networking-info

I am a greentech enthusiast and I have been closely following the greentech VC investment landscape. The VCs like Kleiner Perkins who have had a large greentech portfolio including companies such as Bloom Energy are scaling down on greentech investment . Their current investment is not likely to get any returns close to what a VC would expect. The fundamental challenge with such greentech (excluding software) investment is that they are open ended capital-intensive; you just don't know home much time it would take to build the technology/product, how much it would cost, and how much you would be able to sell it for. The market fluctuations make things even worse. This is not only true in the case of start-ups but also true for the large companies; Applied Materials' grand plan to revolutionize thin-film solar business ended up in a bust .   There's a different way to approach this monumental challenge. Just look at how open source has evolved. It started out as non-commerc...

As my long time readers have certainly noticed, the frequency of my posts have lengthened over the past few months. First, I would like to offer my apologies for being remiss in that department but I have had some extenuating circumstances. For over three years I have been closely observing and actively participating in the government's transition to cloud computing. Many of my observations, experiences and insights have been revealed through " Cloud Musings ", " Cloud Musings on Forbes " and in my first book " GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government ". In parallel, I have also been designing strategies, building processes and creating transition tools all designed to reduce the risk and increase the value of cloud transformation projects. The culmination of my personal efforts and those of the entire team here at NJVC have now all been folded into our new brand for cloud computing operational excellence - Cloudcuity™ Cloudcuity™ offer...

I am in India visiting a large customer who has heavily invested into organized retail stores, a relatively new category for the Indian market. Their head of analytics shared some details of their last promotion with me. They ran an email promotion to send out coupons that were valid on one and only one day -15th August, the Independence Day of India, which is a holiday in the country. They were really bold to take out a page-long ad in all large newspapers on the 15th August highlighting this promotion. Their sales, in all regions, soared on that day. It not only soared but broke all their previous records. They registered the highest sale in that year which was more than the Diwali sale. In the American terms, they managed to sell more on 4th July than on the Black Friday. This shocked me. I analyzed their efforts further to better understand this behavior. Indians in India don't drink beer, barbecue, or watch fireworks on the Independence Day. In fact they don't do anything....

Vienna, Va., Sept. 13, 2012 — NJVC®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces Cloudcuity™, a new framework for the company’s cloud service offerings to help customers transition their technology applications to a cloud environment while cutting spending, improving process and billing efficiencies and complying with a myriad of regulatory and security requirements. The first service being introduced under the framework is the Cloudcuity Management Portal —the first commercial, multi-cloud broker service specifically designed to support federal government customers. “Cloudcuity is not your typical cloud service,’” said Jody Tedesco, NJVC president. “This family of NJVC cloud capabilities, beginning with the Cloudcuity Management Portal, is designed for technology decision makers who must deploy IT applications to the cloud with transparency for managing risk and governance under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program...

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...