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Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

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Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#51

Post by tracker1 »

wahsd wrote: post #33
stephengillie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few workplaces are fond of remote workers. The major reason a lot of people remain employed is so they have a purpose to wake up, leave their houses, and spend the day occupied by the relative comfort of an office building, surrounded by reasonably-intelligent coworkers, as a faux-family. And it's a slap in their face that you don't want to spend your time basking in their physical proximity.

Interesting way of putting that perspective. I have been trying to put my finger on the whole remote working issue for a while. What you expressed is one aspect to the issue, but I also think that it is probably just an intermediary symptom, a phantom / false cause if you will. Personally I think we would see a lot more remote working and even a social revolution if at very least the incentives for physical office sp…

For me, it's a combination of things... I'm far more distracted at home, and it's much easier to communicate face-to-face when you can have, for example a white board to draw out discussions on.

Aside from that, hangouts, lync and the like do make communicating remotely very nice. I've wanted for years the ability to actually share a project session with someone via Visual Studio (or something similar)... so that you can work in the same visual space... if you're on the same file, you can see eachother's edits/changes real time... if you're in other files, you can just flow...

I don't think it all requires that people be in physical proximity, but there are advantages to being a closer team. I often find that 3-4 developers in the same room can dramatically outperform teams that are disconnected from each other. But then again, I think that if your project can't be distilled into units of work/services worked on by 3-4 developers you're doing something wrong.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#52

Post by higherpurpose »

omnibrain wrote: post #24
mikecb wrote: post #7

Finally, the zero trust network has its day. I've been following this for quite a while, especially since this kind of architecture makes even more sense for smaller businesses than large ones that can pay for sophisticated network-edge protection. Edit: Great talk at lisa in 2013: https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/enterprise-architec...

Yes, I submitted this yesterday (instead of the article submitted here, because I found it to be deeper and did not want to submit 2 links at the same time), but sadly it failed to gain traction.

Videos don't usually gain traction on HN.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#53

Post by bduerst »

stephengillie wrote: post #23
passive wrote: post #20

As a remote worker, it's delightful to see things move in this direction, as VPNs are a regular thorn in my side. Of course, there's a certain irony that Google isn't fond of remote workers. :)

Few workplaces are fond of remote workers. The major reason a lot of people remain employed is so they have a purpose to wake up, leave their houses, and spend the day occupied by the relative comfort of an office building, surrounded by reasonably-intelligent coworkers, as a faux-family. And it's a slap in their face that you don't want to spend your time basking in their physical proximity.

>it's a slap in their face that you don't want to spend your time basking in their physical proximity

That's slightly self-centered. Nobody cares about you or their co-workers so much that they are offended if you don't want to work (or bask) in the team's presence.

People are tribal by nature, and one of the ways humans feel a sense of belonging is through overcoming common conflict (i.e. Tuckman's stages). While not impossible, it's much harder to have common conflicts if you're just not there.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#54

Post by mynameisvlad »

NovaS1X wrote: post #44

"The Cloud" that they're talking about is their own datacenters (they're certianly not using EC2) and they're hosting their web-apps over a WAN without VPNs or other traditional forms of closing off access. However, this doesn't say much about their datacenters which will still be heavily firewalled. IPMI, SSH, and other access wouldn't be shared over a wide open WAN. The "Cloud" (see: datacenter) LAN will still be p…

I mean, of course it's their own datacenters. They're not going to be putting their corporate data in a competitor's data center. That said, they could be leveraging new things in their Google App Engine cloud, which would actually make it "the cloud" as people refer to it.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#55

Post by lukeschlather »

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #29
giovannibajo1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are "authenticated devices"? The closest I can think of are client certificates being installed on the devices and used as a first-level of authentication. It could be anything from TLS client certificates to VPN certificates.

Yep, client certs installed on a device with verified boot and an account authenticated via 2FA would be a good start.

