GIPAW-Next Generation Firewalls

I presented to the GIPAW group. GIPAW is an association of all the local Wisconsin government IT Managers.

The presentation that I gave was about Next Generation Firewalls and how they can save money and better protect their network.

Most businesses are trying to solve security problems by throwing multiple solutions to fix the security issues that they are having. This usually does not solve the security problem and is usually more difficult to manage and maintain. You usually have a web filter, IDS, Anti-Virus gateway, IM Gateway. With the next generation firewalls, you have only one appliance. It allows for a single managed interface and the ability to better view your traffic.

You can also have it preform authorization against your directory service to get granular on what users can access. You can also restrict bandwidth down to the user and group.

I really do believe a next generation firewall will save you money and provide you better protection.

Cloud Computing

Everyone these days is talking about Cloud computing as the next generation computing platform. If you think about it, cloud computing already exists today. Services such as hosted spam filtering services and hosted Microsoft Exchange services are already cloud computing services.

Other services such as salesforce.com and also net suite are hosted sales management and accounting applications. In my industry, we even have providers who offer managed services. We run a platform called professional services automation or PSA for short. We run our PSA in house, but the trend is to buy a hosted service. The advantage is a monthly fee and no investment in server hardware and software. We also do not have to worry about the administrative time it takes to maintain those systems.

Companies such as Amazon offer cloud computing, calling it Amazon Web Services. You can rent storage space for dollars on the hour. Some scientists and others are using this service to storage and process large data. It is cheaper than building a storage cluster.

Google and Microsoft are also working on a cloud computing option. They are building massive data centers near cheap and renewal energy sources. They realize that computing is changing and they are using the recession to help build some of their next generation services.

What does this mean to you? I do believe there is something to this cloud computing movement. Applications that are expensive to upgrade and maintain (Microsoft Exchange) will be moved to the cloud at a great pace in the next 10 years. This will allow businesses to cut capital and maintenance costs and also allows them to focus on their core business. You will need to watch this movement and see if it makes sense for your business model.