Even Bigger than the Internet

The cloud is changing everything. The change is even bigger than the change we saw from the Internet. It will change how every business operates. That’s what a cloud computing expert told me – Roger Krakoff, founder and managing partner of Cloud Computing Partners, a venture capital firm that invests exclusively in cloud computing. I didn’t get it. How could this be? Then I had a second conversation with Roger.

An HBR Analytic Services white paper gave me the core of a cloud computing definition I like: “enables access through the Internet to a shared pool of computing resources (hardware, software, etc.) that can be tapped on demand and configured and scaled up or down as needed.” But it stops there. Thanks to Roger I could now add “by any computing device.” That was the missing link. It’s the mobile implications that make cloud computing transformational – not merely evolutionary. Aha!

But then came an e-mail exchange and Roger’s P.S. “better to think of cloud computing as dial-tone or electric power. It is there when you need it. Pay by the unit and it just works.” Bingo! The cloud is the new utility – like electrical power or water or the Internet! One source of its power to transform businesses is what happens when it handles business transactions. And this is already happening in a really big way.

On May 17th, IBM released the following stats about its enterprise SmartCloud services customers: one million enterprise application users working on the IBM Cloud. More than $100 billion in commerce transactions a year in the cloud. 4.5 million daily client transactions conducted through the IBM Cloud. And that’s just one major vendor of cloud services!

What’s more it’s just the beginning. TopCoder, the world’s largest open innovation community, with 400,000 developers is moving to the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise. From this we can expect an exponential increase in innovation, as these developers support the organizations for which they work with the entire innovation process – from ideation, software engineering and analytics to implementation, testing and support.

At YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/ibmcloud) I found the moving story of how the cloud has transformed the Bari fishing industry – and made life better for the fishermen and their families with a new business model. Until recently, the fishermen caught too many fish. They exceeded market demand, Thanks to cloud computing, they can now communicate how many fish they are catching in real time and a virtual market can sell the fish before the boats dock. Now they catch only as many fish as the market consumes, their income is up 25 percent and the time to market is down 70 percent. Wow! That’s innovation that matters!

What Difference Does it Make?

What differences does it make? That’s the first question for every entrepreneur and innovator.

The country – and the world for that matter – is buzzing with new start ups. Most of them will fail of course and it won't matter because most really don’t makd a difference for anyone.

How does your product differentiate itself? That’s what the investor will ask – because being different from other products that serve similar purposes is fundamental to being marketable.

But isn’t it time for new companies and new products to make a difference as well as differentiate? We live in a time when every product category is already saturated with options. That’s why branding has become hot. Creating a distinctive image in the minds of customers is the sine qua non of differentiation. Now some entrepreneurs and innovators are adding an important new dimension to differentiating. They are creating new ways to improve the quality of life.

Arshad Chowdhury did that to create Cleargears, a startup that promises to make a difference for employees of any company sufficiently enlightened to deploy it. What it delivers is a system for real-time performance review by everyone of everyone. Unlike the traditional process – and that hasn’t changed for years – where performance review occurs in huge chunks once a year from the narrow perspective of people at the top, Clearview delivers ongoing feedback in bite-sized chunks from the 360-degree perspective of everyone you work with - anonymously. The vision of Arshad and his early customers alike is that companies can perform better if they help everyone on the team perform better as well

Sandy Heck, MD, is making a difference with Reach Bionics, a start up that is developing technology to help paraplegics wirelessly control electronic devices by activating vestigial muscles around the ears.

Michael Huerta and his partners at BrightPath Energy are making a difference by applying their skills in providing capital and deal infrastructure to the renewable energy sector. One of their first projects is Power.ly, an angel-stage product company that solves cost and logistical problems for remote electricity - such as post-disaster, rural areas, the battlefield, or anywhere the grid is limited – with a truly portable generator that uses solar power.

