Every enterprise, big or small, knows that cloud computing is going to be part of their business. Small companies use it every time they turn to QuickBooks Online, Google mail, or a hosted Exchange server. Large companies are increasingly being attracted by the promise of zero hardware costs and ease of deployment. Yet there’s still fear about moving into the cloud, mainly because of the changes a business must address in order to embrace virtualization. Change hurts, and it hurts businesses more, at least in the short term — and businesses will always be concerned about the cost of change versus the benefits.
Recently, one of the most important voices on information management entered the discussion on cloud security. At a forum on Capitol Hill, Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama to the post of the United States Chief Information Officer, commented that fears around cloud security have been exaggerated to slow change, at both business and Federal government level, saying, “A lot of people are sort of driving this notion of fear around security. And the reason I think that’s been amplified, frankly, is because it preserves the status quo.”
Security and access control to any cloud computing environment definitely tops the list of arguments against cloud technology — especially when a firm considers moving critical data into the cloud. When companies entrust their data to a cloud service provider (CSP) they are effectively handing over their most precious asset. Giving control of your own data to someone else seems a little risky.
Taking the question of security further, it’s apparent that the cloud is still a long way from having a generic security construct. CSPs are building their own policies, procedures, and security systems. In other words, not only do they have the keys to the warehouse, but they built the lock, and the building. How much can a business afford to put their trust in their CSP? As cloud technology matures this will become less of a concern, especially if we see standards or Government oversight. Until then, it’s entirely up to the business to do the due diligence and ultimately make a decision regarding the trustworthiness of their CSP.
These are fundamentally fears of change, not fear of the technology itself. Several recent studies have pointed out that businesses running their own Information Technology (IT) departments have more security issues and maintenance issues than comparable cloud-based offerings. This makes perfect sense. Google, for example, has a very large and very good staff dedicated to the domain of systems security. Their server farms are world-renowned in performance, scalability, and very-near-perfect availability. In contrast to this, small and medium businesses cannot afford to put the same resources on security. Businesses running their own servers see more failures related to poor security policy, inadequate firewall systems, missing disaster recovery plans, and related problems — all of which frequently stem from not having enough staff, or the right staff, that are qualified to protect the network. The payoff is clear: It makes sense to turn these operations over to someone else, someone who’s job is to focus on security, availability, and disaster recovery.
This doesn’t mean that cloud-based systems are any more or less intrinsically secure than traditional hardware solutions. But it is a different kind of security, and rife with its own subtle nuances and needs.
Business aren’t only concerned with the hands-on issues of moving to the cloud. Another leading point of contention in the cloud-versus-Infrastructure debate is service and, specifically, your CSP’s service level agreement (SLA). To a business, full-time, reliable access to data is critical.
Today’s cloud vendors are almost uniform in providing little to no guarantee of service in their SLA’s, in some cases quite clearly spelling out a zero-liability and zero-recourse contract if something goes wrong. In contrast, traditional infrastructure often provides a better guarantee of service — either through service agreements with local hosting providers or through staffing. Businesses are right to be concerned about data availability, server uptime, and guaranteed access. A business needs its data, it’s web site, and its customer facing systems to be working at all times. Fortunately, cloud vendors are beginning to offer higher levels of service — at a correspondingly higher cost (some vendors, such as Rackspace, have started to roll out multi-tier service plans).
As with security, businesses would be wise to take a close look at real costs and their own history of service. When comparing the costs of trying to achieve near-100% service availability, most cloud-based vendors do a better job, at a lower price. For example, a recent comparison of Amazon Web Services actual availability figures showed in excess of 99.99% server availability. That’s an extremely good ratio, and very costly to otherwise achieve. Businesses looking to guarantee similar results will have to look into 24-hour staffing, redundant hardware, extremely thorough backup systems, multi-site installations, and a comprehensive disaster recovery plan — and even then, chances are they won’t be able to beat Amazon’s actual track record.
While the SLA itself may look frightening, the fact is cloud vendors know security, and availability of service is their lifeblood. Poor performance will mean disgruntled customers and failure in the market.
The long-term benefits of cloud computing are becoming more and more clear. Ubiquitous access to our data, offloading the high costs of security, management, and availability, and just being able to focus business resources on core competencies instead of IT operations are a few of them. As the industry matures, businesses will find themselves eschewing the overhead of infrastructure, just as we now rely on public utilities or the phone company to provide service. The cloud will become the standard in business process management. But it will take time to happen, with early adopters leading the way.
