In this podcast, Steve Cakebread, the former president of Salesforce.com, takes the mystery out of cloud computing by explaining the complementary relationship of Salesforce.com, Google's Apps Engine, and Amazon's Web Services.
When Steve Cakebread joined Salesforce.com in 1999, the company had not even introduced its first product. That event happened two years later with the introduction of the single CRM product called Singular Edition people. Today, Salesforce.com has moved beyond CRM to become a diversified company in platforms such as knowledge management and service support. Cakebread says that these new platforms will help to spur the growth of the cloud computing industry.
Meanwhile, cloud computing has got a shot of adrenalin with the likes of Amazon.com's Web Services and Google.com's Apps Engine. Amazon.com built its business around store fronts and logistics, while Google.com's built its business around a consumer's ability to search. Cakebread says, "Amazon's Web services help businesses create those storage fronts on the fly through collaboration or cloud computing, as well as to provide businesses with additional storage and computing power. If you look at Google.com's Apps Engine, it is now creating developer platforms that make it easier to add information for consumers to share in businesses network."
Cakebread says that these three entities have a complementary relationship with each other through various relationships and partnerships. "Each of these technologies, even through they are considered cloud computing, all have different strengths. Salesforce.com is the business platform provider. Google.com focuses on search, while Amazon.com focuses on store fronts, logistics, storage, and computing power. All of these technologies are internally designed on the same technology platform as Oracle Solutions and blade services. The reality is that their architectures are very different, but they can be used by platform developers to achieve service and reliability."
In this podcast, Cakebread also discusses the key technologies that will benefit from cloud computing, the other areas in which both cloud computing and Web 2.0 will enable innovative enterprise applications, and the issues that need to be resolved before companies can deploy cloud computing widely.
Bio
Before becoming CFO of Xactly Corp., Steve Cakebread was the president and chief strategy officer at Salesforce.com. He had been the company's CFO for six months. During his tenure as Salesforce.com's CFO, Cakebread helped to grow the company from $22 million in annual revenue in 2002 to about $749 million in revenue in fiscal year 2008. He also led the company through its initial public offering in 2004.
Cakebread came to Salesforce.com from Autodesk, where he served as senior vice president and chief financial officer. Prior to joining Autodesk, he was vice president of finance for Silicon Graphics. He has also held many key positions at Hewlett Packard.
Cakebread holds a B.S. in Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a MBA from Indiana University.
Resources Podcast -Steve Cakebread on SaaS, sales performance management, IT Knowledge Exchange
In this podcast, Michael Hugos provides insight from his CIO experience and his latest book, Business Agility – Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World.
Michael Hugos, the former CIO for Network Services Company, took a different track when he wrote his latest IT book. Business Agility – Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World provides business executives with tools and tips on how they can help IT professionals drive business revenue. He says that IT professionals tend to forget that the business is where the money is. That's why IT exists." He adds that technologies, such as cloud computing, open source and virtualization, will provide great cost benefits to the business. "We need to be in better position to guide these decisions."
Hugos has first-hand experience working with business executives to drive revenue at Network Services Company, an $8 billion cooperative of 86 distributors that market industrial products to major companies. Before this company became agile, the profit margin on coffee cups was practically nothing and getting smaller. Multiply this by Network Services' distributors who sell to 5,000 stores across the country. He says, "We banded together under this cooperative and worked closely with sales. Interesting things started to happen and ideas for making more money started to flow." The information-based, value-added services Hugos helped to devise returned a two percent to three percent profit margin. "If you do things right, you can earn more money or what he calls the agility dividend"
Hugos thinking is nothing new. He refers to the invisible hand theory which Adam Smith, the great British economist, came up with 250 years ago. He says, "The invisible hand pushes the price of all products to their cost of production. No amount of fast talking sales people and ball game tickets will change this."
The end result for Network Services was complete transparency for more products. Hugos says, "Out of the 50 items we came up with, we carried out 25 for them. For example, we could fill an order directly off a purchasing system or via EDI or XML. We now had a customized solution that made our paper cups more valuable."
In this podcast, Hugos provides some current IT enablers that will help an organization achieve speed and agility, give some examples of companies that have achieved both business and IT speed and agility, and offers takeaways to help CIOs assess the business impact of IT based on speed and agility.
