Tag Archives: IT

Anatomy of a Startup – Part 2

On the heels of my last blog post about the opportunities for a startup, I have been thinking more about the technology infrastructure it takes to launch that startup. It turns out that it is easier than ever, thanks to managed services and distributed computing. There are a lot of very smart people willing to provide services that will help get your new product or service off the ground. In the last blog I talked about the three things you need for a startup: a great idea, awesome people, and a funding source. This week I want to focus on the work behind the curtain.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

There is very little need to deploy your own big iron any more. You can purchase and configure servers in the cloud easily. This gives you the infrastructure that you need so that your developers can create your new service or product and provide the storage necessary for all of those tasks. One of the big benefits of cloud- sourced infrastructure is scalability. You can deploy as much or as little of these resources as you need. When starting out, you can contract a small amount of services and as you grow, the infrastructure can grow with you. The set up time and learning curve are also eliminated, as well as the risk of physical equipment failure. Some vendors in this area are: Amazon Web Services, CA Technologies, HP, and GoGrid.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

If your new product or service is primarily digital, then this will allow you to deploy development, testing, and production platforms for your developers. Again, there is no need to deploy actual hardware at your startup site to have platforms available. Deploy as little or as much as you need and, again, it is scalable and additional resources can be deployed on demand. Vendors in this area are: Amazon Web Services, Google, and OpenStack.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Finally, the top layer. These are the applications that you and your new employees use every day such as customer relationship management and tracking, office applications, e-mail, accounting applications, and so on. These applications can all be maintained by others and accessed through an interface on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone. There is no need to maintain your own computers and your own expertise, thanks to many, if not all of these day-to-day applications. Salesforce.com was one of the early pioneers in this growing field by hosting customer relationship management applications. Other established and emerging companies are SAP for on-demand enterprise resource planning and Financialforce.com to provide you with necessary finance applications, through the cloud.

Thoughts

It used to be that one of the drawbacks of starting a new company is that you had a lot of startup costs associated with procuring IT infrastructure and applications. Now, what was once a barrier is an advantage because you have no legacy IT to deal with. You can start fresh and easily deploy just the right level of services to meet your needs. This frees up you and your team to finally bring that great new product to a waiting market.

About Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Yesterday’s News: Telephone Operators, Pay Phones, and Postage Stamps

I was reading an article recently about the possibility that the US first class stamp may rise another three cents and I wondered if maybe the US Postal Service is heading towards becoming an anachronism. At most, I use maybe fifty stamps per year, right now. At the rate I am going, I can probably buy enough forever stamps to last the rest of my life. I then pondered the reason for the slide and I believe that it is due in large part to technology. I pay a lot of my bills electronically. I can transfer documents electronically and get notices electronically. I use e-mail extensively, so I no longer send or receive personal correspondence through the traditional mail. The mail that I do get is largely unsolicited.

I think this is a case where technology will soon make a long-standing service obsolete. I then thought about other services that have already become what I call technology-induced anachronisms. Here is my list:

Telephone operators

When was the last time you placed a phone call that required a telephone operator? When was the last time you called “information” for a phone number and talked with a live person? Advances in phone switches, networking technology, and voice-activated response systems have made the telephone operator largely obsolete. I am even not sure what would happen now if you dialed “0” from your phone.

Public pay phones

Along those lines, when was the last time you saw a functioning public pay phone? These have been made obsolete by cell phones. Even if you forgot to bring your cell phone from home, chances are you could borrow one from a friend or stranger.

Photo film and film processing

Think about how quickly we have moved from traditional silver halide film to digital photography. It is difficult to find traditional film today, let alone a photo processor. Digital photography does have a lot advantages over traditional film such as the fact that it is less expensive, you get instant picture review, and you can take many more photos, depending on your storage capacity.

Cash

How much cash do you have in your wallet or purse right now? I have $16 and that is probably enough to last me for the next two to three weeks. While this one will not go obsolete as quickly as some of the others, I think that debit and credit cards and some of the latest apps will reduce or eliminate the need for consumer cash transactions. With the new phone swipe apps and devices, even my neighborhood lemonade stand will soon be able to take a credit card.

Thoughts

I hope you will take a minute and think about all of the changes that you have seen in your lifetime or even in the last twenty years. Take a minute and reflect on how technology has changed your life, hopefully for the better. What is your favorite technology-induced anachronism? Do you think there is a product or service headed for obsolescence? Let me know.

