Talking To Big Machines
In Comstock’s vision, software intelligence improves machines in two respects: it makes them both more selfish and more selfless. “Selfish machines” monitor themselves and ask for help when they need it, as when a jet engine calls for service because vibration sensors have detected early signs of wear. Human operators have typically performed this function, observing, for instance, that a combination of rising temperature and falling pressure suggests an oil leak. Not only can software monitor machines at extremely high accuracy and frequency, it can also present nuanced, abstracted conclusions to human users.
Redefine App and Data Delivery for the Modern Workforce
The modern workforce is one that spans devices, countries, time zones and schedules. Delivering apps and data to them can be a serious challenge, and moreover, a serious drain on your resources.So join Holger Daube for this session as he shows you how to: Move your enterprise from device-level management to dynamic delivery of apps and data; Create highly automated, self-service systems to securely deliver data and applications across all devices; and Build a well-managed foundation that enables end user services (e.g., BYOD, VDI, app store) within an ITaaS framework
Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
As an enterprise start-up, Meraki has been impeded by its distance from the web scene. It simply does not have the same recognition as a consumer company whose products users (and potential recruits) interact with every day. “You say, ‘I work at Pinterest,’ and people know what that is — they use Pinterest,” Biswas said. “You tell them you work at Meraki, and they’re a little more reserved. They’re like, ‘What’s that?’ Once we explained our culture and our approach, we were able to hire great talent, but it’s always a challenge.” Since the acquisition, Biswas, who is 32, has fought to retain the spirit of the vanguard, but his struggle reveals an implicit fear — that young engineers might be willing to work at Meraki but not at Cisco
Keeping IT Relevant isn't about the Title of the CIO
There are ramifications for the entire IT organization when pursuing a staffing model that includes technical and business savvy folks being embedded within each of the functions. There is the risk of further stratification of IT between the "innovators" and the "operations teams". There is the risk of having a distributed team performing poorly or not communicating without greater leadership focus. The fact is, there isn't an easy way to slice this artichoke and someone's ego or job function is likely to get poked. However, if you have the courage to make the necessary changes and make the tough calls on staffing models based on people and opportunity not silos or turf, you can make it work.
The cultural gaps between enterprise mobility and business intelligence
"When the project is coming from the BI team, these are the guys who have been doing BI and publishing dashboards around the company," Alsbury said. "The first thing typically they are looking at is we have these ten reports or these thirty five reports now we want to enable people to access them on their phone so can you make our reports that look this way look the same way on a phone? That's the first break down right there." Alsbury adds that some organizations perceive is as a transcription or transposition project where we are taking the same thing they look at here on their desktop and put the same thing on their phone.
Peer Pressure! Business Pushing the Cloud on Enterprise IT
"The cloud is getting so much attention and chat time that all of a sudden there is an urgency," said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst. "Tomorrow the cloud will be tested and trusted. However, today it's still the wild, wild West. IT executives know this but they get pressure from their chief executives to jump into the cloud because it's becoming the new code word for success. And no one wants to be last." Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis, said IT shops are under considerable pressure to improve overall operational efficiency and even to drive business opportunities through the nimbleness that comes along with being a leaner organization.
Taking A Wait-And-See Approach With Disruptive Innovations
While the word has taken on many meanings (as Lepore’s article notes), Christensen’s original definition includes two characteristics that show up in sequence. At first, the technology performs worse than alternatives on performance criteria that mainstream customers care about. At this point, we can only say that it is potentially disruptive. Only if its performance later improves can we say that a technology is actually disruptive. That’s why startups with potentially disruptive technologies start out competing instead of cooperating. Incumbents can’t tell whether their technology is any good, so they decline to license it.
Five Smart Cybersecurity Moves From Top Security CEOs
The complexity of security threats to individuals has also increased, but no individual cybersecurity issue will receive the headlines that a corporate breach would, so one can be lulled into a false sense of security. I sought the counsel of four CEOs of major information security companies to ask them what steps they take personally to secure their information and their computing devices. They offered the following five recommendations.
The future of TV is social
Now there’s a whole generation of cord-cutters, something my colleague Janko has written about extensively, and I have one daughter firmly in that camp: when she and her boyfriend got an apartment together, they chose to get high-speed internet and either download everything they want to watch or stream it via an Android set-top box. But my two youngest daughters — one teenager, one in her 20s — are even further down the curve: like the kids surveyed by Variety, names like PewDiePie and Smosh are more relevant to them than than most Hollywood actors.
Why Do We Need Self-Organising Teams?
Organisations have no longer been able to choose whether they want to respond to these demands or not. Change has become mandatory. Trying to hold onto the status quo is like trying to keep the leaves on trees in autumn. For an organisation to be successful, it must adequately deal with the risks and use the opportunities every change brings along. In other words, the organisation must keep up with, or ideally be ever so slightly ahead of, the current market demands. How inconvenient then that this market behaves unpredictably. That which is ‘top’ today can be a ‘flop’ tomorrow; yesterday’s success factor can become a burden overnight.
