February 5th, 2010 by Valerie Barber
The new Heinz “Dip & Squeeze” ketchup packet has nothing to do with our usual postings on network management or cloud computing, but if you saw this news, you were probably as happy as I was. They are set to hit restaurants this year.
Now on to the exciting stuff…
Earlier this week, President Obama requested nearly $80 billion for federal IT spending in fiscal year 2011. The number of major IT projects increased to 809 from 781. Obama wants IT efforts related to open government and technology modernization to continue and he acknowledges that consumer technology is ahead of the federal government’s technology. Some White House initiatives include the continued rollout of less intensive and less expensive cloud computing technologies and are seeking ways to reduce the number and cost of federal data centers and reduce the time and effort required to acquire IT. Vivek Kundra said the government will be making a “major shift” to cloud solutions this year and he’s asked the CIOs at Treasury and DHS to lead the effort in consolidating the government’s more than 1,200 data centers.
New specialization for IT jobs is yet another example of the silver lining in cloud computing. The top 10 best IT jobs right now include:
- Security specialist/ethical hacker with the skill sets to better secure their environments
- Virtual systems manager – look for certification programs around virtual skills
- Capacity manager – help optimize resources and accurately assign financial value to technology resources
- Network engineer
- Open source specialist
- Service assurance manager to identify potential problems and optimize performance
- Sourcing specialist to make the choices on when to use SaaS. Cloud computing, managed services, outsourcing, etc.
- Service catalog manager, as enterprises IT operates more like a service provider
Microsoft’s Azure Drive, a service that allows businesses to run existing Windows applications in Microsoft’s cloud environment through standard Windows NTFS APIs. The plans start at $0.12 per hour.
Speaking of pennies, Amazon has lowered the pricing for outbound data transfer by $0.02 across all its services, usage tiers and regions.
A new cloud calculator allows federal agencies quantify their potential cloud savings. It compares the different cloud model options, including private, community and public, to determine the suitability and financial impact of their cloud model choice. With lots of talk of the cloud coming to the federal government, this tool lets agencies get a feel for the cloud economics before they spend their money.
As more enterprises move to the cloud, I found some good basic principles for ensuring security: Improve cloud security in your enterprise.
- Learn from existing, internal security processes that apply to shared services like authentication, provisioning, database services and data centers
- Assess the risk and importance of moving various services to the cloud
- Study the different cloud models and categories
- Start thinking like a cloud provider
- Get familiar with and start using Web security standards now
Oracle released its plan on how it will integrate Sun’s hardware and software into its product lineup and CEO Larry Ellison’s comments led to this sharp reaction from IBM:
“Someone said they should have called his routine ‘Larry the Fable Guy’. I can’t believe some of the stupid—and ignorant—things he said.”
Bernie Spang, IBM’s director of product strategy
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February 5th, 2010
January 29th, 2010 by Valerie Barber
So, your CEO/CIO wants to know why you’re not in the cloud. If you are being careful before jumping on the bandwagon, here are five points you may need to draw upon to dampen the hype surrounding the cloud:
- Not everyone’s in the cloud (yet). Interest is high and there is great momentum, but the numbers show that it’s still in the early adopter stage.
- Learn first, then deploy. Understand the risks and capabilities.
- Learn by putting pilot projects in the cloud, offloading some jobs and letting our IT staff get some experience
- Concerns, including security, reliability and lock-ins
- You’re already there via SasS
A recent survey shows that 80% of network and security operations professionals feel they are not adequately monitoring network segments, application performance or IT service delivery. Despite heavy investment in monitoring tools, the survey indicates challenges in establishing and optimizing network traffic access, translating into operational risks that will only grow over time. Some of the findings:
- 43% indicated a shortage/inability to share span ports or taps for monitoring tools
- 66% lack sufficient monitoring tools and tools budgets
- 75% reported monitoring tools are not optimally deployed
- 47% reported monitoring tools were underutilized
- 25% reported tools were overloaded and dropping packets
“Nearly a quarter of our research group (24%) reported they either lack the staff to keep up with monitoring tasks or the training within existing staff to keep up with administration or interpretation. This situation results from both current and ongoing budgetary pressures as well as a trend (identified by 62%) of staff moving toward more generalist roles, reducing the availability of technical specialists.”