Bio Michael Hugos, at Center for Systems Innovation [c4si], mentors companies and teams in practices of IT and business agility. Up until 2006, he was the corporate CIO at Network Services Company, an $8.2 billion cooperative distributor of janitorial product and disposable food service items. His books include the Essentials of Supply Chain Management (2nd Edition), Building the Real-Time Enterprise, and he contributed to CIO Best Practices -- Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology. His most recent book is Business Agility – Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World.
Resources Michael Hugos' Blog, CIO Magazine, "Doing Business in Real Time"
In this podcast Vid Byanna, executive director of Accenture's internal IT infrastructure, talks about his company's and collaborative computing, and cloud computing initiatives.
Each day the 177,000 employees at Accenture, a $19 billion global IT services company, must communicate effectively with 1,000 of customers in more than 120 countries. In fact, Accenture executives often find themselves looking for internal experts who can support specific customer engagements. The traditional process has involved emailing one's network of colleagues to help with the search. Now these executives can use Accenture People, an internal version of LinkedIn, to search the company's global network of employees.
Accenture People comprises Accenture Collaboration 2.0, a global set of technology initiatives to improve knowledge sharing, enhance communication, and allow for dynamic collaboration within the organization. Technologies in this collaboration platform include social networking applications, greater search functionality, telepresence, and unified communications.
Vid Byanna, the executive director for Accenture's internal IT infrastructure capabilitities and Web 3.0 initiatives, says that Accenture Collaboration 2.0 allows employees quickly to get access to the information from experts who can help resolve an issue, or kick start things that deliver value to customers better than through traditional methods. For example, 30 minutes after looking in Accenture People, an employee was holding a telepresence sessions with an Accenture expert on digital media communications."
Meanwhile, with the help of the Accenture Cloud Opportunity Assessment Tools, the internal IT Accenture organization also has developed a cloud computing strategy. It consists of both internal and external cloud computing initiatives. He says, "We think of cloud computing as dynamic resource allocation of computing capacity, storage and other resources. It gives us the ability quickly to provide these resources for peaks and valleys in IT resource demand. We have heavily invested in our internal cloud by consolidating all of our business applications in a single data center. We also have virtualized our servers, databases, and storage. We are now looking at what external cloud providers can give us. Will these services supplement what we have, or will they give some more scale capabilities?"
In this Enterpriseleadership.org podcast, Byanna talks about the following:
the catalysts for Accenture Collaboration 2.0 platform,
the key technologies that comprise this platform,
the different ways Accenture plans to extend its internal collaboration initiatives to partners and customers,
the Accenture cloud computing strategy,
and the benefits the company plans to derive from cloud computing.
Bio
Vid Byanna is the executive director for Accenture's internal IT infrastructure capabilities. He reports to Frank Modruson, Accenture's CIO. Byanna also drives the implementation of IT products and services to support the company's mergers and acquisitions organization.
Before stepping into his current role, he held other IT leadership position in Accenture's CIO organization. From 1989 and 1998, Byanna was part of the company's communications and high-tech operating group, where he directed large solution-oriented projects for global telecommunications providers.
Byanna received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and a M.S. in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Before joining Accenture, he worked at Bell Laboratories.
Regardless about what you think of cloud computing, most technology thought leaders, such as Theresa Lanowitz, a former Gartner Group consultant, says that cloud computing is a disruptive technology moving one step closer to pervasive computing. However, some CIOs says they are hesitant to deploy cloud computing because of security issue or they are just starting to consider what types of cloud computing would be best for their organization.
During 2009, www.enterpriseleadership.org did a series of podcasts with well-known technology thought leaders about cloud computing. Below is an overview of each interview and a link to its content.
Down-to-Earth Talk About Cloud Computing & Web 2.0 ---} Download (15:31) Theresa Lanowitz is a former Gartner Group research analyst and the founder of voke, a research firm focused on breakthrough technologies, such as cloud computing. In this podcast, Lanowitz provides some down-to-earth discussion about cloud computing as a disruptive technology, moving one-step closer to pervasive utility computing. She provides CIOs with some takeaways they should consider in making decisions about this cloud computing.
Optimizing Cloud Computing and Green Data Center Technology---} Download (23:27) Peter Beckman is the director of leadership computing at Argonne National Laboratory. In addition to supercomputing, Argonne also offers its researchers some less expensive computing alternatives, namely, grid computing, and soon, cloud computing. Benefits of cloud computing include lower computing costs, the ability to consolidate and share resources, and the ability to run custom-built solutions in the cloud.
