networking-info

It's unfortunate that despite of the popularity of social networks and plenty of other services that leverage network effects, the review and recommendation systems that are supposed to help users make the right decisions haven't changed much. Thumbs-up and thumbs-down or likes and unlikes signal two things: popularity and polarization. If a YouTube video has 400 thumbs-up and 500 thumbs-down it means that the video is popular as well as polarized, but it doesn't tell me whether I will like it or not. The star review system also signals two things - on average how good something is and whether it's significant or not. There are multiple problems with this approach. An item with 8 reviews, all 5 stars, could be really bad compared to an item that has 300 reviews with 3.5 stars. Star ratings alone, without associated descriptive reviews, wouldn't make much sense if there aren't enough people who have reviewed the item. Also, relying on an average rating alone coul...

VIENNA, Va., Aug. 15, 2012 — NJVC ® announces the release of NJVC SaaS Accelerate, a specialized infrastructure hosting and managed services offering designed to support the business needs of software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. Launched as part of NJVC’s broader managed and cloud hosting infrastructure-as-a-service offerings, SaaS Accelerate simplifies infrastructure management decisions for customers, and offers a tiered array of marketing support services focused on driving software utilization and customer success. “Cloud-based applications from SaaS suppliers are revolutionizing the software industry,” said Jody Tedesco , NJVC president. “NJVC SaaS Accelerate is designed to support these innovative enterprises with an array of customizable infrastructure support and business development services that can reduce the burden of maintaining a robust and secure infrastructure, while simultaneously helping companies access valuable business development support to help ...

What if a cricket team gets two batsmen to replace Sachin Tendulkar and still collectively get 100 runs out of them or have two not-so-great bowlers to replace Shane Warne and still get the other side out? If an eventual goal is to score, say 300+ runs in an ODI match does it matter how the runs are scored? What if you could find four players scoring 50 runs each instead of counting on Sehwag and Tendulkar types to score a century and lose miserably when they don't? This is not how people think when it comes to cricket. That's also not how people used to think when it came to baseball until Billy Beane applied radical thinking to baseball, sabermetrics , now popularly known as Moneyball . On Base Percentage (OBP) became one of the most important metrics since then. As yet another provocative aspect of Moneyball suggests, only thing that matters is whether a hitter puts a ball in play or not. Once the ball is in play the hitter does not control the outcome of that play. In cr...

Late last week  the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) released an important whitepaper that reviewed it's multi-year Pilot Texas Cloud Offering (PTCO) . This project was designed to allow a small group of agencies to choose a virtual private cloud-based infrastructure as a service from a marketplace of service providers made available by a cloud broker. For this project, Texas DIR selected Gravitant and it's cloudMatrix technology . Gravitant’s self-service web portal, Texas Cloud Self-Service Portal (TCSP), allowed participating agencies to manage and support all phases of the engagement from solutioning to provisioning, operations and capacity management, and decommissioning. Gravitant also provided extensive architecture and solution support. Gravitant , as the cloud broker, established, negotiated, and governed the reseller agreements with the individual cloud service providers. They maintained a catalog of services, line items, and prices associated with eac...

Kudos to my colleague Lynn DeCourcey for her recent interview on  ExecutiveBiz.com! Lynn is NJVC vice president and general manager, cyber security. She oversees all aspects of the company’s cyber security business unit, including the creation of technically advanced and state-of-the-art cyber innovations, solutions and strategies to develop new business and financial performance. In her online interview , she discusses how her team is bringing innovation to the marketplace everyday. Before undertaking this new role in the company, Ms. DeCourcey was Deputy Director, Cyber Security, for one of the company’s Intelligence Community customers. She led the effort to support the most successful Defense Information Systems Agency Command Cyber Readiness Inspection in the history of that particular contract. Under her leadership, Ms. DeCourcey’s team also developed the NJVC “ Cyber Dashboard ”—a “single-view” threat and vulnerability situational awareness console. The Cyber Dashboa...