Cloud Computing and Net Centric Operations

I’ve just posted a draft paper on my site on the topic of Cloud Computing and DoD’s Net Centric Operations.   My intent with this paper is to keep beating it up till it is in condition to publish, and I would value your comments on the paper.  Please check it out at:

13Jan2009_Computing_and_Net_Centric_Operations.pdf

One of the things I learned while pulling together this info is that honest people disagree, sometimes vehemently, on exactly what the term Cloud Computing means.  For that reason I recommend anyone writing or briefing the topic start with a definition right up front.  For the purposes of the paper I’m working on for DoD I mention two ways to look at the term.  For most users, they view anything done elsewhere as “cloud” computing.  For most technologists and architects they view “cloud computing” as a much more elegant term which implies new ways of providing capability on demand by use of virtualized resources, pools of storage and other scalable computational resources. 

Note, I’m very thankful to the dozens of friends and associates who have already commented on this paper.   Most initial dialog I had on the paper was via Twitter, which once again proved to me the value of that cloud based capability. 

Bob
 

Tips for the new CTO: How to engineer a miracle

I ran into so many friends at the AFCEA solutions conference this week.  One guy I have not seen in person for years is  Mike “Ziggy” Steinmetz.  Ziggy is a great leader and thinker at Northrop Grumman.  He is also a tremendous collector of wisdom and a teacher who helped prepare me for my position as CTO of DIA.  Seeing him made me think I should share some of these lessons with you.

The lessons come from the true story of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team. The guys that did the impossible by defeating the Soviets.  We all know the story.  And there is a GREAT movie titled “Miracle” that captures it very very well.  From the Amazon description of the movie: "Kurt Russell gives a brilliant performance as the dynamic and
determined coach Herb Brooks, who had an impossible dream — beat the
seemingly unbeatable Soviets at their own game. Starting with a
handpicked group of 26 undisciplined kids, Brooks coached them to play
like they never played before, and turned 20 of them into a team that
believed they could achieve the unachievable — and in the process,
united a nation with a new feeling of hope."

Think of the coach of that team, Herb Brooks, and his strategy for winning.  He took players who once played for competing teams with long standing rivalries and forged a new team unlike any team that had ever played before.  The way he did it has direct lessons for many areas of leadership, especially technology leadership. 

Watch the movie and look for these lessons/thoughts:

• Coach Herb Brooks convinced everyone that something different had to occur than had been occurring in the past.   ”Only way to succeed is to change the way we play the game. “  Then he engineered a strategy.
• Herb picked his team, not based on who the best technicians were, but who the best team players were:  "Not looking for the best players I am looking for the right players."   How does this translate to technologists?  CTOs want skilled technical experts, but just as important is getting skilled technical experts who can work as part of a team.
• Cheap shots however self justified, hurt the team "This is not about old rivalries."   As enterprises transition from the old way of doing things to the new way of doing things they must forget about our own old rivalries.
• Orientation early is by region:  "I'm Ralph Cox and I'm from where ever won't get me hit.”   Herb worked them till they realized—they are on a new team now.   Frequently technologists must have the same light bulb go off.   Enterprise technologists sometimes need to be reminded they play for a bigger team than they used to.  
• This is the same point Herb drives home when he says “ The name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back”
• The team’s identity crisis had to be fixed as it was the source of a lot of the early problems. "Think you can win on talent alone…you don't have enough talent to win on talent alone!"  "Name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back”  “Win loose tie…you are going to play like champions" "If you want to make this team you had better start playing at a level that forces me to keep you here".   Herb understood the consequences of the identity crisis the team faced he also understood he could not tell the team what their identity was; they had to figure that out for themselves.
• Herb's unexpected personal comments of concern towards Jimmy Craig…"I've got to know why you are here and where you are coming from"  "I'm here aren't I?"  "Don't forget to bring your game".
• NHL all stars lost because they played as individual all stars and not as a team.
• "All Stars won't change their game” No one has ever worked hard enough to skate with the Soviets for an entire game…. we will!
• Dedication to improvement and personal improvement were key.
• The Carter "Crisis in Confidence speech" is a metaphor for many old, legacy enterprise technology environments.  "More believe they will be less better off in the next 5 years".  “Stop crying start sweating, stop talking start walking".
• 1st face-off in Madison Sq garden.  Mark Johnson looks at the Soviet Captain and it is still evident he is thinking in terms of individual vs. team effort.  "Jimmy Craig's comment "you gotta listen to me" is a metaphor for the communications breakdown that led to the performance on the ice"
• O'Callaghan injury and the decision to keep him.  Herb knew that once the team was set it was less disruptive to go down a man than to introduce a new member of a successful team.
• "Pulling the goalie"  "Jimmy I Know there is more"  "Coach It's my net.” “Jimmy, They just scored 10 goals…right now its anybodies net"
• ”Lets not turn this game into something it is not.”  “I’m not sure we have any control over that”.
• ”You earn opportunity” Through hard work you make it “your time”.
• Face-off to the 3rd period.  Compare Mark Johnson’s face to that 1st face-off in Madison Sq garden.  Finally they meet as mental and physical equals.  The difference…attitude and a string of “small successes.”   I have seen technology teams like this.  I've seen engineering teams who have decided to be world class best and so they are.  I've seen technologists set goals for themselves that have them walking among the giants of computer science and enterprise operations. 

