The Next Big Thing articles

A test of moving the Internet beyond the clouds…

Charlie Bess — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:19:57 GMT

I recently saw an article on Google testing Internet connectivity via balloons in the stratosphere. Project Loon is taking the concept of low earth orbit satellites and moving them even closer, taking out latency.

Last week, Google (more specifically Google X – their research arm) launched 30 high-altitude balloons above the Canterbury area of New Zealand as part of a pilot. I heard that there will be some interesting pictures coming up in a future issue of Wired as well.

There are still many parts of the earth where it can be impossible to get high speed Internet connection. Since Google wants to increase the access and use of the Internet (increasing their revenue) it makes sense that they would invest in something like this that governments find a bit too remote and expensive. Any business that has sites in remote locations like mines, ranches… will likely see benefits if the project takes root.

Microsoft Lync 2013 Plain and Simple

Charlie Bess — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 06:47:00 GMT

We recently upgraded the version of Lync we use to Lync 2013, so I took a moment to review Microsoft Lync 2013 Plain and Simple.

This book is a high-level, fully illustrated summary of the most common functions that users of Microsoft Lync will consume. It doesn’t go into anything about programmatically accessing the underlying functions, but with a title including the words Plain and Simple you shouldn’t expect that.

I did like the fact that the book started out with what’s different about Lync 2013. I’ve used previous version of Lync before so when the 2nd chapter address what’s new I was happy. I've just started using Lyncs VoIP capabilities so there were a couple useful examples described.

The illustrations were well labeled and clearly pointed out the various components of the User Interface and why they were on the screen at any particular point. There were Tips sprinkled throughout the book with some additional insights the author had about particular features.

Missing from the book were scenarios about why the author thought certain features are useful that bit of information might stretch the preconceptions of the reader and help them take advantage of more of the capabilties.

Although the book may be a useful reference for an experience Lync user, to refresh themselves on specific features, I’d say the main target audience is people starting to use Lync or upgrading from a much older version of Office Communicator.

Can Smartphone sensors be used in an emergency?

Charlie Bess — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:51:15 GMT

When most of us think of being involved in an emergency response situation the first thing we’re like to do is dial 9-1-1. A research team lead by Ram Dantu of the University of North Texas and supported by the NSF sees the growth of cell phone and smart phone usage as an opportunity to improve 9-1-1 response.

We all know there are sensors in the phones, and Dantu has taken the relatively simple sensors and applied them to an urgent task.

"With the current smartphone technology now in everyone's hand, we thought we could do a lot better than just audio calls," said Dantu. "We can actually transmit text; we can transmit images or video. We can revamp or transform the existing emergency dispatch protocols with a next generation 9-1-1."

Dantu will demonstrate these apps at this month's 2013 National Emergency Number Association conference, the largest annual gathering of 9-1-1 operators in the United States, to be held in Charlotte, N.C and see what feedback they can provide.

Some of the application examples developed include:

This is just a relatively simple example of using the sensors around us to add value. You could do similar analysis of machines by placing the phone on an appliance, picking up physical vibration as well as sound. It may also be possible to pick up other information like infrared or ultraviolet information that humans can’t perceive and analyze that as well.

More options for continuing education

Charlie Bess — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:15:56 GMT

I’ve mentioned Coursera (and the need for continuing education on this blog before) as a way to take (or at least sit in on) college level coursework from the comfort of your home - e-learning. Now Stanford is placing their online coursework (starting this summer) on a new site, OpenEdX -- the university has announced. It is built on the open-source platform edX that was released earlier this year. This platform is available for use by other universities and educational providers. More on EdX courses are available here.

I’ve been participated in a number of Coursera courses over the past couple of years and hope these will stand up as well. I'm going to try and take another starting this month on Software defined Networks.

It is all part of a shift in the way education is being performed and will likely effect how businesses train for the future.

Big Data news at HP Discover – HAVEn and a little Neutron

Charlie Bess — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:31:19 GMT

A range of big data solutions is being announced today at HP Discover. At the core of these was HAVEn, a set of services and products supporting the use of Hadoop, Autonomy, Vertica, Enterprise security, n of solutions (I guess that stands for the power of solutions).