Trends in Enterprise Storage - Cloud Computing/Virtualization---} Download (17:00) Michael Karp is the founder of Infrastructure Analytics. In this podcast, Karp, a former storage analyst for Enterprise Management Associates, talks about how technology trends, such as cloud computing and virtualization, will continue to reshape enterprise storage, and what CIOs must know to take advantage of these trends.
Three Trends CIOs Can't Afford to Ignore---} Download (37:10) Dr. Kishore Swaminathan is the chief scientists for Accenture, a $19 billion global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firm. In this podcast, Swaminathan discusses three trends CIOs can't afford to ignore - cloud computing, light systems, and analytics. He says he isn't sure where cloud computing will end up because of the unresolved issues in areas such as data security and performance.
Elasticity Provides More Business Capabilities---} Download (21:10) Dr. Kishore Swaminathan is the chief scientists for Accenture, a $19 billion global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firm. In this podcast, Swaminathan discusses four trends from Accenture's research that will define the technology landscape over the next five years: Internet computing, data management, mobility, and convergence of unified communications, collaboration, community, and content distribution.
Putting Some of Your Apps in the Cloud Jeff Kaplan, founder and managing director of THINKstrategies. His strategic consulting firm focuses entirely on the business implications of transitioning technology from a product focus to services-driven solutions. In this print interview, Kaplan provides some authoritative perspective about software as a service (SaaS) and cloud computing.
Demystifying Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 Platforms ---} Coming Soon! Steve Cakebread, the former president of Salesforce.com. In this podcast, Cakebread, takes the mystery out of cloud computing by explaining the complementary relationship of Salesforce.com, Google's Apps Engine, and Amazon's Web Services.
Keeping an Eye on the Four Facets of Cloud Computing ---} Coming Soon! Mark Lobel is a subject expert at PricewaterhouseCoopers. In this podcast, Lobel, discusses the pros and cons of the four facets of cloud computing. He also touches on other cloud computing issues that should be of concern to CIOs.
Driving a Global Company's Collaborative/Cloud Computing Initiatives ---} Coming Soon! Vid Byanna is the executive director of Accenture's internal IT infrastructure. Accenture is a $19 billion global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firm. In this podcast, Byanna talks about his company's collaborative computing, and cloud computing initiatives.
In this podcast, Dr. Peter Beckman, director of leadership computing at Argonne National Laboratory. talks about both cloud computing and green IT at the Lab.
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) oldest and largest national laboratories for science and engineering research. ANL uses its annual $540 million operating budget to support 100's of research projects of interest to numerous federal agencies, and academic research institutions. ANL is one of DOE's two largest supercomputing centers. The other one is at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
In addition to supercomputing, ANL also offers its researchers some less expensive alternatives, namely, grid computing, and soon, cloud computing. Peter Beckman, the ANL's director of leadership computing, says that grid computing is best suited for running applications at multiple sites in cycles available to users in many locations. He says, "On the other hand, cloud computing will enable scientists to build their own solutions as they need them and run them in the cloud. It will also enable the consolidation and sharing of Linux clusters hosted on our cloud. For example, hosting will enable you to expand your 32-node cluster to a 200-node cluster for a few days. "
Opportunities for cloud computing at ANL include everything form studying the genome to looking at data from CERN's supercollider to understanding the smallest particles in the galaxy.
Cloud computing at ANL will eliminate the need for scientists to do their work on a $100 million supercomputer. Beckman says cloud computing is very appealing to some of ANL's researchers. He say, "Cloud computing's bursty, pay-as-you go for cycles model will lower the cost of getting some projects done. It will allow for demand-driven, large allocations of resources, such as a 1,000's of processors for the next couple of week, better than going to a supercomputer. It will also eliminate the need to upgrade equipment." Beckman adds that ANL would like to push some of its cloud capabilities to commercial service such as amazon.com.
In addition to cloud computing, ANL is saving money by optimizing data center technologies, such as water-size economizing, to keep the supercomputer cool and energy efficient. In fact, the chip architecture of ANL's supercomputer uses the least amount of power possible to do its scientific calculations. Beckman says, "Our data center is a factor of two less power data centers that have a different architecture." During some of the winter months, ANL uses water-side economizing to reduce energy costs. The process involves sending the water outside to be cooled by the cooling tower, and then piping the cooled water through heat exchangers in the machine room. He says, "We can cool the machine for free. We'd like to expand the number of months we can do this for."
