CTO Principles
Vivek Kundra: Still the Alpha CTO and now the First Fed CIO
Today’s news on Vivek Kundra’s role in the federal space made me think of another CTO, Yuvi Kochar. Yuvi, the CTO of the Washington Post, is a great connector of CTOs who leads the informal collective of the Washington Area CTO Roundtable. Although I had heard Vivek speak a time or two, the first really deep interactions I had with
Vivek were through Yuvi’s work in service to the tech community and I much appreciate that.
For a quick update on Vivek from a CTO perspective see: Read the rest of this entry »
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:
– 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.
Compliance enhances IT support to the mission
I’ve previously blogged about Triumfant, a company that has mastered
the automated detection and resolution of IT problems. I also think
of them as the world’s greatest compliance monitoring capability. What
do I mean by compliance? I mean compliance in the context of the many
rules, regulations and configurations that external organizations and
the government require, and also compliance with your own policies and guidance.
For those who are not familiar with the full scope of compliance
issues, a great source is the site of the IT Compliance Institute.
Their goal is to be a global authority on the role of technology in
business governance and regulatory compliance. That means they are
driven to seek out regulations, understand the requirements for
compliance, and then help determine the best way to automate that
compliance.
The site holds several white papers and
checklists on topics like IT Audit, Risk Management, keeping up SOX
compliance, Change Management, Logging, Reporting, and Security.
These papers seem to be good primers for any CTO or other enterprise
technologist who needs to understand this domain.
Here are some other thoughts on compliance:
– During my time as a CTO of a DoD Agency, I noticed a shift in how
federal organizations perceived compliance. Federal organizations are
all about compliance, and have long followed mandates like the
Clinger-Cohen Act, FISMA, the many Enterprise Architecture requirements
(like DoDAF or FEA), and a wide variety of other requirements. But
most federal organizations did not treat compliance as a way to
optimize delivery of IT capabilities to users. And most federal
organizations did not have to comply with many of the regulations being
levied on industry (like SOX, for example). That is all changing.
– More recently IT professionals began to see compliance and the need
for automated control of systems as a way of not just complying with
regulation and reporting requirements, but a way of ensuring uptime,
helping speed delivery of new software deployments, helping reduce IT
admin costs, and helping with overall abiity to support the mission.
Add to this new awareness of the importance of compliance the recent
shifting of federal policy towards having agencies produce financial
audits and IT auditing requirements to the same standards as the
commerical sector.
There are more shifts in compliance underway in the federal space,
including a new Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC). I see all
this compliance as a good thing that should be executed in a way that
enhances uptime, enhances security, and enhances the delivery of
capability to end users.
For more on compliance see my previous post http://www.ctovision.com/2008/07/automated-resolution-of-it-problems.html
For more on triumfant see: http://triumfant.com
Enter my office: using Adobe Acrobat Connect
I have picked a primary online meeting tool for my consultancy (Crucial Point LLC). Although I will use any tool a client or associate needs me to use, the tool I prefer is Adobe Acrobat Connect.
Why did I select Adobe Acrobat Connect? A key reason is that no downloads are required for this to work (assuming, of course, that you have flash player installed on your system, which 98% of the computers on earth already do).
Cyber Initiative and Deterrence
The Cyber Conflict Studies Association (CCSA) is a
non-profit group organized to promote and lead a diversified research and
intellectual development agenda to advance knowledge in the cyber conflict
field. The CCSA is committed to
developing academic programs and communities that can help the nation in this
emerging area of thought. The CCSA is providing enhanced discourse on the
strategic implications of cyber conflict and provides a venue for academic
dialog on the study of economic, policy and other strategic issues and provides key intellectual capital the nation
can tap for the ongoing cyber initiative.
IT Disruptivity
Today I published a reference I have been coordinating with several Chief Technology Officer (CTO) friends for a few weeks. It is my list of disruptive IT.
A disruptive technology is an innovation that overturns the status quo in a market. The term was first coined by Clayton Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave." He dives deeper into the concept in his 1997 book "The Innovator’s dilemma" and in the follow-on book "The Innovator’s Solution." He has also evolved the term a bit, now using "disruptive innovation" since more than technology is required to upset the status quo.
So, disruptive technologies and disruptive innovations are about changing the way things are today. Enterprise CTOs are all very much in tune with concepts like these. Most enterprise CTOs must think through issues like this quite frequently.
In-Q-Tel Portfolio Gadget for the CTO
In-Q-Tel is a famous not-for-profit organization created to help bridge the gap between the needs of the US Intelligence Community and advances in commercial technology. In-Q-Tel has attracted some of the best minds in the technology business and has also established a fantastic reputation for finding emerging companies and entrepreneurs with promising ideas.
Enterprise CTOs looking to track emerging technologies should pay attention to In-Q-Tel. To help do that I wrote a Google Gadget that summarizes some of the helpful information In-Q-Tel provides on its website. The gadget uses Dapper.net to "scrape" information from each of In-Q-Tel’s portfolios. This allows for a list of all the companies in one location. I then feed the resulting "Dapp" into my favorite RSS service, Feedburner.com.
If you click on the company name you will be presented with In-Q-Tel’s write up on the company and a link to the company’s URL.
Here is a screen grab of what the gadget looks like:
Dell, Apple and Sony: who is thinner?
Of course the really big news today is Apple’s ultrathin notebook, the MacBook Air. I have a four month old MacBook and now I feel ancient.
But there was another thin product I just learned about that has me even more excited. A friend of mine noted my post on Sony OLED thin visualizations on Plaxo and pointed me to link for Dell’s new "Crystal."
From the Dell website: Tempered glass, highly polished
metal tripod stand, unobtrusive connections, capacitive touch controls,
integrated webcam, microphone and speakers, and a 22” HD panel helped
Dell Crystal take home the 2008 Best of Innovations Award at the
International Consumer Electronics Show which recognizes the most
innovative consumer electronics (CE) products in the industry’s hottest
product categories.
For more info see: Dell Crystal
I see one of these in my future.
Government Web2.0 Trends for 2008
I blog a bit at the site of Washington DC’s ExecutiveBiz. The ExecutiveBiz blog is widely read and focuses on items thought to be of interest to area senior executives and attendees of the ExecutiveBiz events.
I just posted an entry there that I would appreciate my CTO friends checking out. I could use any feedback you have on the theories and ideas I posit there. The entry is on Government Web2.0 Trends for 2008.
The first theory I posit there is that Web2.0 in government will result in more innovation. I say:
Most large organizations, including government, find the most innovation where there is interaction with others. Innovation frequently seems to come from the edge. With more Web2.0 in government, there will be increased interactions among users internal to government and with citizens. Every interaction is an opportunity to learn of an unmet need which is an opportunity to fuel innovation.
I really believe this dynamic will be more at play in 2008 due to enhanced use of Web2.0 in government. But I’d appreciate views on whether or not this will be a reality or whether or not we need to do things to ensure this comes true.
CTOvision Blog 