Technologies that make buildings smarter and more energy efficient continue to evolve at a rapid pace, with new entrants and solutions announced every week. Many of the new products and services center on the big data that buildings produce in real time. Buildings have been producing volumes of information for many years, but today, according to a new white paper from Pike Research, many companies are starting to leverage the cloud as the basis for rich software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings.
Virtually every leading name in the building services industry has recently launched some form of building energy management system that hosts and manages building data in the cloud, the cleantech market intelligence firm finds. The white paper, which includes 10 key trends to watch in the smart building market in 2012 and beyond, is available for free download on Pike Research’s website.
HP To Fire 27,000 by October ‘14
HP said Wednesday that it would lay off 8% of workforce, 27,000 people,
by October or 2014.
It figures the move will save it $3 billion-$3.5 billion and expects to re-
invest the money in cloud, security and Big Data.
Risk versus Threat
Many see the terms risk and threat as interchangeable. However in the simplest of terms, risk the probability or frequency of doing harm while threat is the actual or attempted infliction of that harm. Tomato, tomahto? It’s all about keeping your IT assets protected, right?
I was chatting with an IT professional about the benefits of cloud-based security and he kept referring to a recent risk assessment he performed. (And if you haven’t done this lately, you should) But what got the gears in my head turning is how interchangeably he used the terms “risk” and “threat.”
Now on the surface they seem like the same component of security management. I tend to disagree. In its simplest of terms, risk the probability or frequency of doing harm while threat is the actual or attempted infliction of that harm. Tomato, tomahto? Splitting hairs? It’s all about keeping your IT assets protected, right?
Tau Omega Leaders by Region & Income Tier
Here are the Tau Index Omega leaders as of late 2011. I’m looking forward to see how things change in the results I’ll present at Cloud Expo.
Tau Index Omega – Global Top 25
1. South Korea
2. Bulgaria
3. Ukraine
4. Lithuania
5. Romania
6. Hungary
7. Vietnam
8. Estonia
9. Czech Republic
10. Sweden
11. Hong Kong
12. Poland
13. Latvia
14. Bangladesh
15. Slovakia
16. Malaysia
17. United Kingdom
18. Singapore
19. Netherlands
20. Morocco
21. Egypt
22. Canada
23. Russia
24. China
25. Slovenia
Notes
I don’t have sufficient information to include Taiwan in my research. I think this nation would finish near the top of the rankings.
The United States finishes 33rd in the ranking, among 82 countries researched
Regional Leaders
Africa
1. Senegal
2. South Africa
3. Kenya
4. Cameroon
5. Nigeria
Americas
1. Canada
2. Honduras
3. United States
4. Mexico
5. Chile
Asia
1. South Korea
2. Vietnam
3. Hong Kong
4. Bangladesh
5. Malaysia
Central/Eastern Europe
1. Bulgaria
2. Ukraine
3. Lithuania
4. Romania
5. Hungary
Western Europe
1. Sweden
2. United Kingdom
3. Netherlands
4. Germany
5. Finland
Middle East/North Africa
1. Morocco
2. Eqypt
3. Israel
4. Saudi Arabia
5. Turkey
By Income
Developed Tier A – Per Capita Income US$29K+
(22 countries in group)
1. Sweden
2. United Kingdom
3. Singapore
4. Netherlands
5. Canada
6. Germany
7. Japan
8. Finland
9. Denmark
10. United States
Developed Tier B – PCI $17K-29K
(7 countries in group)
1. South Korea
2. Czech Republic
3. Hong Kong
4. Slovenia
5. Portugal
Developing Tier A – PCI $7K-17K
(18 countries in group)
1. Lithuania
2. Romania
3. Hungary
4. Estonia
5. Poland
6. Latvia
7. Slovakia
8. Russia
9. Saudi Arabia
10. Turkey
Developing Tier B – PCI $3K-7K
(18 countries in group)
1. Bulgaria
2. Malaysia
3. Egypt
4. China
5. Thailand
6. Tunisia
7. Costa Rica
8. South Africa
9. Jordan
10. Panama
Developing Tier C – PCI <$3K (17 countries in group) 1. Ukraine 2. Vietnam 3. Bangladesh 4. Morocco 5. Honduras 6. Senegal 7. Pakistan 8. India 9. Kenya 10. Philippines
South Korea, Bulgaria Shine as Cloud Expo Approaches
As Cloud Expo in New York approaches, I’m working to update my Tau Index country rankings. The index integrates economic data with national ICT expenditures, Internet access and speeds, and societal factors.
