Big Data – Who will find the patterns of value?

Big Data has great promise – no doubt that we are on the brink of discovering innovative ways to make a lot of money due to the ability to consume and analyze a greater volume, velocity, and variety of data than ever before. 

The question, however, is who will make these innovative discoveries? 

Can the innovation be made by a kid in a garage, a college kid in his dorm room, or a talented IT professional dreaming of a start-up in his free time?  

On the one hand, the answer is NO – the college kid in the dorm will NOT be changing the world via big data the way Mark Zuckerberg did with social networking. Why? The reason quite simply is because “Big Data” requires DATA and a lot of it and in potentially many different forms. 

Data is not free

In fact, there are billion dollar businesses that are essentially data companies – they sell raw data (and analytics on it). I’ve even worked at one in my time. OK – Some of that raw data is free but much of the data is not. The sheer volume of data is prohibitively expensive to acquire for a college kid to start to experiment with. Additionally, some big data use cases revolve around social data that sites like Facebook can use to make money (data is why Facebook has such a high valuation). Did you think Facebook gives away their data for free? If the college kid can’t even get his hands on the data then the game is over before it even starts.

On the bright side, however, cloud computing infrastructure as a service and pay-as-you-go pricing provides affordable infrastructure for the college kid. Powerful infrastructure is also a pre-requisite for Big Data – but it’s not a barrier for the college kid.

It goes back – again – to access to data.

The majority of the big data discoveries will come from big established companies with the resources to acquire it. 

Agree or disagree? Actually, proving me wrong would make me happy. 

 

 

Education Industry Hype Cycle Notes & Mindmap

 

Education Industry Technology Notes from Gartner.

Education Hype Cycle

• Analysis
  • What you Need to Know
    • Consumerization and the cloud

      Go back to the roots, focus on your core competencies

      “Developing or managing a flexible infrastructure”

      Increasingly difficult in a challenging financial climate that favors
      economies of scale that imply standardization, not flexibility

  • Overview
    • 3 major trends from 2010: consumerization, sourcing and standards

      Goal of flexibility

      Education community is slower to implement service-oriented architecture (SOA)

      Building institutional (business) capabilities based on technology that improves the institution’s
      competitiveness is the endgame

  • Priority Matrix
    • Benefit ratings can vary substantially,
      depending on the various types of institutions.
    • Off the hype cycle: Grid computing, blogs, microblogging and wikis
• On the Rise
  • Campus App Store
    • Campus app store is simply a concept modeled on the iOS App Store or the Mac
      App Store, but only intended for one specific institution or in a shared-service environment.

      A service-oriented architecture (SOA)/enterprise service bus (ESB) fundamental for success

      Standardization approaches such as HTML5-based spreadsheets for business intelligence

      Moderate benefit, <1%, Embyronic

  • Wireless aaS
    • Wireless as a service (WaaS) in the education context is defined as when the institution
      buys wireless services from an external service provider to complement or replace its own network
      access.

      4G together with corporate subscription services from a few telcos provides new opportunities to offer students and researchers the cost-effective ubiquitous bandwidth

      Increased bandwidth at the campus by allowing/requesting the telco to set up access points

      Key business benefit is to provide real, ubiquitous access to institution services “anytime-anywher

      Exploit all “dead time” (for example, commuting)

      Moderate, <1%, Embryonic

  • Affective Computing
    • Sense the emotional state of a user (via sensors, microphone, cameras and/or software logic) and respond by performing specific, predefined product/service features, such as changing a quiz or recommending a set of videos to fit the mood of the learner.

      Address one of the major drawbacks of online learning versus in-classroom learning: the teacher’s capability to immediately adapt the pedagogical situation to the emotional state of the student in the classroom

      Hindrance in its uptake is the lack of consumerization of the needed hardware and software involved, because it has to be inexpensively available for students as they use their personal devices

      Follow the research and development of affective computing in education and other industries

      Moderate, <1%, Embyronic

  • Quantum Computing
    • Data is represented as qubits (quantum bits), which have the ability to represent all possible states simultaneously. This gives quantum computers the ability to operate exponentially faster than conventional computers

      Optimization, code breaking, DNA and other forms of molecular modeling, large database access, encryption, stress analysis for mechanical systems, pattern matching and image analysis

      No true quantum computing has been demonstrated in a verifiable way

      Much of the current research on quantum computing is focused on these error correction schemes

      Transformational, <1%, Embryonic

  • BPO
    • The delegation of one or more IT-intensive business processes to an external provider that, in turn, owns, administrates and manages the selected processes based on defined and measurable performance metrics.

      Horizontal offerings (those that can be leveraged across specific industries) and vertical-specific offerings (those that demand specific industry vertical process knowledge)

      Vertical-specific education BPO – grant management, institutional research (aka business intelligence) and online academic programs

      Horizontal BPO is an established service in areas
      such as payroll and benefits management.

      Not penetrated the education market to the same degree that it has the commercial market

      Vertical-specific BPO is still a relatively new phenomenon

      BPO in education is gaining ground is financial-aid processing in the U.S – requires a high degree of automation, a “bubble” of staff at specific times in the academic year and integration with the basic student information systems (SISs) of the institutions

      Moderate, 1-5%, Emerging

  • BYOD
    • “Bring your own device,” is set to become the dominant practice in
      higher education in the First World and is growing worldwide

      Can no longer stop the wave of different consumer devices (not even among administrators).

      Mobility strategy must be built around a common denominator protocol like HTML5

      Must work with almost any device that has a browser

      Alternative is to program the front of many systems in iOS 4, RIM, Android or other mobile operating
      systems, which is an expensive proposition and a losing race.

      • Maximization of the user experience, but using a browser-based technology, while not the “prettiest” for each device, is ubiquitous and allows generalized mobility.

      “win” for both the organizations and the customers

      Moderate, 1-5%, Emerging

  • SIS International Data Interoperability Standards
    • Data formats needed to facilitate and even automate global student mobility.

      Metadata for Learning Opportunities

      Can quickly turn into a competitive disadvantage to not have this capability

      Standards usually take a longer time to mature and be
      accepted than technologies

      Direct impact on the ability to recruit students, as well as the cost for
      recruiting students

      Interoperability of student data will enable a higher degree of process optimization, driving down both cost and risk

      High, <1%, Embryonic

  • Open-Source SIS
    • Developed via open-source or community source models
    • Low, <1%, Embryonic
  • Learning Stack
    • Collection of elements, such as applications, personal productively tools, Web 2.0 applications, content repositories and data sources, that can be accessed through, for example, a social learning platform

      Elements can be added, updated, removed, and replaced in the open structure of the social learning platform

      Uptake of the use of the learning stack is dependent on the move away from point solution learning systems and toward a social learning platform

      High, 1-5%, Emerging

  • Cloud Email for Staff and Faculty
    • Many institutions use no-fee cloud email services for students, but few schools use the
      same service for staff and faculty.

      Vendors will get better at addressing control, security and legal concerns, by, for example,
      making archive and discovery services available and offering rich support and management

      Time to Plateau will be within four to five years

      Cost of internally run email can be anywhere from $4 to $14 per user per
      month, so there can be significant savings for an institution moving to a no-fee cloud email service

      Other advantages of cloud email deployments include vendor-supplied upgrades, redeployment of
      IT staff, very large mailboxes and built-in disaster recovery services.

