Choosing how to build a cloud is perhaps the biggest strategic decision IT leaders will make this decade. It will determine their organizational competitiveness, flexibility, and IT economics.
In his General Session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Gordon Haff, Cloud Evangelist at Red Hat, will discuss the evolution of cloud computing and the options you have to build a cloud. He will also detail an open source approach to cloud computing that includes open standards, choice of infrastructure, and portability.

read more

About a decade ago, researchers began to study the performance of e-government portals in order to identify best practices. Studies have also focused on identifying the factors that influence the information quality these portals offer to the public. Most of these studies consider only portal outputs, but ignore the resources (or inputs) used to develop and maintain the portal. This is a problem, because when you analyze only the outputs of a system you are only seeing half of the performance picture. In other words, you are only measuring effectiveness and ignoring efficiency. In an era of ever-tightening government budgets, we simply cannot afford to ignore efficiency in government services. Naturally then the question is: how do you measure the efficiency of e-government portals?

The answer lies is a little known type of analysis called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Once viewed as tool only for serious economists, DEA has experienced an incredible surge in popularity in measuring the efficiency of systems, business units, and processes across dozens of business sectors. In fact, a quick search of Google Scholar yields thousands of published applications of DEA for this very purpose. While the details of DEA are beyond the scope of any blog post, I can provide you with the main idea of DEA and the challenges of trying to measure efficiency without it.

read more

Back in the day when virtualization and cloud were just making waves, one of the first challenges made obvious was managing IP addresses. As VM density increased, there were more IP network management tasks that had to be handled – from distributing and assigning IP addresses to VLAN configuration to DNS entries.

All this had to be done manually. It was recognized there was a growing gap between the ability of operations to handle the volatility in the IP network due to virtualization and cloud, but very little was done to address it. One of the forerunners of automation in the IP management space was Infoblox. Only we didn’t call it “automation” then, we called it “Infrastructure 2.0”.
After initially focusing on managing the internal volatility in the IP network, the increase in architectures adopting a hyper-hybrid cloud model are turning that focus outward, toward the need to more efficiently manage the global IP network space.

read more

I gave a talk titled Big Data – Trends and Challenges on Sept 27 in San Jose. This was organized as a meet-up event by Datapipe and Compassites Software. Datapipe provides cloud infrastructure services to clients whereas Compassites Software (where I am a board director) is a technology services firm out of … Continue reading →

read more

Healthcare services provider McKesson has transformed the notion of IT by recasting the role of IT. How pharmaceuticals distributor and healthcare information technology services provider McKesson has transformed the very notion of IT. We will see how a shift in culture and an emphasis on being a services provider has allowed McKesson to not only deliver better results, but elevate the role of IT into the strategic fabric of the company.
Let me start with this notion of IT transformation. What allowed you to convince others that this was worth doing?

read more

Here are the latest leaders—overall, by region, and by income tier from the Tau Institute, founded earlier this year, dedicated to global ICT research, with locations in Illinois and Manila, Philippines.

We now have results for a total of 99 countries, as well as detail on how the rankings are calculated. Earlier today, I wrote a brief description on the topic.

Overall
South Korea
Estonia
New Zealand
Netherlands
Finland
Denmark
Sweden
Vietnam
United Kingdom
Lithuania

By Region
Americas
Canada
Chile
Uruguay
United States

Europe
Estonia
Netherlands
Finland
Denmark

M. East/N. Africa
Jordan
Israel
Morocco
Tunisia

Africa
Uganda
Ghana
Senegal
Kenya

Asia
South Korea
Vietnam
Taiwan
Japan

Tier 1 (>$30K in per capita income)
New Zealand
Netherlands
Finland
Denmark
Sweden
United Kingdom
Germany
Canada
Japan
Belgium

Tier 2 ($13K-$29K)
South Korea
Estonia
Lithuania
Taiwan
Poland
Hungary
Slovenia
Portugal
Chile
Czech Republic

Tier 3 ($6K-$13K)
Bulgaria
Romania
Latvia
Turkey
Serbia
Costa Rica
Malaysia
Brazil
Panama
Colombia

