The Results:

Which hypervisor(s) are you currently using?

• 72% VMware
• 17% Using something else
• 9% Hyper-V and VMware
• 2% Hyper-V

(based on 46 responses)

So the VMware responses were in line with what we thought, although I’ve seen numbers up to 90% share of the market. And about 10% are at least playing with Hyper-V – pretty good numbers just a few months out from launch. But look at 17% using a hypervisor other than Hyper-V and VMware!

We know from talking with people that several brought up Xen. I have to tell you that other than from media and analysts, we never hear about Xen (Citrix), which is why we didn’t include it in the survey as a specific selection. Perhaps it took the introduction of Hyper-V, with the attendant marketing juggernaut, to break people of the VMware-only habit. Xen couldn’t really carry that “heterogeneous” hypervisor environment message on its own, but now that Hyper-V is available, the genie’s out of the bottle. Bears watching.

On another note: We were more successful in hanging onto our marbles on day two – people seemed more in tune to the poll and less focused on collecting giveaways than on day one! [Note: no attendees were irrevocably harmed during the execution of the polls. :)] At Interop Vegas, May 17 – 19, 2009, we’ll be about a year out from Microsoft launching Hyper-V and will make sure to ask the same question then to track changes in hypervisor adoption.

1. Tank belonging to warring side A
2. Tank belonging to warring side B
3. Just a tank that was passing by and got hit by mistake :-)
4. Something that looks like a burning tank
5. An archive shot that reporter added for visual impact

Same applies to the "primary weapon" of a modern TV war: "evidence of atrocities of the opposing side."

What's the truth? Who knows... progress brought us "TV wars,"  is this the first "YouTube war"? But if we cannot believe the media coverage, how can we believe a random video online? Well ...  maybe the same way we often believe Wikipedia over Britannica. 

In any case, if there was a better time to turn off the TV (and tune off the web news...), it would be now. Also, time to get the dust off my copy of Toffler?

Rant mode off :-)

ScienceLogic: What’s your real job when you’re not here?

Cummings: I’m a consultant. I have a networking services company through which I offer services all the way from Layer 1 to desktop support.

ScienceLogic: How long have you been involved with Interop?

Cummings: I attended my first show in 1996. I volunteered for my first shown in 1999 and haven’t missed a year since.

ScienceLogic: What makes you want to come back each year for the additional punishment?

Cummings: Working with the team, which are long-term established friendships at this point. That and the excitement of working with the new technologies as they or even before they come out.

ScienceLogic: In Las Vegas you were Team Lead for Help Desk. What are you going be doing in NY?

Cummings: Same thing. That position incorporates some management over the show floor and off-show floor area. That’s kinda where they put me and I’ve been doing it solidly for about 5 years.

ScienceLogic: What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the show over the years, what sticks out?

Cummings: The amount of monitoring that we have and what we do with it has really been changing. We went from more, to almost none and now back to more. We’ve been through numerous vendors and apps over the years and until recently weren’t overly happy.

ScienceLogic: Did the integration between Service Desk and Monitoring that ScienceLogic created help streamline things in a meaningful manner?

Cummings: Absolutely. In the short time that we have to get things setup there’s no way to integrate multiple products in this area. Having things pre-integrated allowed us to quickly link network events and the related tickets together in the management system [EM7].

ScienceLogic: Moving forward on the Service Desk, do you think you can move away from your current paper driven process to a completely paperless process?

Cummings: I could potentially see it changing as we get the process down and fine tune it. We might be able to get an electronic interface for people. It’s tough. There’s always going to be an aspect of the shows we have to hand off on paper and get to legacy people such as electricians and movers.

ScienceLogic: If there was one thing you could improve that you think would make the overall show or help desk operate better, what would it be?

Cummings: We need to keep refining processes down to get information into EM7. Better for using the integration and automation that already exists in EM7.

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What's been clear is that after spending more than $3m, the city couldn't acquire more than a few hundred regular subscribers, about 10 percent of the point they'd need to pay expenses and pay down capital outlay. But it turns out that the backend was as important as their network deployment, IDG News Service reports.

The latest city network administrator brought in Aptilo Networks for backend authentication and session processing, opened the network to 15-minute free trials, and started accepted ad hoc payment. The new network guru also let outsourced contracts expire and brought customer support and other services back in house to reduce expenses and improve the feedback loop. He discovered their existing authentication system was licensed for 500 users, so that might have explained their failure to grow, too.

The city now has 1,000 regular users at all levels, from pay-as-you-go to monthly household subscriptions. They've revised breakeven down to 2,000 subscribers, and say they are breakeven for expenses.