I’ve created a “raw” index that simply measures the amount of ICT purchased on a relative, “pound-for-pound” basis that accounts for the local cost-of-living in the 82 countries I was able to research. In addition to an overall Top 25 list, I’ve created smaller lists of regional leaders and leaders by income category.
Then I’ve created a more nuanced, “Omega” list that incorporates the technology and societal factors. All of the underlying information is publicly available – from organizations such as the World Bank, United Nations, and the International Telecommunications Union – but the weighting is done with a proprietary algorithm intended to smooth out the raw data’s rough edges and to reflect the “street-level” reality of these countries.
The purpose of this research is to derive a ranking system that provides a more level view of the nations of the world. So many rankings I see are absolute, and simply show rich nations on top, poor countries on the bottom, and a bunch of developing nations in the middle. This is not a criticism, as I use a lot of this information as the foundation of my relative calculations. My purpose is to derive something that’s unique and refreshing.
What Does It Mean?
A high listing in the Omega index most likely indicates that the nation is progressing quickly and relatively smoothly toward strong economic growth, fueld by ICT productivity. A high listing in some of the regional and income-tier groups may also indicate some societal turbulenc, given the often-disruptive power of information technology.
The Tau Index is certainly not meant to find the “best” nations when it comes to their ICT expenditures. It does have an implication that all of the leading nations are on a trajectory for rapid economic advancement, for good and bad.
The laggards on the list have a few of today’s popular countries – Brazil and Indonesia, for example. My take is that the blooms will soon be off of these roses if they don’t turn more toward the sunshine and energy of ICT.
Many of the other laggards are also economic laggards, and should be considered countries of opportunity, in my opinion. Some of the very lowest rankings I’ve discovered belong to intriguing countries that could quickly turn things around with whatever change is necessary to make them more aggressive ICT deployers – Venezuela, Paraguay, Libya, Serbia, to list a few examples.
Coming to Cloud Expo
I’ve conducted all of this research with the assistance of Cloud Computing Journal and Computerworld Philippines.
I don’t expect wholesale changes to the results that I’ll present at Cloud Expo, although I do expect some nations to move up and down. The Tau Index measures societal torque, and by extension, volatility. The Index’s leaders, particularly among developing nations, are very dynamic, even combustile places. They are the ideal places for individuals and companies who like to roll the dice a bit and are seeking (or validating) sources, locations, partnerships, and investments.
The Index’s leaders among developed nations would appear to be the most dynamic, yet stable, nations within a sometimes unstable developed world.
I wrote about the leaders of the raw Tau Index in October. Here are those results.
Then here are the Tau Index Omega leaders as of late 2011. I’m looking forward to see how things change in the results I’ll present at Cloud Expo.
GridGain and Grid Dynamics Enable eCommerce and Big Data Solutions
Grid Dynamics, an eCommerce technology solutions company, and GridGain Systems, makers of an open source in-memory platform for Big Data processing, on Wednesday announced the expansion of their partnership which began in 2008.
Grid Dynamics provides personalization and big data solutions for large-scale eCommerce companies, GridGain’s Java based open source middleware platform allows organizations to perform real time processing and analytics on live big data.