      High, 5-20%, Early Mainstream

  • COBIT
    • IT control framework used as part of IT governance to ensure that the IT
      organization meets enterprise requirements.

      Originally an IT audit tool, COBIT is increasingly being used by business stakeholders and IT management to identify and create IT control objectives that help mitigate risks

      Leverage COBIT to identify controls to embed in processes to better manage risks

      Use COBIT as part of a “checklist” in the institution, and to provide guidance regarding the kind of controls needed to meet the institution’s ultimate goal of optimizing the yield of IT, but not as a prescriptive framework

      Main use is still as an audit and benchmarking framework, rather than as a foundation
      for a governance framework.

      in education, the adoption of COBIT is often connected to the adoption of ITIL

      As with the case of ITIL, a tactical approach based on
      pain points and metrics will be the most secure way to success

      First by helping identify weak areas through auditing, then by
      identifying best practices at least at the control objective level

      Moderate, <1%, Emerging

• At the Peak
  • Digital Preservation of Research Data
    • Higher education community context is the issue of dealing
      with very long-term storage and retrieval of primarily research data

      High, 1-5%, Emerging

  • Gamification
    • Use of game mechanics in nonentertainment environments to
      change user behavior and drive engagement.

      Humans are “hard-wired” to enjoy games and have a natural tendency to engage for
      longer in something that they find entertaining.

      Applied to many different challenges relating to, for example, innovation, education, employee performance, healthcare, social change, business and work planning.

      A basic level of game mechanics (a points system, leaderboard, achievements/
      awards or basic challenges) is often not enough to sustain increased engagement.

      Moderate, 1-5%, Emerging

  • Social Software Standards
    • Protocols and data formats that have been agreed on by industry bodies or are, in practice, used by several products or services to support interoperability and for data/service access and reuse between social software environments.

      Standards, which deal with authentication, profiles, connections and activity

      OpenSocial — Enables applications to access profile, relationship, activity and other social network data in any social networking environment that supports it. Apache Shindig is an open-source reference implementation of OpenSocial

      ActivityStrea.ms – serialized access to social events

      PubSubHubbub

      Salmon —  pushes comments and annotations “upstream” to update the original source, such as a blog or profile page.

      OStatus — combines established protocols (including some of those listed above) in a way
      that supports interoperability between distributed and independent social networks.

      OpenID — This decentralized authentication standard enables users to log in to multiple
      websites or online services using the same identity. Other single sign-on mechanisms
      supported by many online services include Facebook Connect and Google Accounts.

      OAuth — This is a mechanism for authorizing access to secure RSS/Atom feeds.

      Standards can be used to design more flexible, open and user-friendly services

      At least for the next three to five years, the dominance of a few social networking
      environments will limit the impact of these standards

      Moderate, 1-5%, Emerging

  • User-Centric IAM
    • Letting the most relevant organization/individual own and certify a user’s claim to a user’s attributes in order to allow access to a service

      Service provider trusts several “justifiable parties” in order to collect the certified claims needed to grant
      access to a service

      An example of a future role for higher education institutions in user-centric IAM
      is to certify the degree of its students in the “claims ecosystem.”

      Natural evolution of federated IAM, which would position it for
      quick adoption as soon as the legal issues in federations are ironed out

      A single external organization-centric IAM is exchanged for several organization-centric IAMs as the
      source for verifying the number of claims needed to establish the role that grants access to a
      service

      Technologically immature and conceptually evolving

      The promise of user-centric IAM is that, if a standardized ecosystem of claim assertions is established, there will be a quick, cost-efficient and trusted way to grant access to services.

      High, 1-5%, Emerging

  • Mobile-Learning Low-Range/Midrange Handsets
    • Use basic and enhanced phones

      M-learning encompasses a very broad range of applications, including, but not limited to, media delivery (e.g., audio and video), exploratory learning using augmented reality, educational games, collaboration and project work, e-books, surveys, tests, data gathering, real-time feedback and simulations

      Moderate, 1-5%, Adolescent

  • Social-Learning Platform for Education
    • Extension of traditional systems for learning management and learning content management that incorporates social software features to support structured social and informal, as well as formal, learning activities.

      Support collaborative learning environments.

      Access the expertise of colleagues inside and outside the institutions.

      Solutions already in place, such as content management, collaboration and communication, should be considered for use as well as solutions procured specifically for learning purposes.

      Benefits

      • Establish a presence, or social profile, that reflects their expertise and interest
      • Create, discuss, share and capture learning content
      • Organize and find learning objects from a variety of
        sources, such as search or peer ratings
      • Interact with peers in their social networks

      High, 5-20%, Emerging

  • Media Tablet
    • Interact with peers in their social networks

      Primary focus is the consumption of media – Web pages, music, video and games.

      Tempting to assume that with the success of the iPad that the media tablet is at or near maturity, but this is not the case

      Instant-on capability and long battery life make it a screen of convenience

      Tablet capabilities for content creation, such as photo and video editing as well as productivity applications, have improved dramatically in the last year, making the device more practical as a general-purpose tool

      Apply the managed diversity model for these devices

      Disruptive to the overall computing industry, including product design centers, software, security and user interface design

      Potential to fundamentally change personal computer use models in the longer term.

      Transformational, 1-5%, Adolescent

  • Open-Source Middleware Suites
    • Collections of middleware needed to integrate software solutions on campus

      Include functionality such as identity and access
      management, enterprise service bus, and workflow

      “plug and play” software integration foundation is
      something for which institutions have strived for decades,

      SOA is the latest incarnation

      NSF middleware project produces the Federated Identity and Access Management (FIAM) solution, Shibboleth, which is used by the majority of identity federations in the academic world.

      Kuali Rice is composed of identity management, enterprise workflow, enterprise service bus, enterprise
      notification and an application development framework (Kuali Nervous System)

      Steady trajectory to maturity.

      Kuali Rice is still in its early days compared with older and more complete suites
      from vendors such as Oracle and IBM

      High, <1%, Emerging

  • Web-Based Office Produvitiy Suites
    • Tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet manipulation and presentation

      Enterprises must purchase full Office 2010 Standard or Professional Plus licenses to get access to Office Web Apps

      Web-based office productivity applications will make the traditional versions of Microsoft Office relatively less important

      Feature richness — Users that require a large number of features or the more advanced features of Microsoft Office

      Offline operation — Web-based products offer varying degrees of offline capability. Users that are not deskbound will require offline capability (or ubiquitous network access) before a Web-based product can replace Microsoft Office.

      Audit the degree to which other applications (such as CRM and ERP) provide Microsoft Office
      macros or integrate with Office to facilitate interacting or integrating with those applications via an
      Office tool.

      Moderate, <1%, Emerging

  • Cloud HPC/CaaS
    • Computing as a service (CaaS) or cloud high-performance computing (HPC) in higher education deals primarily with on-demand delivery of moderate to massive computing power for education and/or research purposes.