Bio Since 2008 Peter Beckman has been the director of leadership computing at Argonne National Laboratory, where he oversees its supercomputing facility. After receiving his Ph.D. in computer science from Indiana University, Beckman helped found the university's Extreme Computing Laboratory, which focused on parallel languages, portable run-time systems, and collaboration technology. In 1997 he joined the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he founded the ACL's Linux cluster team and launched the Extreme Linux series of workshops and activities, which helped catalyze the high-performance Linux computing cluster community. In 2000 he founded a Turbolinux-sponsored research laboratory in Santa Fe that developed the world's first dynamic provisioning system for cloud computing and HPC clusters. The following year, he became vice president of Turbolinux's worldwide engineering efforts, managing development offices in the US, Japan, China, Korea, and Slovenia. Beckman joined Argonne National Laboratory in 2002, as director of engineering, and later as chief architect for the TeraGrid. He designed and deployed the world's most powerful grid computing system for linking production HPC computing centers for the National Science Foundation.
In this podcast, Mike Karp, VP and Principal Analyst at Ptak-Noel Associates and founder of Infrastructure Analytics, talks about how technology trends, such as cloud computing and virtualization, will continue to reshape enterprise storage, and what CIOs must know to take advantage of these trends.
How does both cloud computing computer and virtualization change enterprise storage? According to Mike Karp, a former storage analyst for Enterprise Management Associates and the Hurwitz Group, says that these technologies will profoundly change storage at all levels – from the enterprise of global companies to small businesses. He says that it is important to keep in mind that there is a continuum here. “Virtualization differs from cloud computing. In fact, virtualization provides a path to cloud computing. You can go from virtualization to private clouds to public clouds, or you can do just one of them or a mix of them. You typically see hybridization or hybrid architectures. Virtualization enables a great deal of mobility for where you store your data, applications or where your processing resides. You are not restricted to a particular type of hardware. The mobility of the application and the processing enables you to move from one virtual environment to another one instanteously.”
In this podcast, Karp, the founder of Infrastructure analytics, a research firm that focuses on how storage networking fits into the organization’s overall infrastructure, talks about the following:
how have both cloud computing and virtualization changed enterprise storage,
what pros and cons emerge in the move to each one of these technologies,
what type of impact these technologies will have on disaster recovery, and
what changes CIOs must prepare for when they move to these technologies.
Bio
Michael Karp is the founder of Infrastructure Analytics. He spent nine years as the senior analyst for the storage networking practice at Enterprise Management Associates. Here he consulted with vendors on technologies ranging from data reduction to cloud computing. For about six years, he wrote the twice weekly Storage in the Enterprise newsletter for NetworkWorld. Before EMA he was director of storage technologies for Hurwitz Group.
He also has held senior technology leadership positions at Bellcore/Telcordia Technologies and Microelectronics/Symbios Logic/LSI. He was a doctoral candidate in systems management at Colorado Technical University. He also has written about storage networking for a number of computer trade publications, including CIO Update, Computerworld, Enterprise Storage Forum, and TechRepublic.
In this podcast, Theresa Lanowitz, former Gartner Group analyst, provides some down-to-earth discussion about cloud computing as a disruptive technology, moving one step closer to pervasive utility computing.
Every household doesn't need its own energy grid. If you follow this logic, then each enterprise does not need to be in the business of creating massive infrastructure. Why not take advantage of the some of the world's largest infrastructure offered to you by Amazon.com's Web Services or Google Apps Engine? That is the view of Theresa Lanowitz, a former Gartner Group research analyst and the founder of voke, a research firm focused on breakthrough technologies, such as cloud computing.
She says that while Salesforce.com has revolutionized customer relations marketing by elevating it as a platform as a service, Amazon.com and Google.com have the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with every enterprise. She adds, "By making their massively scalable, highly available, high-performance environment, and a solid security infrastructure available, both Amazon.com and Google.com have moved one step closer to software as a service and pervasive utility computing. As a result, companies will be able to lower the cost of doing business and to remain innovative, competitive, and profitable. Enterprises of all sizes need to focus on delivering value to the marketplace of their core competency, regardless of what it is."
