About once every five years or so, the technology industry blazes a new path of innovation. The PC, the Internet, smart mobility and social networking have emerged over the past 20 plus years, delivering new technologies and business ecosystems that have fundamentally changed the world. The latest catalyst is Big Data.
Nearly every major new computing era in the past has had a hot IPO provide a catalyst for more widespread adoption of the shift. The recent Splunk IPO evokes parallels with Netscape, the company that provided the catalyst in 1995 to a wave of Internet computing for both B2C and B2B marketplaces. It ushered in a wave of new innovation and a plethora of new .com businesses. Hundreds of billions of dollars in new value was subsequently created and business environments changed forever.
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Greece Failing in ICT, Too
As we approach the upcoming Cloud Expo in cosmopolitan, worldly New York City, my thoughts turn again to the global dimension of IT and what IT means to the world.
It seems axiomatic that IT drives a rising tide that lifts all boats, and the question to me is now who has the biggest boats today, but who will a couple of decades from now?
This question helped spawn my Tau Index research about 18 months ago, in which I seek to create a relative measure of national IT expenditures. In doing so, I seek to find the most dynamic IT cultures; not the largest, and not necessarily the fastest growing by traditional, absolute measures.
My rankings are based upon an integration of raw IT expenditures, per-person income, local cost-of-living, income disparity, and bandwidth. Several other societal and economic factors refine the numbers. The results can be surprising, but I think accurate in taking a look at present realities and future prospects.
Which brings me to today’s topic: Greece. The country is in the news again as it struggles to form a new government and threatens to cause more disruption in the Eurozone. It seems that its economic problems will extend to the horizon and beyond.
Keeping Up With the Neighbors
Greece does not do well in my rankings. Among 17 nations in “western” Europe that I surveyed, it finishes next to last, above only Italy. If categorized among the developing nations of Eastern and Central Europe, it fares even worse. Greece’s ranking is brought down by a relative lack of ICT expenditures, a high income disparity for its region, and relatively slow average Internet speeds.
Contrast Greece with one of its neighbors, Bulgaria. Both have modest populations (about 11 and 7.5 million, respectively). Greece has a far larger economy – at about $330 billion, more than 6X of Bulgaria’s $50 billion. Greece’s per-person income is five times that of its neighbor; the country is still solidly considered to be a developed nation, while Bulgaria has a long way to go to achieve that distinction.
In my rankings, Bulgaria does well in relative ICT expenditures and income disparity. Add to this one of the highest average Internet speeds in the world, and the infrastructure for a dynamic ICT and economic culture emerges.
Which country has the brighter prospects? Which is more dynamic? Which do you think will be better off 20 years from now?
I don’t mean to cajole or demean any of the countries in my research. My intent is to glean the diamonds from the rough, while also offering a comparative look at different regions and income tiers. In doing so, Bulgaria emerges as a superstar, trailing only South Korea in the overall world rankings, and leading all of Europe.
Bulgaria has also committed itself to a number of ICT clusters and aggressively promotes its ICT capability – not a large factor in my research, but evidence of why and how it is emerging as a dynamic place.
It’s certainly not too late for Greece and other laggards in my research to renovate their ICT cultures. I’m struck by how infrequently a more aggressive use of information technology is mentioned by world leaders as a key component of economic development. It seems to me that information technology should be the prime component.
No More Jokes
It’s far past time to move beyond lame jokes about how most world leaders “can’t open Facebook” or “ask their teenager” to help them with the modern tools of technology. Widespread use of ICT in all its forms increasingly distinguishes the world’s economic winners from its losers.
It’s time to get serious about looking at it in a relative, productive way, rather than to relegate it to the nerd ghetto in economic discussions.
I’m glad to share details of my rankings with anyone who’s interested.
HP Cloud Is All Set to Enter the Public Beta
OpenStack gets one of the most crucial endorsements as HP goes into the public beta on May 10th. I got the private beta access a couple of months ago and I tried a few scenarios. Though it has a long way to go, HP Cloud looks complete in its approach and is ready to take head on!