      Classic “cloudonomics,” such as electricity and cooling savings, pay as you go, and rightsizing, as well as the usual drawbacks in issues around intellectual property (IP) protection, privacy, backup and so on

      CaaS options are most valuable for institutions that face special circumstances, such as short-term projects, variable computing demands and limitations in power grids (such as in downtown London).

      Transformational because it puts more computing power in the hands of more students and researchers

      Transformational, 1-5%, Emerging

• Sliding Into the Trough
  • EA Frameworks
    • This profile focuses on the aggregation of hype concerning all EA frameworks that are offered in the marketplace for use by EA practitioners and EA programs

      Content and structure of specific EA frameworks vary significantly from one another

      Approximately 80% of our clients are using
      multiple EA frameworks for inspiration and guidance

      Types

      • Academic, Public, Defense, Industry, Vendor, Consortium, Consultancy, Homegrown

      EA framework addresses the process of creating the artifacts that illustrate the structure of an
      enterprise; the interdependencies and interrelationships of viewpoints (for example, business,
      information, technological and solution); and their fitness level relative to the current, target or
      future, and transitional states in light of business objectives, requirements or capabilities

      EA taxonomical models that represent the structure and relationships of the enterprise
      must be complemented by a process that supports artifact creation and consumption

      Acceptance of a common language and recognized artifacts and processes to the creation and
      implementation of EA are more than 10 years away from the Plateau of Productivity

      Myth that there can be one EA framework to solve all the needs of an EA program has only
      recently been exposed as false.

      Speed of universal consolidation remains slow, given that barriers to entry remain low and
      market participants are rewarded commercially. Market participants who monetize the use of
      particular EA frameworks in the marketplace have little, or no, incentive to change their
      perspective

      Market forces of commoditization have yet to shake out the universal elements of EA
      frameworks, yet commoditization is inevitable

      Leverage a combination of frameworks by picking and choosing the elements, artifacts and
      practices that are the most important to reflect their business, IT and cultural needs

      Not simply be followed as a rigid process

      Those involved in promoting the concept, profession and
      recognition of what EA should mean to practitioners are shaped by market forces seeking
      commoditization and standardization of a common language, approach and terms of art to
      reference the concept of “enterprise architecture.”

      Hype of the term “EA framework” is more prevalent
      than market adoption

      Low, >50%, Adolescent

  • Open-Source Financials
    • Monitored as a possible fit only for institutions that are capable of supporting in-house application
      development, as well as those that have no pressing need to change their solutions.

      Main factor in KFS adoption to date has been the reduced total cost of ownership
      (TCO) vis-a-vis a commercial offering

      Moderate, <1%, Emerging

  • E-Textbook
    • Content that is delivered electronically on user devices.

      Can be edited to include up-to-date information, be
      assembled or disassembled to rearrange the sequence or to include content from other sources,
      offer multimedia representation of information and instructional exercises, and allow users to insert
      personal notes or diagrams as study aids

      Moderate, 1-5%, Emerging

  • Mobile-Learning Smartphone
    • Media delivery (e.g., audio and video), exploratory learning using augmented reality, educational games,
      collaboration and project work, e-books, surveys, tests, data gathering, real-time feedback and
      simulations.

      Ubiquity, sophisticated features and flexibility will make them preferred m-learning tools in mature markets

      Form-factor-for-function competition

      Look for simple applications that can deliver educational material or assist staff and students with administrative tasks, such as assignment reminders and booking resources

      Moderate, 1-5%, Emerging

  • Lecture Capture and Retrieval Tools
    • Enterprise solution is not yet here

      Teacher push-back and system complexity continue to impact the speed of adoption.

      Seek a solution that can be integrated with e-learning platforms.
      Consider software as a service (SaaS) solutions to minimize storage implications.

      Positive effect on student grades and retentionv

      Moderate, 1-5%, Early Mainstream

  • Unified Communications and Collaboration
    • Until fairly recently, the technologies and vendors for enterprise communications and collaboration were fairly distinct

      For example, Microsoft’s Office Communications Server is used primarily as an instant messaging platform, but also includes voice, telephony and Web conferencing functionality, features that many organizations have already acquired from other vendors.

      Collaboration vendors will have a hard time meeting the quality and robustness of traditional
      communications vendors as they add these capabilities to their products, just as communications
      vendors are finding it a challenge to understand user interface issues and how people work.

      Facebook, Skype and Yahoo can mix communications and
      collaboration, so why can’t enterprise vendors?

      Efficiency gains via the contextual embedding of communication services into applications at points where, for example, process disconnections occur and human intervention is necessary.

      High, 5-20%, Emerging

  • Hosted Virtual Desktops
    • Full, thick-client user environment, which is run as a
      virtual machine (VM) on a server and accessed remotely

      HVD implementations comprise server virtualization software to host desktop software (as a server workload), brokering/session management software to connect users to their desktop environment

      Centralize and secure user data and applications, and manage personalized desktop instances
      centrally

      Only the presentation layer is sent to the accessing device, a thin-client terminal
      can be used

      Inhibitors to general adoption involve the cost of the data center infrastructure that is required to host the desktop images (servers and storage, in particular) and network constraints.

      Deploying HVDs to mobile/offline users remains a challenge

      Centralizing a thick-client desktop PC without re-engineering each application for centralized execution

      High, 1-5%, Adolescent

  • Open-Source Learning Repositories
    • Sharing of digital media and content – include multiple formats either by institutional ownership, by subscription or by the institutional membership in a consortium

      High, 5-20%, Adolescent

  • Virtual Environments/Virtual Worlds
    • Second Life has not proved interesting
      enough to hold the attention of most educators
    • Future successes of virtual environments will pull from both gaming and simulation.
    • Moderate, 1-5%, Emerging
  • Global Library Digitization Projects
    • Global Library Digitization Projects

      implementation could take a decade

      Ttechnology to support the digital library projects is mature, but the process of including large collections is long, labor-intense and continues to face copyright issues.

      Hgih, 5-20%, Adolescent

  • Emergency/Mass Notification Services
    • Focused on the electronic activation and management of notification messages to groups or individuals

      Organize contacts into an unlimited number of groups or subgroups, to send emergency messages (for example, announcing fires, power outages, natural disasters, severe weather conditions,

      Can use EMNS for more

      • Business Operations -call-outs to parents for absentee students, upcoming and special event announcements, important meeting reminders

        Business context-based alerting that gets triggered from another business process (for example, checking account overdraft, late payment, flight delays, work availability options by locale

        IT Service Alerting

      No vendor has an offering that supports all use cases

      Overlap between the EMNS and communications-enabled business process (CEBP) markets

      Reduces overall costs by consolidating functions and improves the capability to deliver and update uniform message delivery to targeted and mass groups

      Moderate, 20-50%, Early Mainstream

  • SaaS Administration Applications
    • Owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers

      Pay-for-use basis or as a subscription based on use metrics

      Such as student information systems (SISs), finance and HR software, federal financial aid
      calculations

      SaaS offerings for the federal financial aid calculations — formulas that change yearly — are very practical and play to SaaS’s strong suit: There’s a single instance of regulations to update, with many users paying by the application to have the approved and validated calculations performed, relieving them of the yearly update to that portion of their higher education ERP systems.