Businesses need to take note of this. By all means, don’t jump in if you don’t want to. But remember that cloud computing will save a lot of money for everyone, IT operations being just one potential big-ticket to savings. And security? Mr. Kundra’s points are well taken. Business need to be conscious of security, but also practical. Once we weigh the costs against the benefits, the long-term winner is clear.
The truth is, the cloud computing industry is young. It’s immature. It’s like a little kid compared to long-standing, mature industries that we’re used to outsourcing to, such as the phone company. It will grow, but this will take time. And growth brings growing pains.
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Contributing author Sahail Ashraf is the Founder of Talented Internet, a Web marketing company. He is also a freelance writer and contributing author at Hyrax University.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
Non-consumer businesses may have been missing out on the recent explosion of the social media phenomenon. Discovering how B2B and OEM sector businesses could put rapidly growing social networks to use has for the most part been elusive. That’s about to change.
There’s no denying that social media is experiencing unprecedented growth. It’s changing how we do business, how we communicate, how we market to our customers, and even how our government’s govern. Social media is affecting change on a global scale. So exactly why should non-consumer businesses be interested in social media? Is the social media landscape really going to affect how we operate our company?
Businesses are already realizing dramatic changes fueled by the social media substrate. But it’s probably not in the way you might expect.
What matters to business operations is efficiency and decision making. Social media is driving two huge trends, and we’re going to see more of each in 2011 and beyond. On the one hand we have rapidly accelerating speed of communication. On the other, the proliferation of new information that can keep us informed about our customers, data that until recently either didn’t exist, or wasn’t accessible.
Social media has taken off at an unprecedented pace, feeding on its own growth. What once took weeks, then days, then hours to relay around the world now takes seconds. Video is shared across the world almost instantly, as we’ve seen with dozens of shaky Youtube video downloads of revolution in Northern Africa. Customer backlash can hit hard and fast, as Groupon learned after its Super Bowl XLV commercial ignited so much controversy. And people are telling their friends what they like, and what they don’t like, through online services such as Facebook and Apple’s Pulse, a service that’s building a social network around purchases on iTunes.
All of these preferences, likes, and dislikes translate into data. All of the social interactions taking place in the web become transactions that can potentially be analyzed.
Until very recently, this kind of data simply didn’t exist or, when it did, it was expensive and typically very narrowly focused. Lengthy surveys sometimes captured the mood of the public, and carefully conducted analytics could predict a particular business segment’s popularity. But in most cases, the data was slow to accumulate, relatively costly to analyze, and incomplete.
The amount of social data available is truly overwhelming. Analytics and processing technology of the last decade couldn’t manage the sheer volume of data. This is changing as more processing power and new analytics systems become available, a trend that will realize impressive products in the next few years.
With increased computing horsepower and a new generation of advanced analytics, we’ll see solutions that can successfully mine the social networks for relevant data. Information that used to be unrealistically hard to obtain will become readily available.
We’re already seeing startups developing technology along these lines. For example, one system provides a software as a service that can mine the local social network for market demand. This information can then be compared to a store’s sales transactions, yielding a new metric: the conjunction of sales performance relative to immediate, local customer desires. Businesses will be instantly informed of what customers want and will respond by changing product stock almost immediately.
We’ll also see a dramatic increase in global reach as social networks extend customer information, and product penetration, into markets that were formerly opaque to businesses. Social preferences that were formerly constrained to word of mouth by geographically limited communication have become accessible.
The same analytics advances that fuel social data mining at the local level will also fuel global growth. Businesses have traditionally had to invest heavily in market research, taking on considerable risks to penetrate new regions. With the new generation of analytics tools available, offering geographically targeted customer information, businesses will be able to pick and choose markets to enter with greater reliability.
This all means that businesses will be moving more quickly. Decisions that used to take months or perhaps even years will be made in weeks. Even our internal operations will benefit from the increased speed of communication and social collaboration, through tools such as Salesforce.com’s Chatter. Chatter provides a workforce with an edge over the competition, an internal social network of collaboration. Sales people can use it to communicate better with their peers, support their customers, and stay on top of the latest business developments.
In combination, all of these tools offer a new generation of capabilities to our businesses. We can mine the social networks to stay in touch with our customer’s needs, apply new analytics engines to help us make decisions more quickly, and leverage social collaboration tools that enable our mobile workforce to become more effective. It’s all part of entering the global community — the next step in evolving our business.