In this podcast, Theresa Lanowitz discusses the following:
What type of impact Amazon.com Web Services and Google Apps Engine will have on cloud computing;
What other areas of cloud computing and Web 2.0 will prevail;
Why CIOs are hesitant to embrace cloud computing; and
What three cloud computing takeaways CIOs need to think about in making decisions about this app?
Bio Theresa Lanowitz, is founder of founder of voke, inc., an industry research firm specializing in breakthrough technologies. From 1999 through 2006, she was a research analyst with Gartner, where she was the lead analyst for Mercury. At Gartner, Lanowitz was the founder, creator, and chairperson of the highly successful Application Development conference. She is the founding member of AppSIC (the Application Security Industry Consortium), a member of the German ComputerWoche.de "Expert Panel on Quality IT Practices" and a frequent guest on SD Times "Week in Review" podcast.
She began her professional career with McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) where she worked on the C-17 transport plane. While at Borland Software, she shipped the ground breaking Java development tool JBuilder. Lanowitz also played instrumental roles at Taligent in the areas of product management and international marketing. At Sun Microsystems, she was responsible for the strategic marketing of the Jini project – a precursor to emerging convergence market.
Lanowitz holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
How does a guy with a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience wind up doing green IT initiatives at Microsoft? He also has co-authored a guidebook called Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line. I'm talking about Dr. Tony Velte. In this podcast, he offers a concise framework for how you can green everything from your data centers to desktops. He also has co-authored books about cloud computing and virtualization. Now let's meet Dr. Toby Velte, a member of a Microsoft team focused on helping large enterprise groups with their IT strategies. That includes going green.
How does a guy with a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience wind up doing green IT initiatives at Microsoft and also co-writing a guidebook called Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line and the upcoming? Dr. Toby J. Velte's work in computational neuroscience focused on creating models that were very similar to the widespread enterprise networks found in most large companies and in government agencies. Contacts he made along the way helped him to secure a position at Microsoft helping large enterprise groups with their IT strategies, especially around green IT.
Velte's green IT book provides a roadmap for how you can create a company-wide green IT program starting with your data centers, moving down to desktops, and empowering individual business units to develop their own IT strategies. He says that the number one problem companies have with moving forward with green IT isn't the technology or having adequate funds. "It's the people situation." He urges companies to get all of their stakeholders together to try to understand what the green initiatives are going to look like at the end of the day, and how do they plan to measure success. Next, companies need to measure everything starting with power consumption. "Most companies don't have the metrics in place. People need to understand what they have and what they are consuming." Once companies know what outcomes they want to achieve, then it's time to execute the green IT program as if it were another IT initiative.
In most companies, green IT begins in the data center. In fact, that's where it began at Microsoft. When Microsoft built its new data center outside of Quincy, Washington, it supplemented reliance on the power grid by use of water power.
Meanwhile, virtualization and cloud computing can also cut down on a data center's power consumption. He says, "By moving business process out to the cloud, you are really turning over the power consumption issue to the service provider. With virtualization, can you eliminate the servers with low utilization, say around 15 percent, by moving those applications to virtualized servers. You can achieve upwards of 80 percent utilization with fewer servers."
In this podcast, Velte talks about some of the practical measurements you can take to make sure your desktops and data centers are green, the ways you can translate those metrics into meaningful results, the steps you can take to reduce your reliance on the power grid, and a plan companies can follow to stay green.
Bio
Dr. Toby J. Velte is a key member of Microsoft Corp.'s North Central practice focusing on helping thriving companies with their technology-based initiatives. He also works with large organizations to create green IT roadmaps that are business focused and practically implemented. Prior to Microsoft, he worked at Accenture as a business development technology executive. He has co-founded Velte Publishing, Inc. Velte has co-authored more than a dozen books published by McGraw-Hill and Cisco Press. These books include the following: Green IT: Reduce Your Information System's Environmental Impact While Adding to the Bottom Line and the upcoming Microsoft Virtualization with Hyper-V, and Cloud Computing: A Practical Approach. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from the University of Minnesota and then completed his post-doctoral training at Harvard University.
Resources
The Reputation Green IT Doesn't Deserve, Fast Company
In this podcast, Carvallo goes into detail about building the enterprise architecture for the Smart Grid based on service-oriented architecture and cloud computing.