Quote for the day:
"Simplicity and complexity need each other." -- John Maeda
In Comstock’s vision, software intelligence improves machines in two respects: it makes them both more selfish and more selfless. “Selfish machines” monitor themselves and ask for help when they need it, as when a jet engine calls for service because vibration sensors have detected early signs of wear. Human operators have typically performed this function, observing, for instance, that a combination of rising temperature and falling pressure suggests an oil leak. Not only can software monitor machines at extremely high accuracy and frequency, it can also present nuanced, abstracted conclusions to human users.
Redefine App and Data Delivery for the Modern Workforce
The modern workforce is one that spans devices, countries, time zones and schedules. Delivering apps and data to them can be a serious challenge, and moreover, a serious drain on your resources.So join Holger Daube for this session as he shows you how to: Move your enterprise from device-level management to dynamic delivery of apps and data; Create highly automated, self-service systems to securely deliver data and applications across all devices; and Build a well-managed foundation that enables end user services (e.g., BYOD, VDI, app store) within an ITaaS framework
Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem
As an enterprise start-up, Meraki has been impeded by its distance from the web scene. It simply does not have the same recognition as a consumer company whose products users (and potential recruits) interact with every day. “You say, ‘I work at Pinterest,’ and people know what that is — they use Pinterest,” Biswas said. “You tell them you work at Meraki, and they’re a little more reserved. They’re like, ‘What’s that?’ Once we explained our culture and our approach, we were able to hire great talent, but it’s always a challenge.” Since the acquisition, Biswas, who is 32, has fought to retain the spirit of the vanguard, but his struggle reveals an implicit fear — that young engineers might be willing to work at Meraki but not at Cisco
Keeping IT Relevant isn't about the Title of the CIO
There are ramifications for the entire IT organization when pursuing a staffing model that includes technical and business savvy folks being embedded within each of the functions. There is the risk of further stratification of IT between the "innovators" and the "operations teams". There is the risk of having a distributed team performing poorly or not communicating without greater leadership focus. The fact is, there isn't an easy way to slice this artichoke and someone's ego or job function is likely to get poked. However, if you have the courage to make the necessary changes and make the tough calls on staffing models based on people and opportunity not silos or turf, you can make it work.
The cultural gaps between enterprise mobility and business intelligence
"When the project is coming from the BI team, these are the guys who have been doing BI and publishing dashboards around the company," Alsbury said. "The first thing typically they are looking at is we have these ten reports or these thirty five reports now we want to enable people to access them on their phone so can you make our reports that look this way look the same way on a phone? That's the first break down right there." Alsbury adds that some organizations perceive is as a transcription or transposition project where we are taking the same thing they look at here on their desktop and put the same thing on their phone.
Peer Pressure! Business Pushing the Cloud on Enterprise IT
"The cloud is getting so much attention and chat time that all of a sudden there is an urgency," said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst. "Tomorrow the cloud will be tested and trusted. However, today it's still the wild, wild West. IT executives know this but they get pressure from their chief executives to jump into the cloud because it's becoming the new code word for success. And no one wants to be last." Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis, said IT shops are under considerable pressure to improve overall operational efficiency and even to drive business opportunities through the nimbleness that comes along with being a leaner organization.
Taking A Wait-And-See Approach With Disruptive Innovations
While the word has taken on many meanings (as Lepore’s article notes), Christensen’s original definition includes two characteristics that show up in sequence. At first, the technology performs worse than alternatives on performance criteria that mainstream customers care about. At this point, we can only say that it is potentially disruptive. Only if its performance later improves can we say that a technology is actually disruptive. That’s why startups with potentially disruptive technologies start out competing instead of cooperating. Incumbents can’t tell whether their technology is any good, so they decline to license it.
Five Smart Cybersecurity Moves From Top Security CEOs
The complexity of security threats to individuals has also increased, but no individual cybersecurity issue will receive the headlines that a corporate breach would, so one can be lulled into a false sense of security. I sought the counsel of four CEOs of major information security companies to ask them what steps they take personally to secure their information and their computing devices. They offered the following five recommendations.
The future of TV is social
Now there’s a whole generation of cord-cutters, something my colleague Janko has written about extensively, and I have one daughter firmly in that camp: when she and her boyfriend got an apartment together, they chose to get high-speed internet and either download everything they want to watch or stream it via an Android set-top box. But my two youngest daughters — one teenager, one in her 20s — are even further down the curve: like the kids surveyed by Variety, names like PewDiePie and Smosh are more relevant to them than than most Hollywood actors.
Why Do We Need Self-Organising Teams?
Organisations have no longer been able to choose whether they want to respond to these demands or not. Change has become mandatory. Trying to hold onto the status quo is like trying to keep the leaves on trees in autumn. For an organisation to be successful, it must adequately deal with the risks and use the opportunities every change brings along. In other words, the organisation must keep up with, or ideally be ever so slightly ahead of, the current market demands. How inconvenient then that this market behaves unpredictably. That which is ‘top’ today can be a ‘flop’ tomorrow; yesterday’s success factor can become a burden overnight.
Quote for the day:
"Simplicity and complexity need each other." -- John Maeda
