Below is a video of Ian Murdock, Sun's VP of Emerging Technologiesof that was sent to the CommunityOne Oslo event when Ian couldn't make it.  In it he addresses the CommunityOne attendees on Cloud Computing and Open Source and the relationship between the two areas.

You can get details of CommunityOne Oslo here.

Russ

In a story I saw on the New York Times website was this piece about how enterprises are looking at Cloud Computing.  Entitled, "The Enterprise Impact of Cloud Computing," it makes a very good point about the optics Cloud Computing provides to enterprises, even if a company doesn't adopt Cloud Computing.  

 In essence the story observes that enterprises are using Cloud Computing as a pricing benchmark.  While this might not be a fair benchmark, its a fairly transformative idea.  If an enterprise discovers its paying 10x for storage that a Cloud provider is charging, it might lead to all kinds of interesting pricing pressures.  I'm keenly following this notion.

From Cloud Computing Expo last week, the folks at Sys-con had a few photos that caught my eye.  

First up is Dave Douglas, the head of Sun's Cloud Computing group.  Next is my fellow booth staffers Cassandra Clark and Angelo Rajadurai.

Finally, if you want a very in-depth review of Cloud Computing Expo, I suggest you read Said Syed's blog entry.

 Russ