He also talks about his involvement in driving the IT Leadership and CTO Best Practices Collection, a 700-page document that describes essential IT processes, such as how to manage a data center to how to run a project management office. He also provides some takeaways for CIOs who might be interested in moving to Smart Grid technology. Despite the economy, Austin, Texas, has seen a spike in major businesses, such as google.com and Hewlett-Packard, moving into the area, as well as more people relocating there to find jobs. Meanwhile, Austin Energy, the nation’s ninth largest community-owned electric utility, is making sure it can meet the power demands of its one million residential customers and 41,000 businesses, and continues to return more than $1.5 billion in profits back to the community.
If all goes as planned, Austin Energy could become the country’s first electrical utility to deliver Smart Grid technology. A Smart Grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost, and increase reliability and transparency.
Perhaps, the credit for putting Austin Energy on its Smart Grid journey belongs to Andres Carvallo, the organization’s CIO. In fact, this year Computerworld Honors Program’s recognized the outstanding significance of Carvallo’s Smart Grid work in the energy field. Carvallo just could become the first CIO to deliver the country’s first Smart Grid for a public utility.
The genesis for the Smart Grid began in 2003 when Carvallo was working on automation and efficiency and optimization of the business. In 2004, after reading the Electric Power Research Institute’s white paper on the Intelligrid, Carvallo thought it would be possible to use similar technology for Austin Energy. In fact, not wanting to infringe on the Intelligrid trademark, he coined the term Smart Grid. In 2007, he gave his first speech about the Smart Grid. With the support of executive management, Carvallo’s team began working on Austin Energy’s Smart Grid, which seamlessly integrates four disciplines: energy, communications, software, and hardware.
He says, “Together these four disciplines help to redefine how we generate, distribute, and consume electricity. The project goes beyond how we collect data and move it, and how safely we do it. The decisions will be able to make about that data will affect production, distribution, and consumption of energy, from turning on and off devices, to managing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in the house. “
Of course, as a public utility Austin Energy must abide by the North American Electrical Reliability Council’s standards and regulations for infrastructure protection and cyber security. Carvallo says, “We will become compliant this year.” Meanwhile, he has been one of eight people working on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s cyber security standards for Smart Grids. He says, “We are awaiting the publication of the interim Smart Grid standards.”
Bio Andres Carvallo is the chief information officer at Austin Energy. In addition to his CIO responsibilities as CIO, Carvallo sits on an eight-person executive team, as well as on the Innovation and Opportunity Development executive board. Outside of Austin Energy, he is vice chairman for the Large Public Power Companies’ CIO Task Force. Carvallo is a frequent speaker at both IT and energy industry venues, such as CleanTech.
His outstanding work in IT has earned him many awards, including IT Executive of the Year by the Association of Information Technology Professionals in 2005, Premier 100 IT Leader by Computerworld in 2006, Best in Class of Premier 100 by Computerworld in 2006, CIO 100 Award by CIO Magazine in 2006, InformationWeek 500 by InformationWeek Magazine in 2007, and Computerworld’s Top 12 Green IT Companies in 2008 (First Ever).
Before joining Austin Energy, Carvallo held key positions at four start-ups and large companies, such as Philips Electronics, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Microsoft. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas, and has completed executive management programs at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania.
In this podcast, Swaminathan goes into detail about the following:
how four technology trends drive the elastic business model;
what challenge businesses will face deploying the elastic business model among a wide spectrum of different generations in the workforce;
how communication will change from a need-to-know model to a good-to-know model;
and why the workplace of the future will resemble the open source community.
Every year, Accenture, the global technology service and outsourcing firm with $23.9 billion in revenue for 2008, does a thorough analysis to identify the major technology trends that will change the underlying business models and capabilities. In 2009, research conducted by Dr. Kishore Swaminathan, Accenture's chief scientist, identified four major trends that will define the technology landscape over the next five years: Internet computing, data management, mobility, and convergence of unified communications, collaboration, community, and content distribution. He says, "These technology trends will give businesses a new capability that we call elasticity. They will allow every aspect of a business -- from IT to businesses process to how a company innovates -- to be more flexible, and to expand, contract and change, depending on current market conditions."
