networking-info

I was invited as a guest blogger to Structure 09 - a day long event by GigaOM focusing on cloud computing. It was a great event with an incredible speaker line-up of thought leaders in the domain of cloud computing. The panel and keynote topics included persistence on the cloud, hosting web apps on the cloud, infrastructure design etc. I won't attempt to summarize everything that I saw and heard, instead here are some impressions: Solving interoperability with Open Source: A founding developer of Wordpress, Matt Mullenweg , strongly advocated open source for the cloud for two reasons. The first reason is to achieve interoperability and the second is to ensure the business continuity when certain vendors cease to exist. As I have argued before there is a strong business case for open source on the cloud . It was great to see the reaffirmation that other thought leaders feel the same way. Operational excellence: Javier Soltero , CTO of Management Products at SpringSource, emphasiz...

Today, on this week's Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum webcast, Mr. Jim Borland, Special Advisor for Health IT, Office of the Commissioner, Social Security Administration (SSA), will discuss the value of health care information technology. His comments included the following: Every disability benefit claimant must have their medical records reviewed. Once the claimant authorizes medical record release, they are typically received by fax today. Fifteen million request for medical records from over 500,000 physicians and 6000 hospitals are processed every year. Health care information technology offers a tremendous opportunity to improve and automate the collection of medical records and to use decision support tools to analyse those records before a human looks at them. Improved health care IT will give the SSA the ability to make claims related decisions faster, dramatic reducing required processing time by up to one-third. A key challenge is for us to identify data stan...

During this week's Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum pre-recording, Dr. Leslie Lenert, Director, National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shared some of his thoughts on the future of health care information technology. His comments included the following: The NCPHI is focused on (1) improving the link between public health and our national clinical care systems and (2) automating public health practice. The biggest change in health care information technology is the establishment of two-way communications between public health and the health care system. Health situational awareness is crucial to our ability to monitor public health problems. We must target situational awareness so that it makes a difference in individual patient care. One key to addressing privacy and confidentiality concerns is for us to move away from "individual level" information exchange unless it benefit the specific pa...

This week pre-recording of Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum featured Linda Fischetti , Health Informatics Architect at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). During a panel discussion, her comments on VHA accomplishments and plans included: Every Veteran's Administration facility uses electronic health records today. The New England Journal of Medicine recently complimented the VA on their use of electronic health records (EHR). VHA currently has over 1400 points of care and has been using EHR for over 10 years with dramatic associated improvement in clinical health care quality. Until now, electronic health records have been provider records. The current goal is to transform that perspective into a veteran centered record. A majority of health care information is currently recorded on paper. Changing from paper to EHR represents a major challenge and expense. Clinicians must be drivers and decision makers in this health care information technology transition. The Fed...

During the pre-recording of this weeks Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum , Vish Sankaran, Program Director of Federal Health Architecture, discussed the role of information technology in improving the country’s health care system. These dialogue was great for healthcare management professionals and anyone else in the industry.  Mr. Sankaran insights on the Obama administration efforts in this area included: Significant progress has been made in the coordination of efforts between agencies with a health related mission. A clear sign of progress is the coordination between 25 different agencies in establishing the federal health records gateway Since it's release in February, the federal health records gateway has received over 46,000 unique hits and over 1300 downloads The biggest opportunity we have in health IT today is enabling information to follow the patient, which helps doctors to make better decisions Historical challenges around proprietary systems are now being o...

In covering unfolding events in Iran, the world's most powerful news outlets have been entirely dependent on the Twitter-provided flow of text, images, and video. While this has definitely showcased the power of Twitter, Facebook and You Tube as an information channel, it also prompted me to re-read some of my September 2008 blog posts: 9/9/08 The Cloud Wins in Minneapolis at the RNC! Little did I know that while I was watching the Republicans cheer their standard bearer inside the Xcel Energy Center that the cloud infrastructure was outside defeating the forces of civil obedience! From " The revolution will be Twittered ": "A free and public social-media website called Twitter, which publishes brief messages sent in from cell phones and computers, was a game-changer for protesters, organizers, and journalists covering the event. ....What developed was an ad hoc information system that provided a vast amount of first-hand accounts, insight and the opportunity for r...

I see cloud computing play a big role in enabling IT revolution in the developing nations to help companies market products and services to 4 billion consumers at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). C.K.Prahlad has extensively covered many aspects of the BOP strategy in his book Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid that is a must-read for the strategists and marketers working on the BOP strategy. This is how I think cloud computing is extremely relevant to the companies that are trying to reach to the consumers at the BOP: Logical extension to the mobile revolution: The mobile phone revolution at the BOP has changed the way people communicate in their daily lives and conduct business. Many people never had a landline and in some case no electricity. Some of them charged their mobile phones using a charger that generates electricity from a bike . As the cellular data networks become more and more mature and reliable the same consumers will have access to the Internet on their mobile phon...