The approach should address the common needs of organization today:

Supporting a range of consumption models:

- Operate yourself

HP Vertica Community Editiondelivering full power of the HP Vertica Analytics Platform – available at no cost up to 1 TB of data – with enhanced self-service support capabilities and an enhanced portal for better interaction.
The new Autonomy Legacy Data Cleanup solution is designed to address the cost, compliance, and control challenges confronted by organizations struggling to manage increasing volumes of legacy information. Powered by Autonomy ControlPoint 4.0, this solution helps organizations gain access to, understand and classify, and defensibly dispose of outdated and unnecessary legacy information.
HP Operations Analytics providing transparency and insight into the complete IT environment via a platform to collect and manage operational big data from a variety of HP and 3rd party sources. It combines powerful search, guided troubleshooting and visual analytics to provide actionable intelligence to resolve ANY issue and a management cockpit

- Consume as a service

HP Actionable Analytics Services helping organizations unlock the information that’s hidden in their business data through direct delivery of analytics projects and consulting that develops and enhances in-house analytical capabilities. This services deliver optimization services for: Online Offers, Field Force, Procurement, and Inventory.

- Professional Services

HP Big Data Architecture Strategy Services helps customers develop an integrated IT strategy for the capture, consolidation and management of Big Data, includes: HP’s Big Data Infrastructure Transformation Experience Workshop.
HP Big Data System Infrastructure Services New HP services that help organizations navigate the complexities of Hadoop design and implementation by providing customers with a detailed plan that considers deployment goals and supports growth, including. Services include: HP Enterprise Design for Hadoop, HP Reference Architecture Implementation for Hadoop and HP Implementation Service for Hadoop.
HP Big Data Protection Services helping organizations identify potential issues and achieve compliance with government and industry data security requirements. Services include: HP Big Data Protection and Compliance Analysis.

In addition to HAVEn, there is also project Neutron, a big data analytics solution for IT operations teams to analyze the volume and variety of IT data to predict, prevent and respond to application and infrastructure issues, preventing costly downtime, but I didn’t have much info on that. If you poke around the HP Discover Site later today you’ll find it.

HP Storage announcements at Discover

Charlie Bess — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:55:16 GMT

I don’t do posts about HP product announcements, but since this the week of HP Discover, why not. There definitly are some changes in the wind for storage.

One of the first things out of the shoot today at HP Discover was a whole new set of capability in the area of software defined storage. With all the options in storage today (SSD, low end, backup…) the complexity of managing the environment is reducing the flexibility of organizations. Storage solutions are becoming complex, inefficient and rigid.

The family of converged storage solutions announced today should help address many of these issues by providing a single architecture enabling a flexible and extensible approach that embraces block, object and file storage of devices ranging from HDDs to SSD/flash, providing:

Performance acceleration – eliminating system bottlenecks
Efficiency optimization – extending the life and utilization of existing media
System resiliency – providing constant information/application access
Data mobility – federating across systems and sites

With a range of HP 3PAR StoreServ solutions ranging from the low end 7200 to high performance (StoreServ 7450) or high scaling 10800 – all running from a single architecture and interface.

The 7450 that was announced today is:

Accelerated: Over 500,000 IOPS and less than 0.6 ms latency proving a massively parallelized architecture, flash-optimized cache algorithms and QoS
Efficient: Reduce capacity requirements up to 50% and extend flash lifespan delivering a multi-layered and fine-grained virtualization with hardware-accelerated data compaction
Bulletproof: Eliminate downtime for performance-critical applications with a Quad-controller design with persistent cache and ports, peer failover, and multi-site replication
Futureproof: Allowing organizations to move data seamlessly to balance performance and cost enabling a simple solution across Tier 1, midrange, and flash with federated data mobility

Also announced was HP StoreOnce VSA, a software defined approach to information protection enabling a more agile and efficient approach to remote information protection.

The breadth of these announcements should enable greater flexibility for organizations that maintain their own infrastructure.

A few things happening before HP Discover

Charlie Bess — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:52:56 GMT

Today (right before HP Discover) the availability of the retail sleeve for the ElitePad was announced. By adding this hardware extension, a tablet that runs the full version of Windows 8 now can have additional features specifically designed for use in a retail setting, allowing them to connect to existing store systems and improve customer service.