To derive more revenue and business value from this elasticity, businesses must get all of these four technologies just right. Take Internet computing, For example. Swaminathan says that transformational technology trends often pose a dilemma for CIOs who now face a possible change to their applications, the enterprise architecture, or the business models. "You have several choices: You can commit to a major change that will take much time and money, and you won't see much business value right away. On the other hand, you can ignore the trend or put it aside, and then you can wait until you have no choice but to spend a lot of money and embrace the new trend. Many CIOs need to go experiment and get comfortable with things, such as how to source storage, or software as a service (SaaS). They have to understand the pros and cons."
Swaminathan says that many CIOs he has spoken with have a visceral reaction to SaaS, especially with security and data privacy issues. He adds that the visceral reaction is fine. "Ultimately, CIOs have to make a business decision based on solid empirical data. They have to get Internet computing right in the long run, but for the short term they need to experiment, gather as much data as possible, and learn about the model. Unless they are comfortable with a new technology, they shouldn't put in it on a critical path."
Accenture definitely practices what it preaches about technology trends. In fact, Accenture acquires as much first-experience with a technology before deploying it. Swaminathan says, "We try to determine if we have a successful model or not." Accenture's approach to collaboration mirrors this practice. The company has created a version of LinkedIn, called PeoplePages, where more than 100,000 Accenture employees have already posted their professional profiles. Swaminathan says the site enables employees to find communities or individuals with certain expertise. Meanwhile, the company has begun a project to put its collective knowledge into the Accenture Encyclopedia, modeled after Wikipedia. He says, "We're encouraged by the progress we have made to date." Accenture also has developed its own version of YouTube, where employees can use video to convey difficult concepts and then distribute those videos to colleagues.
Bio Dr. Kishore Swaminathan is chief scientist at Accenture where he defines the company's technology vision and helps to set the company's research and development agenda. He also heads Accenture's Systems Integration research located in the United States, France, and India. Swaminathan joined Accenture in 1990, taking a position in Accenture's Center for Strategic Technology Research. He has a bachelor's degree in technology and aeronautical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology of Madras and holds a master's and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was a Smithsonian Fellow. Media outlets ranging from ABC Evening New to The Wall Street Journal have featured his work.
In this podcast, Diane Bryant describes the benefits of Intel's various social media platforms, provides an overview of Intel's code of conduct for electronic communications, touches on Intel's cloud computing architecture within the firewall, as well as cloud computing product's Intel is developing, and discusses why women do a good job of driving social media.
With more than $30 billion in annual revenue, Intel Corporation both innovates and invents microprocessor technologies that reside at the heart of most of the PCs and servers. Likewise, Intel also innovates and invents when it comes to deploying social media, both within the company and with external customers. In fact, in 2003, instant messaging became the company's first collaboration method outside of email and audio conferencing. Diane Bryant, Intel's vice president and CIO, says, "Within less than three years, we went from not using instant messaging to a 90 percent adoption rate."
As a globally diverse company with more 83,000 employees, numerous suppliers, and millions of external customers, Intel has continued to keep pace with effective ways for all constituencies to collaborate effectively. In 2004, the company began internal blogging with the CEO leading the charge. Two years later, Intel opened up external blogging as a way to reach out and communicate directly with specific manufacturers that use Intel products, and with end users. Bryant says, "As the devices based on the Intel architecture have become more solutions-based and directed at end users around the world, we needed to have direct connection with these end users. Social media or social networking provided us access to this external community."
In 2008, Intel launched Open Port, a series of external communities for end users. Bryant says that today more than 75 percent of all the content on these communities comes from end users, not Intel. "We have seen a strong viral pick up on solutions. We have examples of customers coming together to solve their real problems." Intel also uses social media for software development. Some of these software development communities allow people to collaborate about how they have optimized their software suite for the Intel architecture."
While Intel has begun to reap the benefits of social media, this company knows that the pervasive nature of social media means that proper controls need to exist. Bryant says, "Most executives I talk to say that their social media initiatives tend to self-police themselves." Intel has adopted a code of conduct that defines how people must act when they engage in all forms of Intel electronic communications, both internally and externally. The code also has provisions for maintaining legal compliance.
Bio Diane M. Bryant is vice president and CIO of Intel Corporation where she is responsible for Intel's IT organization of 5,700 employees. A 25-year veteran of Intel, Bryant has held several key general manager and director positions in various business units at Intel. She was general manager of the server platforms group, director of the corporate platform office, and general manager of the enterprise processor division. Before joining the enterprise group in 1998, Bryant was director of engineering of the mobile products groups. She received her B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Davis. She holds four U.S. patents.