About Kelly Brown

Informatics and Health Care Reform

There is a lot of attention right now on health care and health care reform. The focus is on providing health care for everyone at an affordable price. There exists a lot of political wrangling over the method of achieving the goal of affordable universal health care but I would like to suggest that IT can play a big part in making health care more efficient and therefore cheaper. Specifically, health informatics can create patient record efficiencies and cost savings.

Health Informatics

Health informatics is really the storage, processing, and display of personal health records. Health informatics has grown from the old days of hand-scribed paper records to a complex electronic system of networked data. Health care itself has grown as well, from the country doctor to the point where a single patient may have multiple doctors and specialists. According to a study by the Rand Corporation, “Most chronic conditions require multiple clinicians to coordinate care, and most patients who have these conditions visit providers from many different medical groups. This creates obvious logistical challenges, such as making sure all providers are up to date on the current care plan, as well as their respective roles and responsibilities for keeping track of the patient. Additionally, patients with more than one chronic condition—who incurred roughly 93 percent of Medicare spending in 2011—require coordination among an even greater number of providers.”

This is where IT and health informatics can shine. This is our specialty. We are very good at processing, dissecting, and compiling information and making it available to everyone, everywhere.

Funding

Some of the funds for implementing and upgrading health informatics systems are available from government stimulus via The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). This legislation authorized incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid to doctors and hospitals when they use Electronic Health Records (EHRs) to achieve specified improvements in care delivery.

According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine “…the federal government will commit unprecedented resources to supporting the adoption and use of EHRs. It will make available incentive payments totaling up to $27 billion over ten years, or as much as $44,000 (through Medicare) and $63,750 (through Medicaid) per clinician. This funding will provide important support to achieve liftoff for the creation of a nationwide system of EHRs.”

Thoughts

We have the incentive to create systems that can provide information that can lead to a breakthrough in a patient’s care and recovery. We have the necessary funds provided, at least partially. We have the skill to create, process, and display information in such a way that a skilled practitioner can provide the professional judgement that leads to quicker diagnosis and treatment. In turn, the care is quicker, cheaper, and more effective, which is the whole point of the current political debate.

Can it really be that simple? Do we just need to bring together the skill, the funding, and the professional expertise to make health care affordable and thus available? I think it boils down to just that. Do you work with electronic health records? Can better and more readily available information really create breakthroughs in this arena? Let me know your thoughts.

About Kelly Brown

Should Data Be Free?

There was a mantra in the IT community in the late 1990s and early 2000s that went like this: “Data Should Be Free.” The thought was that we should unlock the value of data by removing restrictions such as copyrights and intellectual property rights. If barriers such as this could be removed, then we could create new and useful ways of combining information to make our lives better. This movement spawned organizations such as Creative Commons, the Free Software Foundation, and Project Gutenberg. While I generally applaud these efforts and have benefitted from several of these projects, I think there is a fine line between freeing data and respecting property rights.

History

Data, or information, is quickly becoming a product in and of itself. It is now traded, sold, and reconfigured to create a differentiator for a company or organization. The argument for free data is that people can create derived works based on the original data and these can be used to enhance understanding or to create a whole new product. Think mash-ups.

A recent article titled “Playing With Maps” spurred my thinking in this area. The author cites the dilemma of trying to find playgrounds in Toronto. Since playgrounds are not businesses they do not pay to be added to Google Maps and therefore do not show up on a cursory search. The author was trying to find a source of geospatial coordinates that already tagged playgrounds that could then be mapped. This is an excellent example of how free data could be derived and used to build new functionality.

Open Source

The entire open source movement sprung from this notion that data should be free. It has spawned entire operating systems and applications such as Linux and any of the Mozilla products such as Firefox. In fact, Mozilla’s tagline is “Doing Good Is Part Of Our Code”. BUT, here is the dilemma: many of the coders that create Linux variations, Mozilla products, or any number of open source products are doing so on their off hours. Their working hours are often spent coding commercial products that are bought and sold. In other words, a company with proprietary and protected code that is sold for financial gain is paying for the services of a coder and is allowing that coder to create open source or free products on their off time. A symbiosis has to exist between companies that are selling “not-so-free” data and coders that wish that all data and all applications were free.