The extensible nature of the ElitePad is an example the flexibility that needs to be designed into solutions to increase value and the business environment today and in the future. Last month the personal system group within HP announced a whole series of new machines (like the Rove).

The new HP Pro and HP Elite series desktop PCs were also announced, including space-saving commercial all-in-ones (AiOs) with rich multimedia and optional touch screens, act as the hub of enterprise productivity. You can see more about these in the press release.

This week there should be a number of interest announcements… if you're there have fun it should be a great opportunity to answer questions and learn. I couldn't make it this year.

A white paper you can download about gamification

Charlie Bess — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:21:00 GMT

I recently took many of the thoughts I had about gamification (that I’ve written about on this blog) and created a white paper:

Change behavior and focus attention with gamification

It is available for download and described my view on some of the core components of gamification as well as describes an effort I coordinated internally.

HP once a year has a global Technical Innovation conference called Tech Con. I was the leader of this effort for the last couple of years and this year I tried to gamify the review process.

Since the only way to get invited to the conference is to create an abstract that describes the innovation and have it peer reviewed and accepted, ensuring that the review process is done effectively is important to the event.

This year we had about 1900 abstracts submitted and each one had to be reviewed by at least four individual. This means that at least 7600 reviews needed to be completed by a group of about 300 reviewers in a relatively short time frame. The paper provides details about the process and the impact of the relatively simple gamification activity. It definitely had a measurable impact and exceeded all the goals identified.

I was talking with an individual just this morning who was asking about innovative uses of mobility. Gamification instantly came to mind. Gamification is about goal oriented, metric driven, behavior modification.

If you can influence the individual wherever they happen to be, aligning their efforts to corporate goals, that seems to be a pretty innovative and valuable use of mobile devices. One important part of gamification can be to influence the decision at the time it is being made. A whole variety of examples fell out of our discussions, since the mobile device is the computer you have with you all the time.

My view is that the entire services industry is ripe for gamification.

Full body Virtual Reality - in your future?

Charlie Bess — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 15:05:59 GMT

I recently saw a story about The Omni a new virtual reality gaming device that launched a funding campaign in Kickstarter.

It is a platform with a low friction, grooved base that allows users to walk or run in place. That movement translates directly into any keyboard-compatible game, allowing for an even more natural interface. It can be used with head up displays like the Oculus Rift and motion controllers like the Xbox Kinect to provide a very high level of realism to virtual reality.

There are also health benefits, since you’re not just sitting playing – you actually need to move large muscles to play the game.

As I looked at the capabilities, I couldn’t help but wonder about its application in the business environment. Maybe not for the knowledge worker (although thinking about that may be innovative) but for training and orientation. Let’s say you are a telecom worker who goes in the field and makes adjustments at a communications center – it may help to know what it will look like when you get there.

Of course, why not put a robot in the corner of the building that can make adjustments… and you could interact with the environment without actually having to travel there. Moving bits not atoms…

Is ITs job to make everyone a programmer?

Charlie Bess — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:48:25 GMT

Recently readwrite.com had an article on Why Programming is the Core Skill for the 21st Century. The focus of the article is that there are far more programming jobs than there are people who can fill them, therefore alternative techniques are being applied - everywhere. I find that interesting, since there are numerous experienced programmers that are out of work, but maybe they have not kept up as the needs of the marketplace have changed.

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 913,000 computer programmer jobs in 2010. That number is expected to jump 30% from 2010 to 2020. Meanwhile, the average growth of all other U.S. jobs is predicted to be just 14%.“

With the increased analytic capabilities and computing in general more and more jobs are going to be augmented with automation. Knowing how this works will be important. It makes me wonder if the IT organization of the future will be focused more on supporting the business organization with their own automation efforts, rather than being seen as the go-to business process automation resource pool, or will entities like codeacademy take on that role? Before you ask – yes I have actually reviewed a few courses on codeacademy.