EMA report “Monitoring Optimization 2010”
Nearly half of the U.S. CIOs surveyed by Gartner expect the recession to continue well into 2010. 23% believe business budgets will stabilize and 26% see some recovery and growth. Just 4% predict revenue growth in 2010 above the levels of 2008.
To counter the predicted decrease in the number of skilled IT workers, Gartner is advising CIOs to recruit from outside the IT team, with more CIOs coming from “the business” and with more “users” taking control of their own delivery infrastructure. Some new roles that Gartner predicts will soon fall under the IT umbrella:
- Litigation support managers who will execute discovery exercises for litigators and mediate between legal and IT departments
- Digital archivists who have expertise to access, appraise and preserve records
- Business information managers who have a combined expertise in business and information management
“Over the next two years, business demand for IT-driven growth and innovation will outstrip the supply of qualified people to fulfill job roles and, as a result, traditional IT tasks are moving outside the IT department.”
Debra Logan, Gartner
A quick factoid: people still use short, simple passwords, almost guaranteeing the success of brute force password attacks. Passwords that were compromised in two breaches (Hotmail and Rock You) were analyzed, revealing that in both cases, “123456” was the most common password along with other common arrangements like “qwerty”.
Thank goodness the Winter Olympics will provide a much needed distraction for NBC at 10PM. Even so, I think this article sums up some solid management lessons that can be drawn from the recent drama surrounding the Tonight Show:
Career progression is crucial to retaining top talent. Employees need opportunities to advance – if not here, then there.
- Succession planning is important. Figure out who is likely to retire and have someone in mind to train as their replacement.
- If you’re going to fire someone, just do it already. There’s always the potential that a disgruntled ex-employee will wreak havoc.
- Don’t trash your employee to others – handle disputes in private.
- Don’t send mixed messages – show confidence in the new hire by moving the replaced person out of the way.
While we’re on this, here’s an article from 1994 detailing the history of Leno v. Letterman and how Jay Leno became the host of The Tonight Show.
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January 29th, 2010
January 22nd, 2010 by Valerie Barber
The $7.4 billion Oracle-Sun deal received approval from the European Commission, effectively ensuring Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The deal was announced many moons ago and the US government approved it on August 20, 2009. However, the EC took another five months to perform due diligence to insure the deal would not deter free trade in the 27-country European Union, where 20% of Oracle’s business comes from. The merger still needs approval from regulators in Russia and China (and Michael Widenius, creator of the MySQL database is still opposed), but Oracle said it expects “unconditional approval” from those countries and that it “intends to close the transaction shortly.”
For Government IT, 2010 is expected to be the year for building out strategies to deliver on many of the technologies and philosophies of 2009. Under the direction of the US’s first federal CIO Aneesh Chooprah and the first federal CTO Vivek Kundra, here are some of the predictions fro Government IT in 2010, which seem right on the mark.
- Cybersecurity – despite more reports of breaches, the Department of Homeland Security will make strides toward a solidified cyber offense and defense strategy for both the government and civilians.
- Cloud Computing – The federal government will push data center consolidation, forcing more agencies to think about their own private clouds. GSA’s cloud will provide more shared services via a private cloud.
- IT Procurement – while there are significant changes planned in how agencies buy and deploy IT, concerns around transparency and cybersecurity are stumbling blocks. No-bid contracts and on-the-fly installations are quick, but can hide the details of government spending and include security shortcuts.
Gartner predicts that by 2010, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets, dumping or foregoing assets as they move to the cloud and increase their use of virtualization technologies. As hardware ownership shifts to third parties, they predict major shifts throughout all of the IT hardware industry, which will impact IT careers. Read all of for IT in 2010.
“For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more strategic projects; enterprise staff will be either reduced or re-skilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points.”
