One thing in life, whether you are using a Garmin to go to a friend’s party or planning your career, you need to know where you’re going. Failure to have a destination in mind makes it very difficult to get directions. Even when you know where you’re going, you will have a terrible time getting there if your directions are bad. Take, for example, using a GPS to navigate between when they do major road construction and when you next update your GPS device’s maps. On a road by my house, I can actually drive down the road and be told that I’m on the highway 100 feet (30 meters) distant. Because I haven’t updated my device since they built this new road, it maps to the nearest one it can find going in the same direction. It is misinformed.

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KDnuggets recently posted its annual poll on data mining software, and the R language retains its #1 ranking as the most commonly-used software for data mining: R is now used by 52.5% of poll respondents, compared with 45% last year. Donnie Berkholz provides an analysis of the year-on-year trends for Redmonk. He provides the chart below, and notes «the general trend of newer, open-source languages growing at varying speeds (Python followed by R and Hadoop-based options like Hive/Pig), while older languages including Java, SAS, and Matlab are bleeding users». Meanwhile, the recently-released Rexer Analytics 2011 Data Miner Survey also ranks…

David Smith

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A recent report from PwC estimates that between 15 and 30 percent of enterprise IT spending is of the roguish nature. That’s a pretty wide range, so we probably shouldn’t rely on the folks who put this survey together to land the next probe to Mars; need a bit more precision than that.

But, to give them a break, maybe we can assume this range means that some companies are at the lower end, others at the higher end. The survey covered companies in the US with revenues of more than $500 million. Its purpose ostensibly addresses rogue cloud-services buying (eg, AWS), but seems also to address the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) issue that’s emerged in an era of smartphones and tablet computers.

As we sit, the smartphone segment has several platforms, slightly reminiscent of the early PC days. This time, though, there are fewer platforms and much less chance that Microsoft will emerge as the monopolist. It’s also unlikely that Apple will do so, as the company stubbornly (and successfully) refuses to license its platform. Thus, the iPhone’s initial market share of 90 percent+ has settled into a market share in the 40s, with the diffused Android OS taking a similar chunk.

The dying RIM platform looks as if its best shot will be to be integrated into an enterprise solution from IBM. I’ve said before that Windows 8 phones will end up being important if major telcos embrace them. I’m having doubts, though, as I see chaos brewing at Microsoft with its unfocused OS story – by January, we could have one OS for phones, a different one for low-end Surface tablets, a slightly different one for high-end Surfaces, and another for laptops and desktops. Not a pretty picture.

The global legal battle between Apple and Samsung is the big story right now in the BYOD space. As a general rule, judges don’t like to make business law and they don’t like to resolve what they view as playground squabbles. Matters of intellectual property in the IT world are particularly difficult to adjudicate, as they represent the worst possible combination of Patent Office buffaloeing and legal casuistry. It’s hard to believe that in the end Samsung will be prevented from hawking its wares.

So we live in interesting times. Rogue cloud-services buying is one thing, but let’s think this through. It seems as if this buying is truly roguish, ie, not central to the mission. I doubt any serious enterprise app deployment will be done on a stealth basis that ignores the IT department entirely. I don’t doubt that people will continue to bring their own devices to work, or demand their own particular device, depending on how many chits they’ve built up with top management. It doesn’t matter if it’s 15 percent or 30 percent. In the end, IT departments will respond to C-suite directives.

The real issue is whether or not your top management is paying attention to what’s going on, and is flexible enough to bring whatever technology is best brought to bear for your company. If it is, these rogue issues will remain on the margins. If it’s not, then your company will die.