The desire to hack back – never a good idea

Charlie Bess — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:46:59 GMT

When I was at the MIT CIO symposium a few weeks back during a security session one of the attendees was talking about the need to “hack back”. The whole thought made me chuckle so I tweeted back:

“Remember there is an infinite number of hackers and u just have your security staff”

He responded with:

“Good guys are always outnumbered but never outgunned! Anyway, it is not about numbers but about attack surface area”

To which I responded:

“Sometimes it can be at the total IQ count applied to the problem, since a blind pig finds an acorn”

Wh1t3Rabbit posted today: Play Nice! Another reason hacking back is probably a bad idea with a view on the situation, from his childhood:

“Kids followed the playground rule of 'If you hit me, I’ll hit you back until someone wins.' The problem with this approach is that it almost always ended with either the recess bell calling us back from the playground or, more likely, a teacher breaking up a massive brawl.”

Who has the most to lose in the situation? I bet it is not the hacker, yet it seems to be a common view that it is an option.

With all the other choices available (honey pots, fake data…), it seems that the instant gratification of hacking back is a distraction from an organization’s goals and is likely the least innovative as well.

Derived behavior data and disease prevention

Charlie Bess — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:44:43 GMT

Recently there was a story in the MIT Technology Review on how derived data is being used to track the spread of disease. I put a post out a while back about a similar approach to traffic monitoring that took place in California.

In the case of using the information for disease monitoring, they were able to combine the information gathered about cell phone location and the travel patterns of the individuals and

“found that people making calls or sending text messages originating at the Kericho tower were making 16 times more trips away from the area than the regional average. What’s more, they were three times more likely to visit a region northeast of Lake Victoria that records from the health ministry identified as a malaria hot spot.”

It seems clear that information derived about behavior should definitely influence how the malaria problem is attacked.

Businesses can use similar techniques (with the consent of their employees) to identify opportunities for improvement in processes and the use of automation..

20” Windows tablet – could it be the elephant in the room?

Charlie Bess — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 11:55:35 GMT

The HP Next Bench blog had a post about the HP Rove the other day that I found interesting. When there is all this talk about having mini-tablets, why not have a large form factor as well. With 10 finger touch support, I can think of some very interesting applications involving more than one person (like schools).

Although HP has sold all-in-one, touch form factor PCs for a very long time. This is the first portable one. I was a bit surprised by the introductory price being relatively low.

I am sure there are those who will laugh at the Rove, but it is product that stretches a concept in a new direction – and that is not a bad thing.

Medical application of 3D printing

Charlie Bess — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:46:58 GMT

I mentioned a while back that I purchased a 3D printer (PrintrBot). After many hours of assembly and calibration, I actually produced some parts that look close to the models (chip bag holder and a cube calibration model).

Making my printer work made me even more impressed when the story broke about a 3D printed tracheal implant saved a baby's life. Essentially, they were able to print a splint to keep the baby’s air passage open, using a material that can be absorbed over time once it is no longer needed – this is another example of the intersection of 3D printing and medicine.

I was talking last evening with a product developer at a large food manufacturer who met with his tooling supplier yesterday. The supplier is producing production tooling direct from models using 3D printing and food grade plastic. You can expect to see some really interesting approaches to seasonal cookies/snacks in the future. These techniques are definitely entering larger volume mainstream manufacturing as well.

Shifting education trends and services

Charlie Bess — Wed, 29 May 2013 17:47:46 GMT

Recently, I had indirect exposure to a DARPA project called Education Dominance. This is an approach that uses technology to have a more automated approach to training. The initial results reported looked promising, but I don't see many details.

The pilot approach called Digital Tutor, had the goal to make sharable instructional objects available wherever and whenever they are need to provide learning and assistance. The analysis of the results appeared to be more effective and significantly lower in cost. It did make me wonder if gamification techniques would make the approach even more effective or if Massive On-Line Techniques (e.g., Coursera) could be applied.

One of the issues I’ve talked with leaders about in the past is the gap between the education experiences and skills developed in college. How do organizations develop the kind of expertise needed in the new hires to be effective? I wonder if a more time constrained approach like Education Dominance would be applicable. I’ll have to ask around for my friends in ISSIP to see how it may affect the service industry.

Applications make the difference

Charlie Bess — Tue, 28 May 2013 21:56:32 GMT

This video describes the visual survey platform app that integrates pictures and analytics into a mobile application that can be used by organizations. In the case of video it is Fundación Paraguaya:

This shows a tool to assist in census like activities to determine levels of poverty and then take action to have real impact quickly.