Gartner’s key predictions for IT in 2010
VMware’s VMware Go, a tool aimed a making virtualization easier for small- and medium-sized businesses, has been released from beta. VMware Go automates the installation and configuration of the ESXi hypervisor, eliminating the skill and resources barrier SMBs may face. VMware Go is free.
Want to connect to the White House? There’s an app for that. Just in time for the State of the Union address, you can get a free iPhone app that streams live video from the White House, links to the White House blog and the briefing room. Up next: mobile.WhiteHouse.gov, a mobile-ready version of WhiteHouse.gov.
Finally, I came across the “8 IT personality types” that I found pretty funny – probably because I fit one profile and have witnessed all of the others. My favorites:
- The Empty Suit – has memorized most of the important acronyms the surfs Wikipedia after the meeting to find out what everyone was talking about. (Isn’t that what Wikipedia is for?)
- The Scary Sys Admin – your company can’t run without him and he knows it. He’s a good guy, but if you get on his bad side you may be locked out of your computer and possibly your bank accounts.
- The Angry Support Drone – will do what you ask, but no more. Install the printer – yes. Test it to see that it works – no – you just asked to have it installed.
- The Human Roadblock – whatever task or project, the response is, “It can’t be done”. Followed by a painful explanation of why it will fail and ending with “It was a stupid idea to begin with”.
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January 22nd, 2010
January 21st, 2010 by Valerie Barber
Looking to close the technology gap between the public and private sectors, the White House hosted the White House Forum on Modernizing Government, bringing together many top US CEOs and Deputy Secretaries from government agencies. Chief Performance Office Jeffrey Zients noted that one reason for the forum was to allow public agencies to leverage on the leaps in technology that the private sector has made in recent years. “We wanted to find out how they did it,” he said. The forum included breakout sessions on transforming customer service, streamlining operations and maximizing technology ROI.
Federal CIO Vivek Kundra cited a number of improvements over the past year, but also identified some systems that still need to be overhauled, like the paper-based processes for the Veterans Administration’s claims processing and the Patent and Trademark Office that prints and scans applications that it receives electronically. “Today is about unearthing the best ideas in the country,” he said.
Many of the suggestions and input are posted, with more to come, including:
- A critical need for standardization in software and data centers
- A warning about costly customization, when commercial-off-the-shelf solutions often suffices
- Centralizing the federal government’s IT budget
- Requiring periodic IT investment reviews
- Collecting citizen feedback on government services
- Benchmarking
- Breaking big IT projects into smaller chunks
President Obama kicked off the meeting by directing the Office of Management and Budget to provide federal agencies with a plan – including firm milestones and ownership and accountability requirements – to implement some of the CEO’s ideas gathered during the forum.
See who participated on each of the panels.
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January 21st, 2010
January 19th, 2010 by Valerie Barber
With software sales expected to increase 9.7% worldwide, along with a strong rebound in computer hardware sales of 8.2%, Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels says the tech recession is over. The tech recovery in the US is expected to be much stronger than the overall economic recovery, with tech spending growing at more than twice the rate of this year’s gross domestic product. While this is good news, I like Forrester’s note that “smart computing” – a combination of advanced hardware and software technologies that drives new levels of automation and efficiency – will result in a six- to seven-year growth cycle for IT spending.
“New technologies of awareness married to advanced business intelligence analytics make computing smart. Smart Computing rests on new foundation technologies such as service-oriented architecture, server and storage virtualization, cloud computing and unified communications. 2010 marks the beginning of this next phase of technology advancement.”
Andrew Bartels
While this is good news that falls in line with the mainstreaming of virtualization and the momentum of cloud computing, it faces the realities of recent surveys that show data centers are understaffed and the growing difficulty in hiring qualified staff. The good news is IT blogger Paul Venezia feels that IT is getting too easy because everything “just works”, and when it doesn’t, you Google the problem to find someone who’s posted a resolution. Let’s hope there’s a rapid convergence of talent and resources that catches up to the opportunities of Smart Computing.