A CTO needs to do more than watch a movie to be a great CTO.  But this movie sure gives you things to think about.  So, a big thumbs up from the CTOvision movie review team.

CTOs, Global Cyberwar and Our Collective Future

If you are a technologist, please take a moment to download the PDF of the report by the U.S. Commission on Cybersecurity.  This report, titled Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency, is the best proclamation of the challenges of cyber I have read.  It is also a roadmap that will help any trying to navigate these very tough issues.

I've been involved in things cyber for a long time.  My deepest
involvement began in December 1998, almost 10 years ago to the day.  
In all that time I've seen lots of studies and lots of papers and many
treatments of the issues.  But I've never seen one that captures the
complexities and the need for specific actions as well as this one. 

I'd really recommend you read every word, if you want to be considered literate in this field.   But if it will be a little while till you get to it, here are some key points:

The three major findings are:  1) Cybersecurity is now a major national security problem for the U.S., 2) Decisions and actins must respect privacy and civil liberties, and 3) only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international  aspects of cybersecurity will make us more secure.

The report makes a few points about the Bush Administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI).  In general the give credit to that initiative, and call it good.  I agree, it is a great activity I've previously written about that is led by one of the most effective people in government today and has done great work.  But as the comission points out, the work of the CNCI is good but not sufficient. 

The biggest shock for me in this study:  The amount of funding on R&D for cyber security.  I have been looking into the many activities underway, and maybe that look made me deceive myself into thinking it was a well funded effort.  According to the comission, however, they estimate that the total R&D funding in the federal government for cybersecurity is about $300million.  Less than two-tenths of one percent of the total federal R&D.

The report has a great section on identity manangement. 

I am convinced the organizational approaches outlined in the study are the right ones as well.  There is only one place in our government where we can lead solutions to this challenge.  Where is that?  Hey read the report!

What else do I recommend CTOs do besides read the report?  I think one way we can all help the cybersecurity effort is to think through which standards bodies are the most important to engage with regarding security.   A few are here:
http://www.ctovision.com/2008/05/standards-organizations-ctos-should-track.html

Three Events of Federal CTO Interest: Will You Be At These?

FYI, in case your schedule will allow us to connect in person I wanted
to update you on a few events I plan on being at over the next few
weeks.