What is exciting for organizations is that the video shows that some very basic tools can have a profound difference when they are taking mobile and used in context.

Disruptive Technologies, Impact and interplay

Charlie Bess — Mon, 27 May 2013 11:02:28 GMT

Recently the Atlantic had an article where they took a McKinsey report on disruptive technologies and turned it upside down to say which ones were the most overhyped. The Atlantic reporter based their analysis on economic impact vs. number of relevant articles.

The technologies were (in order of least impact to most):

Renewable energy
Advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery
Advanced materials
3D printing
Energy storage
Next-generation genomics
Autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles
Advanced robotics
Cloud
Internet of Things
Automation of knowledge work
Mobile Internet

This approach by the Atlantic may be a novel way to look at technologies but not all that accurate or effective from a strategic perspective, especially since I doubt that was the intent of the McKinsey article.

I was also a bit surprised by some of the technologies left out of the McKinsey report. Technologies like User Interface Advances were not really mentioned, and the interplay between technologies was just touched on.

The best example of interplay magnifying impact is the intersection of the mobile internet, the internet of things and automation of knowledge work. Where these intersect, the role of employees change – human augmented automation. An approach that takes advantage of the fact that people are not fungible, as opposed to how many business may look at employees.

A visioning document based on the interplay of technologies is likely worth its own report -- aiding IT leaders in thinking about enabling their business in whole new ways. In any case, the McKinsey report is worth the read.

Towel Day 2013

Charlie Bess — Sat, 25 May 2013 05:39:00 GMT

It may not be recognized by most but today (May 25th) is Towel Day. Fans of Douglas Adams carry a towel (as referred to in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) with them to demonstrate their appreciation for the books and the author,

Don’t Panic -- no matter what the day throws at you, draw comfort from the knowledge that you’re armed with your trusty towel.

My experiment at conference note taking with Twitter

Charlie Bess — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:27:49 GMT

Tried an experiment this week that may be of interest to some -- although I am not the first I'm sure. When I go to a conference, I usually try and take decent notes about what I heard and more importantly what it made me think.

This week I was at the MIT CIO symposium (#MITCIO) and the MIT Center for Digital Business Research (#MITCDB) research report out. Rather than taking note on paper, I just wrote down all my thoughts on my Twitter account (@CEBESS). Not all that novel, but an active change in behavior for me. Hopefully, my few followers were not too annoyed.

The side effect of this change is I could see the comments by others who used the same hash tag in a chronological context. With only 140 characters, it is easy to lose context about what the post was actually about when you are typing on a phone furiously. But with all the other posts being done by others it’s more useful.

I used my Samsung S2 SkyRocket phone for all the posts at the #MITCIO session and my Slate7 for the #MITCDB event. Both worked well, but on the Slate7 I was able to use TweetChat, so I didn’t ever forget that hashtag, which is all too easy to do when you’re in a hurry.

I was a bit shocked by the number of people I ran into at the #MITCIO event that I already knew. @kimStephenson, @Thedodgeretort, @mkrigsman, @M3Wilkinson and a number of others were there that I have interacted with before.

Big Data at the MIT CIO Forum

Charlie Bess — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:14:42 GMT

Running a bit behind on getting blog posts out this week, but I thought I’d try to get one out early about the MIT CIO symposium I attended yesterday.

Jeff Cutler did a great job of summarizing what went on at the Big Data session and wrote it up in a blog post, with pictures and everything.

A couple of the key elements discussed were:

Correlation is NOT causality.
When dealing with Big Data, you need to Measure, Experiment, Analyze and Replicate. Having expectations is important.

I did ask the panel a question about their view on:

When you expand your knowledge about the organizational behavior and management process using big data techniques, management may be one of the most well understood and best targets for automation so what are the implications for business and business schools. I don’t think they really understood the question, since their answer was targeted at a whole other set of issues related to how management uses the output of Big Data efforts.

I did talk to Erik (the moderator) after the session and he agreed that this is an area where organizations have significant opportunity in the future. When you think about business processes and the data available, there is structured and yet-to-be-structured data as well as well understood, yet-to-be-understood processes and chaotic behavior (I almost said chaotic process, but if it is chaotic it can’t be a process). Most of that management work is ripe for automation, freeing up people to work on other creative (leadership) tasks.