Update 2019: We’ve been busy working on some great training content around security, check out the Cloud Academy library to prepare on all-things cloud security.
Cloud Technology Issues: struggles between relational databases and NoSQL, VMWare and Red Hat, and malware creators and the WordPress plugin
Welcome to the Cloud Technology and Security Alert News Digest. This week we’ve got some interesting struggles: between relational databases and NoSQL, VMWare and Red Hat, and malware creators and the WordPress plugin, Fancybox. We’ll also discuss Minecraft in education and the opening up of IBM’s Watson.
The relational database strikes back
We’ve mentioned the shifting border between relational databases and NoSQL in this space before. Now James Bourne at Cloud Computing News reports that an EnterpriseDB-commissioned study performed by Forrester found a significant number of respondents reporting having trouble fully integrating their NoSQL solutions, while the capabilities of many relational DBs – and in particular Postgres – are improving the way they handle unstructured data.
Cloud technology, Watson style
ZDNet reports that IBM’s Watson, the cognitive computing system that, more and more, is opening up to developers, has now made its formidable speech-to-text, text-to-speech, visual recognition, concept insights, and tradeoff analytics available through the Watson Developer Cloud.
Minecraft as cloud giant in the education market?
Why not? The Minecraft gaming world is a mature platform with a huge and fiercely loyal, paying user base that just happens to present enormous educational potential. Besides the existing programs using Minecraft mods to teach kids programming skills, a recent Atlantic Monthly article points out that some educators are apparently now incorporating Minecraft worlds into a much broader swath of their curriculum.
The big boys are having it out in the enterprise cloud ring.
Cloud Computing News reports that Bryan Che at Red Hat isn’t impressed with VMWare’s new hybrid cloud initiative, writing that VMWare is not the ideal platform for architectures requiring significant scale-out (rather than scale-up) options. Che feels that a specifically scale-out cloud base like OpenStack would benefit from a more closely matched infrastructure.
WordPress plugin bug
Did you really think we’d go a second week without reporting some nasty exploit? If your WordPress deployment uses the Fancybox image displaying plugin, then you might just be in for an unpleasant surprise: Fancybox has a vulnerability that can leave you wide open for attack. ZDNet reports that WordPress has already removed the plugin from its own repositories, but anyone hosting WP locally and using Fancybox, might want to remove it immediately.