When I’m lucky enough to discover start ups like these, I hear Stevie Wonder’s lyrics echo in my head: “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”

The New News: Vox Populi

  • A new Greenpeace campaign targets Apple’s cloud computing products, as it looks to “clean the cloud around the world.
  • A smooth animation of a timelapse of planet Earth from ‘Electro-L’, a geostationary satellite orbiting 40,000 kilometres above the Earth.
  • A blind-folded guy entertainingly told at his bachelor party that he’s about to bungee-jump 50 feet – only it’s more like 5 feet into a pool of water!
  • Honda’s new ‘UNI-CUB’ personal mobility device.
  • A graphic undercover investigation, by the Humane Society of the United States, into the walking horse industry discovers cases of rampant cruelty.

These are Storyful Daily’s “Five of the best on YouTube” for today. Not exactly “all the news that’s fit to print” or any other major daily’s take on world news, is it?

To the five best on YouTube, Storyful adds its five best in sport, five best in weather and five general stories – Frankfurt protesters, fans mourning the death of disco queen Donna Summer, a PAC plan to attack Obama, the effect of a Twitter hashtag on a Spanish bank and a live-tweeted journey through a region facing a hunger crisis.

It’s the new news from Storyful, the brainchild of an Irish journalist. Storyful’s professional journalists sift “actionable news” from the chaff of the real-time web for use by news organizations throughout the world, acting as a “social media ‘field producer'” and providing an online window into their findings for the general public. For both its media clients and the general public, the result is access to authentic views on recent events or developments and early warnings of what could be big stories to come. It adds a valuable social dimension to what we call “news.”

The New Communication: Electronic, Social & Mobile Media

For some years, I had six phone lines on each of two instruments and a phone at one ear or the other – sometimes both – many hours a day. I also had a third instrument with my private line to be sure I could call out no matter what and certain key people could always reach me.

Now I’m so rarely on the phone that I often don’t even bother to check for voice mail messages. It’s easy to manage with merely one land line phone and a cell phone! Lots of people find all they need is the cell phone.

What happened? We abandoned synchronous communication and gained control of our time. We send and receive text and email messages instead of calling. We also went from long-form to bite-sized messages and, at the same time, to more frequent brief interactions.

Not long after the new communication formats started, social media entered my life – Facebook about 2002, Linked In a few years later and Twitter after that. I have what one friend calls “a robust presence” on all three but spend little time on Facebook, not much more on Twitter and probably the most on Linked In. On Facebook, it’s fun to interact periodically with distant friends at times we’d typically have no communication. On Twitter, it’s helpful to discover and share insights. Linked In has become an invaluable reference tool, only rarely used to communicate, let alone interact, but the only way to reach some people at times. So all three add value for me in different ways. They supplement live interaction uniquely.

Does any of this replace live interaction? No way! My calendar is full - and it's only thanks to email and text messages that I can keep it straight!

Sherry Turkle, social scientist, author and MIT professor, argues that our increasing use of email, text messaging and social media has a negative impact on the social fabric and demonstrates evidence of diminished expectations of our relationships with other people and of a personal power-grab for control of interactions. Bah, humbug!

Any media can of course be used for positive or negative reasons and with varying results. But, in my experience, contrary to Dr. Turkle’s perception, the new ones enrich the social fabric with an infinite number of contact points that have never existed before, they provide the convenience of communication on demand – free of interaction – and they allow each of us to manage our time more productively without losing touch.

The New Advertising: Frictionless Sharing

Privacy – “the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively,” according to Wikipedia” – has become a marketable commodity for millions of consumers, it seems. Given the right “value exchange,” these people can cheerfully accept “frictionless sharing” – automated distribution by marketers to their social networks of their personal information and online activities.

What’s the right kind of value exchange That depends on the individual. It can, for example, be as simple as a sense of self-esteem, coupons or a 4Square badge.

It’s typically all ok to the people involved as long as the process is transparent, and they know who’s doing the distribution and trust them. Some consumers actually interact with brand pages on social networks, in effect, broadcasting their endorsement of the brand to whomever.