      Educational agencies and institutions
      that don’t view their data requirements as unique will adopt SaaS.

      Moderate, 5-20%, Adolescent

• Climbing the Slope
  • 802.11n
    • Improvements in the technology have expanded the throughput
      and range that can be implemented in 2.4GHz or 5GHz

      802.11n is expected to deliver as much as 600 Mbps of networking performance using four spatial streams, but actual performance will depend

      Moderate, 5-20%, Early Mainstream

  • Intellectual Property Rights and Royalties Management Software
    • Enable rights holders to index and associate specific business rules (including distribution rights information) with each piece of content under their control.

      Help the monetization of content via multiple distribution channels

      Often run in parallel with or loosely tie into royalty tracking and settlement capabilities, because a royalty payment request must be generated for each licensed use of the content

      Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR), an effort to develop a common content ID and registry of licensed content.

      Objective is to design and build a database that would track the ownership and control of musical work.

      High, 5-20%, Adolescent

  • IT Infrastructure Utility
    • Shared IT infrastructure provided through on-demand services.

      Utility hosting, which has evolved from traditional dedicated hosting via virtualization

      Service provider controls and manages the operating platform up to a level below the logic of the application

      Amazon.com (with its EC2 and S3 offerings); smaller providers such as GoGrid,
      Joyent, OpSource and SoftLayer Technologies; and virtual data center hosting companies, all
      deliver IU services that leverage a cloud computing infrastructure as a service (IaaS) approach.

      39% of respondents confirmed that they were already users of IUS, and an additional 22% of the respondents planned adoption within the next 12 months

      New and disruptive approaches — especially those based on cloud computing — and new providers will progressively threaten the existing status of every insourced or outsourced solution

      IUS market was worth $7,101 million in 2009. By 2013 it will grow to $23,501 million, representing a
      compound annual growth rate of 34%

      Moderate, 5-20%, Early Mainstream

  • ITIL
    • Provides process guidance on the full life cycle of defining, developing, managing, delivering
      and improving IT services.

      De facto standard in service management

      ITIL is now a well-known alternative for IT service
      delivery quality improvement in education institutions

      Basic level of “service desk” and “service support” capability, with processes such as change, incident and problem management in the first round

      Ultimate goal is operational process improvement or business transformation. If the
      goal is institution (as opposed to just IT) growth or transformation, then a more strategic approach
      to change will be required and other frameworks, such as Six Sigma and COBIT, are more
      applicable.

      Proven tactical approach to ITIL implementation is to focus on the pain points (such as downtime) and to establish metrics that demonstrate tangible results of ITIL implementation.

      ITIL is best suited for supply governance, while other frameworks, such as COBIT, have more experience in strategic alignment and demand governance. ITIL and COBIT are two excellent frameworks that work well
      together.

      Large and/or complex institutions will likely find greater ROI

      Moderate, 5-20%, Adolescent

  • Mashups
    • Mashup is a lightweight, tactical presentation-layer integration of multisourced applications or content in a
      single, browser-compatible offering.

      Mashups are composite applications that are built on
      enterprise platforms, are internal-facing and are not necessarily Web-based.

      Built with a minimal amount of code

      Higher education institutions are naturally being drawn to the use of mashups through
      student portals, social networking software, mobile apps and academic content posted from
      multiple sources to course management and content management systems.

      Mashups can be used effectively to bring content and functionality together with
      a low level of IT skills, thus improving flexibility and the time from idea to service.

      Moderate, 5-20%, Adolescent

  • E-Portfolio
    • Web-accessible repositories for student work, both graded and
      ungraded, which may be shared with authorized parties.

      Adoption is still hampered somewhat by interoperability issues

      Moderate, 5-20%, Early Mainstream

  • Game Consoles as Media Hubs
    • include movies, television shows and other services.

      Incremental distribution market opportunities for media
      companies that target 18- to 40-year-old males.

      Moderate, 20-50%, Mature Mainstream

  • Open-Source Portals
    • More than 250 higher education enterprises have used Jasig uPortal, or a solution based on
      uPortal, like SunGard’s Luminis Platform

      Often characterized as content management systems, rather than portal platforms, they suffice for handling portal duties at higher educational institutions

      Microsoft is offering portal capability as part of its broader SharePoint platform, which includes content management, collaboration and social networking capabilities not normally included in portal software, and it integrates readily with Microsoft Office and Exchange

      consider open-source  portal alternatives, but should also carefully evaluate their long-term requirements and investment in adjacent spaces, such as content management, search and collaboration.

      Moderate, 20-50%, Early Mainstream

  • Social Media in Education
    • applications are provided to document and filter connections between individuals, present content on profiles, support various multimedia and facilitate communications between people

      People who are connected by events, products or demographics to develop contacts based on personal, professional and educational backgrounds

      Student and alumni memberships are using social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn as well-established meeting places

      Increasingly, faculty members are using social networks as the means to communicate with students

      Official university Facebook uses include communication for social purposes,
      academic announcements, marketing and emergency messages.

      Learning platforms and higher education CRM solutions are including social media links
      within their applications.

      Social media may provide additional useful tools for recruiting, teaching,
      collaborating and marketing. Increasingly, higher education software providers will include social
      media as an additional communication channel

      High, >50%, Early Mainstream

  • CRM for Enrollment Management
    • Importance of CRM in addressing institutional, market and constituent needs is now widely recognized in higher education

      Multichannel communications, business analytics, and agile reporting and management tools, which together allow for the establishment and maintenance of student/prospect relationships throughout the enrollment cycle, and may continue into other areas of the student life cycle.

      Integration of social media into these systems is a critical differentiator
      among the providers to meet higher education end-user expectations

      Traditionally, the enrollment/admissions function in higher education has “owned” the early relationship with the customer/prospective student.

      CRM for enrollment management should be considered as a business unit strategy

      Affected areas include recruiting, enrollment community relations, advancement, student retention and alumni relationships

      Track a student from the initial contact with the institution through enrollment, matriculation and
      entry into alumnus status.

      High, 20-50%, Early Mainstream

  • Web and Application Hosting
    • Includes custom and packaged application hosting, is the outsourced management of some or all the infrastructure associated with Web-based content and applications.

      Customers are provided with Internet data center facilities, bandwidth, computing
      capacity, security and storage, as well as associated managed services.

      Hoster is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the infrastructure. In application hosting, the provider will supply day-to-day application management tasks, in addition to infrastructure management

      Web and application hosters have automated most of the deployment and management of the network, infrastructure and operational support in dedicated and virtualized environments, and now must look to extend this level of competence to cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environments

      As hybrid hosting offerings become more user-friendly, enterprises will start to divide
      applications and workloads between both dedicated and multitenant-based hosting services.

      High, 20-50%, Mature Mainstream

      As hybrid hosting offerings become more user-friendly, enterprises will start to divide
      applications and workloads between both dedicated and multitenant-based hosting services.

• Entering the Plateau
  • Organization-Centric IAM
    • Manage user accounts and privileges that are under the direct control of the
      institution

      Separate this entry from those on federated IAM and user-centric IAM

      Enable personalized, secure and auditable access to networks, systems and data, which has become a top priority in higher education

      Specially in a demanding environment such as higher education, where at least 20% new user IDs are needed each year, and where changes of roles are frequent.