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
Hyrax International LLC is pleased to announce the launch of its new training curriculum focused on developing more successful global-U.S. partners. The flagship product, Building Successful U.S. Business Partnerships, delivers highly interactive, case-based training tailored for South Asian and South American markets. Designed to complement Hyrax International’s Successfully Outsourcing in Brazil, Russia, India, and China curriculum, this program focuses on improving the abilities of foreign businesses to deliver reliably to U.S. partners.
The training program tackles differences in work ethics, communication, culture, language, and business lexicon facing any international team. Students will learn the skills needed to succeed with international business essentials and the cultural intricacies of international teams, and gain insider information that would take years of experience to learn. The program provides an essential guide to real-world solutions and techniques for successfully managing an outsource relationship.
“When we set out to develop our distance learning programs we wanted to make sure the student experience rivaled in-classroom training,” says Zacharias J. Beckman, President and CEO of Hyrax International. He adds, “Most distance learning programs don’t support group exercises, one-on-one time with your instructor, and open discussion periods — we wanted to be different. That’s why we have put so much time into developing our coursework and the unique tools that make it work.”
Some of the tools employed in the unique training programs include one-on-one time with subject matter experts and instructors, much like you would find at a University through instructor office hours. The programs also deliver long-term learning benefits by providing information, research, articles and even workshops to students for up to six months after they complete of an individual course.
“Our goal was to create quick-to-deploy, but long-lasting education benefit for our clients,” says Mr. Beckman. “We make sure that our students put into practice what they’ve learned and then have resources to rely on and opportunity to learn more.”
The new training curriculum has been announced and is scheduled for launch in India later this summer. Course dates will be announced on Hyrax International’s web site.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor, addressing the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, providing oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance and training, and we’ve never missed a deadline.
Contact: Hyrax International LLC, 2629 Townsgate Road, Suite 235, Westlake Village, California 93161. Telephone 805-669-8493. General inquiries by email information@hyraxintl.com. Web site http://www.HyraxLLC.com.
The official unemployment rate has leveled off. Setting aside arguments about whether official figures are ignorant of the real picture, signs of improvement are starting to take root. Nevertheless job creation still isn’t what it should be, and the amount of time it takes find a lost job is hovering around a record of 35 weeks — longer in many cases. So, what’s the hold up?
Are we experiencing a jobless recovery, or facing something much more fundamental? Should we be challenging the assumption that job recovery will automatically follow on the heels of economic recession?
Historically job recovery has always followed times of recession. However, if we are facing new, fundamental shifts in the economy, history need not necessarily repeat itself. The changing economic landscape could be forcing the U.S. into a structural change, not a cyclical one.
The influence of the global economy is undeniably bringing about changes that are both new and unanticipated. As information flows around the world instantly, new possibilities open up — particularly in markets that deal with intangible assets, such as intellectual property, market data, and ideas. Technology is combining with the global landscape, forever altering how we do our work, and what the end product of that work looks like. The result is a truly global work force, where our “office mates” could well be halfway around the world, where companies leverage 24-hour work cycles by spreading their staff around the globe, and formerly distant economies are suddenly right next door.
Combined with the effect of a global work force — in fact, fueled by that very force — comes the inevitable realization that the U.S. market is a small part of a much bigger system. Coca-Cola saw its revenue more than triple in Q4 of 2010, bringing in nearly 75% of its revenue from international markets while domestic growth lags at 7% compared with 11% internationally. At the same time, IBM has more workers outside the U.S. than inside it. As international barriers and distance continues to shrink, the U.S. will increasingly find itself a member of a global community — one with nearly 7 billion members, of which less than 5% live inside the country.
The influence of the global economy, technology, and developing globalization trends have combined to create a “megatrend,” a fundamental change in the nature of the job market. With massive numbers of workers available, and markets that dwarf the value of domestic markets, the U.S. must change its perceptions. We have to realize that the manufacturing jobs that have left the country aren’t coming back. Likewise, the global nature of information and intellectual property means we must adapt to a world in which global workforces play a part in domestic economics on a daily basis.
U.S. businesses need to learn new tricks, and U.S. workers need to keep pace. The global economy is not tolerant of insular economies or attitudes. In contrast to shrinking distances, the consumer market is growing faster than ever before. We have to face that realization that companies such as Coca-Cola are seeing a world where domestic markets matter less than global ones.