Thoughts

I believe that there is a time and place for free data and free applications but they must coexist with applications and information that are protected by copyright laws and sold commercially. It is those commercial products that in part allow the free versions to come to market. Do you have a particular open source application that you use? Tell me your favorite. Do you believe that all data should be free? Let me know your thoughts.

About Kelly Brown
Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT topics that keep him up at night.

The Inevitability of Change

In a recent article in the MIT Technology Review, author David Rotman quotes assertions by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee revealing that “impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years.” My initial reaction was one of concern but, at the same time, if their assumptions are correct, I would not want to throttle technological advancement to keep the status quo. For me, it comes down to the fact that the information technology world is changing and jobs are changing. The questions that I ask myself are these: “Am I changing, and am I in a position to take advantage of this changing world?”

History

Information has traditionally been tangential to main business processes but has never been the process itself. It is either used as an input to a business process or becomes an output. Now, there are whole companies and whole industries built solely on the brokering, storage, and exchange of information. Information now is the business process. Information is the product. While it is true that technology, and, more specifically, information technology has replaced some traditional jobs and careers, it has also created brand new fields and opportunities.

New Beginnings

I am just starting a new course today in Information Systems and Management; this new start always spurs my thinking about the changing landscape of information technology. I also think about the inevitability of change, especially in the IT field. We can either view change as an opportunity or a threat. We can either fear change or embrace it.

Fear of Change

As the information technology field changes, information professionals need to change also. This is a fast-paced field, and we need to keep abreast of the latest offerings, technologies, and breakthroughs. To be afraid of change is to be afraid of opportunities. A number of years ago, I had a colleague who was a computer operator (I go back a long ways). As the world transitioned away from central computing to personal computing, the computer room and the computer operator position disappeared. Unfortunately, my colleague did not keep up with the changes, mainly due to fear and apathy, and he eventually lost his job. It was unfortunate but inevitable.

The Next Chapter

The struggle today is how to deal with mobile devices and how to sort out and analyze increasing amounts of information. The challenge is to make sense of all of the data that we are generating and make intelligent decisions based on those findings. There are abundant opportunities out there if we are willing to stretch and learn and apply our skills. Are we learning all we can to meet the challenges? Do we have the right skill set to sort out the thorniest problems? What do we need to do to upgrade our skills and retool?

Thoughts

What are you doing today to prepare for the next chapter? What are your long-term plans? Are you ready? Let me know your thoughts.

Maintaining Our Technology Lead

Background

Recently, there was an article published in Information Week in which author and former Department of Transportation CIO Nitin Pradhan posed the question: “Do we need a U.S. Department of Technology?” Pradhan lays out his argument for a U.S. cabinet level department of technology to promote technology education and technology jobs in the U.S. I disagree and would like to offer an alternate view on how we can address the same issue.

The Issue

Mr. Pradhan argues that we need a centralized coordination point to retain our global technology lead and that we should combine current technology departments for efficiency and to have one strong voice. He writes, “Tech industries grow because of the availability of research and development dollars, a high-quality education system, a tech-savvy workforce, a large local technology marketplace and government incentives.” I agree with all except the last point, and that is where our thoughts diverge.

Early Education

A business maintains competitive advantage by investing in superior research and by hiring superior people that can carry out that research. I believe the key to developing those superior people lies in early education. The key lies in providing an engaging and compelling education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). If young people are excited about these fields, then they will be excited about finding new ways to use technology. This is what will lead them to maintain our technological edge. Since early education in the U.S. is largely a public function, then I agree with Mr. Pradhan that we need some governmental coordination. However, this needs to be done in lockstep with private industry that are the beneficiaries of this new talent, and I would argue that the push should be led by private industry. Larger government programs would only hinder the progress.

Proposal

Here is my early intervention proposal for increasing interest in technology and working to maintain our lead in the world:

Bring real world technology applications and research into the classroom. This benefits the school by raising the awareness and interest of the students. It benefits the business by increasing their exposure to future employees and by garnering ideas from a broader audience. Crowdsourcing ideas from a middle school? Why not?
Encourage post secondary education in STEM by providing high school job shadowing opportunities with people who are creating the future. These could be in information technology, bioinformatics, or technology research.
The technology industry can step up to take the lead on creating this future. There are already several consortiums and associations formed to address various intercompany and interindustry problems. This education lead could be housed through one of the existing associations, to be co-led by an existing government agency.