What are the chances of legislation or FTC regulation? Probably zero. Technology is growing too fast for legislators or regulators to keep up with it. Ultimately, the market self-corrects anyhow. All marketing benefits from frictionless sharing depend on relevant targeting and willing users.

These were my principal takeaways from this morning’s Gotham Media Ventures discussion at Frankfurt Kurnit by Daniel Berkowitz, of 360i; Jordan Franklin, of Clickable; Marc Hayem, of MicroStrategy; Kathy Leake, of Local Response, and Brett Martin of Sonar. Terri Seligman, of Frankfurt Kurnit, was moderator.

A Time for Transformation, not Mere Change

Once upon a time – about a year ago - traditional publishers fell in love with the colorful screens of mobile devices as a solution to their battle with the popular assumption that information on the Internet wants to be free. Here at last was a way to once again produce a unique product, charge traditional single copy and subscription prices and restore profit margins.

Jason Pontin’s describes the rude awakening in “Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps,” Technology Review, 5.7.12. (http://bit.ly/JgoAAm)

Today, most tablet machines are Apple, and publishers have to pay Apple to sell their products – which means actually losing sales on individual issues. Most serious, when they sell through Apple, they lose direct connection with their readers – the lifeblood of magazines and newspapers.

Technical problems also made adapting print publications to apps challenging. Many publishers ended up with five digital versions of their products to accommodate diverse devices, viewing options and ordinary website HTML pages. And they found the unbudgeted cost of app development both expensive and time consuming. Without their own digital readers, they had no audiences to sell to advertisers and so insufficient incremental revenue to offset the app development cost.

Worst of all, publishers discovered their stories in apps in fact disappointed reader expectations because the stories do not link; they live in walled gardens, closed off from other digital media.

The outcome? Most mobile device owners read news and features on publisher websites, now coded to adapt to smaller screens or using glorified RSS readers. “The paid, expensively developed publishers’ app, with its extravagantly produced digital replica, is dead,” pronounces Pontin.

What happened? Publishers tried to impose old print formats on digital channels – to make an adaptive change, not a transformation. “I hated every moment of our experiment with apps, because it tried to impose something closed, old, and printlike on something open, new, and digital,” writes Pontin.

One aspect of transformation is to go back to basics – to understand the essence of the product and release it from traditional trappings. Barnes & Noble made a major change with its superstore bookstores containing pianos, coffee shops and sofas. Amazon achieved transformation by eliminating the bookstore altogether. Pontin’s solution, like that of Financial Times is to launch an HTML5 version of its website, optimize it for devices, incorporate many applike features and functions and, ultimately, kill the app. What will the new revenue model be once digital content is free? That’s yet to come. Innovations evolve. You don't always get all the answers at once.

As author/futurist Daniel Burrus has said: “There are two primary uses for technology by business and government. The first is to accomplish more with less―to be more efficient and productive. That's how most people use technology, and it's a good use of it. But the second major use of technology―and it's not that common―is to use it to create new products, services, markets and careers.”

Learning to accomplish more with less is an important first step - and it's still happening. But more and more of us now understand enough about technology to create the new, to innovate – that’s transformation, not mere change!

Simply Pure and Purely Simple – Systems, Stacks and Clouds

I recently attended the IBM IMPACT conference. During the keynote, an IBM executive remarked (and I am paraphrasing) – It is very hard to make technology simple. This is a very profound observation.

This morning (May/2), comfortably perched in my aisle seat on the plane, as I return back to the wonderful state of Connecticut, several impressions from IMPACT start to swirl in my mind. So I thought I would clarify or purify these impressions and articulate them as simply as I can. So that I can purge them from my conscious mind-cache yet make them persist in words through this blog post.

Tomorrow, at the strike of dawn in Connecticut, I want to start with a clear and pure mind and continue with my day job (IT Analyst and Consultant) of gathering and analyzing and articulating additional ideas and thoughts to benefit my paying clients who sponsor my consulting projects. I must do that to make a living and ensure the continuing well-being of my children. This is pure and simple.