To survive in this new landscape, the U.S. will need to strengthen its global position. This means a greater focus on education, not only to strengthen our domestic work forces’ position in the new economy, but to re-establish the U.S. as the preeminent source of higher education. Many countries have long regarded the U.S. as the best possible place to send their best and brightest for education, but that distinction has slipped in the past decade or two.
Having a strong education program won’t, by itself, solve our long-term concerns. As a whole, the U.S. needs to integrate into a global culture that represents this newly emerging market. Formerly, the U.S. has been notoriously insular. We are one of very few countries in the world where the educated speak only one language. Our appreciation for the arts, culture, and mannerisms of foreign people is poor, at best. As a people, U.S. citizens pay precious little attention to world politics. The effect is like that of a child raised without adequate social interaction. We don’t know how to play with the rest of the world, and are often perceived as ignorant of social and economic events. In the landscape of this shifting economy, we need to develop a better understanding for who our neighbors are, and fast.
This means a more educated professional work force, and business services that are more attuned to the needs and wants of a global people. Executives of the future will be expected to converse with global partners, understand the subtle nuances of international communication, and readily connect with counterparts in foreign countries. Americans without international skill sets and only one language to rely on will be left behind.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; Moody’s Analytics, 37.6% of forecast shares of newly created jobs in 2012 will demand a Bacholor’s degree or higher, up from less than 8% in 2010. Moody’s indicates that in 2011 the better educated will control 60.1% of all new jobs, but by 2015, the projection rises to 66.4% even after construction bounces back. According to Time (Where The Jobs Are, January 17, 2011), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s career services office reports that 7% more interviews were scheduled by companies on campus this past fall than the year before, a fact that seems to support Moody’s projections.
Time also reports that Gautam Godhwana, CEO of SimplyHired, is seeing dramatic signs of job market improvement. “Before the downturn happened, we had 5 million job openings. This dropped to 2.1 million job openings in the first months of 2009, and lo and behold, in the second half of 2009 the bottom fell out of the economy.” But he notes that the reverse is now happening, “In the last six months we’re back to 5 million jobs in our database. So there are some reasons to be optimistic.”
All of this seems to support the idea that the U.S. is beginning to perceive the need for change. The education market and professional services will do well in this climate. According to Moody’s, technology is leading the way. The strongest growth (defined by more hires combined with more job openings) will be in professional and business services, specifically, the technology sector. Network systems and data analysts, and professionals suited to global IT projects, are among the fastest growing sector after biomedical engineers. Bill Saporito, Time Magazine, writes:
And [the recovery] will favor companies that sell abroad rather than those that depend solely on domestic demand. “Any industry that is very focused on exports will do well,” says Nariman Behravesh, [chief economist for IHS Global Insight]. “Agriculture, aircraft, high tech.” He would include education in that segment, since so many foreign countries send their best and brightest here.
Education, professional services, and technology are the gateway into the new global economy. It will take time for the shift to take root, likely years before we find out if the U.S. can successfully discard outmoded ideas about where the jobs are. Until then, we still have record levels of unemployment to deal with, and a work force that needs to adapt to change.
But the U.S. still has a stable economy that is the world’s largest. It can handle short term unemployment and restructuring, provided that it stops treating the current change as temporary. Many jobs in sectors such as manufacturing and even technology are gone forever. The next step is to assess the new landscape and begin to change accordingly. We need to refocus our sights on superb education and technological leadership, where the U.S. was once undisputed leader. Likewise, cutting-edge infrastructure will be necessary to deliver on the promise of being a world leader once again. The U.S. has to change its perceptions — and until we do, we’ll keep playing catch-up.
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
In some ways, the “cloud computing revolution” harkens back to the days of “big iron,” when massive mainframe computers filled entire buildings. When I was going to school, we didn’t have personal computers. Instead, we had terminals that connected to powerful super computers. Everyone at the University connected to a small handful of mainframes, getting a proportionate slice of computing power and storage. All our work was stored in the same shared space, all our programs ran in the same central processing system. It was cyberspace — just a much, much smaller cyberspace than we’re used to today. It also wasn’t distributed. In other words, while we all connected to a single computer much like we connect to “the cloud” today, it wasn’t a cloud. It was one system, with all the limitations that implies.
Flash forward 20 or 30 years, and we see a new landscape: Distributed computing power is everywhere. Our laptops, our smart phones, our tablets and iPads are just the beginning, but they have one thing in common with the days of “big iron:” They all want to connect to something. That something is rapidly turning out to be the cloud.
