With my mission for the Canadian Cloud Best Practices Network to be a showcase of locally home-grown Cloud innovations and expertise, then it’s great when this can be achieved by talking about powerful, global-level capabilities.
In this case I refer to the recently released Cloud Computing in Health strategy document released from Canada Health Infoway, the principle eHealth standards organization for Canada.
This is a massive step forward in Cloud computing best practice trend-setting, globally as well as here in Canada, so it will be a very exciting program to profile.
Achieving a global audience through these assets is the primary reason I focus so much on reviewing and showcasing Canadian Government R&D in this area – Global level innovations attract a global audience…

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It’s rather difficult to get a good read on public opinion, especially about things that half of them don’t know about. Cloud computing is one of those things.
How does one get a really good view on the overall public perception of particular things? Sure, you’ve got your own personal opinions, but they may be years ahead or behind the bulk of the public, depending on what exactly the subject is. We’re speaking very generally right now and philosophically at that, but this is a general topic that is extremely relevant. How can we really gauge things, and not just model them and pretend as if we’re doing something real.
Political polls claim to be judges of public opinion. They are somewhat accurate, but you’re taking thousands of people and claiming that they are representative of millions. Something seems fundamentally wrong. Thus, to claim that we know anything except very limited knowledge based on polling would be a lie.

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We’ve produced our initial report for sale by The Tau Institute. It’s priced at $895, with a $200 discount if you mention “Cloud Computing Journal” when you order. You can visit our website or tweet me if you’re interested.

But this is not a sales pitch. The report is just part of our activities. I started my research on national ICT environments about two years ago, with the help of Cloud Computing Journal and ComputerWorld Philippines.

I started the Institute a few months ago. I’m Executive Director, with an office and an assistant here in the US. Ibarra Gutierrez serves as our Associate Director. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Computerworld Philippines, and has some dedicated staff to the Institute from his offices along Ayala Ave. in Makati Metro Manila.

We now have eight other folks on our Advisory Board, drawn from all regions of the world. They’ve been invaluable in helping us set a direction for the research, and fine-tuning it. My goal is to expand the board to about 15 members by end of 2013.

But again, this is not a sales pitch. What I’d like to do is focus my readers on the various regions of the world, and how they compare on a relative basis. As I’ve written many times before, most surveys and rankings in essence show rich countries at the top and poor countries at the bottom. They don’t tease out the relative differences among nations, ie, which nations are doing the most with what they have. This is what we strive to do with our initial research, which we call The Tau Index.

When I first started putting numbers together and creating our algorithms, I found a lot of dynamism in Southeast Asia. This confirmed my initial reason for starting this research, ie, the region is a beehive of activity. Yet my travels also told me that certain countries were overrated by normal measures, while others were diamonds in the rough that needed more exposure.

Our numbers confirmed this as well, pointing out that Indonesia actually appears to be lagging, Vietnam is a shining star, and the Philippines is more dynamic than Thailand. Our algorithms do integrate the perception of corruption, but are neutral about the form of government or underlying societal stresses.

So the flawed democracies of India and the Philippines, for example, are not compared against the Communists of China and Vietnam, the Islamists of Indonesia and Malaysia, or the severe class friction of Thailand. The same neutral approach goes for the rest of the world. The recent US election and its result have no bearing on the Index, nor do the current political struggles in Greece and Hungary, or the turmoil and serious violence throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Instead, our aglorithms measure a country’s overall commitment to ICT and the benefits it brings. Over time, we may find that certain types of government or a long period of societal turmoil affect how a country migrates to ICT, with a subsequent affect on its economy. Our view is that higher levels of commitment to ICT equal more economic growth and less economic disparity.

In particular, the growth of mobile technology and social media are driving more open societies – something that we favor, of course – even as government attempts (including in the US) to control it become increasingly ham-handed.

As we enter the final weeks of 2012, I urge everyone to keep their eyes on Northern Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia, but particularly on Northern and Eastern Europe. Countries and regions that could stand improvement – and may in fact be the leading beneficiaries of our research – include Latin America, the United States, the BRICs, and Southern Europe.

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We’ve produced our initial report for sale by The Tau Institute. It’s priced at $895, with a $200 discount if you mention “Cloud Computing Journal” when you order. You can visit our website or tweet me if you’re interested.

But this is not a sales pitch. The report is just part of our activities. I started my research on national ICT environments about two years ago, with the help of Cloud Computing Journal and ComputerWorld Philippines.

I started the Institute a few months ago. I’m Executive Director, with an office and an assistant here in the US. Ibarra Gutierrez serves as our Associate Director. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Computerworld Philippines, and has some dedicated staff to the Institute from his offices along Ayala Ave. in Makati Metro Manila.

We now have eight other folks on our Advisory Board, drawn from all regions of the world. They’ve been invaluable in helping us set a direction for the research, and fine-tuning it. My goal is to expand the board to about 15 members by end of 2013.