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January 19th, 2010
January 15th, 2010 by Valerie Barber
While we all like to “do the right thing”, we can take comfort in knowing that the added benefit of saving greenbacks is still a strong motivator – even in making decisions about going green. In its quarterly report on Green IT, Forrester has found that saving money is the motivating factor for implementing Green IT solutions. Respondents said they are interested in driving down energy costs (66%) and reducing other IT-related expenses (42%). Just 16% said regulatory compliance was the driver. The report indicates a renewed focus on green technologies as the recession begins to ease.
With data centers accounting for about 3% of all energy consumed in the U.S., it’s no wonder the Department of Energy has granted $47 million in stimulus money (that will be matched by $70 million in private industry donations) to find ways to make data centers more green. The money will be distributed among 14 projects whose goal is to improve data center efficiency through innovative components, better power supplies and improved cooling technologies. Award winners include Yahoo, HP and SeaMicro.
“Our goal is to double the energy efficiency in data centers within five years,” Brad Wurtz, President and CEO of Power Assure that was awarded $5 million in DOE grant money
Greenpeace awarded HP its “Best in Show” at last week’s CES for its 8000f Elite Ultra Slim Desktop PC that has a host of environmentally friendly features. HP has come a long way since Greenpeace staged a protest last year that included painting “Hazardous Products” on the roof of the headquarters building and William Shatner’s voicemail to employees asking about HP’s promise of a toxic-free computer by 2009. Now Greenpeace is on Samsung, who they say is tailing leaders like Apple and Sony in phasing out toxic chemicals in its products.
Just as data centers are becoming more complex and harder to manage, a Symantec survey finds a large number of IT executives report that their data centers are understaffed. With 31% reporting a reduction in headcount in 2009, 16% of respondents said they are extremely understaffed and 34% said somewhat understaffed. Most companies reported having trouble finding enough money and enough qualified applicants to maintain healthy IT staff levels. Some of the cost-saving strategies include cross-training IT staff, automating routine tasks, server virtualization and consolidation, data center consolidation, chargeback, cloud computing and outsourcing. View the report here.
On January 28, 2010, the Federal Trade Commission is hosting a public roundtable discussion, “Exploring Privacy”, on the privacy challenges of cloud computing and other 21st century technologies. You can listen to the webcast as they discuss protecting consumer privacy while supporting beneficial uses of the information and technological innovation.
Mark your calendars now so you won’t forget to celebrate some notable 25th anniversaries in 2010. In addition to the Cray-2, registration of the first domain name (symbolics.com), free software and the MIT Media Lab, other notables that hit the quarter-century milestone include:
- AOL
- “Back to the Future”
- Blockbuster stores
- New Coke
- Discovery Channel
- Windows 1.0
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January 15th, 2010
January 15th, 2010 by Julia Lim
USS Carl Vinson
Want to know how you can help Haiti? Check out Facebook.
The federal government is using the social media tool to communicate a variety of ways in which it’s responding to the crisis in Haiti and how you can get involved. The State Department’s Facebook page provides contact information for people wanting to donate money, provide assistance or find US citizens in Haiti.
Even the Twitter crowd is getting into the act, tweeting about the USS Carl Vinson which was dispatched to support relief efforts. And Facebook itself has set up a site to help its members find ways to help.
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January 15th, 2010
January 8th, 2010 by Valerie Barber
Happy 75th Elvis!
Happy New Year!
Man, it is cold!
On the heels of a year that saw numerous, high-profile outages from major providers, it’s not surprising that analysts predict that SLAs will be coming to the cloud in 2010. That’s just one of the tech predictions for this year. Other cloud-related predictions include in-cloud encryption to address cloud security concerns, as well as the rise of private/dedicated clouds due to fears of multi-tenancy. In general, a modest recovery in IT and telecommunications industry is predicted, fueled by surging demand in emerging markets, the growing impact of the cloud services model and the explosion of mobile devices and applications.
