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The CTOvision.com blog has been operating on its own server for quite a while now, and we continue to provide content on items of interest to enterprise CTOs.
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Bob Gourley
A Blog I Like: Haft of the Spear
Michael Tanji brings a perspective forged in years of intelligence work and a successful stint protecting information in the financial sector. He is a well published author who focuses on national security issues and is also a thought leader in the computer security domain.
At Haft of the Spear he writes primarily about technology related/enabled national security issues, which includes a heavy dose of information warfare.
Read HOTS at: http://haftofthespear.com/
Next week I write about Nicholas Carr and his Rough Type blog.
A look ahead: Some technology developments to expect in 2009
2008 was a year of rapid changes for Chief Technology Officers. We should expect 2009 to move even faster. Where will the biggest trends take us? I offer some considerations below. Please
look these over and give me your thoughts. Push back if you have
disagreement.
First, my overall advice for CTOs in 2009… Just like the new thin interfaces you will be testing in your lab… be flexible. Now here are some more thoughts on what's in store for CTO s in 2009:
- Here is a no-brainer: Increasingly CTOs will leverage social media to
collaborate. Things are moving so fast that we all like to network to
seek help on big things and to get advanced warning on what is coming
next. More of us will be on Twitter, in Facebook, and writing blogs.
And this is a good thing.
- "Mashups" will still be very
important as an enterprise objective in 2009 (and beyond). And the
company that will help accelerate them into the federal enterprise is
JackBe. They do things in a way that enterprise CTO s like. They build
in connections to governance, security, identity management. And they
play well with the entire ecosystem so you don't have to rework all
legacy just to use them. Of course web2.0 will remain a key trend, but mashups takes web2.0 to a new, more mission-oriented level and for enterprise players the mission is what is important.
- An approach we will all learn to love and follow is "context
accumulation". This very important term was coined by Jeff Jonas, and
I think Jeff is going to have all of us moving out on that in the next
12 months. If you agree, visit his blog and by all means help others
understand why this is really the only way we humans stand a chance of
surviving/thriving in the onslaught of data.
- Federal acquisition of IT will still be criticized for all the
reasons it always has been. But there will also be an acceleration of
a dramatic positive change brought about because of open source
software and a new appreciation that IT acquisition processes
(RFI/RFP/FAR/DFAR based purchases) do not apply to software that is
free. Free software is not being bought, it is being used, for free.
The whole reason the FAR exists is to ensure when the taxpayer's money
gets spent it gets spent wisely. When things are free the FAR has less
applicability. Services for open source are being bought and since
that uses government money of course the taxpayers will continued to be
served by the same FAR-type processes that are meant to ensure open
competition, but that is not for free open source software, that is for
services to configure and manage the software.
- Will this be the year of enterprise security? We have been banking on that for a long long time. We know the answers on how to make enterprises more secure. There is a great recap of some of the most important components of security in the CSIS report. But there are many more things that can be done as well. My goal, as captured here, is to improve security by two orders of magnitude within the next 24 months.
- Netbooks, Thin Clients and Cloud Computing will accelerate
throughout the technology landscape, especially inside the federal
government. These trends in both devices and the cloud components are directly related and are also benefiting from the global, unstoppable trend toward open computing
(open software and open standards). One to watch in this area: Sun
Microsystems. But also track the dynamics of the netbooks providers.
Dell will get serious about netbooks, but Acer will continue to grow
market share.
- A key accelerator of Cloud Computing has been the powerful technologies of virtualization, especially those of VMware. Open source and other virtualization capabilities are coming fast too. Trend to watch in 2009 is the arrival of higher order, more elagant capabilities to manage virtualizaiton accross large enterprises. VMware and Opsware (HP) will continue to evolve to do this, but Appistry, Vizioncore, Xsigo and Sun (and others?) are coming fast.
- Increasingly leaders will recognize that concepts of operation that
require humans to tag and create metadata are sub-optimized. When busy
people are tasked with burdensome tagging operations they too
frequently become tempted to cut corners and rush the process. Over
time, meta data generated this way just becomes meta crap. This
growing recognition in the federal space will sweep in new technologies
and new approaches to discovery of content. One to watch to solve this
issue: Endeca, because of their approach to visualizing information and enabling human to computer iterative examination of data. - Flexible computers will arrive in production this year for early
adopters and many CTOs will use them in labs to assess applicability
for massive deployment in the coming years. These flexible computers
are the ultimate thin clients. Backends/servers/architectures
developed for the cloud perfectly suit ultra thin, flexible computing
devices. For more on this hot topic, start at the site of the Flexible Display Center at ASU.
- Collaboration will increasingly be seen as the means to link human
brains together. Collaboration tools that are stand alone stovepipes
will be a thing of the past. Users will collaborate using the entire
technology environment: voice, video, data, whiteboard, chat,
application sharing, info discovery will increasingly be integrated
into a single fabric. Key players here: Adobe, Microsoft and Cisco.