      Organization-centric IAM as a whole in higher education lags the more mature area of federated IAM.

      Federated IAM solves a simpler process and technical problem, where IDs and attributes are already assigned (by the organization-centric IAM), using established technological standards, such as SAML, as well as metadata standards, such asEduPerson, to allow for the interinstitutional sharing of services.

      Many institutions only implement the basic IAM functionality, leaving such things as role-based authorization for later iterations.

      Should be included in the security plan

      An organization-centric IAM solution, including well-designed user-provisioning and deprovisioning processes, is also a prerequisite for the full exploitation of federated services.

      High, >50%, Early Mainstream

  • SOA
    • Improve its ability to quickly and efficiently meet business demands

      Faster time to market, lower costs, better application consistency and increased agility

      Intrinsic interoperability makes systems easier to use.

      Modularity makes systems easier to maintain. Improving system maintainability
      makes it easier and faster to make changes (i.e., it increases agility)

      Vendors of middleware, development tools and packaged applications have delivered SOA
      capabilities in most of their products, although the implementations are still superficial in some
      cases

      Near-term return on investment in some SOA projects has been difficult to quantify, mostly
      because the results are spread over the lifetime of the solution.

      Use SOA to design large, new business applications, particularly those with life spans
      projected to be more than three years, and those that will undergo continuous refinement,
      maintenance or enlargement

      Leverage pre-SOA applications by wrapping function and data with service interfaces

      When buying packaged applications, rate those that implement SOA more highly

      Patterns within SOA — including multichannel applications, composite applications, multistep
      process flows, REST and event-driven architecture (EDA)

      Main benefit is that it reduces the time and effort required to change application systems to support changes in the business

      Transformational, >50%, Early Mainstream

  • Windows-Based Tablet PCs
    • Differentiated from media tablets, such as Apple’s iPad,
      because they run a full, user-controlled OS

      Equipped with a pen and an on-screen digitizer, and run Windows

      The ability to do nontext entries (such as diagrams and formulas) continues to make pen-centric
      Windows-based tablets attractive for higher education students

      Media tablets (which are largely focused on content consumption, rather than on content creation), along with the greater convenience of instant-on, all-day batteries and simple, easy-to-learn apps, are all limiting the growth of Windows-based tablet

      Moderate, 1-5%, Early Mainstream

  • Federated Identity Management
    • Enables identity information to be shared among
      several entities and across trust domains

      Tools and standards permit identity and other information to be transferred from one trusted identifying and authenticating entity to another for authentication, authorization and other purposes.

      Major jump in penetration from 33% to 69% worldwide for Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)-based federations

      Dominant design is based on SAML and derivatives of an early Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) schema called EduPerson (which has many commonly defined identity attributes, such as student, staff and organization)

      EduPerson is important, as it enables “role-centric” access management that is suitable for many
      different types of services.

      SAML as a protocol, EduPerson as a format and with several OSS (Shibboleth and SimpleSAMLphp) and
      commercial federated IAM applications available, implementing a federated IAM capability is now a
      low risk and relatively straightforward institutional decision

      Metadata management has to do with agreeing to the data types that
      will be transmitted across trust boundaries, performing the operational steps to map data syntax
      and format between federation partners, and managing that operation moving forward.

      Primary benefits are reduced identity administration for service providers, reduced
      authentication failures for users, and user convenience through single sign-on

      Moderate, .50%, Mature Mainstream

  • Open-Source E-Learning Applications
    • Moodle and Sakai have proven to offer mature, out-of-the-box solutions; consistent adoption; and the
      ability to implement and bring live.

      21% of institutions, where the platform is designated as the “single official campuswide standard for the delivery of all e-learning courses

      Good fit for institutions capable of supporting in-house application development.

      Moderate, 20-50%, Mature mainstream

• Off the Hype Cycle
  • Blogs
    • “Weblog,” is a website designed to make it easy for
      users to create entries in chronological order.

      Mostly used to express opinions on topical events such as sports, music, fashion or politics, but
      in the past three years, they have emerged as established communication channels for businesses
      as well as individuals

      Blogging policies for public-facing divisions of companies, not to mention the use of internal blogs to keep teams apprised of developments and more

      Moderate, >50%

  • Grid Computer
    • In higher education refers to using computers ownedby more than one organization to collectively accomplish large tasks, such as theoretical chemistry calculations, Large Hadron Collider data analysis or complex simulations

      Potentially disrupting trend is the emergence of cloud computing, where computing power can be bought “on demand.”

      High, >50%

  • Microblogging
    • Pioneered by the social network site Twitter.com and followed by similar services from Plurk,
      Yammer, Socialcast and Identi.ca

      Even those who do not want to follow many people can search through the microblogging stream for topics or tags that they are interested in.

      Trending topics provide a condensed view of what everyone on the service is talking
      about.

      Services such as salesforce.com’s Chatter, Yammer, Socialcast and Present.ly provide microblogging
      services aimed at individual companies, which provide more control and security than public
      services such as Twitter

      Rapidly becoming a standard feature in enterprise social software platforms such as Socialtext, NewsGator, BroadVision Clearvale, IBM Connections and Jive.

      Moved off the Hype Cycle, because it has combined with activity streams — which are essentially microblogs plus alerts automatically generated from events in other systems.

      Activity Streams Are the Future of Enterprise Microblogging,” and has largely come to pass.

      Coordinating large numbers of people and providing close to real time insights into group activities

      Moderate, 5-20%

Application Portfolio Management – Notes & Mindmap

Application Portfolio Management: TIME for the Application Masses

• Findings
  • Large inventories of small applications can often be categorized rapidly by frequency of use.
  • Many infrequently used applications can be retired or consolidated.
  • Proactively proposing retirement can accelerate portfolio simplification
• Analysis
  • Big, complex applications are often a fairly small percentage of the total application count., support a lot of business value, and merit a detailed analysis
  • How can we economically categorize and overhaul the thousands of smaller applications that form the rest of the portfolio?
  • ” Application-hunting license,” prescreening applications by usage and requiring user involvement in creating appropriate life cycle strategies.
    • Create a routine process that will rapidly align the thousands of applications into tolerate, invest, migrate and eliminate (TIME) categories — ideally driving extensive application elimination
• Application Hunting
  • Start this routine with any applications that haven’t been accessed in a year, then systematically bring the time down to nine months, then six months and then three months.
  • It’s Rare that anyone thinks of retiring applications after task is done or the project is completed. In extreme cases, none of the people who used the application remain with the organization.
• Send out a message listing five to 20 applications that have not been accessed in several quarters.
  • In the case of nobody responding, the exercise is straightforward to retire the system
  • Otherwise ask How often is the application used? Could you live without it? Is there another way to get that job don
• One less system to maintain, fewer licenses for which to pay maintenance fees, and less storage and power being consumed
• “mock” retire the system — that is, bring it offline for a full quarter, and if no one complains, then officially retire it

Application Portfolio Management: Maximizing Value

Application Portfolio Management (APM) is about maximizing the value of the applications running your business.  The goal is to achieve beneficial changes that improve the balance of value to supported cost risk.

