The fact that Google was hacked by cybercriminals is hardly surprising. The fact that these criminals would go after email in the cloud is not surprising, either. After all, e-mail is the most visible, most popular and to many people, most important application running in the cloud today. The fact that Google would consider pulling its entire business out of China because of these hackers just emphasizes the importance of security in the cloud, while raising some old questions about the security of Gmail – issues we have discussed in the past.

However, today's news also carries a broader message for all IT vendors. As we increasingly move applications to the cloud, we have to focus on security. Until we can guarantee security of all applications in the cloud, adoption of cloud computing will continue to lag. Security is already the leading concern among IT executives considering cloud as part of their IT infrastructure, and the news from Google will only accentuate this concern. Identity and security management needs to be intrinsic to all applications deployed into the cloud. This is the premise behind Novell's approach to the emerging intelligent workload management market.

Novell's collaboration strategy is to ensure that our solutions are secure, regardless of whether they are running in the cloud or on-premise. Used by organizations in more than 120 countries around the globe, Novell GroupWise has built its reputation on delivering secure access to the information that people need to be productive. And with the recent announcement of Novell Pulse, Novell is bringing secure email and real-time collaboration to the cloud.