back to article Snowden is great news for hybrid cloud says VMware

Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of the online snoopery in the US are good for business, say VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and COO Carl Eschenbach. Speaking today at VMWorld 2013 the, pair were asked if Snowden's leaks are changing customers' attitudes to public clouds. Both answered in the affirmative. “We have …

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  1. Frank Zuiderduin

    Those guys are either complete idiots or they think we are.

    ALL american companies can go **** themselves, whether they're offering cloud in their own shitty country or in the rest of the world. Remember people, even if they are doing the latter, as long as they have a presence in the US of Assholes they'll screw you over as soon as their government goons wants them to. And they won't let you know they're doing it either.

    Americans cannot be trusted. Period.

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Those guys are either complete idiots or they think we are

      Sorry Frank Zuiderduin, but the only complete idiot I have spotted so far is closer. Personally I would rather have my data in hardware I have control over, than in some cloud, who knows where. This has been my opinion from the start, although I have sometimes had the feeling I am getting old fashioned. Still there is that old problem with taking responsibility (and getting the funding) for keeping the data "at home". Snowden has indeed made it harder for the cloud. If I was very good at lying, I would be interested in who to trust in your opinion.

      1. Fatman

        RE: Re: Those guys are either complete idiots or they think we are

        This has been my opinion from the start, although I have sometimes had the feeling I am getting old fashioned.

        NO, you are just exhibiting the ability to comprehend the ramifications of having YOUR data under someone else's control and how the gubmint of the US of A can spy on YOUR data if it passes through the US.

        ID10Ts who spout "cloud" are just seeking to deflect any blame from their incompetence; any COMPETENT MANAGER knows that once you surrender control of YOUR DATA to a third party, all bets are off.

        Only DAMAGEMENT tries to deflect blame, and point responsibility to a third party.

  2. tom dial Silver badge

    So which country's companies to trust? UK (or Canada, New Zealand, Australia, all of them cognizant of XKeystore)? China? Russia? Or do you follow Lars's hint an maintain your own data on site with encrypted offsite storage for DR (and you control the encryption yourself). A possible use of the commercial cloud might be storage of those encrypted files; anything else is more risk than I care for.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What sheeple

    Are people REALLY so technically challenged as to think that their communications won't be read by using the cloud? PT Barnum was right...

  4. anatak

    cloud

    I never understood the obsession with the cloud.

    I understand the convenience but who is responsible for your data ? You ? the cloud company ?

    what happens when you have a catastrophic event ? I am sure that the cloud company will evoke some user agreement that says that they at the end are not responsible.

    So you are still left with making backups of your data. So why not run your own cloud and take your own backups ?

    I guess the time is comin that IT will move back in house again if you are a company that values its data and privacy.

  5. dssf

    Isn't the "cloud" all smoke and mirrors, anyway?

    Isn't the "cloud" all smoke and mirrors, anyway?

    Just euphemistically/metaphorically elevated ether-meshes...

    It is not as if a meterological cloud can just ffffffff away the bytes. What WOULD bite is if enough hardware got shut down, say, by EMP, tactically discharged over a period of weeks. No nukes are required, IIUC. If one is willing to kill the cloud base stations, the "cloud makers" will be dancing on hooves and prancing with wolves...

  6. James 51

    The title is too long.

    "the US has been shown to be a jurisdiction in which supposedly private data can be accessed by the government"

    That isn't the problem. Any responsible goverment would be looking into the activities of suspected criminals/terrorists etc etc. It's the scale and the level of justification for what they are doing is the problem.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Missing the point

    Politics aside, my reading of this is that other cloud vendors lock your VMs in their site, and data is subject to laws of where its hosted. Geslinger's claim is that the vmware cloud allows migration in and out, so you can only move up the type of vms that don't house data you don't want snooped?

    so if you use it, don;t move the file server that shows where your tax emptions are into a US based cloud host! :)

  8. Benjol
    Pint

    Nourishment?

    Interesting choice of word in your post-scriptum :)

  9. RobHib
    Boffin

    In the same vein.

    It's occurred to me it'd be possible to have a virtual internet--one where physical (real) IP addresses were always obfuscated (decoupled) from net users by an encrypted layer.

    It seems to me the net can never be totally secure until both users and servers are working in (interfaced to) a virtual world. That's to say servers would never be able to locate the physical location [real IP addres] of a user nor a user locate the physical location of his data server--both would only ever see virtual addresses.

    Unless the encryption is broken snoops would never know the physical location of either a user or the server(s) he was using. In such a schema the servers would also be encrypted so if accidentally found there'd be no return address to source the key.

    We had the inklings of such a scheme in the old WWII days when radio was the primary means of transmitting encrypted messages. In a radio comms circuit, especially one working over very long distances, an interceptor could only vaguely guess the location of the transmitter (poor direction finding meant he could be hundreds of miles off course). And those who were only ever receiving information could never be detected by the interceptor just sniffing the aether [the equivalent of intercepting IP packets]. Receivers would only be detected if their receiving requirement leaked RF (which sometimes happened but it shouldn't) or if someone discovered the location of those doing the receiving by accident.

    It seems to me we should reevaluate the internet from basics if we want to truly keep snoops away. Being snoop-proof must, a priori, be fundamental to the design.

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