Without an APM practice, the unmanaged portfolio of applications grow stale. This may be in the form of higher operating costs to “keep the lights on” for the application, weak service level and support, or obsolete technology – to name a few. The key here then is to methodologically and pragmatically assess all or a subset of the applications top-down in the business in order to devise strategies and define projects and request funds.

We begin the process by assessing key factors of each application in order to categorize each application. Ideally the scope is all the entire application inventory but it may be segmented based on current strategic business initiatives with a process, risk, cost, or value perspective. There are various methods to categorize the applications. A popular format is based on the 2X2, 4 quadrant matrix. An example is the “TIME” (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate) method as defined by Gartner.

T – Tolerate applications that provide good enough business value but may have an old architecture or not be well integrated. Without APM, this is probably the largest category.

I – Invest in strategic or newer applications in order to increase value and use.

M – Migrate technologies that have high business value but have issues the with people, data, or technologies that support it. The technology may be unsupported or people may be on the verge of retiring with a declining pool of replacement skills.

E – Eliminate applications that no longer provide sufficient business value.

Once each application has been categorized then define a strategy and high level set of actions, and create a business case and project charter. Also, add these newly defined strategies to the overall future-state enterprise architecture plans and roadmaps.

Over time, the application portfolio balance should shift to a greater percentage of “invest” applications with a lower percentage of tolerate and eliminate applications. This will result in a greater proportion of IT spending to business value and growth based projects  – and that’s the goal.

Top 3 Drivers for an IAM Business Case and 8 Presentation Tips

In this post, we will discuss the top 3 Drivers for an Identity and Access Management (IAM) Business Case and 8 Presentation Tips.

Who: As always, consider your audience – who will be most interested and in what driver. At a minimum, include the following teams and see the benefits through their eyes:

1) IT Operations Management 2) Security and Legal teams 3) Business (revenue focused) Managers

What (the drivers/benefits):

1. Efficiency – The ability to do more, faster and with less effort. Examples include automating access removal when someone leaves a company, reduction of helpdesk calls from automation of password resets, SLA improvement, and quicker consolidation of infrastructure.

Primary audience: IT Operations Management

2. Effectiveness – Doing the right things and doing them well. Examples include more accurate reports, savings from reduced regulatory fines from inaccurate reports, better general consistency and automation of reports, better customer and auditor perception.

Primary Audience: Security and Legal Teams

3. Agility – Change faster with less effort. Examples include the reduction of effort to form business partnerships (and thus encouraging more partnerships), reduce the time to integrate a newly acquired company, and improved customer service.

Primary Audience: Business (revenue focused) Managers

Socializing and Presentation Tips

1. Emphasize non-quantifiable benefits over ROI calculations. The reason is because ROI calculations are based on assumptions that can often be easily challenged, derailing the entire business case if successful. Only emphasize ROI if you are comfortable sitting in front of the CFO for 20 minutes going through the detailed assumptions and calculations. It’s a safer bet to stick with non-quantifiable benefits. If you must include an ROI, be sure to include others in the assumptions and calculations.

2. “Road test” the business case presentation in one on one or smaller meetings in order to get feedback and improve your message.

3. In the presentation, spend more of your time on the expected benefits as opposed to the why, how and technical jargon, which often only detracts focus from the main drivers.

4. The overall format should include at a minimum one slide for the following: problem statement, who was involved in the business case analysis and objectives, proposed solution, expected benefits, high level plan/options and costs, and an Appendix (assumptions and calculations).

5. Present in a professional, conversational, and competent manner

6. Know the material well (more than what is just on the slides)

7. Formally present for 20 minutes and then answer questions and have a conversation for another 20 minutes (often the most important piece)

8. Speak with conviction and above all else, honesty.

 

So Why Field Notes?

Reblogged from Dr Jerry A Smith:

• 

Those that know me will contest that I tend to take a lot of notes. I do so because I truly believe that to remember is to record. This quote, “I’m not writing it down to remember it later. I’m writing it down to remember it now” really put this practice into perspective for me. As such, most of my field notes never see the light of day, not even for me.

Read more… 180 more words

The "Notes and Mindmaps" section was inspired by Dr J's blog of "Field Notes".

4 Ways IaaS Cloud Computing Will Reduce Your Costs

1. Disaster Recovery – Cloud providers such as Amazon AWS offering “pay as you go” pricing enable reduced cost for disaster recovery. Essentially, one only pays when disaster happens and a recovery is needed. To be more accurate, the 24/7 activity of replication and storage of data from the production environment to the DR environment is the fixed cost. At the same time, however, the application and data servers do not cost a single penny unless a disaster happens, in which case the servers are started up. Even if a disaster lasts for months (e.g. Katrina), this is still considerably less expensive than an in-house data center that must purchase all the hardware upfront for the application and data servers.

2. Batch Computing – Batch applications often follow a predictable “batch window” of high and low processing requirements. For example, nightly batch processes may require 1000 servers of processing to complete it’s processing from 12am-8am before the next business day starts. These 1000 servers must be purchased up front and may not be used (or used very little) during day-time business hours, resulting in a very low CPU utilization rate of 33% (8/24).  With IaaS cloud computing and the ability to scale (or auto-scale) when needed, the CPU utilization rate is theoretically 100% or realistically at least in the 90s. Major savings.

3. Short-term Web Site – For example, a marketing professional may create a dedicated web site for a product. If that web-site is mentioned in a commercial  during the Super Bowl with 100M+ viewers, there a good chance that web site will get hammered, potentially with 100′s or 1000′s or more  unique hits within a few minutes, potentially requiring 100′s or 1000′s of servers. A few days after the Super Bowl, the  marketing web site requires 2 servers for the rest of the year. Again, with a pay as you go and auto-scaling capability, the cost savings in comparison to traditionally purchasing all the equipment up front are through the roof.

4. Test & Dev – Cloud computing is also cost effective for test and development environments that may not need to be running 24/7. Again, pay only for the time the system is running.

IaaS Cloud Computing will not always reduce costs

It’s important to call out that IaaS Cloud computing may not be cost effective for large business steady state workloads for many use cases and may even be more expensive.  I predict, however, this will change due to improved automation capabilities that enable IT Operation teams to perform more efficiently. The technology of automation capabilities are still lacking and not yet mature enough to provide real steady-state savings. Examples of automation capabilities include automated patches, backups, database replication (e.g. Amazon AWS RDS), and the ability to quickly deploy and configure  a complex, integrated environment of web, application,  data and network components components in an automated fashion. Again, the tools exist but are still several years until mainstream adoption in my opinion. Put another way:

Sufficiently mature and integrated automation capabilities will be the tipping point for mainstream enterprise adoption of IaaS Clound Computing. We are still several years away from this reality. Do you agree or disagree? Your thoughts are welcome.