The other problem Lompoc had, by the way, is that the cable and telephone companies didn't sit still. I exaggerate, but when Lomopoc was planning its network, it had very poor coverage for its 42,000 residents for DSL and cable modem service. When the Wi-Fi network was announced, the incumbents started pulling copper, coax, and fiber, and dramatically improved network coverage. The $3m wasn't entirely ill spent so far: it was a kind of reverse incentive to the private companies to get their act together.

As an Enterprise Architect, I understand the importance of the ability for a security professional to articulate risk to IT and business executives, yet I am also equally passionate that security professionals should also have the capability to sit down at a keyboard and actually do something as opposed to just talking about [it].

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, and I believe the project goals are noble. So I went to read the latest OPCP draft proposal to see how they planned to tackle this admittedly difficult problem. What did I find? It’s just another test, with questions in a dozen or so broad categories. Far more specialized that CISSP, with topics that are more relevant to application security, but ultimately, still just a test.

The comment I once made about security educators/trainers is relevant here. Whatever questions end up on the OPCP test, these educators could probably answer most of them correctly without even studying. They lecture day in and day out about these topics. They have heard obscure questions and are prepared to answer them. And yet, many of them do not have any practical field experience.

A client chastised me once for making a statement that penetration testing is a mixture of art and science. He wanted to believe that it was completely scientific and could be distilled down to a checklist type approach. I explained that while much of it can be done methodically, there is a certain amount of skill and intuition that only comes from practical experience. You learn to recognize that “gut feel” when something is amiss. He became rather incensed and, in effect, told me I was full of it. This customer went on to institute a rigid, mechanical internal process for web app pen testing that was highly inefficient and, ultimately, still relied mostly on a couple bright people on the team who were in tune with both the art and the science.

Certifications only test the science.

There is a great article in Business Week this week that talks about a scam that bank and credit card companies are pulling on consumers.  It has resulted in the banks winning arbitration cases against consumers to the tune of a 99.998% clip.  That is right, 99.998%.  It has turned arbitration, where an impartial judge makes determination into the biggest home field advantage this side of the NBA play offs.

It seems many of the credit card agreements that govern your use of credit cards call for arbitration to settle any disputes between you and the credit card company.  Well the credit card company gets to pick the arbitration company. Many pick the National Arbitration Forum, which markets itself to the credit card companies as a form of collection agency.  The whole system is basically stacked against the consumer, which results in the credit card companies getting their way.  Business Week does a great job of digging in here and finding out all of the dirty secrets of this scam.  I highly recommend you read the article for all of the details.

I don't think too many people disagree that over the last years there has been a big swing in the pendulum favoring business's over the consumer. Many of the laws and rules that were put in place to protect consumers over the years have either been thrown out or ignored.  Our bankruptcy laws have been totally rewritten to the disadvantage of the consumer.  Lazes-fare attitudes toward regulating business has seen oil companies raking in billions of dollars a quarter while we pay 4 dollars a gallon.  Health insurance companies raising rates higher than inflation while hospitals have to close for not making enough money.  A mortgage industry that without oversight has written loans that has our finance system to the brink of disaster. A return of inflation and recession at the same time.

Not too advertise my own political views, but do I think it is time for a change?  Your damn right I do!  I hope that the press shining the light on some of these injustices will make it easier for a new era in Washington to make right (no pun intended) some of the wrongs in our system.

There is a great article in Business Week this week that talks about a scam that bank and credit card companies are pulling on consumers.  It has resulted in the banks winning arbitration cases against consumers to the tune of a 99.998% clip.  That is right, 99.998%.  It has turned arbitration, where an impartial judge makes determination into the biggest home field advantage this side of the NBA play offs.

It seems many of the credit card agreements that govern your use of credit cards call for arbitration to settle any disputes between you and the credit card company.  Well the credit card company gets to pick the arbitration company. Many pick the National Arbitration Forum, which markets itself to the credit card companies as a form of collection agency.  The whole system is basically stacked against the consumer, which results in the credit card companies getting their way.  Business Week does a great job of digging in here and finding out all of the dirty secrets of this scam.  I highly recommend you read the article for all of the details.

I don't think too many people disagree that over the last years there has been a big swing in the pendulum favoring business's over the consumer. Many of the laws and rules that were put in place to protect consumers over the years have either been thrown out or ignored.  Our bankruptcy laws have been totally rewritten to the disadvantage of the consumer.  Lazes-fare attitudes toward regulating business has seen oil companies raking in billions of dollars a quarter while we pay 4 dollars a gallon.  Health insurance companies raising rates higher than inflation while hospitals have to close for not making enough money.  A mortgage industry that without oversight has written loans that has our finance system to the brink of disaster. A return of inflation and recession at the same time.

Not too advertise my own political views, but do I think it is time for a change?  Your damn right I do!  I hope that the press shining the light on some of these injustices will make it easier for a new era in Washington to make right (no pun intended) some of the wrongs in our system.