PureSystems – Patterning and Partnering

 
 
IMPACT was quite packed – over 8500 attendees. The solution center opened on April 29 in the evening. I was fortunate to leisurely examine the demos that perked my interest. I spent a significant amount of time examining the various PureSystems exhibits. In particular, I was very impressed seeing the internals of an operating PureFlex system with its dense packaging – servers, storage, and networks.

But I was even more impressed when I spent a significant amount of time with Manhattan Associates – a PureSystems Application Provider partner that focuses on delivering Supply Chain solutions – both for planning and execution. Their very smart and enthusiastic lead technical expert told me that Manhattan Associates has over 15 software products that they have been able to integrate with the PureApplication System using a combination of IBM patterns and Manhattan patterns. This simplicity, he said was a pure delight to clients in retail, logistics, and other areas where optimizing the supply chain is critical for enhancing operational efficiencies.

To date, IBM has over 100 such partnerships and expects to deliver hundreds more similar PurePatterns across various industries with even more partnerships. It will be interesting to quantify the collective ROI that clients receive both in ease of deployment and in ongoing operations from this PureEcosystem.

It is well known that IT operational costs in labor are one of the fastest growing components of the total cost of ownership (TCO). What PureSystems along with the growing portfolio of PurePatterns do is to tackle this head on to make IT simpler to use –similar to the value proposition for cloud computing which has been front and center in the minds of IT organizations worldwide. This brings me to my second set of takeaways from IMPACT.

Cloud OpenStack – Molecules Matter

 
 
During the IBM Analyst deep-dive sessions, I got the opportunity to understand the scale and focus of IBM’s Cloud OpenStack initiative. One primary motivation behind this open source initiative is to simplify and standardize Cloud Use Cases and Workloads by building a technology stack using open source and standards to instantiate these use cases. IBM used a very nice chemistry analogy to explain this: system components and their functions are like elements in the periodic table while real-life workloads are like molecules that provide higher level business function and are composed of several pre-wired components (elements).

Then we witnessed a very feature rich demo that depicted a fairly comprehensive cloud business use case. This consortium plans to produce many more of these cloud business use cases and members plan to contribute code and other resources to this initiative. In the next few months, IBM plans to work with other consortium members on governance and process related matters in addition to growing this Ecosystem to include more end-users and application providers.

All this will make these molecules matter even more in the industry. It will further that magical chemistry that continues to fuel the Open Source movement that was born at the dawn of the Internet era. Are we poised to witness another spike in the IT industry with the impending confluence of open source solutions in Big Data, Analytics, and Cloud? The mathematics and technologies for this exist. The bigger question is do we have the knowledge and human capital and the collective wherewithal to leverage all of this? I think so. The first movers have already spoken. The rest will follow. It’s that simple!

OpenStack the PureSystem

 
 
IBM was asked several times during the analyst session if there was a plan to extend the Cloud OpenStack to PureSystems. While no formal commitments or announcements were made, I felt from a business strategy perspective, this is a purely simple matter. It will only enhance the PureEcosystem. This chemical bonding will deliver a macro-molecule that could help enterprises deploy clouds in much the same way Enterprise Linux did almost a decade ago. It should also further the collective benefits of Open Source for one and all – pure and simple.

The plane has landed at Westchester Airport. For me the simple act of comfortably flying will now be replaced by the laborious act of having to navigate the traffic on the busy highway (I – 684) that goes north to Danbury, Connecticut. Too bad automobiles are not yet self-navigating and autonomic. But this is bound to happen as cars increasingly become computers in the next decade or so and they get all the intelligent capabilities of sensing and responding in real-time. But this labor of driving through traffic will be very well worth it as I will experience the pure joy of being back at home. After all as a wise man once said Home is where the heart is! That, my dear friend, is pure and simple!