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GridGain will present at Twin Cities Java JUG about “Streaming MapReduce with GridGain and Scala”. As always, JUG is hosted by Intertech. Live coding, good introduction into in-memory computing and data processing and plenty of……

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Here is a summary of the Gartner Hype Cycle for “Emerging Technologies” for 2012 – what is stated explicitly, what can be inferred. This Hype Cycle is suppose provide insight into emerging technologies that have broad, cross-industry relevance, and are transformational and high impact in potential. Most crowded hype cycle on emerging technologies in last … Read more

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The data center (as we knew it) is never going to be the same. Fluid changes are already in motion, brought about largely as a result of ‘paradigm’ shifts in computing.
empowerment for those that can bring meaningful analytics to bear upon the new data stack and, conversely, security concerns for those who fail to grasp the new triffid-sized nettle that has the growth potential to run rampant.
Colorful analogies aside… what are we talking about here in real terms? Enterprises today are increasingly forced to deal with massive amounts of so-called Big Data as they have to contend with the risk of employees connecting to the network with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) tablets, smartphones and more.

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«We started in the high-performance computing area and have been focusing on Big Data for a while,” stated Michael King, Director of Cloud Content & Media at DataDirect Networks, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 10th International Cloud Expo, held June 11-14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley, November 5–8, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.

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According to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute, many agencies still have significant
reservations about moving essential information and functions to the public cloud. According
to the poll, nearly half of respondents indicated that worries about security were the primary
factor keeping them from fully migrating to the cloud.

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Network management is important to cloud computing success. Software defined networks and data center fabrics all help in helping manage cloud initiatives better.
Acquisitions in the cloud computing space have been picking up recently as technology companies look to offer end-to-end solutions. It also shows that for large companies, innovation through acquisition is becoming more popular as a way to adapt to changing technology trends. Cloud acquisitions typically fall into the Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) category.

Oracle has been a voracious cloud acquirer with a number of SaaS acquisitions like RightNow, Taleo and Vitrue. SAP has also been adding to their SaaS portfolio with purchases of Ariba and SuccessFactors. IBM, which typically claims that it is not in the “application” space, has been adding to its SaaS portfolio with business analytics solutions like DemandTec and Emptoris. SaaS solutions are a great way to open cloud markets to large technology companies as the subscription model allows a low entry point for new customers.

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The words “cloud drive” in the revival of “Dallas” jumped screaming from my TV screen. Said drive was mentioned twice in the season’s recent finale, and once the week prior. The prop was used, among other things, to send a guy to jail, charged with murder (among other things).

No specific product was mentioned, but as the storyline had video that was said to be transmitted automatically from a character’s phone to other devices, I’ll assume the character used Apple’s iCloud.

In any case, this must be the fastest transition ever for an IT industry term to make that leap from geek reporting to big-time Hollywood production. (And yes, I’m putting the “Dallas” revival in the latter category, as it has apparently drawn pretty strong ratings from its location on TNT, and will definitely be back in January.)

I was further astonished that cloud computing made it onto a self-consciously retro show like this “Dallas” revival, which took pains to recreate the original show opening, featured almost every key actor still alive from when the original ended more than 20 years ago, and had a truly merciful lack of whiz-bang technology featured throughout the show.

Oh yes, an email played a key role in driving the plot. But hey, we had email in the 80s. And there was some texting. But I don’t recall Facebook being mentioned, or Google, or YouTube. No ostentatious display of WiFi. No “gesture” interface, no biometric security, no yammering about pods and pads.

A thumb drive seemed to be the most leading-edge tech on the show – until that initial, breathtaking mention of the “cloud drive.”

I mean, one of the show’s main plot devices was the use of an old-fashioned, sleazy Private Eye poking his nose into things, for crying out loud. Another key plot twist involved a microphone strategically placed on one of the character’s bodies and what looked like a Soviet-era recording device.

And then – a “cloud drive.” Wow.

I count “Dallas” as one of my guilty pleasures, and can seriously say that JR Ewing, as created by Larry Hagman is one of the two or three greatest characters in the history of television. Mr. Hagman is 80 years old now, and has had some serious health scares in real life. Without him, the show simply cannot exist.

So come to think of it: How great is it, that even today in 2012, acting, an ancient human talent, can still trump technology?

Oh, rule you cloud drive! Sing your siren song! Dance your delirious dance! But remember, in the end, you just can’t beat JR. Nobody can.

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