One thing I’m learning this year as I dive deep into the IoT is a new meaning for the word “raspberry.” In particular, Raspberry Pi, the little computer that could.
A new announcement involving this technology comes from Ocean Optics, which has a new set of spectral sensing tools for IoT developers.
The STS Developers Kit features the company’s STS spectrometer—which measures less than 42mm square and 24mm high–a Raspberry Pi, customizable software, and wireless capabilities in single package.
“It can be used to develop handheld devices for applications such as color determination in liquid, gases and solids; color temperature of LEDs; or solar UV data collection,” according to company information. “It could also be used to create cloud-connected measurement clusters, and mounted on UAVs for remote monitoring.”
Once connected to a WiFi network, the spectrometer can be controlled through phone, tablet, or computer web browser. The WiFi range is up to 150 m, and all data is securely stored to the onboard SD card. It comes pre-loaded and ready to use out of the box, but can also be customized, as noted above. The company offers three models of the device.

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Telehealth legislation opened the floodgates for investment in modern communications services and APIs since 2010. WebRTC promises a second revolution. In his session at 2nd WebRTC Summit, Ivelin Ivanov, co-founder of TeleStax, will discuss a real-world example where telephony APIs make a difference in improving patient care and reducing healthcare costs. He will then look into a brighter telehealth future with secure, high quality, ubiquitous WebRTC video interactions.

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Back when we were doing DB2 at IBM, there was an important older product called IMS which brought significant revenue. With another database product coming (based on relational technology), IBM did not want any cannibalization of the existing revenue stream. Hence we coined the phrase “dual database strategy” to justify the need for both DBMS products. In a similar vain, several vendors are concocting all kinds of terms and strategies to justify newer products under the banner of Big Data.

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The Physical Web is an open standard so any device can broadcast a URL wirelessly, so any phone/tablet/watch nearby can see and rank those devices. When the user taps on one, they just go to that web page. It’s really that simple. It’s about thinking small, enabling micro-information (what is in my prescription bottle) or micro interaction (can I buy a candy bar). Scott Jenson leads a project called The Physical Web within the Chrome team at Google.

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Four in five small businesses will be “fully adapted” to the cloud by 2020, according to a new forecast from software firm Intuit.

The figures, posted in a deck entitled ‘Small Business Success in the Cloud’, prognosticated that 78% of US SMEs would be au fait in six years, as opposed to the current adoption rate of 37%.

While this was the standout stat, the overall report gives off vibes similar to Verizon’s report last week, which pigeonholed users into distinct categories. In this instance, Intuit identified four types of player that would be fully in the cloud by 2020, “moving from passive to active use of the technology”, according to a press release.

‘Plug in players’ would, as the name suggests, simply plug in to cloud providers who deliver a fully managed service – “giving small business operators the ability to focus on mission-critical areas of business”, as the PR states, while ‘head to headers’ are firms which are able to utilise cloud computing, outsourcing its IT costs, to compete with far larger vendors for contracts.

‘Hives’ will be companies which operate virtually, with employees in different locations. With the rise of the weightless office and virtual desktop infrastructure among other technologies, this is fast becoming a reality among smaller businesses. ‘Portfolioists’ however is a more obtuse category, targeting freelance employees who are optimising the cloud to make up a portfolio of work.

Intuit sees this analysis as showing off the human side of cloud computing, as well as giving a glimpse as to how entrepreneurs can utilise cloud.

“Today, the US and global economy is going through a series of shifts and changes that are reshaping the economic landscape,” said Steve King, of Emergent Research in a statement.

“In this new landscape, many people are using the power of the cloud to re-imagine the idea of small business and create new, innovative models that work for their needs.”

Recent cloud surveys include a study from Verizon which showed that two thirds of US enterprises who had adopted cloud early had seen some form of competitive advantage, as well as an IDC study which affirmed the chief financial officer will “hold the keys” to the next phase of cloud adoption.

You can find out more about the Intuit analysis here.

On Friday SYS-CON Events, Inc. named Cisco “Gold Sponsor” of upcoming Cloud Expo, co-located with 3rd International Internet of @ThingsExpo, the largest IoT event in the world. 15th International Cloud Expo will take place November 4-6, 2014 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. Cisco will present a number of technical sessions, including a general session which will be announced next week.

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Agility is top of mind for Cloud/Service providers and Enterprises alike. Policy Driven Data Center provides a policy model for application deployment by decoupling application needs from the underlying infrastructure primitives. In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, David Klebanov, a Technical Solutions Architect with Cisco Systems, to discuss how it differentiates from the software-defined top-down control by offering a declarative approach to allow faster and simpler application deployment.

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Evelyn de Souza is a cloud compliance and data privacy strategy leader at Cisco responsible for championing solutions to address emerging industry trends. She is a strong proponent of building repeatable processes that enable organizations to sustain compliance while optimizing data security posture. Evelyn co-chairs the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM), which harmonizes regulations and industry standards to a common framework.

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“Do you drive in Nairobi?”

‘Yes, I do,” came the quick reply.

That surprised me, because I won’t drive in the Philippines, where I spend about half of my time. At least they drive on the right-hand side of the road in Manila, unlike in the former British colony of Kenya.

I was talking to Adam Nelson, an American who has set up shop in Nairobi to deliver public cloud services. His company is called Kili (www.Kili.io) I wrote a short article about him the other day for Cloud Computing Journal, and branded his firm “The AWS of Africa.” To be sure, Adam would like to expand much more deeply into the potential user base in Kenya, he told me, and extend his service throughout East Africa and the continent.

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Video management and delivery has become increasingly challenging due to the diversity of solutions, mobile devices, platforms and video formats. As a result, companies are often required to piece together multiple solutions and vendors to get what they need.
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Ralf Jacob, Chief Revenue Officer at Verizon Digital Media Services, addresses the challenges of streaming live and on-demand adaptive video to multiple platforms and devices by moving the workflow from hardware-dependent infrastructure to software and cloud-based infrastructure. He will demonstrate how Verizon Digital Media Services eliminates complexity instead of managing it, with a simpler, more scalable approach that significantly reduces costs.

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