The cloud itself turns out to have three very distinct stratifications. The most readily identified is Software as a Service (SaaS, usually pronounced “sass”). SaaS includes web based applications such as Gmail and Google Apps, Intuit’s QuickBooks Online, and Salesforce.com. The advantages of SaaS are quickly realized by anyone trying out the technology — no software to install, no hardware to maintain, no upgrade paths to worry about. Software as a Service “just works,” and can usually be deployed by simply starting up a trial account. In a new study Forrester Research estimated that these services generated sales of $11.7 billion in 2010.
One level more abstracted are Platform as a Service (PaaS, pronounced “pass”) products. Platform as a Service merely means providing a collection of tools that can be built upon. Salesforce.com offers both SaaS and PaaS. In addition to providing the widely-known Salesforce product as a service, companies can also use the Salesforce tools to create customized products. These products build on top of the Salesforce tool set, and go where Salesforce never thought of going — for example, providing integration with corporate databases and new applications. The Salesforce AppExchange is a commercial market in which companies that have built new Salesforce-driven products can market their wares. Forrester’s estimates put PaaS revenues at $311 million.
The most abstracted level — possibly the one most deserving of the term “cloud computing” — is Infrastructure as a Service (typically not pronounced, except by spelling out I-A-A-S). IaaS offers raw computing resources, typically “rented” in the same manner we used to rent “big iron.” The big players in this market are Amazon, RackSpace, Google, and GoGrid, and each provides raw computing infrastructure to its clients free of the typical hardware management hassles. Within literally minutes, an aspiring cloud computing user can have a virtual system running, usually at the cost of pennies per hour of computing time. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the market leader in this space.
Estimating the size of the IaaS cloud computing infrastructure is a bit trickier. Very few of the IaaS vendors publish sales figures that are any help in pinpointing the size of the market. In fact some are very guarded about figures, treating the information as a competitive secret. What numbers are revealed tend to be very tangential. RackSpace says it operates nearly 64,000 servers worldwide, but doesn’t indicate how many are used for IaaS. Amazon Web Services publishes the intriguing statement that it fulfills nearly 200,000 requests every second for over 200 billion objects — but what this means in terms of IaaS is anyone’s guess.
But thanks to statistics and possibly a few lessons from our past, the trail doesn’t end here. During the second world war, the Allies’ worries turned toward a new German tank. They were concerned that the tank could turn the tide in Europe, effectively giving the edge to the Germans. Observations in the field led to contradictory intelligence reports, leaving the Allies with a big question: How many of the new tanks were there?
Statisticians made the assumption that the German tanks were numbered sequentially, and used the serial numbers of captured tanks to estimate the size of the fleet. Allied statisticians arrived at an estimated number of 256 tanks in the field. As it turns out, they were spot on. The Germans had built 255 tanks.
Tackling the IaaS market size problem with a similar technique, Guy Rosen and Cloudkick jointly came up with a very detailed analysis of the size of Amazon’s IaaS cloud. Guy deciphered the virtual serial numbers of the Amazon Web Services computing infrastructure and from there, Alex Polvi, the founder of Cloudkick, used these numbers to calculate the total number of virtual computers turned on every day. He arrived at some pretty staggering numbers.
The results suggest that cloud computing could be a much larger business than previously thought. While UBS publicly speculated that Amazon’s cloud computing revenues would cap $500M in 2010, and $750M in 2011, the new figures are larger. Assuming that the analysis is reasonably sound (and understanding that Amazon has about 80-90% of the cloud computing market share right now), the 2010 market for cloud computing could easily top $1 billion.
Forrester is predicting that the entire cloud computing market (not just the IaaS portion) will grow as big as $56 billion by 2020, a number that might well prove to be conservative given these latest findings. Their findings suggest that the raw computing IaaS portion may cap out at $4 billion, although this, too, could turn out to be a very conservative figure.
Wherever we actually arrive, one thing is clear: We’re now sitting at the inception point of a new market. Cloud computing, from a global market standpoint, didn’t exist just a few years ago. Now the horse is out the gates, and we’re likely in for quite a ride.
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
LOS ANGELES, February 14 — Hyrax International LLC delivers Information Technology infrastructure assessment to Makerere University, Uganda, Africa. The assessment is a crucial first step in understanding the particular challenges of implementing reliable, cost effective infrastructure and procedures throughout Makerere University and its outlying facilities, and provides specific guidance to optimize the University IT infrastructure, efficiency, security, procedures and policies.
