Sony Attack maybe Corporate Warfare in the guise of a Cyber Attack

Sony has been in the news this quarter for compromise in its online security and customer data.
Is Sony a Japanese company and a true Samurai Warrior under attack and is cybersecurity its Achilles Heel.
Sony has build such a formidable brand globally that it is associated with the best experience in multimedia.
Yes Apple is the leader today, but Sony has a large global presence . Of course Samsung is another strong contender.
This is the season to plan the product launches for the thanksgiving weekend in the North American Market which is followed by Christmas shopping.
Sony seems to be focusing more time on damage control then its new game launches for the 2011 last quarter which is its biggest revenue spinner.

Sony Attack maybe  Corporate warfare by its global business rivals, Japan as a country is weakened after the devastating earthquake and nuclear disaster and also a weak Government. Japanese business has always worked with the benign guidance of the government. The current situation for Japanese business is gloomy based on all its economic indicators and it is an opportune time to take down one of its largest corporates Sony.
Will Sony recover like a Samurai Warrior to fight the battle and regain its supremacy or will it be brought down to its knees with the new and disruptive changes in technology delivery using the cloud.
Its biggest competitor Apple launched the icloud this week, which changes the very way we get entertained digitally. Sony is a signatory with Apple for media content but it could also become a take over target if it does not recover in the ensuing quarters.

This are the first rumbling of corporate warfare in the cyber world and we will see more of them in the ensuing years. It is time for the Boards to critically view their cyber readiness lest their business is crippled and brought down by cyber warlords rather then by market warfare.

Denial of Cloud Computing for Many Countries

As many  countries grapple with cybersecurity laws they are making stringent laws which will prove to be a barrier to cloud computing.
Also the largest provider of cloud services is the USA which plans to make foreign Internet access into that country more stringent given the number of recent cyber attacks. The US government may classify Major cyber attacks as war .see the link below
http://governancenow.com/gov-next/egov/us-may-classify-major-cyber-attacks-acts-war.
These developments do not harbor well for many countries who would benefit from cloud computing.
The cost of monitoring and regulating traffic on the Internet highways will be a challenge in the future given the exponential growth of devices powered by wireless services.
Add to this stringent laws that may be passed by countries which  prevent use of social networking sites like facebook and twitter or for that matter google.

Well there will be country specific and regional clouds which will still be launched, but these will be islands in a setting sun and do not augur well for a global cloud computing framework.

USA will leverage on the cloud, so would Europe which is building its own European Cloud,  Australia and New Zealand and also Japan will be forced to build their clouds or share the cloud infrastructure with USA or Europe. We could even have continent specific clouds based on political alignments like the North American Cloud shared by USA and Canada. The European Cloud is already a reality.
The  developing  countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China may also build their own clouds given their potential for computing driven  economics.
This means the many countries in the Rest of the World who can benefit the most from the cloud computing paradigm  may not be able to derive the benefits of the Cloud for social and economic development.
How this will pan out in the future is difficult to pen now, but one outcome is clear there will be a denial of Cloud Computing for Many Countries" especially those who do not have the skills or money to invest in the required technology for cloud computing.
Stringent patrolling of the Internet may not be the answer, so it is time for us to deliberate how the networks of the world will be shared towards the end of the decade.
Remember the countries which had the best ships still had to control the sea routes for economic dominance less then an 100 years ago. Unfortunately the same may not hold true for the Internet  and cloud computing.