In this podcast, Brian Wolfe comments on the security issues around cloud computing and provides several takeaways CIOs can use to improve their corporate security.
It’s hard to avoid all of the news stories about the economic downturn, company layoffs, or employees being asked to take drastic pay cuts. Most employees understand that businesses have no choice but to reduce their costs. On the other hand, those disgruntle employees or former employees in dire financial straits could find themselves doing things they wouldn’t normally do. As a result, these employees could pose a whole new set of security threats to an organization. Brian Wolfe, a security expert and co-founder of Laurus Technologies, an IT consulting firm specializing in security, says that companies must have controls in place to make sure that people can’t do things, such as authorizing a purchase order to a fictitious vendor, and having funds disbursed to a company that never receives the goods.”
Meanwhile, security breaches still continue to plague America at the rate of about one a week. In fact, within the first few months of 2009, Merrill Lynch, Continental Airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the United States Postal Security all became victims of security breaches. Wolfe says that CIOs do have something to worry about. He adds that about 75 companies out of the Fortune 1000 have an ISO 27001 certification for security. “ CIOs must think about whether or not they have the proper security controls in place to both prevent on-going threats, and these newer threats. They need to have some access controls that clearly delineate between the software development area, test and quality assurance, and product. The goal here is make sure that no one person is in a position to introduce fraudulent or malicious code or data into some critical applications. CIOs also need to cover all of their bases with respect to vulnerability assessment, and penetration testing, especially data loss or data leakage prevention.”
Bio Brian is a co-founder of Laurus Technologies, where he directs the software solutions group. He has 18 years of IT experience, with emphasis on healthcare. His accomplishments in this area include the development of an early TCP/IP-based distributed medical imaging protocol “Simple Image Transfer Protocol” (SITP) for UNIX and VMS systems at the Medical Imaging Research Center of Henry Ford Hospital. His paper on SITP was accepted and presented at the Radiological Society of North America. He belongs to the Greater Chicago Chapter of HIMSS, and the Society for Information Management. He also chairs the Sun Microsystems Education Market Advisory Board and belongs to the Sun Microsystems Software Partner Council. Wolfe is also a member of the advisory board for the School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems at DePaul University. He received his MS in Computer Science from DePaul University in 1996, and his BS in Computer Science from University of Michigan.
As chief scientist for Accenture, a $19 billion global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firm, Dr. Kishore Swaminathan tries to understand the major trends that will shape the technology landscape over a 3- to 5-year period. According to Swaminathan, CIOs can't afford to ignore three major trends: cloud computing, light systems, and analytics.
He defines cloud computing as the sourcing of some capability from somewhere out there, typically through the Internet, and you, as a user, neither know nor care where this capability is coming from. The four types of cloud computing include software clouds, such as software as a service; hardware clouds, such as data backup; desktop clouds, such as google applications, and business process clouds, such as PayPal. Swaminthan says he isn't sure where cloud computing is going because of the unresolved issues in areas such as data security and performance.
Swaminathan calls the second trend light systems because they allow the IT organization to use independent, but related technologies to push data from multiple streams so end users can manipulate it. Technologies such as the RESC protocol, mashups, and widgets free the IT organization of a lot of unnecessary work, especially having to build a new system or a new application.
In the last 18 months, major software companies such as IBM and Microsoft have acquired analytics companies. Swaminathan says that this third trend will take the drudgery of getting analytics out of backup systems, and build the analytics capability right into the technology platform, such as Oracle Enterprise suite or SAP. As a result, people won't have to depend on the IT organization or a small number of research gurus to get the analytics they need. They'll be able to access the analytics capability.
In this podcast, Swaminathan also talks about why CIOs have failed to contribute to the innovation process when it comes to pursuing new revenue sources.
Bio
Dr. Kishore Swaminathan is chief scientist at Accenture where he defines the company's technology vision and helps to set the company's research and development agenda. He also heads Accenture's Systems Integration research located in the United States, France, and India. Swaminathan joined Accenture in 1990, taking a position in Accenture's Center for Strategic Technology Research. He has a bachelor's degree in technology and aeronautical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras and holds a master's and Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was a Smithsonian Fellow. Media outlets ranging from the ABC Evening News to the The Wall Street Journal have featured his work.