Tier 4 ($2K-$6K)
Jordan
Jamaica
Ukraine
Mongolia
Morocco
Tunisia
Philippines
China
Armenia
Thailand
Tier 5 (<$2K) Vietnam Uganda Ghana Senegal Kenya India Mozambique Zambia Tanzania Nigeria Raw Index Overall Vietnam Kenya Uganda Tanzania Ukraine Ethiopia Nigeria Bulgaria Romania Morocco By Region Americas Bolivia Jamaica Honduras Ecuador Europe Ukraine Bulgaria Romania Serbia M. East/N. Africa Morocco Egypt Tunisia Jordan Africa Kenya Uganda Tanzania Ethiopia Asia Vietnam Mongolia China Philippines Tier 1 (>$30K in per capita income)
Belgium
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Germany

Tier 2 ($13K-$29K)
Lithuania
Hungary
South Korea
Estonia

Tier 3 ($6K-$13K)
Bulgaria
Romania
Serbia
Latvia

Tier 4 ($2K-$6K)
Ukraine
Morocco
Mongolia
Eqypt

Tier 5 (<$2K) Vietnam Kenya Uganda Tanzania

read more

We’ve updated some information into our rankings algorithms at the Tau Institute (something we launched this year, focused on global ICT research, with offices in Illinois and Manila, Philippines). We’ve also added a few countries into the mix, now reaching a total of 99 countries surveyed.

As a result, we’ve adjusted the rankings slightly. Most interesting is the rise of Canada in the overall rankings, and the emergence of Uganda within our basic, raw measures. Two countries separated by many thousands of miles literally and figuratively, yet each has its own unique values in our rankings, depending on whether companeis and individuals are looking for sources, locations, or investments.

I’ve provided a description of how we derive our rankings in a previous article. We integrate several publicly available factors into our own algorithm. There is thus transparency in the data we input combined with a specialized weighting system that we believe reveals new insight into the statistics.

As I’ve written before, we can view the datas in more than one way.

The overall ranking integrates all of the technological, societal, and economic factors in our algorithm. This ranking shows what we believe are the most dynamic ICT environments—worldwide, by region, and by income tier.

The “raw” ranking integrates only the technological factors. We believe these to be the countries that have the most potential for dynamic change in the short to medium term. The raw index is also the place to locate diamonds in the rough.

Canada & Uganda
Canada outperforms the US because it has less income disparity, is perceived as less corrupt, has slightly higher Internet speeds with a slightly lower income, and higher levels of overall and broadband Internet access. In fact, Canada now ranks #13 in the world and #8 in its income tier. The US ranks #34 and #13, respectively.

It’s no secret the US needs to do more in developing its ICT infrastructure and in revitalizing its educational system and economy for the 21st century. Canada, with its vast resources and an immigration policy more friendly than that of the US, should perform well economically in the future if it also continues to be a leader in developing its ICT infrastructure.

Meanwhile, in Africa, Uganda has risen to the top of the raw rankings, something that surprised us a bit. The country remains among the world’s poorest, but is developing an ICT infrastructure relatively quickly given its income level. It is aided by a very low cost of living, something we’d expect to see rise as the country develops. I’ll have more to say later about this country and its East African neighbors—many of which also score well in the raw rankings.

As a reality check and benchmark, we’ve created a “Perfect Land” which has optimal statistics in all categories. The idea is that no country should beat Perfect Land in the overall index, although many countries will beat it in the raw index, which is weighted more toward potential than overall performance.

I’ve listed our current leaders in several categories in a separate article. Please send us a tweet if you’d like to know more.

read more

The European Commission said Thursday that it’s going to take Microsoft to the woodshed and formally charge it with breaching a 2009 agreement to offer European users of Windows a mess of alternative browsers, a deal struck to settle a brewing antitrust case.
Microsoft admitted the oversight blaming it on a technical problem and offered to extend the term of its compliance by 15 months.
Antitrust czar Joaquin Almunia said his people are running up the statement of objections.
Presumably it’ll mean another hefty fine on top of the $1.28 billion Microsoft’s already paid the regulator, especially since it’s the second time the company has failed to comply with an EC order, something no other company has ever done.

read more

“#CloudExpo looks super interesting (almost sexy),” tweeted Xochi Adamé ‏(@xochiadame) recently, referring to the Cloud Expo due to be held Nov 5-8 in Silicon Valley. “Who’s going?” Adamé continued. She is just one of dozens of IT professionals who are using Twitter right now to connect with other like-minded Cloud & Big Data experts and compare notes as they prepare to attend The Largest Cloud & Big Data Event in the World…11th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo Silicon Valley.

read more