To extend what the IBM executive said at IMPACT – Let us make technology homely! We as IT analysts do – in our own small way – contribute to this goal by trying to communicate as best as we can the value of technology in simple terms.

The Pure Thing

Yesterday, I watched from the comfort of my home office, IBM’s PureSystem “Unveiling of a New Computing Era” announcement in New York City. After the initial background business discussion by Mr. Steve Mills – Sr. Vice President and Group Executive for IBM Systems and Software, the curtain was lifted by Mr. Rod Adkins, IBM Senior Vice President, Systems and Technology Group. At that very instant, with a wide grin, Steve made a comment that I am paraphrasing, “Unlike software with systems, you can actually see the real thing”. When the curtain was lifted, there stood that gleaming blue PureFlex system. This sparked a train of thought that gelled this morning under this spring’s cool Connecticut sun during my customary jog in the park.

What is a Thing?

 
 
During my spare time and sometimes to get a real good night’s sleep, I read. One book that does an admirable and efficient job of “accelerating the time to deep slumber” is entitled “What is a Thing?, by Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest 20th century philosophers. I’ve had the pleasure to be about 1/3 the way.

But this morning, reflecting on Steve’s comment, I thought: What is IT (information technology) today? Why is the word “Pure” so relevant? What does this all mean? This created an energizing stream of shedding “thought-vortices” whose trajectories like their fluid mechanics counterparts are difficult to model and predict much less tame and transcribe. But here is where Martin and some reflection come to rescue.

Material and Abstract Things

 
 
You see – a system like the PureSystem is something that you can see, touch, and feel. It’s a material thing. Data (even BigData) you cannot see, touch, or feel. But then you can visualize data through software. Software is not a material thing (actually like data it is an abstract thing) but it makes a material impact especially when grounded and optimized on a material thing like a system and then used to solve a business or scientific problem.

Likewise, mathematics (one of the most abstract things) has its profound impact when its “purest” form is applied to solve the challenging problems of the day especially those that have a material impact, for example, the impact of shedding vortices on aircraft operating performance or the calculation of the best available airfare between two cities. All this is of course done in software that runs on a system.

The Everything and Nothing Route to Profound and Pure Insights

 
 
But perhaps the most abstract thing, philosophy, and the philosophers who pursue these thought-vortices may take “this thing (whatever that thing is)” and argue that it’s nothing. Just as their other philosopher colleagues could argue that it is everything. That is the duality of zero and infinity. For instance, the great Greek philosopher Aristotle was once asked how he was able to come up with such profound insights. It is rumored that Aristotle answered that he sat in a room and opened all the windows and an avalanche of thoughts came flying into his head which he then curated and came up with profound “pure” insights. That’s BigInsights from BigData.

Contrast this with Buddha who sat in total isolation and completely “emptied” his mind of all thoughts and meditated and came up with yet another set of profound and “pure” insights. That’s starting with a “clean slate”.

The surest (and perhaps purest) thing that I think I know is that I am. But do I really know that? That’s an entirely new and different question for another day.

When Aristotle (West) Meets Buddha (East) in the Cloud

 
 
I was told during the IBM PureSystems announcements that IBM worked on this initiative over the last four years; taking input and learnings from thousands of client engagements around the world and came up with this highly optimized, cloud and analytics ready family of systems and platforms. I was also told that the technical architects started with a “clean slate”. That is like marrying East with West to get the best of both worlds and this should be great for clients everyware!

Now lest I get fired from my day job of doing IT analyst work, I must move on to my next “thing” which is finishing up the white paper that my employer wants me to write! That is very material my dear friend! To my children – who read my blogs – note your survival and well-being depend on my finishing this next thing!

The Taming of Data – On the Value Train from Insights to Knowledge to Wisdom to perhaps Happiness?

