Ubiquity of service — State of the Art of the Cloud, circa 1982

For 2012 to be a better year than previous ones, those of us in the various technology sectors must be less protective of IT assets that are commodities, and look aggressively at ways to expand and creatively built upon these assets, rather than maintaining large, complex systems. I call it the 'democratization of technology," the way Steve Jobs brought forth GUIs for the rest of us.

For those elements that require unusual thinking and partnerships, I suggest a change in approach -- emphasize focus to ensure that we are not squandering scarce resources simply to be among the first on the block to do something new. Rather, in a world of limited resources, I advise CIOs to be strategic about IT investments, driven by innovation tied directly to the mission of the organization. In rough economic times, seek partnerships to bring down costs and to maximize innovation and reduce risk.

History supports lofty goals for IT: Jim Morris, in 1982, was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He articulated a vision for connectivity and collaboration: “the primary goal should be to broaden, deepen, and improve the communication among students.”

The way that was accomplished was to devise a computing environment where information could be shared. Professor Morris, working with IBM, rolled out a network at Carnegie Mellon he predicted would be ubiquitous in the future. The Andrew Project, and within it the Andrew File System, was born. AFS was the first safe and efficient distributed computing system, available to both students and professors on campus. In 1982.

Near the close of 1990, Tim Berners-Lee built all the tools we take for granted today for the World Wide Web on the Internet: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), a Web browser, the first HTTP server software, the first web server, and the first Web pages spelling out the project itself. The browser could access newsgroups and FTP as well, and ran on NeXT computers.

SOPA - killing freedom, not piracy

The Stop Online Piracy Act is an item of legislation that the entertainment industry wants most desperately, but virtually anyone else with an interest in the internet (isn't that all of us?) opposes.

While the bill has bipartisan support, it also has countless critics, there's significant public opposition. Roll Call warned that SOPA could be used to stifle political free speech and shut down entire websites "without any involvement by a court." The current bill would dismantle the "safe harbor" protections of the DMCA, protections that allow sites like Facebook and YouTube to operate without taking responsibility for infringing actions of users, who, after all, are responsible for what they upload.

People feel so strongly about maintaining internet freedom, many suffer a backlash for supporting SOPA. For example, GoDaddy reversed its position on SOPA after the company reportedly suffered from the exodus of tens of thousands of customers.

David Carr's piece over at the NYT gives a good perspective on this.

Innovative Service Leveraging the Cloud

I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting ways the Cloud is being leveraged, and EdgeBook, a forthcoming securities data service, meets that criteria. With Xignite, the EdgeBook Cloud service will allow compliance officers,traders, analysts and academics to retrieve replays of a given market day and its order book.

The GUI will enable slicing of specific segments of historical data to use for back-testing and analysis. In keeping with scalable conventions, accessing data will be totally self-service.

Kevin Carrai, Connectivity Services at Direct Edge, says, this approach “...enables us to provide an innovative, valued-added product with a rapid time-to-market."

I've been involved in knowledge management and data mining since the 1980s, and relish the thought of inexpensive data analysis tools on the web, available to anyone -- the democratization of information continues unabated, thanks to andTBL.

Bicyclists need to observe the traffic laws -- of course

Poor behavior by cyclists gives us a bad name. And, of course, jeopardizes safety for all. This study in Portland, Oregon puts numbers to what we have anecdotally observed -- frequent running of traffic lights, stop signs, ignoring pedestrian safety, etc.

Aaron Cole, who was one of the researchers, said, “We encountered a great deal of criticism during and after our study, primarily from bicyclists that felt our study was severely flawed,” admitted Cole, adding, “One local bicycle business even went so far to say that all of our data was ‘junk.’ Meanwhile, support for this has been seen from those who don’t ride bicycles. The Portland Police Bureau was supportive during our interview, and many drivers commented how they witness the same thing.”

Incidents of bike crashes go under-reported. Leah Shahum of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition says its group's 2001 study concluded that police neglect to report bicycle incidents. Out of about 40 injury cases called in to the coalition's hotline, officers didn't file reports one-third of the time.

One of my favorite resources for bike safety has lots of tips, tricks and plain old good advice for keeping us all safe on the road, together.

The Clouds Continue to Gather

As 2011 ends, the year ahead should be a banner year for the continued growth of cloud technologies. Technology research analysts at Gartner have predicted that, by 2012, 20 per cent of businesses will rely solely on software as a service (SaaS) solutions for their IT needs.

Ventana research confirms that organizations are moving to the cloud now and will accelerate the pace of doing so in the near future. At least 20 percent of five different line-of-business functions use cloud-based applications, and within 12 months at least 40 percent of eight of nine functions will. Dell is putting $1 billion toward the cloud over the next two years in the form of data centers, customer service outposts and new solutions. The company announced it would spend that amount over the next fiscal year building multiple eco-friendly data centers around the world for customer access to outsourcing capabilities and public and private cloud technology.

As software-as-a-service matures, for example, we will see more commerce (local, national and global) as a result of the internet. And that's a happy new year, after all.