I’ve seen 2010 hailed as the “year of the cloud”, but it appears there is still a long way to go in getting IT professionals on the same page when it comes to defining and understanding what the cloud actually is. In a survey of 200 IT professionals, 40% said they were confused by the term and its many definitions. A third thought it was mostly hype and 24% “weren’t sure”. This confusion could stall enterprise adoption of cloud computing technologies, especially since just 10% said their finance directors could accurately define the term and 59% thought their chief executive could not. Over a year ago at The 451 Group Client Conference we covered the debate about defining the cloud. IT workers foggy about cloud computing.
Here’s a good take on how the government will address security concerns as it expands its use of cloud computing in 2010. Instead of trying to “protect everything”, there will be a shift to prioritizing security controls based on whether the data presents low, moderate or high levels of risk, allowing more government agencies to move less-sensitive data that generally is made available to the public into cloud computing environments. This strategy will pave the way toward migrating more sensitive data to the cloud as new security models and solutions emerge.
I like the high-tech hype machine list that gives a hype status and commentary:
- Cloud computing: climbing
- Green computing: overhyped but still valuable
- Telepresence: overhyped and growing (but coming to your home?)
- Unified communications: overhyped but facing reality
What are IT’s most important priorities?
- 33% – increase use of server virtualization
- 28% – information security initiatives
- 27% – improve data backup and recovery
- 27% – upgrade network infrastructure
Finally, here’s some irony – the parent company of foreclosure.com has filed for bankruptcy. At least it happened last year!
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January 8th, 2010
December 31st, 2009 by Valerie Barber
Wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous New Year!
A recent survey of CIOs shows that 43% feel their IT departments are understaffed in relation to their workload. A separate Gartner survey of senior business executives finds that 62% recognize that “IT-enabled changes will be a key element in their post-recession strategy”. While these two findings conflict, Gartner’s survey also shows that CIO priorities have shifted from 2009’s cost cutting to 2010’s focus on revenue growth. The shift to growing revenue could be an opportunity for IT leaders to position themselves and their staffs as key comp0nents to the rebuilding plan that could also signal the need for new hires.
With all of the daily cloud news over the past year, it’s no surprise that a number of IDC’s top 10 tech predictions are cloud-related. Number one is maturing of the cloud with improved SLAs and business continuity/disaster recovery that are expected to be the “killer apps” for the cloud in 2010.
As cloud computing continues to mature, 10 big cloud trends have been identified that will help drive enterprise adoption:
- Price drops as aggressive commodity pricing continues
- Simpler cloud pricing models including all-you-can-eat
- Enterprise application vendors embrace metering for easier tracing of usage
- Enterprise-grade SLAs of 99.9% or better
- New cloud technologies that improve use and performance, including tools to help reduce the cost of “on-boarding,” or moving applications into the cloud.
- Security concerns (the #1 inhibitor to cloud adoption) addressed
- Ubiquitous performance monitoring
- Open standards for cloud computing advance. “For cloud computing to really take off, it has to be open. Cloud providers will have to allow movement between clouds and interoperability, as well as enabling disaster recovery between clouds,” said Emil Sayegh, general manager of cloud for Rackspace US Inc.
- Politics will drive decisions. Cloud decisions will increasingly be made with an eye on politics and not by IT managers. The Los Angeles City Council’s approval of a $7.25 million, five-year deal with Google Apps engaged the mayor and city council in a very public debate about cloud services.
- Decentralized IT decision making; for example, the federal app store allows U.S. government employees to order services and tools without necessarily having to go through an IT approval process for each and every action.
More on last week’s appointment of Howard Schmidt as the White House cybersecurity coordinator… Schmidt will report to John Brennan, assistant to the presidnet for homeland security and counterterrorism. One of Schmidt’s challenges will be to ensure that sensitive information is secure while at the same time stimulating innovation and coordinating the efforts of civilian and military agencies.
No one end of the decade list is definitive, but here are seven tech advances (compiled by GCN) that show just how far we’ve come in just 10 years. While everything on this list seems mundane or routine, remember: 10 years ago they were not. I’m excited to see what the next decade brings:
- GPS devices – in 2000, the DoD began allowing accurate positioning information leading to GPS on/as handheld devices and in cars, phones, PCs, etc.