I recently attended the IBM #SmarterAnalytics Summit in New York City that focused on #Analytics and #Optimization. The sessions and the client panel in particular were superb and enlightening. Beyond, the typical discussions on technology, the IBM client panel repeatedly emphasized that organizational and cultural changes were critical to properly implement and integrate #Analytics and #Optimization as core business process.

This re-sparked a train of thoughts in my mind. I even got to test these thoughts a bit later at the evening reception. On my train ride back home, this train of thoughts on how to tame this avalanche of data for mankind’s (including corporations) benefit continued to escalate. I thought I should transcribe this train of thoughts quickly before it crashes and bursts into some forgotten cloud! For this my Cloud Mobile (iPhone) with Speech Recognition Software (Dragon) came to my rescue.

On Data, Words and Deeds, and Ephemeral Social Media

 
 
It’s well recognized by IT industry experts that data by itself has little value. It’s what you do with it that generates the value. It reminds me of Lech Walesa’s quote “The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now.” Or simply put, in an anonymous quote, “talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand”.

I am not suggesting that we clamp down on the supply of words. That would be tantamount to curtailing free speech. We must take a thoughtful approach and critically examine the hype around #Bigdata – primarily perpetuated by the IT industry for which, as an analyst, I am also guilty.

Also guilty – contributing to the excess supply of data – is the recent spate of growth of “unstructured” data: images, video, voice, pictures and others. Probably because many believe that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. And a video even more! Every time I hear this oft used cliché, I think REALLY? WHY? Why are we creating all these quantities of image/video data and spending our precious resources (our time) doing so? More importantly, why are we so enamored with transmitting this data to others?

Yes, new social media and the underlying technologies give each and every individual enormous capability for creative expression and even contribute to the overthrow of oppressive regimes e.g. the Arab Spring. But aren’t we collectively trampling on another form of creative expression – the thoughtful reflective kind by drowning each other in all this data? Or aren’t we being distracted by all these images that like fast foods fill us up to sated exhaustion but have very little nutritional value?

But Some Words do Matter. Some Words are better than Exabytes of Pictures (or Words) and they Persist!

 
 
Here are some poignant examples. This is what the great contemporary Scandinavian poet, Tomas Tranströmer (translated by Robin Robertson), wrote about words:

FROM MARCH 1979

Sick of those who come with words, words but no language,

I make my way to the snow-covered island.

Wilderness has no words. The unwritten pages

Stretch out in all directions.

I come across this line of deer-slots in the snow: a language,

language without words.

And the great 20th century Mexican poet, Octavio Paz (translated by J. M. Cohen), wrote:

CERTAINTY

If the white light of this lamp

is real, and real

the hand that writes,

are the eyes real

that look at what I write?

 

One word follows another.

What I saw vanishes.

I know that I am alive,

and living between parentheses.

Distinctive Numbers – God’s Equation Then and Now – Hey It’s All Just Zeros and Ones

 
 
Just like profound and wise words, there are some distinctive numbers (data) that also matter: zero and the imaginary number i and those irrationals Pi and e. And then there’s Euler’s God’s Equation of centuries back: e ^ i2π = 1. Thus, the “simplest” and most fundamental of all numbers (Numero Uno) is incredibly complex, made up of irrational, transcendent constants that extend to infinity. Now, the more contemporary version of God’s Equation (circa 2007) is the fourth album by the Norwegian progressive metal band Pagan’s Mind and contains video clips! But hey, today it’s all just digital data which are, at the end of the day, zeros and ones – the two most fundamental numbers. So why are we all making such a hoopla!

Because we must traverse that Divine Manifold from Data to Information to Insights to Knowledge to Wisdom and perhaps Happiness

 
 
Data is plentiful (all the data generated today can’t even be stored!), and left untamed is bound to be catastrophic. So we (corporations included) must harmonize all our assets and capabilities (people, process, data, technology, and culture) to navigate through this data onslaught and traverse the Value Train with the help of yet another God’s Equation: This new equation must transform Data to Information to Insights to Knowledge to Wisdom. One recent noteworthy technology asset for this journey to wisdom could be #IBMWatson.