The Advanced Technical Intelligence Association TECHINT conference will
be held 9-11 Dec 2008.  This conference focuses on the technical
dimensions of intelligence, and has a theme of "integrated
performance."  The theme refers to the need to integrate capabilities
from all the agencies engaged in national security to better perform in
meeting our national security challenges.   On 9 Dec I'll be speaking
at a panel on the real and growing threat in cyber space.  There will
be no blogging or tweeting from the conference.  But if you are going
to be there please drop me a note and lets connect in person there.  
For info see http://masint.org 

The AFCEA Solutions conference on Cyberspace will be held 10-11 Dec
2008 at the Ronald Reagan Center in DC.  This conference will be
focusing on the challenges and solutions of cyberspace related to
national security.  Speakers include Secretary of Homeland Security the
Honorable Michael Chertoff, The Deputy Secretary of Defense the
Honorable Gordon England, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks
and Information Integration the Honorable John Grimes, Ms. Melissa
Hathaway, senior adviser and cyber coordination executive for the
Director of National Intelligence, LTG Keith Alexander, Director of the
National Security Agency, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Information and Identity Assurance Mr. Bob Lentz and Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Information Management Mr. David Wennergren. 
I'll be speaking on a panel on Wednesday at 1530 on formulating a
common response.  

• This unclas conference follows a model that AFCEA has been using for
  several similar events.  They are actively seeking ways to enhance the
  value of these conferences by leveraging more Web2.0 capabilities
  before, during and after the formal presentations.  Blogging and
  tweeting from the conference is encouraged. You can visit the site at: www.afceasolutions.org/group 
  For the event schedule and program details can be found online here: www.afceasolutions.org

The US Army Intelligence Warfighting Summit will be held 15-17 Dec
2008.  This one will also be a conference where blogging and use of
twitter is not appropriate due to the sensitivity of info discussed. 
However, I would appreciate knowing if you will be going so we can
connect there in person.  Speakers will include the most senior Army
intelligence leadership, plus Vice Admiral Bob Murrett from NGA, LTG
Alexander from NSA, and Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems.  For more
on the event see: http://www.ncsi.com/iws08/index.shtml 

So, if you are going to any of these please let me know.  

And please follow me on Twitter so I can send you a few bursts from the AFCEA conference.  I'm at http://www.twitter.com/bobgourley 

Cheers.

The Technology Implications of the Obama Win

There are several megatrends sweeping the technology industry today.  Some of them are about to be accelerated.  

I like to use five key topic areas to track megatrends in IT: 

- Convergence and trend towards unified communications and user empowerment
- Globalization and increasing internationalization of IT and demographic shifts
- Increasing open development of software and hardware
- Power, Cooling and Space (PCS) impacting data centers and every place computing is done
- Increasing pace of technology development and probability of disruption

Over the past two months two major events have occurred which are impacting these trends.  

The
first was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the resulting cascading
effects on the financial industry.  The impact on IT spending and the
movement of more enterprises to grid/cloud computing because of that
are still being assessed, but for some thoughts see: Wall Street Crisis

The second was the Presidential election of Barack Obama.   

The Future of Cyberspace Security: The Law of The Rodeo

This is an update of my now annual assessment of the future of technology associated with good and evil in cyberspace which was first posted here.

Predictions
of the future of technology are increasingly starting to sound like
science fiction, with powerful computing grids giving incredible computational power to users and with autonomous robots becoming closer and closer to being in our daily lives vice just in computer science departments. Infotech, nanotech and biotech are fueling each other and each of those three dominate fields are generating more and more benefits that impact the other, propelling us even faster into a new world.   Depending on your point of view the increasing pace of science and technology can be good or
bad.  As for me, I'm an optimist, and I know we humans will find a way
to ensure technology serves our best interests.   

Melissa Hathaway Op-Ed on Cyber Security

Below I'm going to post, in its entirety, the text of an e-mail I received from the ODNI notification service.   The subject is an op-ed written by Melissa Hathaway, a senior leader who has been spearheading significant coordination action in the federal government (opinion: Melissa is perhaps the most effective SES-level leader in the US government today, IMHO).