Today, I start two days of training with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Federal. If that's the first time you've ever heard about an AWS Federal division, your not alone. Held in downtown Washington, DC the course was invite-only and attendance was IT services firms that had demonstrated a clear track record of success in the Federal market. The companies invited to this inaugural session were: o Abacus Technology Corp ( http://www.abacustech.com ) o Acumen Solutions, Inc. ( http://www.acumensolutions.com ) o Apptis ( http://www.apptis.com ) o Citizant ( http://www.citizant.com ) o CNSI ( http://www.cns-inc.com ) o Collabnet ( http://www.collab.net ) o Dataline ( http://www.dataline.com ) o Foxhole Technology ( http://www.foxholetechnology.com ) o IGI ( http://www.igius.com ) o Information Concepts ( http://www.infoconcepts.com ) o SE Solutions ( http://www.sesolutions.com ) o Syneractive ( http://www.synteractive.com ) o Touchstone Consulting Group ( htt...

The Twitter conversation between  Christofer Hoff and I went like this: Christofer - I haven't formally blogged a resp. (yet) to  @Kevin_Jackson on his 'maneuver warfare in IT' Not just a cultural shift but a huge tech. one Kevin - @Beaker I'm looking forward to your comments. Christofer -   @Kevin_Jackson  I want them to be constructive, so I'll do my best. I'm having trouble with the reality distortion field vs. unicorns ;) Kevin -  @Beaker  LOL I strongly recommend that you read his response titled "Cloud Computing Security: (Orchestral) Maneuvers In the Dark?" . It begins: "I enjoyed Kevin’s piece but struggled with how I might respond: cheerleader or pundit.  I tried for a bit of both." The challenges he had with my article, include: Mixing tenses in some key spots seemed to imply that out of the box today, Cloud Computing can deliver on the promises Kevin is describing now.  Given the audience, this can lead to unachievable expect...

Earlier this week I published " Cloud Computing: The Dawn of Maneuver Warfare in IT Security " via Ulitzer . In publishing the article my intent was to explore the more dynamic approach to information security offered by cloud computing. Although the conversation continues in earnest, today I would like to highlight Ben's thoughts from Iron Fog : "What about managing virus outbreaks, patch deployment and vulnerability detection? managing virus outbreaks - If I can scale my security infrastructure rapidly, I can scan my distributed filesystem and workstations, I can hunt down and remove infections - in theory I can scale my cloud rapidly enough to combat warhol-esque worms. patch deployment - if I need to force patches across my environment, I can deploy a swarm of servers that will connect to every server and workstation in my enterprise and force the patch down (after I've spun up a multiple VM's to test/socialise the patch against my standard configuration...

GigaOM has organized an exciting event on cloud computing, Structure 09 , on 06/25/2009. I will be at the event as a guest blogger and will be part of the energy and excitement. GigaOM has managed to put on an excellent schedule packed with great speakers including Marc Benioff, Michael Stonebraker, Jonathan Helliger, Greg Papadopoulos, Werner Vogels, and many others. I like the breadth of topics - cloud databases, data center design and optimization, commodity hardware, private cloud etc. I will see you there if you are planning on attending the event and if not come back here for blog posts covering the event. Leave a comment if you would like to see any specific topics or sessions covered. Here is a lineup of the speakers: Keynotes Marc Benioff | Chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com Paul Sagan | President and CEO, Akamai Confirmed Speakers Include: Werner Vogels | CTO, Amazon.com Greg Papadopoulos | CTO, Sun Microsystems Jonathan Heiliger | VP Technical Operations, Facebook ...

On the 17 & 18 June, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) will present the premiere Innovative Solutions Showcase. Titled " Unleashing the Crowd in the Cloud: Igniting the Innovation Insurgency ", this event will be held at the NRO in Chantilly, Virginia. The theme will focus on collaboration and information sharing with an emphasis on innovation and mission-enabling applications that address challenges and opportunities across the National Security Enterprise. According to the event website , the current rise in the use of Web 2.0 social media has spawned innovative and unorthodox approaches to meet the demands of today's global and highly mobile workforce. The data-driven web has morphed into a user-centric web, with increasingly empowered users who are accustomed to and demand self-service and highly customizable experiences. An expected highlight will be a demonstration of " Apps for Democracy " by Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO. Other speakers include: M...

Last week the Trezza Media Group , Flyzik Group and Federal News Radio combined to produce an outstanding Federal Executive Forum on Secure Cloud Computing . Moderated by Jim Flyzik, panelist included: Henry Sienkiewcz-Technical Program Director, Computer Services, Defense Information Systems Agency  Mr. Ronald Bechtold-Army Architecture Integration Center, at Headquarters, Department of the Army, Chief Information Office/G6  Curt Aubley-Technology Officer CTO Operations & Next Generation Solutions, Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Services Dale Wickizer-Chief Technology Officer-Public Sector, NetApp, Inc. Aileen Black- Vice President of Public Sector, VMware Inc. Key points I gleaned from the discussion include: Cloud Computing has provided an inflection point in government information technology that is changing the paradigm for delivering services The biggest challenge to adopting cloud computing is in re-educating the workplace.  The reduction is cost and incr...