ServerCentral to Unveil Enterprise Cloud at Cloud Expo New York
ServerCentral, Chicago’s leading provider of colocation, cloud, network connectivity, and managed services, announced on Tuesday that its high performance cloud will debut on June 11 at the 10th International Cloud Expo, held June 11-14 at the Javits Center in New York City.
“ServerCentral customers have voiced their frustrations with cloud offerings which may require thousands of VMs to run large workloads,” explained Jordan Lowe, ServerCentral President and CEO. “Our cloud services support real-world enterprise and content workloads, offering the CPU, network, and disk throughput of high-performance physical servers.”
ServerCentral built their cloud with virtual machines as powerful as physical servers, enabling it to run enterprise workloads with ease. Each VM has dedicated CPU, a generous allocation of memory, and redundant 10-Gigabit connections to ensure data and applications are accessible, protected, and lightning-fast 100% of the time. Additionally, cloud users are able to configure, launch, monitor, and manage their entire cloud infrastructure in a powerful provisioning portal built by ServerCentral’s own Chicago-based software development team.
ITpreneurs Bringing Cloud Computing Essentials to Cloud Expo New York
ITpreneurs, the leading provider of competence development solutions for IT best practices, will be delivering its Cloud Essentials course at the upcoming Cloud Expo New York, taking place June 11-14, 2012 at the Javits Center in New York City. The two-day course covers core concepts and prepares individuals to become internationally certified by CompTIA.
“We are very pleased that ITpreneurs is providing this course offering for attendees,” said Jeremy Geelan, President & COO, Cloud Expo. “The Cloud Essentials course provides professionals not only with the content to succeed, but the confidence to excel.”
Individuals can register for the course here. Those registered for the course will be able to attend two daily technical sessions, and have access to the Expo floor and all keynote and general information sessions.
PixPuffin Photo Management System for SMBs Runs Carbon-free on Iceland’s GreenCloud
NordicPhotos image agency has released PixPuffin, a cloud-based photo management system for medium sized and small businesses. Web-based, without any need for additional software or servers, it is the first of its kind and specially designed to administer the image library of today’s companies and organizations. The system has been in constant development for over 11 years as the core system overseeing NordicPhotos’ own image library. Based in Iceland, the system is cloud hosted on greenqloud’s 100% renewable energy servers, making PixPuffin the first completely eco-friendly image management solution available.
Between single user solutions and large, very expensive server based media management solutions, the creators of PixPuffin felt that user friendly and affordable image management solutions were somewhat lacking from the market. Businesses and organizations can save a great amount of money every year by using a solution like PixPuffin, they can save time and prevent damages such as lost images and expensive copyright mistakes. Furthermore, they can improve or extend the use of their images, save on image purchase and make their marketing and PR presence better than ever.
For more information www.pixpuffin.com
“We have talked to almost 200 companies during the past few weeks and it surprised us how much of a problem image management is becoming within companies of all kinds,” said Arnaldur Gauti Johnson, Managing Director. “They are using more images than ever, but lacking systems to manage the images and the copyrights attached. Access to the images is also becoming increasingly important as many administrators in the company need to grant access to the media and clients as well as the employees and they must be able to control this access.”
PerspecSys Named “Silver Sponsor” of Cloud Expo 2012 New York
SYS-CON Events announced today that PerspecSys Inc., the leader in cloud data protection solutions for the enterprise, has been named “Silver Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
PerspecSys Inc. is a leading provider of cloud data protection solutions that enable mission-critical cloud applications to be adopted throughout the enterprise. With PerspecSys, any information that leaves an enterprise’s environment and enters the cloud can be tokenized or encrypted (using strong FIPS 140-2 encryption modules), ensuring that data remains undecipherable when it is being processed or stored in the cloud. PerspecSys accomplishes this for many large, heavily regulated companies across the world, giving them full control over their sensitive data while ensuring that end-user functionality of SaaS cloud applications is maintained. Based in Toronto, PerspecSys Inc. is a privately held company backed by investors that include Intel Capital and GrowthWorks.