It also highlights security risks that the University is exposed to, and provides detailed recommendations for corrective action, including new infrastructure initiatives, training programs, and security and compliance measures such as ISO 27001 program development.
The assessment was performed in close partnership with Ikarus Satellite Communications S.L. Both firms worked to develop the in-depth technology assessment, in concert with the Johns Hopkins University PEPFAR Distance Learning Project. Generously funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the partnership for Building the Capacity of Makerere University to Improve Health Outcomes in Uganda, the project is anticipated to be instrumental in identifying the most cost effective and appropriate steps the University can take to achieve its IT infrastructure goals, and do so with a sustainable, long-term strategy.
Hyrax International LLC is simplifying IT: Simplifying Information Technology, Product Development, and Global Project Management by delivering intelligent decisions for tough business challenges. We manage complex, global IT projects and make sure you deliver on time and on budget. In fact, on average our customers have lowered their IT budget 40% by implementing our best in class guidance and training.
Contact: Hyrax International LLC, 2629 Townsgate Road, Suite 235, Westlake Village, California 93161. Telephone 805-669-8493. General inquiries by email information@hyraxintl.com. Web site http://www.HyraxLLC.com.
Which technologies or trends will drive significant change or disruption in 2011? Which will have the greatest potential for enterprise impact over the next few years? Recent shifts in the economic landscape are causing some surprising changes.
Cost savings over revenue generation. We may be seeing a tipping point in 2011. According to Gartner rankings, CIO’s indicated that reducing the cost of IT is their number 3 priority in 2010 — down from number 2 in 2009. If the trend continues, reducing costs could drop entirely from CIO top 10 strategies, putting it back where it was in 2007 (ranked at position 12). But for now, the top three priorities remain more or less the same as last year: Delivering projects that enable business growth (up to position 1 from 3); linking business and IT strategies and plans (down to position 2 from 1); and reducing the cost of IT (at position 3, down from 2).
Key change is coming: Increasing revenue, not saving costs, will drive IT decisions. In the longer term, expectations are that IT drivers will focus on increasing revenue. That means that better use of information and business intelligence may well be in the top 3 CIO priorities as early as 2013, a trend that could begin late in 2011.
Green is out for 2011. While 2010 still held a fascination with green technology, the reality is — at least for now — that green is expensive. With businesses focusing short-term attention on cost saving measures, green is out for 2011. Don’t look to see huge purchases to improve green strategy until the economy and business environment improves. Don’t worry, green will be back… but not until business are out of the red.
Cloud computing, mobile applications and tablets. Leaps and bounds in technology (and Moore’s law) continue to drive mobile applications of all flavors, and that includes “putting it in the cloud” so you can take it with you — anywhere. Repeating a trend from 2010, cloud computing will continue to grow, and the cloud is going to enable portability. With new mobile devices such as the iPad and smart phone platforms proliferating, not to mention laptops supplanting desktop computers, customers will expect to have continuous access to all their information. That means it won’t live on the device, but in the cloud.
Next-generation analytics. A precursor to technologies that will be adapted to improve the use of information and intelligence — in the short-term, next-generation analytics are going to emerge in 2011 as a hot technology. Social engineering, demand for analytics, collective intelligence, publishing and instant global feedback will drive innovation in this area. In the long term, this will help improve business information and intelligence.
Context aware, ubiquitous computing. Not far off from scenes out of Minority Report, startups are already pushing ahead with context aware systems that not only know who we are, but what we like. Look for interesting developments in everything from kiosks to handheld devices.
Clearly, right at the top of the priority chain is mobility. So what does this mean for you? Chiefly, mobile applications will become a critical design point. Failing to support mobile computing will severely cripple an enterprise (this means both internally, offering mobility to your employees, as well as externally, to your customers). Businesses supporting mobile models will learn to adapt to new ways to operating, and new opportunities. For example, customers will become stickier, and awareness of customer location, movement and preference will become a business advantage.
Also driven by mobility and, hence, ubiquity — social computing will continue to take off. Businesses embracing social strategies will realize gains. Social networks will deliver preferences and recommendations, and ultimately new customers. Collaboration tools will become business tools, as well as consumer tools (think blogs, wikis, and office collaboration tools such as Salesforce.com). Social publishing means rapid access to information, and all of this means quick feedback — both positive, and negative.
