The Cloud Pays Off

So for those of you who thought the cloud only pays if your a consumer of technology who is looking for scalability and flexible pricing models, think again. 

Bloomberg has an interesting article on how Adobe is growing their revenue by billions switching their apps to to the cloud. 

Instead of customers paying a one time purchase price for Creative Suite or Acrobat, now customers must pay for Creative Cloud or Document Cloud subscription fees that may sound small in the beginning, but really add up over time. 

And more than that, Adobe doesn’t have to worry about wowing customers with the next upgrade in order to get them to make another purchase, because as long as their products are competitive, the customers will keep paying their subscriptions fees money month after money month.

What’s better than making a sale to a customer?  Selling to them in a cloud subscription model that keeps paying and paying and paying. 

No wonder it’s better to have your head and technology in the cloud–it’s a true rainmaker! 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Losing Patience With Tech Progress

We’re so close yet so far…that’s my feeling as I grow ever impatient with the pace of technological progress. 

We have cloud computing, but still everyone has their own private computing setups everywhere. 

We have mobile computing, but still can’t get get reliable service in the Metro and all the other “dead zones.”

We have social computing, but still people are so cliquey and nasty and troll and bully each other online and off. 

We have the Internet of Things, but still things don’t really talk to each other regularly (except our smart meters).

We have robots, but still they’re relegated to factory assembly lines. 

We have natural language processing, but still can’t get a meaningful conversation going with Siri.

We have 3-D printing, but still can’t get dinner or a pair of Nikes to appear from the Star Trek like “Replicator.”

We have augmented and virtual reality headsets, but still can’t go anywhere with them without getting motion sickness.

We have biometrics, but still have to sign the check.

We have driverless cars, but still there is a driver inside. 

We have networks of information, but still it’s subject to hacking, malware, identity and data theft, and even big time EMP knockouts. 

We have immunotherapy, but still haven’t beaten cancer. 

We have nanotechnology, but still we travel through life loaded down with material possessions.

We have food and biotechnology, but still one in eight people are going hungry. 

We have space shuttles and stations, but still can’t get a colony going on Mars.

We have big data, but still information is corrupted by personal biases and politics. 

We have knowledge management, but still more than 780 million adults are illiterate. 

We have artificial intelligence, but still it’s devoid of emotional intelligence. 

We have bigger, deadlier, and more sophisticated weapons systems and smart bombs to “protect us”, but still are no closer to living in peace and brotherhood. 

All this technology and advancement is great, except that we’re left hungrier than ever for the realization of the promised technology land, and are really only halfway there, maybe. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

What Beauties

What beauties these purple flowers are?

Tall on the thin green stem. 

And then ballooning and budding out into these futuristic spherical lattice-shaped flowers. 

Almost like soft clouds that we can reach out and touch (and touch too hard, and the flowers just fall off into the breeze).

But think again with technical imagery and these can be an advanced interconnected living neural network that with “big data” can solve all our information and artificial intelligence needs. 

Each flower computing, sensing, processing, analyzing, and problem-solving. 

A swarm of living and dying nodes and sprouting forth again with a natural processing function. 

A gorgeous flower, but you can imagine it as so much more. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Cloud Pleasing

Technology vendors have wised-up and are rushing to the cloud to give customers what they want. 

You want cloud?  

You got cloud!

Cloud Computing with the virtually infinite promise for flexible, cost-effective, on-demand computing–all centrally managed by the vendor–you can sleep easy at night, oh baby. 

CIOs love it. 

The only problem as everyone moves to the cloud is the promise of the cloud continues to fall short. 

Now how unpopular a thing to say is that? 

Take out the guillotine…

Seriously though, it was supposed to be flexible, but it isn’t so much as vendors contract with customers for multi-year deals and customers find switching vendors not quite so easy…anyone hear of vendor lock-in?

Also, cloud was supposed to be more cost-effective, but vendors still need to make their margins, so longer commitments, service bundling, minimum fixed costs, and variable month-to-month pricing–sure helps things add BIG DOLLARS for the cloud vendor. 

Then you have vendors that simply call everything cloud…ah, “cloud washing” that is.  If you think you are getting cloud (even if it ain’t so much so), yippee are you happy…you have drunk the cool-aid and it is sweet.

Technology leaders swooping into a new job want to come in with a bang…”Hey, look what I did to modernize, transform, reinvent, revolutionize…and save money too–thank G-d, they hired me.”

So cloud, cloud, cloud…it sounds so CLOUD PLEASING, I mean crowd-pleasing. 

Whether in the specific situation it’s better or not, that’s not the point, stupid. 

At least, it’s out of our hair–let the vendor worry about it!

One, two, three…everyone say “CLOUD!” 😉

The Way Things Were

So here’s the word of the day–Troglodyte.

How many of you know this word?

It usually refers to someone from prehistoric times, like a cave-dweller. 

But it is used to refer to people who are basically just old fashioned. 

A near relative of the Troglodyte is the Luddite who opposes new technologies. 

Today, a colleague said to me that he misses the old organization phone books we used to have with organization charts and readily available contacts everywhere. 

It didn’t matter that we have this electronically now, he likes the hardcopy ones that he could keep on his desk and flip through…to heck with technology. 

Then he goes that someone called him (jokingly, I think) a troglodyte for feeling this way. 

Well there is something to be said for the good ‘ol days and I understand people that appreciate “the way things were”, but in many ways, those days weren’t all that good–think poverty, illness, corruption, racism, and more. 

So I feel quite blessed to be living now, rather than say at almost any other time in history. 