Thoughts

The need exists and the desire exists to maintain our technology lead. The key is partnering to make technology exciting and fulfilling so that we can attract brilliant minds to help create our future. Do you agree? Are there other ways to reach this future state? Let me know your thoughts.

About Kelly Brown

My Eight Favorite Tech Sites

People sometimes ask me which sites I track to keep up on tech and business news. The Information Umbrella is dedicated to answering that question with a short explanation as to WHY I choose and trust these sites:

TechRepublic

This site gives me the latest news and articles at a glance. I can also drill down to specific areas of interest such as data centers, mobile, big data, etc. I get a short summary e-mail each week with a list of articles that may be of interest to me.

CIO

CIO keeps me abreast of all things relevant to a CIO or senior IT manager. Like TechRepublic, I can also drill down to specific areas such as career, social media, and BYOD. I often research on this site when developing material for courses and other projects.

Marketwatch

This site, which is sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, keeps me up to date on financial news as well as relevant tech news. I have programmed it to send me tech updates in e-mail so that I can keep up with the latest news.

IT White Papers

This is a compilation of tech white papers centered on specific topics such as data centers or virtualization or mobile computing. These are helpful if I am working on a particular tech problem. Be aware that most—if not all—of these white papers are written by technology vendors with a slant toward their product offering.

I maintain a large network of professional colleagues. LinkedIn helps me keep track of their activities as well as providing unique content and reposting of relevant articles, mostly on business but some also on technology.

Cnet

I have used Cnet for years. It not only keeps me up to date on tech news but also provides reviews on tech equipment, consumer electronics, and applications.

Perceptual Edge

This site keeps me current on the latest thinking around information visualization. This is a blog written by Stephen Few, an expert in data visualization and data organization.

TED Talks

I love this site when I have a few minutes for learning and exploration. These are short talks on everything from economics to technology to social trends. I often find that they influence my thinking on unrelated projects that I am working on.

Caveat

If you visit these sites enough, you may want to sign up for their premium service, which is often free, but does come with e-mails and vendor solicitations. If you can put up with that, these are very valuable in keeping up to date on the latest tech and business news.

Thoughts

Which sites keep you coming back for more? Do you tailor them to your particular needs, such as virtual computing or mobile computing? Do these sites provide all of the updates you need to stay informed? Let me know. I would love to see your list.

About Kelly Brown

Cyber-Terrorism: Real or Imagined?

In a recent report on National Public Radio (NPR), the reporter reminisced about the big power outage in the Northeast ten years ago this week. While that outage was brought about by a weak line in Ohio, experts wonder if we don’t have a more imminent threat posed by cyber criminals hacking into the power grid and triggering outages.

History

In reality, there are three different power grids in the US, shown in map form on geni.org. The Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection can supply power to each other, but they also have fail-safe mechanisms as well. Despite the separation, each of them is still very much vulnerable to a breach of their computer systems. This was first highlighted during the Year 2000 or “Y2K” issue where there was concern that incorrect date entries could cause local or widespread outages. The problem at that time was mitigated but did bring to light other vulnerabilities.

Computer Use In Power Generation

When coal-fired plants, hydroelectric facilities, and nuclear facilities were first built, the use of computers was minimal because frankly, they were simple and added little to no value. A large number of operators were needed to monitor switches and relays to keep the facility running. Later, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) allowed facilities to monitor, collect, and process data from one central location instead of having multiple operators monitoring each switch and each piece of equipment.

Internet

With the spread of the Internet, a power plant could now take the SCADA concept one step further and monitor everything REMOTELY. Since everything is now connected to everything else, why not consolidate all of the data collected by the SCADA systems and process it at one time and in one place? Big data meets big power. But, there’s the risk. To do this, you need to have many computers and many controllers all connected to some form of the Internet, be it public or private. Hackers or cyber criminals also have access to that same Internet and, potentially, to your computers and controllers. Whether they access your systems for notoriety or for political purposes, the threat of bringing down parts of the power grid is very real.

Thoughts

As noted in the NPR report, there is legislation in the works to order public utilities to mount a counteroffensive, but the utilities object to these measures. Power companies are already working to thwart any potential threat that may arise, but it is really going to take a partnership between power distribution engineers and computer experts. They each know their specialty, and together they can develop measures to prevent attacks or, at least, monitor and deal with threats.

Do you think the threat of cyber attacks on the electrical grid is real? Should power companies take their equipment off of the Internet to prevent attacks? Can we find a middle ground between attack readiness and returning to the time of manual operators? Let me know your thoughts.