IaaS Cloud Computing Providers: Notes and Mind-maps

The IaaS landscape is far from mature. Providers vary greatly in terms of the service, features, and markets they serve. As outlined in the mind-map, the key points below are of the strengths and weaknesses noted based on Gartner research and my own observations. It’s interesting to understand the varying SLA’s and that none of the major vendors but some of the smaller offer 100% SLA. The virtualization technology Citrix Xen, open source KVM, and VM Ware are the predominant choices. Some providers are geared toward niches: Disaster Recovery, Government, Compliance (e.g. HIPAA) while others are general purpose. The leader in the market is Amazon AWS but in my opinion CSC has the best enterprise offering. Hosting.com has a unique feature to pay less for VM’s that are not used, which is great for DR. Rackspace is embracing the open source movement and I believe they are on the right path to compete with the big boys. For more observations, see the mind-map or it’s bullet point form below.

IAAS Vendors

 

• Amazon Web Services
  • Strengths
    • Paid by the VM (no contract)
    • Xen virtualized
    • DC around the world and for US gov’t
    • Also offers cloud storage, CDN, and PaaS services
    • Market and thought leader
    • Largest pool of capacity (good for batch)
    • API access and many 3rd party management tools
    • Large partner ecosystem – licensing and packaging s/w to run on EC2
    • Compliant – PCI, SAS, FISMA etc…
    • Good for Cloud native, batch, big data, e-business, test and dev
  • Cautions
    • Best effort cloud
      • highly variable EBS performance and between VMs
      • weakest SLA of top providers – 99.95%, capping at 10% of annual bill
        • Requires customer to run in at least 2 AZ’s
        • Does not include EBS
      • Be careful with modeled network charges
      • Forum based support is free and enterprise class support is 10% uplift to bill
    • Only basic ACLs for controlling network access (rather than full-fledged firewall service)
    • No managed services but available via partners
      • Adding automated infrastructure management (e.g. RDS) but does not provide core functions of ‘turn key’ use case
    • No colocation but available via 3rd party (Equinix)
    • For better terms, sign an enterprise agreement (0 dollar contract)
• AT&T
  • Strengths
    • Paid by the VM, cloud storage, CDN, colocation, managed hosting, VMWare virtualized
    • Good for multiple workloads requiring managed services, cloud experimentation for small teams and use with other AT&T services
    • Focused on hybrid (not pure) cloud
      • VMware

• Cautions
  • Developer centric offering, low SLA (99.9%), awkward UI, proprietary API w/o 3rd part tool support
  • VM provisioning time long and weak RBAC
  • De-emphasis on self-service
• Bluelock
  • Stengths
    • Mid-market, vCloud Datacenter for public and private IaaS w/ optional managed services
    • Supports vCloud Global connect – federation between vCloud DC providers
    • “Portfolio” tool provides monitoring and IT financial management
    • Good for e-business, general business, test and dev
  • Cautions
    • Prime target for acquisition
• Carpathia
  • Strengths
    • Focus on mid-market and gov’t and emphasis on compliance
    • Citrix Xen virtualized and also offers private cloud, US gov’t cloud, storage, colocation, managed hosting
    • Primary differentiator is compliance (FISMA, DIACAP, HIPAA, PCI, C&A)
    • Also offers VMWare virtualized option and options to mix with Xen
    • Good for significant compliance requirements and public sector

• Cautions
  • Focused on managed services (not self service)
  • Limited brand awareness outside of public sector but this is changing
• CSC
  • Strenghs
    • vCloud DC, optional managed services
      • Public multi-tenant, private single tenant – both in CSC DC
      • Private single tenant in customers own DC
      • Standardized architecture across public and private
      • Top 5 market share in VMWare hosting
      • Strong roadmap for enterprise IT operations management tools including automated managed services
      • CloudLab for developers – IDE integration, network simulation
      • Generous with offering trials
      • Good for general business, test and dev, cloud-enabled DC transformation and transition
  • Cautions
    • Support and account management weak, parent company slow and may interfere
• DataPipe
  • Strengths
    • Hypervisor neutral on Citrix platform in public/private variants w/ optional managed services
    • Offers colocation and managed hosting and a suite of managed services on top of AWS
    • Low cost Kernel-based VM (KVM)
    • Can use Stratoshpere in conjunction with AWS
    • Good for hybrid hosting, supplemental infrastructure in conjunction with AWS
  • Cautions
    • Emphasis on managed services
• GoGrid
  • Strengths
    • Xen virtualized public/private, optional managed services plus storage, CDN partnering with EdgeCast and managed hosting
    • 100% SLA
    • Successful blend of self service and managed services
    • Eases licensing and allows partners to build on top of each others software stacks
    • Good for cloud native apps, e-business, hybrid hosting big data, test and dev

