Cultural, regulatory, environmental, political and economic (CREPE) conditions over the past decade are creating cross-industry solution spaces that require processes and technologies from both the Internet of Things (IoT), and Data Management and Analytics (DMA). These solution spaces are evolving into Sensor Analytics Ecosystems (SAE) that represent significant new opportunities for organizations of all types. Public Utilities throughout the world, providing electricity, natural gas and water, are pursuing SmartGrid initiatives that represent one of the more mature examples of SAE. We have spoken with, or attended presentations from, utilities in the United States, South America, Asia and Europe.

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Since 2008 and for the first time in history, more than half of humans live in urban areas, urging cities to become “smart.” Today, cities can leverage the wide availability of smartphones combined with new technologies such as Beacons or NFC to connect their urban furniture and environment to create citizen-first services that improve transportation, way-finding and information delivery.
In her session at @ThingsExpo, Laetitia Gazel-Anthoine, CEO of Connecthings, will focus on successful use cases.

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As I mentioned above, I find that understanding the «why» of moral and ethical behavior is just as important as knowing «what» moral behavior is expected. For this reason, I will briefly outline the origins of the ethical principles I have outlined above.
Broadly speaking, ethical and moral philosophy is dominated by two schools of thought. On the one hand sit deontologists. Deontology is the idea that there are certain moral rules to be followed simply because of the nature of sentient life. For example, a strict deontologist, like the great philosopher Immanuel Kant and even great thinkers in the East, argue that being honest at all times is a moral principle to be observed under any and all circumstances. The basic reasoning here is that human beings have value in and of themselves; completely separate from whom they are, what they may do or how they act. This is a recognition of the universal value of sentient life, especially human life, and certain moral rules are established which insist that sentient life is never to be used as a means to an end because, life is an end it itself. As I say, this type of thinking is common in both Western and Eastern moral philosophy. Even ancient Greek «Virtue Ethics» are based on a deontological thinking.

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With so much concern revolving around security, the release and spread of FIDO’s Security Key is a welcome development. It by no means solves all security problems, but it’s a cheap, convenient, and effective way to enhance security and keep cyber attackers at bay. Security Key can be seen as taking easy security solutions to the next level, one that will likely become a common sight as more organizations focus on improving cyber security.

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In this demo at 15th Cloud Expo, John Meza, Product Engineer at Esri, showed how Esri products hook into Hadoop cluster to allow you to do spatial analysis on the spatial data within your cluster, and he demonstrated rendering from a data center with ArcGIS Pro, a new product that has a brand new rendering engine.

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Cloud has become an extension of today’s enterprise and the traditional perimeter has long disappeared. Increasing business requirements for agility and flexibility make the cloud-extended enterprise ideal for a workforce that works anywhere, anytime and any place. This is especially true as organizations are increasingly made up of third-party resources, partners and suppliers compared to just employees.
However, traditional security models are not equipped to deal with the fluid nature of data and network flows that extend from the enterprise into a mix of multiple clouds. This not only creates concerns about network resiliency and availability, it puts key business transactions, assets and access to critical work streams at business risk. As organizations continue to embrace cloud models, IT and InfoSec teams need to find a way to reinvent security so that they have seamless visibility across their enterprise and into the different cloud models their businesses are using. This is where adopting a data and network-centric approach is pivotal.

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As the years passed, and we entered 2014, not only did cloud computing mature as a business model, but senior management began to increase their awareness of various aspects of cloud computing, including the financial benefits, standardization of IT resources, the characteristics of cloud computing, and potential for Platform and Software as a Service (PaaS/SaaS) to improve both business agility and internal decision support systems.

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SYS-CON Media announced that Cisco, a worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow, has launched an ad campaign in Cloud Computing Journal. The ad campaign, a webcast titled ‘Is Your Data Center Ready for the Application Economy?’, focuses on the latest data center networking technologies, including SDN or ACI, and how customers are using SDN and ACI in their organizations to achieve business agility. The Cisco webcast takes place January 13, 2015, at 9:00 a.m. PST. Cloud Computing Journal aims to help open the eyes of Enterprise IT professionals to the economics and strategies that utility/cloud computing provides.

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If cloud computing benefits are so clear, why have so few enterprises migrated their mission-critical apps? The answer is often inertia and FUD. No one ever got fired for not moving to the cloud – not yet.
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Michael Hoch, SVP, Cloud Advisory Service at Virtustream, discussed the six key steps to justify and execute your MCA cloud migration.

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How agile is your IT organization? Have you kept pace with the rapid evolution of cloud computing services? Have you applied that cloud investment to connect with your key stakeholders in the marketplace? Are you ready to seize the opportunities from the emerging mobile cloud trend?
If you answered NO to any of these questions, you’re at a competitive disadvantage with your more digital savvy business technology peer group. The leading organizations worldwide will rely on cloud infrastructure to achieve commercial benefits that extend far beyond IT cost reduction goals.
Informed CEOs and other senior executives are realizing that cloud service adoption can be a much-needed catalyst for operational process improvement — as well as a driver of business transformation.

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