About Kelly Brown

Always On, Always Connected

I had the chance to camp for the last two weeks at a very large jamboree on the East Coast. While it was nice to disconnect for a while, I experienced some unexpected angst about being out of the digital loop. To be clear, the camp was well connected with wi-fi but I chose to concentrate on camping as opposed to being distracted with the normal stream of correspondence and news. It got me thinking about how hard it is to break out of the “always connected, always on” world. Is it good to leave it behind once in awhile and focus on the process of living, or is the angst that I experienced normal?

Mobile Computing

With the advent of smart phones and other portable computing devices, we are now connected 24/7. No longer do we turn off our computer and go home for the day or turn off our computers and go to sleep at night. Our computers are on all the time and we are on all the time. It is common to see people walking down the street glued to a small screen as opposed to being aware of and enjoying their physical surroundings. On this same trip, I was in a beautiful gothic cathedral and witnessed people engaged with their devices rather than enjoying their magnificent surroundings. Why even go out if you are more present in the digital world than you are in the physical world?

Hyper Connectivity

In a 2011 article in Family Circle, Christina Tynan-Wood discussed the balance between always being connected and being present. In the article, Tynan-Wood describes a recent family vacation to a remote cabin. When they arrived, they discovered that there was no cell signal. Panic set in. She states: “The uncomfortable feeling that we were missing out on something important overtook our intentions to enjoy downtime together.” I believe that more and more we tie ourselves to our network and feel the satisfaction of being needed in that network. In doing so, however, I wonder if we are missing out on the sheer joy of being present in the physical world?

Being Present

I am trying to strike a balance between being connected in the digital world and being present in the physical world. In a May 2013 article, social strategist Amber Naslund suggests that finding that balance is a personal choice for each individual. The author states: “…the way I use my phone or my computer or my iPad is my own, and when I’m the only one affected, doing so doesn’t make me less present, it just makes me present in a different way, on different terms, in a different context. It’s every bit as real to me.” Maybe the secret is to focus on one task and one conversation at a time.

Thoughts

Is being connected 24/7 the new norm? Can you be connected and present at the same time? Have you found the perfect balance for yourself? Do you ever experience angst about not being connected enough or not being present enough? Let me know your thoughts.

About Kelly Brown

The Internet of Things: Is Your Refrigerator on the Internet?

I have been thinking lately about “The Internet of Things.” This is really more a concept than a tangible device or product. It is kind of like the cloud. The theory is that physical objects will each have their own identity and will be connected to the Internet and be able to communicate with other physical devices also on the Internet. This is all possible today but here is the thing that concerns me: if each device creates and broadcasts data such as its location and condition, how do we process all of that information? We are already drowning in man-made data as it is.

Definition

According to Techopedia, “The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and will be able to identify themselves to other devices.”

Current State

According to TechTarget, “The technologies for an Internet of Things are already in place. Things, in this context, can be people, animals, servers, applications, shampoo bottles, cars, steering wheels, coffee machines, park benches, or just about any other random item that comes to mind.” Can you think of physical objects that you would like to be connected? Can you think of objects that you hope never become connected?

All That Data

With all of the data pouring in from all of these physical objects, how are we going to be able to process everything? How are we going to be able to make sense of everything and characterize all of this data into a form that we can understand? Can this all be boiled down to a visualization? Does it need to be? Am I thinking too humancentric?

Thoughts

I believe that it is no accident that “Big Data” and “The Internet of Things” are being discussed in the same space and time. It is almost as if they are meant for each other. The Internet of Things will create Big Data, but we need to look beyond our human construct. We need to work on ways to automate the extraction and filtering of data as well as the decision making based on that filtered data. If we think beyond the notion that we as humans have to touch and understand and make every decision, then we free ourselves to apply our unique capabilities to the intractable problems of the world. Physical objects can make rational decisions that benefit themselves. For example, could your coffeemaker consult your calendar to determine the likelihood of your presence? Could your calendar broadcast to other devices as well? Consider the efficiencies gained by stepping out of that decision-making process. We are cognitive beings that can better spend our time on real problems.

Do you take a utopian or dystopian view of this future? Are we headed toward the Jetsons or toward 1984’s Big Brother? Can we really figure out what to do with all of the data that is coming? Let me know your thoughts.