The user experience will also be a differentiator. As computers “disappear into the fabric of society,” the best products will fade into the background more easily. This means innovation in user interfaces, driving simplicity and reliability. Micro-application of computing technology will take off in the near future, and that means dozens (if not hundreds) of computing devices for every person. Simplicity, ubiquity, integration through the cloud, and transparency will be critical.
Further research and material on these topics include the following Gartner publications:
- Hype Cycle for Cloud Computing, 2010, David Mitchell Smith (G00201557)
- What the iPad Will Mean to Retailers, Hung LeHong, Van Baker (G00175778)
- Seek Information Patterns with Data Mining and Predictive Analytics, Bill Hostmann (G00205070)
- Hype Cycle for Consumer Services and Mobile Applications, 2010, Sandy Shen (G00200989)
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
We all want to be Apple. We want to have their reputation, at any rate. A zealous customer base, fantastic products that seemingly flow out of design and into production without a hitch, and a virtually zero record of recalls or product delays.
But it’s the part about the customer that really grabs our attention. So the question is, how do they do it? If we put the right people in a room together will they just “get it,” and execute a flawless vision?
That’s likely a key part of it, at least in so far as it takes the right people to make the right decisions. But how do we execute our vision with such precision? And if we look at other successful companies, will we find some theme that’s in common with Apple? Absolutely. That common theme isn’t just one thing — But every single successful company has one common element in their strategy: A mechanism for avoiding undue risk.
Risk management has become mainstream. It’s no longer the domain of rocket scientists and actuaries. In fact, it’s become so mainstream that formal risk management practices are showing up everywhere we look. Most of the time, we’ll see the word Enterprise included in the definition — a way of letting us know “this is for the whole firm.” Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Governance and Risk Compliance (GRC) are just a few of the different names risk management flies its flag under.
But is all this sudden attention to risk management going in the right direction? To answer that, we need to look at the specifics of different risk management techniques.
For example, the Project Management Institute (PMI) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have both put forward standards that devote significant space to the topic of risk management. The PMI standard of risk management (PMI-RMP®, or Risk Management Professional) includes some pretty extensive methods for identifying, quantifying and mitigating risk.
Much of the PMI-RMP standard can be considered a brief introduction to risk management. It doesn’t introduce quantitative analysis or provide any background of Judgement and Decision Making (JDM) theory. It does, however, provide a starting point, some kind of a baseline that we can use to at least make sure that our projects, programs and organizations are addressing risk management — at some level.
This is good, at least at first blush. But, unfortunately, when we dig deeper there could be a more subtle problem here: The practices advocated by PMI and NIST standards are, quite simply, apt to cause more harm than good.
There are decades of remarkable research in JDM and risk management theory. The research that has gone into this kind of theory has produced an invaluable treasure trove of tools, processes and techniques that we can leverage to learn how to accurately and effective assess risk across our organization.
This same research has also largely debunked “crackpot” risk management theory and poor decision making practices. For instance, Harvard Business Review led a study of over 200 popular management tools, like TQM, ERP and so on. Independent external reviews of the degree of implementation of each of these various tools was compared to stakeholder return on investment over a five year period. The resounding conclusion from this in-depth study, as reported by HBR, was that: “Our findings took us quite by surprise. Most of the management tools and techniques we studied had no direct causal relationship to superior business performance.”
But this shouldn’t be a surprise, at least not to anyone familiar with formal risk management and JDM theory. In research conducted over many decades, such as that of Brunswik, Kahneman, Hubbard and others, most of these recently introduced management practices have been exposed as ineffective and often even harmful.
Consider, for example, the principle method for quantifying risk in the PMI standard is a matrix-based weighted scoring system. This system advocates highly subjective risk assessment practices, such as relying on risk assessment almost entirely from subject matter experts. Studies have shown that even well trained experts — let alone the people that often serve as experts on review boards — tend to provide highly inconsistent and spotty assessment results. One study by Hubbard tested a group of experts in their ability to assess risk across a portfolio of projects. Unbeknownst to the participants, two of the assessed projects were identical — and, hence, we should expect identical risk assessment of the two projects. But that’s not what the study shows: Participants only agreed with their own risk assessment 22% of the time. The rest of the time, risk assessment varied widely, sometimes as much as 35% by the same individual.