That great wise soul, Mahatma Gandhi, once said: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” So the Happy (and Wise) enterprises of the future in our data-driven world will be those that can act and culturally transform themselves through change and a complete re-think of strategy – just like the IBM client panel repeatedly emphasized – those were divine words! And they matter! Act on them! The customer is always right!

Tracking an IT Analyst’s Journey on the Cloud Mobile: My Musings after Attending IBM Pulse 2012.

The one key takeaway for me from the conference was IBM’s message on the confluence of private secure clouds to support an increasingly mobile world – employees, clients, partners, and other stakeholders. This is the Cloud Mobile (think Snow Mobile). It has to be safe, secure, and comfortable yet must perform, scale and deliver a high quality of service. IBM unveiled a set of solutions to support this vision and you can get all the detail from IBM Pulse 2012.

Very early morning on March/7 at the hotel, after a shower, I turned on the TV news. I heard that Apple planned to announce the iPad3 later in the day probably with the same pricing as the previous iPad2. It was expected that the price for the iPad2 would be reduced. This irked me as I had just bought an iPad2 a few weeks before. But I quickly got over that as I had already obtained significant business value from my iPad2 investment. This iPad2 and my iPhone4 are my most valuable mobile devices. This fact would be further reinforced as that day’s events unfolded. While checking out of my hotel to return home to Connecticut, a train of thoughts on my Cloud Mobile began to evolve in my mind that I want to share with you.

The Cloud Mobile has enhanced many professional pursuits in differing ways

 
 
Gone are the days when Mathematics was largely a solo-sport and the primary tools were just paper, pencil, extraordinary rigor, and amazing individual imagination. In recent years, with the advent of the Internet and an unusual level of collaboration among mathematicians, it has increasingly become a team sport with just as much rigor and an even greater and more amazing group wisdom and imagination.

This has greatly advanced innovation and discovery in Mathematics even in such arcane areas as Number Theory that was once the province of individual brilliance. In fact, the famous Fermat’s Last Theorem was finally proved by Andrew Wiles in 1995 after centuries of sustained collaboration and inquiry. And, yes computers were partly used as tools to arrive at this result just as they were largely used to resolve the Four Color Theorem in 1976. With cloud computing, this level of collaboration will only increase. But then, in some sense, Mathematicians have always been on the cloud!

Painting/art is still largely a solitary activity with less technology impact. Yes there are new artistic areas impacted by technology and graphics but the most creative artists and painters still rely only on their traditional tools – canvas, paint, rigorous techniques, and an amazing imagination. And yes artists and painters are notorious for their nomadic and mobile lifestyles. They too have always been on the cloud!

While writers continue to primarily work solo, there is an increasing trend for them to work in groups particularly when creating complex technical or non-fiction content. Markup capabilities in modern word processors and capabilities in Google Docs further facilitate these group efforts particularly in the cloud!

But while painters and writers both possess amazing creative capabilities, they differ in at least one way – Can you imagine a painter giving up his/her brush to a collaborator to markup on his/her evolving work of art?!

Technologists and Engineers tend to innovate better in groups and through collaboration. In fact, the industrial revolution and the subsequent rise of today’s large corporations depended heavily on this group collaboration. Today, this collaboration extends to other stakeholders including suppliers, customers, investors, and business partners. And Engineering Clouds are being adopted in the Manufacturing industry to improve productivity in design and development. So they too are getting on the cloud!

My current profession – an IT Analyst – is a blend of several of the above professions. IT Analysts must possess the analytical rigor of the mathematician, the conceptual creativity of an artist, the story telling capabilities of a writer, and the knowledge of the technologist. Add to these, the experiences of a business professional – marketing, sales, management, etc. So naturally, IT Analysts should also benefit from the cloud!