But again, this is not a sales pitch. What I’d like to do is focus my readers on the various regions of the world, and how they compare on a relative basis. As I’ve written many times before, most surveys and rankings in essence show rich countries at the top and poor countries at the bottom. They don’t tease out the relative differences among nations, ie, which nations are doing the most with what they have. This is what we strive to do with our initial research, which we call The Tau Index.

When I first started putting numbers together and creating our algorithms, I found a lot of dynamism in Southeast Asia. This confirmed my initial reason for starting this research, ie, the region is a beehive of activity. Yet my travels also told me that certain countries were overrated by normal measures, while others were diamonds in the rough that needed more exposure.

Our numbers confirmed this as well, pointing out that Indonesia actually appears to be lagging, Vietnam is a shining star, and the Philippines is more dynamic than Thailand. Our algorithms do integrate the perception of corruption, but are neutral about the form of government or underlying societal stresses.

So the flawed democracies of India and the Philippines, for example, are not compared against the Communists of China and Vietnam, the Islamists of Indonesia and Malaysia, or the severe class friction of Thailand. The same neutral approach goes for the rest of the world. The recent US election and its result have no bearing on the Index, nor do the current political struggles in Greece and Hungary, or the turmoil and serious violence throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Instead, our aglorithms measure a country’s overall commitment to ICT and the benefits it brings. Over time, we may find that certain types of government or a long period of societal turmoil affect how a country migrates to ICT, with a subsequent affect on its economy. Our view is that higher levels of commitment to ICT equal more economic growth and less economic disparity.

In particular, the growth of mobile technology and social media are driving more open societies – something that we favor, of course – even as government attempts (including in the US) to control it become increasingly ham-handed.

As we enter the final weeks of 2012, I urge everyone to keep their eyes on Northern Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia, but particularly on Northern and Eastern Europe. Countries and regions that could stand improvement – and may in fact be the leading beneficiaries of our research – include Latin America, the United States, the BRICs, and Southern Europe.

read more

There is little doubt that Big Data solutions will have an increasing role in the Enterprise IT mainstream over time. Get a jump on that rapidly evolving trend at Big Data Expo 2013 New York, co-located with 12th Cloud Expo – being held June 10 – 13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York, NY.
As advanced data storage, access and analytics technologies aimed at handling high-volume and/or fast moving data all move center stage, aided by the cloud computing boom, Big Data Expo is the single most effective event for you to learn how to use you own enterprise data – processed in the cloud – most effectively to drive value for your business.
A recent Gartner report predicts that the volume of enterprise data overall will increase by a phenomenal 650% over the next five years. Help plant your flag in the fast-expanding business opportunity that is Big Data: submit your speaking proposal today!

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Despite the economy, cloud computing is doing well. Cloud Computing is not just a buzz term; it’s already proving itself as the next wave of technology infrastructure.
The 12th International Cloud Expo, to be held June 10-13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York, NY announces that its Call for Papers is now open. Topics include all aspects of providing or using massively scalable IT-related capabilities as a service using Internet technologies (see suggested topics below).
Cloud computing helps IT cut infrastructure costs while adding new features and services to grow core businesses. Clouds can help grow margins as costs are cut back but service offerings are expanded.
Help plant your flag in the fast-expanding business opportunity that is The Cloud: submit your speaking proposal today!

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The objective of our new Cloud Revenues program is to build a knowledge base of insights and materials to support Solution Selling new Cloud offerings.
Key insights include those from key thought leaders – For example this piece on the Cloud SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is powerful and timely.
Tom zooms in on the heart of the matter, what the real disruption effect of the Cloud will be, which is that an entirely new vision of IT itself is needed.
Focusing on the SOA as the headline for this he introduces a new iteration of the model to reflect this Cloud wave, what he calls the ‘Distributed SOA’.

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It’s downright embarrassing when the head of the CIA can’t use e-mail to
whisper sweet nothings without his love affair being outed four months after
it reputedly ended.

The fact that the lady in question and General David Petraeus, who ran the
wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, used a shared Gmail account to leave
messages for each other in the draft folder – a tactic employed by terrorists
to avoid incriminating e-mail trails – has also prompted concern about
whether the spy chief’s cyber security was blown by somebody else besides
the FBI at any point.

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Intel CEO and president Paul Otellini, 62, has apparently tired of beating back the dragons that periodically threaten to devour the company and has decided to retire early.
Intel CEOs have all previously stepped down when they were 65, when retirement is mandatory, with their designated replacement clear. This is not the case this time.
The board, reportedly surprised by his decision, asked him to hang around for six months while it searches for his successor and starts an “orderly” transition. He will leave in May, his anniversary.

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For the real-world enterprise, cloud computing promises flexibility, efficiency and convenience. But those attractions mask realistic potential risks to data integrity, privacy and oversight. And that’s enough to make even the earliest of early adopters hesitate to move to the cloud.
Private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) enables the real-world enterprise to reap the benefits of cloud computing while preserving the order of on-premise managed IT.

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