- In a big change for how money is moved in major enterprises, the CIO
will be given responsibility for the energy budget. This will encourage
CIOs to modernize to conserve energy, since money saved from energy
costs can be invested back in modern IT. This will be a very virtuous
cycle, that saves money for organizations, saves energy, and modernizes
IT.
- In a stunning turn, IPv6 will be rapidly adopted, not by enterprises,
but in homes. The major home communications provider that delivers
full IPv6 to home environments (and to cell phones) will have an incredible advantage over
competitors and will dominate. The many rich features of IPv6
delivered to consumers will finally push enterprises everywhere to move
out on IPv6.
- In 2009, as in every year prior and for most into the future, there
will continue to be bad people using technology to do bad things.
Enterprises will move to protect info, but bad guys will keep moving to
get the data. And the use of social networking tools by terrorists
will likely grow. This is not a foregone conclusion, but I'm not
personally sure what can be done to mitigate the use of advanced
technology by bad people, other than to say that we good people need to
work together more to stop them, and my hope is that we can keep 2009
safe and secure.
Thoughts/comments/suggestions? Please let me know what you think.
What if you could show key Social Media/Web2.0 sites in one graphic?
Overdrive is a company that specializes in helping others leverage the social media landscape. They produced a great graphic that gives at least a high level overview of the key social media and web2.0 world. Click on the image here for a larger view download the PDF here: Download social-media-map.pdf (1330.3K)
I really like this graphic for a couple reasons. One is that like many other people I long for ways that can help me visualize and grasp things in this fast moving space. I know this does not capture all the social media sites and I know the categories are not as clean as depicted here. But still it is GREAT context and will be helpful to me in explaining to others some of the fast moving cloud based services out there (note to overdrive: please find room to add a section on cloud services, like cloud based office automation).
Another key reason I like this is it proves Overdrive's assertion that they are a company that can demystify online tools and help companies leverage these capabilities. The fact that they are letting any blogger anywhere post this graphic on their site is proof that they understand how these things work. Companies who want to make it in social spaces should give first then receive later.
How did I find this cool graphic? Friends at Facebook sent it to me. I found this cool social media reference through a cool social media site.
The Disruptive Power of Netbooks
The idea of light-weight, low-cost, but very powerful laptops designed for a smaller feature set than traditional laptops has been around for a decade or so. But all indications are that something has changed in the market place. Due to a convergence of many factors, netbooks are growing in sales. These factors include the continual improvement in wireless speeds, the more widespread availability of wifi, the continued drop in cost of hardware, the continued increase in performance of open source operating systems and open source applications, the unstoppable move to more thin-client solutions, and the dramatically increased capabilities of cloud computing services (including the entire web2.0 megatrend and of course the continued innovations of Google in the cloud computing and online applications space).
I just did a few searches on Amazon and Bestbuy for netbooks devices, and pulled up entries for small notebooks like the Acer Aspire One, an 8.9-inch mini laptop that runs Linux Lite and sells for under $300.00. It has plenty of capability and is very lightweight. It comes loaded with applications, including open source office automation packages (I think I would want to download the most recent version of open office if I purchased this). It also comes with a built in camera and is ready for high end video chat.
Will I buy one? There are clearly some of these in my future, I just don't know when. I have a MacBook and I really like it for everything I need in a laptop. I use it around the house and on travel. And, although it is over a year old now, it doesn't need replacement. When it does, however, I'm going to be asking myself why I would want to pay $1000 more for a Mac instead of a couple hundered for a Netbook. So much of what I do I do on the cloud anyway, and the many things I do locally can be done using the free Open Office.
If we assume the same sort of trades are being considered by other buyers, a conclusion starts to emerge. Netbooks are going to be a very disruptive force in the market.
And what is the market saying so far about this trend? Acer is reporting huge success with their netbooks approach, their sales have been growing significantly. They just reported a 78.8 percent growth rate over the same quarter in 2007. And this is during a huge market downturn. HP and Dell are reporting unit sales growth of 13.5 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively. Apple is just about flat.
If you are an enterprise CTO, what should you do with this information? For one, you should consider how to use laptops/netbooks like these in your organization. If done right, you can enhance the security of your enterprise by moving more of your data and applications to secure clouds, and you can also add security features to your netbooks and field a significant enhancement to your security posture. And, since the cost of these devices is far less than traditional laptops you can equip more of your workforce and save money at the same time, which is a very virtuous thing in this economic environment.
Note: I've previously written about several devices that qualify as netbooks, including:
Thin Client Laptops: Functionality, Security, Mobility A review of high end, enterprise quality wireless stateless thin clients using the Sun Microsystems approach;
and
The Future Is Changing Again A review of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.
I also recommend a recent article at Economist.com called Small is Beautiful.
And, thanks to a friend on Twitter, I just got pointed to a post at GigaOm titled: Why Netbooks are Greener Than Laptops
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