How on March 7, the Cloud Mobile helped this IT Analyst

 
 
Just as I was finishing up my breakfast at the MGM Grand with some of my colleagues, I saw a missed call from one of my key clients responsible for Business Analytics. So as I took the cab to the airport, I called him back. He wanted to get an estimate of the size and growth of data in the financial services industry particularly financial markets. He had a good estimate of the total size and growth across all industries and had tried some internal sources but did not have an estimate for his particular area. I told him that I was on the road and will try to do some investigation and get back to him the following day.

Now my firm, unlike some other major analyst firms, does not routinely provide these types of market estimates. There are other firms that specialize in these studies and make these reports available to their clients. I do not have access to these reports. But often, there is a lot of information on the web that one could often piece together to arrive at an informed estimate to such questions. So after checking in at the airport, I pulled out my iPad2 – fortunately the airport had free Wi Fi access – and began searching the web. After about ½ an hour, I had some relevant pieces of helpful information but was still nowhere near an estimate. I was a little disappointed and was almost planning to give up temporarily.

But then suddenly, I remembered that I had downloaded a very comprehensive Big Data report written by a major Global Think Tank in 2011. This report was on my secure private storage cloud. I had always planned to read it but never got the time to do so. So with my iPad2, I connected to my secure private cloud (protected by two levels of security), and pulled in the report into my iPad2’s iBook format. Then I boarded the plane. And as the plane soared up above the clouds and the flight attendant announced that we could turn on electronic devices, I opened up the iPad2 and began reading the report.

In that report, after about three hours, I found the missing pieces of information in various places. Not only did I find the missing links to provide my client with an informed estimate, but I also read through this comprehensive Big Data report and was completely oblivious to the uncomfortable middle seat that I was sitting on. Now that’s a ton of business value made possible by the cloud!

The plane landed at Charlotte, NC where I had to transfer to White Plains, NY. I was keen on composing the email to my Business Analytics client summarizing how I had arrived at the informed estimate and the rationale. But I got hungry. So I had a nice hot and spicy Mexican meal at Tequileria at the Charlotte airport. After the meal, I boarded my next flight and slept through the short flight to my destination. The next morning, I sent the email to my client with the informed estimate and rationale.

The Advantages of a Private Cloud Mobile

 
 
IBM’s notion of providing clients capabilities to build and deploy secure private clouds and connect as needed to hybrid clouds should help security (but also very cost) conscious enterprise executives make the transition to the cloud to support their very talented mobile workforce. Beyond, the obvious transactional mobile use cases i.e. procurement, sales force automation, invoicing that improve operational efficiency, the Cloud Mobile can (as depicted in my own personal use case) facilitate a level of analysis, collaboration, productivity and innovation, that can be a source of significant competitive advantage for enterprises while nurturing their talented mobile knowledge workers.

There’s a reason why I did not put that Big Data report on a public cloud i.e. Apple’s free iCloud service. These reports and other similar content are my sources of competitive advantage and differentiation. I like to keep these secure and private and protected through several layers of security yet accessible on demand. Also, through this private cloud, I can regulate access to my many collaborators in the cloud!

Back to the Cloud Mobile. The Music and the Pulsating Moves at Pulse 2012 and More.

 
 
Maroon 5’s concert at Pulse 2012 indeed made the Cloud Mobile move like Jagger! This built on some amazing fluid cloud like dance moves we witnessed earlier in the day by a group called iLuminate. Musicians and performers too are on the cloud! Performers collaborate and rehearse constantly. They are constantly on the road and mobile. And while there are individual superstars, there is nothing like listening to a well-coordinated talented group either at a concert or in your Cloud Mobile (Automobile).

This weekend the weather was perfect in Connecticut. I had the great joy and pleasure of taking my younger twin son to his choir performance and concert in my Cloud Mobile (Car). Then we all witnessed the lovely performance of his dedicated choir culminating after weeks (and weekends) of group rehearsals and practice. It put this parent on the Cloud! And that feeling even the best IT Analyst can’t analyze! It can only be experienced – in the cloud!