Novell Releases Cloud Security Service

Novell on Wednesday announced the availability of a service for coordinating security between enterprise systems and in-the-cloud application, platform, and infrastructure services.

Novell Cloud Security Service aims to address the leading business and government concern about using the cloud -- namely, security.

To ease those concerns, what's needed are "interoperable security solutions for -- and between -- an enterprise's internal infrastructure and the cloud provider's platform," said Antonio Piraino, VP of research for Tier 1 Research, a division of the 451 Group.

The Novell service itself is hosted in the cloud, either by a Novell partner or by a vendor of a cloud-based application, infrastructure, or platform, as an add-on to its service. Novell's application connectors then enforce access control and relay activity monitoring and compliance reporting back to an organization's identity management or reporting systems.

For Novell's service to gain traction, however, it will need to be as "plug and play" as possible and to be offered by as many vendors as possible, since few cloud services stand alone. Rather, successful vendors typically foster a partner ecosystem to facilitate compatibility and integration with as many other services as possible.

Several early adopters have been testing Novell's cloud security service. But Novell will now begin targeting 1,500 cloud application, infrastructure, and platform vendors, hoping to get them to add Novell's connectors to their services.

If Novell is successful, then its customers would be able to provision, authenticate, and authorize users, whether they're accessing systems located on the premises or hosted by a vendor in the cloud. That security capability would go a long way toward enabling organizations to adopt more cloud-based services, which often cost less and are much easier to procure and manage than their on-the-premises counterparts.