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Andrew Cunningham over at Ars Technica took a deep dive into cloud office alternatives and came up with the goods in the real world.

As cloud computing gains steam in the enterprise, many IT shops are looking for ways to move stuff out of their own server rooms and into someone elses. This has given rise to services like Google Apps and Office 365, which offer e-mail, calendaring, and other Web-based services that completely replace not just software running on your companys servers, but also software running on your companys desktops.

One of those software products is the venerable Microsoft Office, which is ubiquitous in most offices. In this, the first in a series of articles comparing different cloud office solutions, well be looking at productivity apps from Google, Microsoft, Zoho, and ThinkFree to compare not just their features and interfaces, but also their ability to integrate with existing systems and work with Microsoft Office documents.

Productivity software has some important considerations not necessarily found with other applications. Switching to a new cloud-based e-mail or CRM system, for example, may cause some short-term complications, but these systems are essentially isolated (or at least, they communicate with the outside world using relatively simple, well-known protocols).

Productivity software is different, thanks to Microsoft Office. Most businesses will have to be able to read Office documents, and likely produce them too. Without these interoperability constraints, most of the products here could stand on their own as productivity apps. But Office compatibility is too important to ignore.

To that end, I spent some time testing out each products Microsoft Office document converters. Its not going to be possible to track down every oddity or inaccuracy, but I wanted to get a feel for the kinds of things that each product would catch, miss, or mangle. I created and uploaded a mix of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, some that I put together myself and some that were created using templates included with Office.

Have a look at who comes out on top. And weigh in: Whats the best solution full cloud or hybrid when it comes to office suites?

Original post:
Great Office Shootout: Cloud vs. Hybrid -- Fight!

SUPERIOR, CO--(Marketwire -05/02/12)- StillSecure, a managed network security solutions and certified compliance company, today announced that its suite of comprehensive managed security services can now be embedded within a public cloud infrastructure. StillSecure's network security appliance, Cloud Network Security Appliance (NSA), can protect customer cloud servers at most public cloud providers.

Until now, organizations leveraging the public cloud were forced to either build their own security infrastructure, use "outboard" security appliances, or had no security at all. Unfortunately, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) users were not able to easily outsource security for their applications and data hosted in the cloud. These cloud applications were either left unchecked or required significant resources to secure.

Now, with StillSecure Cloud NSA, organizations can quickly and easily spin up a managed security cloud server within their public cloud infrastructure. Built on top of CentOS, a free operating system distribution based upon the Linux kernel, Cloud NSA can serve as the security gateway device providing inline services such as managed firewall, IDPS, or WAF. Additionally, Cloud NSA can also provide out-of-band services such as IDS, log management, file integrity monitoring, or vulnerability scanning. Cloud NSA can also deliver StillSecure's comprehensive PCI compliance service, PCI Complete.

"Security in a cloud environment can be both a black box and a minefield of risk at the same time. Most people aren't prepared to cope with the kind of exposure and weaknesses that used to be hidden behind a firewall. Fear of the unknown and having to rely on the 'just trust us' model are a bad combination. That's why security remains one of the key factors preventing cloud adoption," said Carl Brooks, an infrastructure and cloud computing analyst at The 451 Group. "Providing a managed services approach so that users feel more in control when operating in a cloud environment is a viable way to improve security. It does not require a deep understanding of the security space, but it does let end users leverage additional services and expertise to achieve practical security results. StillSecure's introduction of Cloud NSA does just that -- it gives providers an important new managed service without forcing them to understand the security space like an expert, and yet still gives organizations a chance to leverage an outsourced service to handle security and compliance."

"Establishing a tight security perimeter around your cloud instances is critical to reducing your attack surface and making security manageable," said James Brown, CTO of StillSecure. "With the introduction of Cloud NSA, StillSecure is leading the effort to embed comprehensive managed security services into public cloud environments."

About StillSecureFor IT executives facing escalating security threats and evolving compliance requirements, and data centers looking to cement long-term customer relationships, StillSecure designs and delivers managed network security and certified compliance solutions so you can focus on growing your core business.

StillSecure's full suite of managed security services provides military-grade network security in dedicated, cloud and hybrid environments. Its flagship product, Safe Access, is a secure network access control (NAC) solution that ensures a company's protection against compromised and dangerous endpoints.

As opposed to vendors with uncertified partial fixes, or worse, self-audited solutions, StillSecure unites its security experts with certified processes and innovative technologies to provide a holistic approach and solutions to eliminate the need for dedicated resources, as well as juggling multiple vendors, products and requirements.

For more information please call (303) 381-3830, visit http://www.stillsecure.com, or check out more on the StillSecure blog at http://www.thesecuritysamurai.com. Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/securitysamurai and http://twitter.com/stillsecure.

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StillSecure Introduces First Comprehensive Managed Security Services Suite Within Cloud Infrastructure