Of all the professions that practice risk management, actuaries are the only ones that can claim a real profession. Actuaries, much like accountants, doctors and scientists, must demonstrate their ability to assess risk using scientifically proven methods. And, like other formal professions, an actuary puts her license on the line when certifying a Statement of Actuarial Opinion. As with doctors and lawyers, if she loses her license she can’t just get another job next door. The industry of risk managers, modelers and assessors outside of the insurance industry would be greatly served by this level of professional standards.
Likewise, organizations such as PMI and NIST should stop promulgating what amounts to crackpot risk management practices. Decades of extensive study have shown that the core principles of risk management integrated into the PMI and NIST standards simply do not work. Worse, in many cases these practices actually cause more harm than good. Scoring methods should be disposed of. Instead, standards should rely on existing bodies of proven risk management and JDM practices.
But in the meantime, attaining a greater awareness of the risks associated with bad risk management practice is our responsibility. Understanding what to look for in risk management, and consulting trained professionals that can employ statistical risk methods is a good starting point. At the very least, firms should consult with formally trained professionals — and look for empirical, statistics-based methods. Anyone proposing a weighted scoring system should be shown the door!
If you would like to learn more about risk management theory and practical methods of assessing and avoiding risk, see our seminars on these topics. Attendees are welcome at our public presentations. If you are interested in hosting a presentation at your firm, contact us. Introductory seminars are offered at no cost.
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
According to extensive research The Gallup Organization (Washington D.C.) and Harvard Business Review have conducted over the past decade, few factors are as corrosive to employee engagement as a colleague who skates through the workweek taking advantage of the much harder work of others. What’s the cost of disengagement? Much more than any manager wants to pay. Thanks to Clarity Technical Communications we can read all about it in the Harvard Management Update, When There’s A Freeloader On Your Team.
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
When considering their Information Assurance and Security policies, organizations almost always overlook one potential vulnerability: How safe is your data recovery vendor? Data recovery tends to be something of an afterthought, a contingency plan to call upon in the event everything else goes wrong. Fair enough, in an ideal world your own backup procedures will avoid the need for data recovery. But what about that executive laptop that gets run over in the driveway? Or the USB device with critical client data that stopped working?
Data recovery services are easy to find and, quite often, are pulled out of a hat (or, at least, off the internet) at the last minute, when the sudden realization hits: Your data has to be recovered, and fast.
For Federal agencies and contractors, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued new guidelines for the selection and vetting of data recovery vendors. These guidelines take effect over the next few years, possibly longer, as agencies attempt to comply with it. The new NIST guidance states:
Organizations may use third-party vendors to recover data from failed storage devices. Organizations should consider the security risk of having their data handled by an outside company and ensure that proper security vetting of the service provider is conducted before turning over equipment. The service provider and employees should sign non-disclosure agreements, be properly bonded and adhere to organization-specific security policies.
Even these guidelines are vague from a risk management and planning perspective. I would suggest that any organization should look carefully at what could happen if its data was sold, published, or delivered to a competing company. Unless you find the risk acceptable, then the following policies should be put in place with your data recovery vendor:
Most data recovery agencies are considered based on speed and ability, especially in the heat of the moment while everyone is running around trying to find lost data. While these are critical factors, security really should be first and foremost when evaluating any vendor. After all, what value is the recovered data if it has been compromised?
DriveSavers and Ponemon Institute conducted a survey of 636 information technology and support personnel, according to Government Computer News (Sep. 2010). The results were disheartening. The survey confirmed that a large number of security breaches are associated with third-party vendors.
The survey also asked participants to develop criteria for vetting third-party recovery vendors. The suggested criteria included (according to GCN):
Mr. Zacharias J. Beckman has 25 years experience working with technology-focused clients from the Fortune 500, Government, and private and public sectors, including Xerox®, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles County Sheriff, NASA, and the Department of Defense. Mr. Beckman specializes in Global Project Management and Program Management, successfully addressing the challenges of outsourcing and distributed development. He is also a published author and has developed coursework for Cross Cultural Teams, Program Management, Project Management, Risk Analysis, Software Quality Assurance, Project Methodology and more, and runs the widely read Rational Scrum blog.
Hyrax International LLC is your Global Project advisor. We address the challenges of outsourced projects and distributed teams, provide oversight, and make sure your project is done on time and on budget. On average our clients reduce their budget 40% with our best in class guidance, and we’ve never missed a deadline. Hyrax International LLC • http://www.HyraxLLC.com • 805-669-8493 • information@hyraxllc.com • 2629 Townsgate Road, # 235, Westlake Village, California 91361
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805-669-8493
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