- Smartphones – from Blackberry to Treo to iPhone to Droid and continuing…
- Open source – now the mainstream (Firefox, Google Chrome, Linux)
- Web 2.0 technologies
- Flash memory – may even replace hard drives in laptops and PCs
- WiFi – anytime, anywhere Internet!
- XML languages – if it involves storing, identifying, moving or sharing data, particularly via the Web, XML is in the mix
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December 31st, 2009
December 24th, 2009 by Valerie Barber
Not surprisingly, given the rapid adoption of virtualization and the emergence of cloud computing, managing the virtual environment is #2 on Denise Dubie’s list of must-have IT management technologies for 2010, behind service assurance. Despite the buzz around cloud management, without support for heterogeneous virtual systems and advanced features to manage performance and capacity, there is no cloud management.
“Virtualization and automation technologies are directly related to the cloud. Virtual servers comprise the computing environment, and automation is responsible for the cloud being monitoring, management, secured and made compliant.”
Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates
As Julia noted in her post from the Gartner Data Center conference, virtualization has gone from emerging to mainstream at light speed and leads the way to cloud computing.
Kudos to Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, named Chief of the Year by Information Week. Since taking the post in March of this year, Kundra has led the charge to fulfill President Obama’s promise of transparency in the federal government by opening the government’s databases to the public while ensuring security, privacy, confidentiality and data quality. Download the report and read his plans for cloud computing, cybersecurity and engaging the public via the web.
It seems like December is the time to close the loop on stories we’ve been following for a while. Howard Schmidt, who worked as chief security officer at Microsoft and was chief information security officer at eBay has been named Cybersecurity Coordinator. Schmidt served as the former cybersecurity advisor in the Bush administration and served in the Air Force. It took seven months for the position to be filled, with many reportedly declining the job offer due to its lack of authority.
Here’s a great example of the power and influence of social media (think David vs. Goliath). HP has responded to a YouTube video that declares HP computers are racist. I know it sounds crazy, but watch the video – it’s pretty funny. According to “Black Desi” (as he calls himself) and “White Wanda”, the facial recognition webcam fails to follow Desi but follows Wanda. Just watch the video! HP has acknowledged the problem and is investigating. In the meantime, Tony Welch, the lead social media strategist for HP’s Personal Systems Group, suggests users visit the HP Webcam optimization center.
“We believe that the camera might have difficulty ’seeing’ contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”
Tony Welch, HP
To round out the decade, a few more lists:
Top 10 Business Stories of the Decade
- Dot-com bubble bust – NASDAQ bottoms out at 1114 in October 2002
- 9/11 terrorist attacks – the NYSE fell 14.3%
- Enron scandal, Oct. 2001 - shareholders and investors lose billions
- China’s economic strength after joining the World Trade Organization in Nov. 2001
- Federal Reserve cuts key interest rate to 1% in June 2003
- Google – went public and raised $1.67 billion in 2004
- Housing bubble burst of 2007
- Bear market of 2007
- Oil and gas prices – $147 for a barrel of crude = $4 a gallon for gas
- Wall Street Meltdown on September 15, 2008, when Lehman Brother became the largest bankruptcy in American history
Did I Do That? The Top 10 Mistakes of the Decade:
- “Nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme,” a tipster wrote about Bernard Madoff in 2000
- “Mission Accomplished” – George Bush, 2003
- The 2009 photo shoot over Manhattan of a low-flying Air Force One shadowed by a fighter plane
- Balloon Boy
- If I Did It,” O.J. Simpson’s book about the murders in 2006
- Dick Cheney shooting his hunting buddy – 2006
- S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s visits to Buenos Aires via the Appalachian Trail in 2009 and NY crime-fighting Gov. Eliot Spitzer dubbed “Client-9″ in a hooker’s black book (2008).
- Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction – 2004
- California’s energy crisis (helped along by Enron) 2000 – 2001
- $100 million for “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” starring Eddie Murphy – 2002
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December 24th, 2009
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