I wanted to post this in totality for a couple reasons.  One is it is something all of us should read.  Although I believe most readers of this blog will find no surprises in this op-ed, Melissa has a real talent for capturing information in easy to understand ways and I think we can all borrow lessons from the way she explains things. 

Social Media and Web2.0 for National Security Planners

Over the last couple weeks I sent several friends and associates a draft article I was working up on Web2.0 for National Security Planners.  I enjoyed pulling that together, since it helped me convince myself that the right thing to do is to get more senior US strategists engaged in Social Media.  There are some real security concerns there and we dont' want all our national security efforts exposed to all our adversaries on the Internet.  But use can be made of these tools and the risks there can be mitigated so the overall benefit to the country will far outweigh the risks. 

One of the folks I sent it to was Dion Hinchcliffe, President and CTO of HInchcliffe & Company (see http://hinchcliffeandco.com ).   Dion has long been a very collegial person with an open/collaborative work style.  I met him several years ago when he was giving a presentation to my old community on the then new concept of Web2.0 and have been very glad to be connected with him since.   Dion read the article and published it in his Social Computing Magazine (see http://socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=578 ), and I am very appreciative of him getting the word out on that.

Another online associate is Helen Thompson of AFCEA.  Helen is herself a great contributor to the dialog on national defense.  She just published an article titled "Reconciling Collaboration and Security in the Social Media Space (see http://www.afcea.org/signal/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=1680&print=yes ).   In it she references my article and underscores the point I make about social media tools being a good way to accelerate good idea.

The current draft of the article is at:  http://www.ctovision.com/social-media-national-security.html

Please check it out and let me know your thoughts/input/suggestions.

Adm. Stavridis: Think, Read, Write and Publish, and Blog Too

In a previous post I mentioned the AFCEA/JFCOM Joint Warfighting Conference.  I’ve e-mailed friends and associates more detailed thoughts on the significance of the conference.  If you would like my views drop me a note and I’d be glad to share.  

During the conference there were several very important messages for CTOs, including a few controversial points I’m still trying to think about how to diplomatically blog a
bout.  One topic I’d like to discuss now is encouragement from Admiral Stavridis, the four star USN commander of U.S. Southern Command.  He strongly supports and encourages leaders to publish, and I think that is a message all CTOs should listen to.  

A good summation of his call to publish is on the Signal Scape blog at:

Adm. Stavridis: Think, Read, Write and Publish

Here is a quote from that entry:

Adm. James G. Stavridis, USN, commander, U.S. Southern Command,
stepped away from

AFCEA, JFCOM, Blogs and Twitter

AFCEA just pulled together another great conference (Joint Warfighting 2008).  They have been
real pioneers when it comes to using new Web2.0 technologies during
these events, and that really came out during this conference.  For example, some of
Signal Magazine's greatest writers, including Maryann Lawlor, were at
the conference blogging the highlights of the key events as they were
occurring (they also encouraged other bloggers to post, including the
military PAOs).  For a look at what they did: The AFCEA blog for the Joint Warfighting 2008 conference starts here.  The JFCOM blog for the conference starts here. 

Both AFCEA and JFCOM also used Twitter to give a running feed of what is happening where.   To see what the AFCEA Twitter Feed looked like click here.  To see what the JFCOM feed looked like click here. 

I've been using twitter a bit as well, and I encourage all CTOs to
check it out.  If you use it wisely and configure it to automatically
update your Plaxo feed and Facebook it can be an easy way to keep comrades up to speed on items of interest.  I've also posted a feed on my blog here as a bit of an experiment (I might decide to move that to my personal page instead).

Why do folks like me see a potential benefit from Twitter?  One
example is in the post I did before going to the conference last
week.  After some friends saw that we were able to pre-arrange some
meetings that we would not have done without Twitter.  And, by
following Signal and AFCEA's twitter feed, I was able to maximize my time at
the conference.   

You can check out my feed at: http://twitter.com/bobgourley