In looking out towards the near future, I am prepping myself for the new smartwatch coming out from Apple later this month, and while I have my doubts about it (having gotten so attached to my smartphone especially the large screen–6 plus, Yes!), I realize…

That the next technology tidal wave is coming with wearables (and then embeddables), and if you don’t get on board and adopt early…you might as well be riding an old Timey Bike around town with a big sign on your back that says, “Troglodyte…A Stick In The Mud and Stuck In The Past!” 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Marie-ll)

Smartphone or Kitty Litter

Interesting…Bloomberg Businessweek ran a special anniversary issue with a countdown of the 85 most disruptive ideas (in the last 85 years), and guess where they think the smartphone fell in that?

#78!!! 

Right up there with the white board (#82) and good ‘ol high frequency trading (#80).

But not as important as get this…the corporate campus (#77), the VCR (#74), Kitty Litter (#73), Singapore, literally–{Uh, and how about Israel?} (#71), bottled water (#56), High-fructose corn syrup (#48), Air Jordan sneakers (#45), Napster (#43), and junk bonds (#7).

They ranked the smartphone so low in disruption, even after giving it a two-page spread with no less than 32 “things the smartphone killed” and they probably missed a few hundred!

There is no need to list everything the smartphone does for you, because you use these functions every moment of every day. 

To most people now, the smartphone is one of their most prized possessions and they don’t go anywhere without it and rarely do you see anyone not “on it.” (Uh, I know more than a few people who even dropped them in the toilet!)

Honestly, Businessweek…I think you missed the significance of the smartphone big time. 

Yeah maybe Starbucks (#68) and the Pill (#9) are competitors, but not as important or disruptive as Kitty Litter…shame on you!  😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Lonely Bob)

Data Like Clouds

So data is like clouds…

Clouds want to be free roaming the wild blue skies similar to how data wants to be searchable, accessible, useful, and so on. 

But with data, like clouds, when it rains it pours–and when data blows about with the windstorm and is compromised in terms of security or privacy, then we not only come away wet but very uncomfortable and unhappy. 

Then, as we actually end up putting our data in the great computing clouds of the likes of Amazon, iCloud, HP, and more, the data is just within arm’s reach of the nearest smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer. 

But just as we aspire to reach to the clouds–and get to our data–other less scrupled (cyber criminals, terrorists, and nation states)–seek to grab some of those oh so soft, white cloud data too.

While you may want to lock your data cloud in a highly secure double vault, unfortunately, you won’t be able to still get to it quickly and easily…it’s a trade-off between security and accessibility. 

And leaving the doors wide open doesn’t work either, because then no one even needs an (encryption) key to get in. 

So that’s our dilemma–open data, but secured storage–white, soft, beautiful clouds wisping overhead, but not raining data on our organizational and personal parades. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Robots Reach The Clouds

So robots have reached the clouds before many of our government agencies have–who would’ve thought?

 

Bloomberg Businessweek reports how robotic activities are being stored in the cloud and are then accessible to other robots to learn from and repeat as necessary.

 

The “cloud servers essentially [are] a shared brain” where memories and experiences are uploaded and accessed by other robots with a need to know the same thing.

 

The cloud is the means of transfer learning from one robot to the other.

 

It serves like a master neural network where the Internet provides the how-to for everything from serving juice to patients in a hospital to functioning as autonomous warbots in battle.

 

Like the Borg on Star Trek with a collective brain, the cloud may become the mastermind for everything from day-to-day functioning to taking over the species of the universe.

 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

I Like That Technology

Christopher Mims in the Wall Street Journal makes the case for letting employees go rogue with IT purchases.

It’s cheaper, it’s faster, “every employee is a technologist,” and those organizations “concerned about the security issues of shadow IT are missing the point; the bigger risk is not embracing it in the first place.”

How very bold or stupid?

Let everyone buy whatever they want when they want–behavior akin to little children running wild in a candy store.

So I guess that means…

Enterprise architecture planning…not important.
Sound IT governance…hogwash.
A good business case…na, money’s no object.
Enterprise solutions…what for?
Technical standards…a joke.
Interoperability…who cares?
Security…ah, it just happens!

Well, Mims just got rids of decades of IT best practices, because he puts all his faith in the cloud.

It’s not that there isn’t a special place for cloud computing, BYOD, and end-user innovation, it’s just that creating enterprise IT chaos and security cockiness will most-assuredly backfire.

From my experience, a hybrid governance model works best–where the CIO provides for the IT infrastructure, enterprise solutions, and architecture and governance, while the business units identify their specific requirements on the front line and ensure these are met timely and flexibly.

The CIO can ensure a balance between disciplined IT decision-making with agility on day-to-day needs.

Yes, the heavens will not fall down when the business units and IT work together collaboratively.

While it may be chic to do what you want when you want with IT, there will come a time, when people like Mims will be crying for the CIO to come save them from their freewheeling, silly little indiscretions.

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Healthcare Where You Need It

Great new medical examination device from Tyto Care.

Handheld, mobile, cloud-based solution for performing a basic medical examination, anywhere–either remotely guided by an online physician or using the 3D avatar on the device itself for conducting a self-examination.

The device looks like the one in the doctors office that checks your ears, but it also has sensors to listen to your heart and lungs, and for viewing your eyes, throat, and skin, and for taking your temperature.

The results can be read by the end-user or sent to a physician for review and diagnosis.

When your not feeling well or aren’t sure what’s wrong–isn’t great to have the convenience to have your vitals checked from wherever you are and the self-sufficiency to even get and see your own basic medical stats.

In a time where we are under more stress to get adequate medical care due to families made up of dual working parents, jobs that are 24/7, and a declining ratio of medical professionals to patients–the Tyto seems like a breakthrough that can help us get checked and get help, anytime and place.

Now, we just need to get our medical practitioners online and in regular remote communication with their patients–so the traditional office visit and emergency room aren’t the only options for being seen. 😉