• Cautions
  • S/w is dev all in-house which may make it hard to compete
  • RBAC limited and only basic ACLs, firewall extra
  • Offer own API but not many 3rd party tools
• Hosting.com
  • Strengths
    • Mid0market, VMWare virtualized plus private cloud, colocation, and managed hosting
    • Specializes in cloud DR
      • Uses VMWare Site Recovery manager for synchronization and optional EMC SAN for replication
      • Cost effective parking feature to run VM inactive mode for a fraction of cost of running VM
    • Automated Managed Services
      • Workflow driven automated patch management system
      • Portal based service catalog
        • 1st offering is pre-configured SharePoint as managed service
    • Contracting flexibility w/ minimum revenue commitments
    • Good for cloud DR including continuous availability facilitated by using IaaS as secondary DC
  • Cautions
    • Growing via acquisitors and may be an attractive acquisition
• IBM
  • Strengths
    • Paid by the VM, KVM, colocation, managed hosting, private cloud
    • Integrates well with other IBM tools
    • Lot of partnerships with independent software providers (ISV)
    • Good for orgs with deep investment in IBM, cloud native, test and dev, or batch
  • Cautions
    • Best effort, dev centric towards new cloud native apps and test and dev and low SLA 99.9%
    • Forum based support with enterprise 10% uplift of bill
• iLand
  • Strengths
    • vCloud Powered w/ focus on DR using VMWare Site Recovery Manager
    • Offers hosted virtual desktop
    • Good for Cloud DR
  • Cautions
    • Potential target for acquisition
• Joyent
  • Strengths
    • paid by the VM, KVM
    • Emphasis on performance (and its analytics)
    • On verge of PaaS with its SmatOS
    • Good for cloud native apps that need performance
  • Cautions
    • No self-service network security, single account model
    • Highly dev centric with emphasis on API and emblement of 3rd party tools
• NaviSite
  • Strengths
    • VMWare Virtualized with optional managed services, colocation and app management
    • Strong self-service and RBAC and workflow
    • Integrated performance monitoring, auto-scaling
    • Good for general business apps, test and dev
  • Cautions
    • Acquired by Time-Warner in 2011 but unclear long-term vision
• OpSource
  • Strengths
    • paid by the VM, VMWare Virtualized with optional managed services
    • 100% availability
    • ISV partnerships
    • Good for e-business, cloud-native, hybrid SaaS, test and dev
  • Cautions
    • Geared toward hosting use cases for web apps (not general purpose workloads)
• Rackspace
  • Strengths
    • Paid by the VM, Xen w/ managed hosting, hybrid hosting, private cloud, storage, PaaS, monitoring, virtual desktop, and SaaS SharePoint and email
    • Primary sponsor of OpenStack (open source cloud stack)
    • Good support and easy to use and low cost
    • Large eco-system of vendors likely to compete with VMWare, MS, and Amazon that enables 3rd party management tools support
    • Good for Hybrid hosting where IaaS is supplemental to dedicated infrastructure, test and dev
  • Cautions
    • Dev centric, best-effort and geared toward hosting use case
    • No self service security features
    • Migrating from proprietary to open cloud stack
• Savviis
  • Strengths
    • Public/private VMWare virtualized w/ optional managed services and colocation
    • Offers different price points, SLAs
    • Strong customer portal w/ strong security features
    • Strong automated managed services including on-demand DB from Oracle and MS
    • Good for general business apps, test and dev
  • Cautions
    • Overly diverse product portfolio (multiple flavors of single and multi-tenant)
• SoftLayer
  • Strengths
    • Focus on small business, paid by the VM Citrix Zen w/ storage, CDN, private cloud, colocation, dedicated hosting and managed hosting
    • Thought leader and deep investment in managed services / exceptional portal
    • Strong monitoring and alerts from failure
    • Ability to integrate with 3rd party authentication (VeriSign) and free vulnerability and PCI compliance scans
    • Good for e-business, test and dev, self managed hybrid hosting
    • API Supported by RightScale
  • Cautions
    • Focus on small business w/ smaller consultative sales
• Tata Communications
  • Strengths
    • Citrix xen based, public w/ colocation and managed hosting
    • Supports AWS API
    • Strong RBAC and financial tools and free VPN
    • Good for cloud native, test and dev, and cost-conscious customers
  • Cautions
    • No managed hosting, 99.95% SLA by SLA credit cap of 20% of bill
    • Low brand awareness w/ focus on Asia
• Terremark
  • Strengths
    • 2 VMWare virtualized Offerings and vCloud Express and offers managed hosting and colocation
    • “Enterprise Cloud” – Strong focus on self-service VDC and good for general business apps, test and dev
    • “CaaS” focused on hybrid hosting and customers that need some managed hosting with VDC – can provision VMs and dedicated servers w/ metering by the day (not hour) – good for hybrid hosting, general business apps
    • vCloud Express – for developers and quick POC’s
  • Caution
    • Weak customer service
    • Split product portfolio may cause difficulties
    • Integrating Terremark w/ Verizon
    • vCloud DataCenter only offered as private cloud IaaS
    • Future strategy is hypervisor neutral
• Tier 3
  • Strengths
    • vCloud Powered
    • A lot of new custom functionality
    • Two tiers of SLA – 99.9% and 99.999% w/ replication to second DC
    • Scriptable templating for deployment “Blueprints”
    • Good for e-business, cloud native, general business, test and dev
  • Cautions
    • No vCD UI
    • Very small but innovative, prime for acqusition
    • Limited brand awareness and marketing
• Viracore Systems
  • Strengths
    • vCloud express complements its private cloud IaaS
    • Unified management portal
    • Good for non-mission critical, small-scale web apps, test and dev
    • vCloud Express
  • Cautions
    • SMB focused, lacks feature depth including self-service load balancer, monitoring, VPN and weak firewall
    • Guaranteed CPU not RAM
    • Limited brand awareness

What kind of models does an Enterprise Architecture describe?

What is an Enterprise Architecture Model?

Many mistakenly assume that Enterprise Architecture is a “tech thing” only. This could not be further from the truth.

From a modeling perspective, enterprise architecture brings great clarity to a system.

What is a system? According to Google: “A set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, in particular.” Note: No use of the word technology in the definition.

What kind of models does an Enterprise Architecture describe? Again, according to Google (define keyword): “An enterprise architecture (EA) describes the structure of an enterprise, its decomposition into subsystems, the relationships between the subsystems, the relationships with the external environment, the terminology to use, and the guiding principles for the design and evolution of an enterprise …”. Note: No use of the word technology in the definition.

Or to summarize, Enterprise Architecture is the System of the Enterprise

A subset of an enterprise architecture are automated systems. Another subset of an enterprise architecture are NOT automated systems.

Let’s take the US Government as an example. The US government is composed of 3 branches – executive, legislative, and judicial. All 3 branches work together in a SYSTEM to provide life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. An Enterprise Architecture is used to describe the system of the US Government.

Every business, government agency, university etc… has an enterprise architecture. The question is – are they fully conscious of their enterprise architecture? Furthermore, what are the benefits of being fully conscious of an enterprise architecture? What are the benefits of using an Enterprise Architecture? With those questions in mind, stay tuned for my next blog post.

Hint: the value of adding the TIME dimension to our enterprise architecture models to effectively manage change.

TOGAF 9 – The Certification and 2 Improvement Proposals

I recently passed the TOGAF 9 Certification exam. The process of studying the TOGAF material really did help to give a clearer context of the role of an Architect and how to do my job better. The content was a thick yet generally readable 800 pages and I also took a course from “Architecting the Enterprise”, which I highly recommend.

I decided to become certified in TOGAF 9 because it is generally accepted as the most well-known and respected framework for Enterprise Architecture out of the 75+ existing architecture frameworks. This doesn’t mean, however, that the TOGAF 9 is readily applicable out of the box – and it is acknowledged in the “Preliminary Phase” to customize the framework as needed before beginning the work in the ADM (Architecture Development Method). In fact, almost all other existing architecture frameworks could be viewed as some derivation and modification of the TOGAF.

The framework is very thorough and would certainly benefit an architect to have a deep understanding of it. At the same time, however, there are other frameworks (e.g. PEAF) that are simpler and easier to teach and use out of the box.

Two key concepts that the TOGAF could improve upon:

1)      Phase G – “Implementation Governance” – By calling out governance during implementation, TOGAF is missing the boat in terms of emphasizing the governance needed BEFORE implementation (Phases A-E). For example, during Phase E, when solutions are first considered, there may be various solution options to choose from – ranging from the most strategic to the most tactical. Continuing with this example, the most strategic decision may cost $20M while the most tactical decision may cost $100K – and there may be options in between the two extremes. It is the job of the architect to define the various solutions options. A governance board which includes key executives should then make that important investment decision. This type of governance is equally if not more important than “Implementation Governance” in Phase G and therefore TOGAF 9 needs to change to better emphasize governance throughout the entire ADM.

2)      Estimation - “Just give me a number”- In companies where products are heavily or entirely based on software/web, often business executives or product people just want to know – how much will it cost to build? This question is first asked at product conception before requirements and any of the key phases in the TOGAF such as phases B-F. An important concept that is unjustly buried deep under the 800 pages of TOGAF is that cost estimation becomes more accurate as each ADM phase is completed. For example, in Phase B we will have gathered key processes and requirements and in Phase C we become aware of the key logical application and data components. The outputs from Phase B & C is potentially sufficient detail to provide a cost estimate with, say, 70% confidence.  The technology view from Phase D and the solutions in Phase E potentially enables a cost estimate with 90% confidence.  The key point: From a CEO or business executive’s point of view, a big reason to “do TOGAF” or Enterprise Architecture is to define to sufficient detail the strategy, architecture, and solution (via diagrams, matrices, and views), so accurate costs can be estimated, to make go/no-go decisions of major initiatives, and to support optimal program and implementation project planning.