Soon after going into the public beta, HP wants to add persistent block storage and relational database capabilities to the stack. According to HP, the Cloud Block Storage offers a high performance, persistent storage solution that allows users to easily move data from one compute instance to a second compute instance and the HP Cloud Relational Database for MySQL is a managed, web-based service that provides you with on-demand access to your application data stored in a relation-based structure. HP manages the database administration tasks for you.
Aquilent Gives Federal Agencies Affordable, Strategic Cloud Options
“Aquilent is thrilled to have the opportunity to offer the AWS GovCloud (US) Region through the GSA IT-70 Schedule,” stated Aquilent CEO, David Fout, as Aquilent announced that it has added Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud (US) Region to its GSA Information Technology Schedule-70.
“At this point, every agency should have a cloud strategy in place. Regardless of the stage, Aquilent isuniquely qualified to offer a full spectrum of services to support the government’s cloud needs,” Fout added.
Storming the Castle
When developing your security architecture, look to the 500 year old medieval castle model to create layers of protection. And this best practice extends itself to the cloud as security-as-a-service.
One of the true benefits of the cloud is the ability to reconfigure and create a stronger, more active asset protection strategy than you might be able to otherwise afford. But let’s look beyond the cost factor for a moment and analyze a true best practice that gives an organization a true advantage within the cloud and an overall strategic deployment of security resources.
OpenNebula and OpenStack Featured in European Report Advances in Clouds
The European Commission has just published a report entitled Advances in Clouds – Research in Future Cloud Computing where a Group of Experts provides a state-of-the-art view on cloud computing technologies, its position in and its relevance for Europe. The Group of Experts was conveyed in 2011 and includes representatives from major Cloud players, like IBM, NEC, Google, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, France Telecom, Oracle, British Telecom, or T-Systems. The report brings valuable information for people defining Cloud Computing strategies, developing innovative research lines, or exploring emerging market opportunities beyond today’s Clouds.
Cloud Scaling: Back to the Basics at Cloud Expo New York
It’s easy to lose your head in the clouds. While virtualization has provided a way to satiate the need for on-demand solutions, it is easy to lose sight of the appropriate architecture when being allured to the sky.
In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Phil Jackson, Development Community Advocate for SoftLayer, will go back to the basics and take a practical approach to solution building: how to structure your application to take advantage of hybrid environments and provide the basis for a truly scalable solution.
As Development Community Advocate for SoftLayer, Phil Jackson is the lead customer contact for SoftLayer’s robust API. He also develops and maintains a portion of the company’s software platform and content. Mr. Jackson joined SoftLayer from The Planet, where he was a Sales Engineer building test environments, architecting complex technical solutions, and serving as a technical consultant for customers pre-and-post sale. Prior to The Planet, he served on the top tier of the Customer Care and Response team for Ev1Servers, where he also led the training department and created numerous training initiatives. Mr. Jackson is proficient in a wide variety of software languages and has a diverse background in the technology industry.
Dell Cloud Introduces Cloud-enabled Solutions for Running SAP Apps
Dell Services on Tuesday announced the first offers in its new Dell Cloud suite for SAP solutions, further enriching Dell’s portfolio in support of SAP solutions. For customers looking to move their SAP solutions, Dell’s easy-order offers blend a set of SAP-certified enterprise-class cloud services in a secure hybrid, public or private cloud.
Dell Cloud for SAP Solutions provide the agility to easily integrate legacy applications and enables customers to expand beyond physical resources for “just in time” resource allocation and incremental on-demand capacity.
Dependencies Gone Wild: Testing Cloud Applications at Cloud Expo New York
The move to cloud-based applications has undeniably delivered tremendous benefits. However, the associated distribution creates various challenges from the quality perspective:
End-to-end tests need to pass through multiple dependent systems, which are commonly unavailable, evolving, or difficult-to-access for testing.
Accessing such systems often involves transaction and bandwidth fees.
Teams need to test and tune the system under test against a realistic and broad range of performance and behavior conditions – yet such conditions are often difficult to achieve in a test environment.
Crypto in the Cloud Secures Data in Spite of Providers
With companies increasingly worried about their data in the cloud, a number of providers have cropped up to offer various types of encryption Many studies have shown a chasm between cloud service providers and their customers regarding who is responsible for the security of the customer’s data: The providers put the responsibility in the hands […]