If you do it right (store the cert in a TPM) the device itself actually is a second factor so you don't need anything other than the device.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#56

Post by ceejayoz »

istvan__ wrote: post #32
furyg3 wrote: post #13

We tried this where I worked (with the exception of the evil desktop app financial program)... and had to retract after a zero day defacement in one of our web apps. In the meantime we also learned that keeping all of your web apps 100% up to date at all times is really freaking difficult. The good news is that the (failed) attempt got us off of a few client side applications and made us much more platform agnostic t…

The only way to succeed with this is with heavy firewalling or VPNs. There are several unknown zero days in any application so just by opening up your application to 0.0.0.0/0 makes it possible for blackhats to get in. The only question is how much your information is worth for somebody. If you it is less than price of a brand new zero day you might be ok, but there are still the script kiddies and political blackhat…

> There are several unknown zero days in any application

Does this include the firewall and VPN?

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#57

Post by NovaS1X »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #54
NovaS1X wrote: post #44

"The Cloud" that they're talking about is their own datacenters (they're certianly not using EC2) and they're hosting their web-apps over a WAN without VPNs or other traditional forms of closing off access. However, this doesn't say much about their datacenters which will still be heavily firewalled. IPMI, SSH, and other access wouldn't be shared over a wide open WAN. The "Cloud" (see: datacenter) LAN will still be p…

I mean, of course it's their own datacenters. They're not going to be putting their corporate data in a competitor's data center. That said, they could be leveraging new things in their Google App Engine cloud, which would actually make it "the cloud" as people refer to it.

I'm glad you mentioned that. A full scale switch like this, if successful, would be great marketing ammunition and would simplify the administration of their datacenters.

No separation of their cloud hosting and internal services would greatly simplify administration at the cost of having to beef up security mentioned in the article.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#58

Post by stephengillie »

jklein11 wrote: post #45
wahsd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting way of putting that perspective. I have been trying to put my finger on the whole remote working issue for a while. What you expressed is one aspect to the issue, but I also think that it is probably just an intermediary symptom, a phantom / false cause if you will. Personally I think we would see a lot more remote working and even a social revolution if at very least the incentives for physical office sp…

Could you explain what you mean about the incentives from tax and accounting policy? Are you saying that tax benefits for having office space are richer than the actual expense of renting that office space?

In the USA, you can deduct your business expenses (including building rental) from your profits for tax purposes. This creates a huge incentive to rent, as it's basically free - the company is basically paying part of their tax payment to their landlord.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#59

Post by wahsd »

jklein11 wrote: post #45
wahsd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting way of putting that perspective. I have been trying to put my finger on the whole remote working issue for a while. What you expressed is one aspect to the issue, but I also think that it is probably just an intermediary symptom, a phantom / false cause if you will. Personally I think we would see a lot more remote working and even a social revolution if at very least the incentives for physical office sp…

Could you explain what you mean about the incentives from tax and accounting policy? Are you saying that tax benefits for having office space are richer than the actual expense of renting that office space?

Essentially, there seem to be significant tax, accounting, and general financial incentives associated with office space and expenditures that come with it. Take, for example, during the recession, special corporate tax rules were set in place that rewarded and essentially subsidized capital expenditures and allowed for accelerated write-downs.

Those are not necessarily solely financial incentives, but they function to compound and combine with already established systems of corporate organization, personnel structures, and general status quo operations and processes. In that scenario, the co-located work paradigm was not only supported and strengthened where remote working was not, but it also set an expectation that thar be government breast milk in tumultuous times.

I am no corporate tax, accounting, or financial expert; but what I can say is that it seems to be the forest that can't be seen for all the trees.

Re: Google Moves Its Corporate Applications to the Internet

#60

Post by stephengillie »

taylorwc wrote: post #26
jingo wrote: post #16

I wonder which "cloud hosting provider" they will choose. Microsoft? Amazon? Does it make a difference? If my company starts selling cloud hosting and then I announce my company will be hosting its internal applications in "the cloud" (i.e., in my own data centers), what are the security implications for my company? Are they the same if some other company asks me to host their applications in my data centers? Is this…

> I wonder which "cloud hosting provider" they will choose. Meant to be sarcastic? Google is in this market. Doesn't strike me that there is any chance they'd use MSFT or Amazon for infrastructure.

In a way, it seems similar to what Amazon did when they launched AWS.
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