EMC is developing technology to track and verify the location of virtual machines in cloud networks, potentially solving one of the key sticking points preventing customers from using the cloud.
Because of FISMA, the Federal Information Security Management Act, customers who put sensitive data in cloud services need guarantees that VMs stay within the country, says Chad Sakac, vice president of the VMware technology alliance at EMC. This is a problem for a cloud provider like Terremark, an EMC partner, which operates data centers in multiple continents and uses live migration technology to move virtual machines, potentially from one country to another, he says.
