Navigating the Cloud

This week I'll continue with the theme of cloudy thinking, which some say I excel at. In previous posts I observed, from a stratospheric level (sic), that many applications of cloud technology can provide distinct, if not unique, advantages to some processes that are simply impossible with more traditional methods. Given this distimction, certain challenges compel us to look to the clouds for solutions. A seasoned pilot will tell you that flying in cloudy skies is a dangerous, risky business. To do so safely and successfully requires knowledge, skill, proper tools and a good bit of common sense. The same can be said when considering launching any cloud-based technology. In my world that technology centers primarily on cloud communications - that is using cloud-level technology to solve earth-bound problems.

This picture very simply illustrates how a business is able to link multiple sites together using a cloud-based service provider as their enterprise communication system. The provider "hosts" the services - the required communications equipment is housed at their site - and the business pays to connect to, and use the service. Each location is physically connected to the cloud using some form of high-speed IP connection such broadband cable, dedicated T1's, fiber-based Ethernet, or even wireless links. These connections are often refered to as "pipes". The more bandwidth available on the pipe translates into faster data transfer speeds and is typically called a "fat pipe". Just like having a larger garden hose will help you water your lawn in shorter time.

The unique position of the "Cloud" service provider gives businesses an easy way to move voice, data and video communication between sites, no matter where they are. Another advantage is the ease with which a business can expand, or contract, its footprint by simply connecting sites to the cloud. As a result, a customer's phone call to site A - which might be in New York - can be transferred to a destination at site C in California with the same ease as if the call stayed in New York. Or a mobile employee can travel from sight to sight while his calls will find hime regardles of where he might be on a particlua day. Cloud communication services are especially useful for multi-site retail chains, restaurants, medical and financial institutions - essentially any organization with a broad footprint and the need to move communication from site to site simply and affordably.

Of course this is a very simplistic illustration and there are as many solutions as there are technology professionals. The take away from this is the idea that cloud-technology might be a good tool to help your organization communicate better. Then again, it may not be the right tool for your particular enterprise. So how do you decide?

That's a whole other blog....

Cloudy Thinking

from last week...

"But our Cloud's silver lining does all kinds of work for us and helps us accomplish more things faster than we could ever dream possible. We love our Cloud. We pay money, sometimes a lot of money, to 'touch' our Cloud and have our Cloud 'touch' us. Very soon our Cloud will 'think', and 'learn' and gain 'intelligence', and help us live in a better, safer, heathier 'smarter' planet. Our Cloud will embrace our lives and help us in all things."

My observation above "Very soon our Cloud will 'think', and 'learn' and gain 'intelligence'" is flawed in that many of those in the know would argue the Cloud is already inetelligent, self-educating, and indeed thinking. More correctly, the Cloud stores information - knowledge - and makes comparative analyses for the purpose of predicting future events. You hear it all the time called 'modelling'. In that sense then the Cloud is an intelligent, thinking 'entity'. Consider the following:

in·tel·li·gent (/inˈtelijənt/) Adjective

 

Having or showing intelligence, esp. of a high level. (of a device, machine, or building) Able to vary its state or action in response to varying situations, varying requirements, and past...

learn (/lərn/) Verb

 

Gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by study, experience, or being taught. Commit to memory.

 

think (/thingk/)

1. to have a conscious mind, to some extent of reasoning, remembering experiences, making rational decisions, etc.
2. to employ one's mind rationally and objectively in evaluating or dealing with a given situation
3. to have a certain thing as the subject of one's thoughts
4. to call something to one's conscious mind
5. to consider something as a possible action, choice, etc.

 

Given these definitions, one can rightfully argue that information technology has evolved - and continues to evolve - to increasing levels of 'intelligence'.

 

Obvious, daily examples include computer modelling applied to predicting weather, financial activity, industrial processes, engineering design, disease evolution and genetic predisposition. Less visible yet critical applications include intelligence-gathering and analysis for military, law enforcement, and national security purposes popularly known as 'profiling'. The current gun-control propositions before Congress include 'profiling' existing and potential gun owners to help identify - predict if you will - individuals most likely to commit a serious violent crime. Does anyone remember the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report"?

 

Less obvious, but nonetheless useful, are social-behavioral predictability functions including innumerable marketing research and consumer preference analytics.

My grocer sends coupons based on past purchasing patterns suggesting items they think I might also find to my liking. Barnes and Noble, Netflix, Amazon, Sears, and countless web researchers collect information to predict what might interest us, based on 'historical' consumer data. I say 'historical' with tongue-in-cheek since in most cases the predictability application is processing information real-time and making virtually instantaneous recommendations - i.e. in-store coupons printed at checkout, or eCoupons delivered to your smart phone while shopping.

 

So far, all of this seems to be a relatively positive thing. I am increasingly concerned however with the ease with which we justify information-gathering and analysis. I consider it legalized snooping. Inch by inch we are willingly relinquishing individual privacy for some higher 'good'.

 

but that's a whole other blog....

 

 

 

 

ourCloud

Historically, clouds have gotten a bad wrap I think. Sure there are always those grateful souls who appreciate the rain clouds bring, or the cooling shade they provide, or the magical way they shape themselves and weave above our daily lives. Most of us however tend to consider clouds less affectionately. Not that we wish them ill, we simpy lament their gray dark nature, the way they can quickly blacken a blue sky, and escort nasty storms that can leave damage, destruction, gloom and despair in their wake. But of course we know each unique ever-changing form in the sky is nothing more than vapor, gases and airborne matter combining together momentarily on their way to other forms of instantaneous existence.

Fascinating isn't it, that those in the technology field adopted the whistful "cloud" as the representative for what is, at its core, a technically complex, structured and ruled environment within which we move electronic information. The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that they simply couldn't come up with anything else. It's easy to imagine a group of silicon-valley-types lounging around on a grassy knoll one mostly-sunny afternoon and, upon looking skyward, one of them has an epiphany. The Cloud.

There it had been, right in front of them all the time. I can see him (or her)  jumping to his (or her) sandaled feet exclaiming "Eureka! I've discovered the Cloud!" Of course everyone else was awestruck, and envious to be sure, with this display of brilliance knowing full well that his (or her) stock options were destined for the stratosphere. With great excitement they all hurried back inside to their cubes and desktops - remember, they didn't have the portable wi-fi, my-fi, your-fi or other i-stuff back in the 90's - and got busy keyboarding out the code that would come to be affectionaly known as the Internet, the I-Ching, the Cloud of clouds, the I-Cloud (head nod to Apple).

And our lives haven't been the same since. Fortunately for those of us folks that like the Cloud because it gets us whatever we want whenever we want it wherever we happen to be, the Cloud isn't just vapor that vanishes in the blink of an eye. Oh no, our Cloud is more like those massive, ominously dark behemoths that churn overhead and seem to last forever. Like in Illinois in the spring. And in Seattle all the time.

Our Cloud has a silver lining, literally. Check it out. Look inside your desktop or laptop or server sometime and you'll discover all sorts of shiny little silver things, and other boring black silicon things too, sitting around on something called a motherboard, giving off heat and pretending to be a Cloud-ette. Somtimes they hum or buzz, sometimes they don't.

But our Cloud's silver lining does all kinds of work for us and helps us accomplish more things faster than we could ever dream possible. We love our Cloud. We pay money, sometimes a lot of money, to 'touch' our Cloud and have our Cloud 'touch' us. Very soon our Cloud will 'think', and 'learn' and gain 'intelligence', and help us live in a better, safer, heathier 'smarter' planet. Our Cloud will embrace our lives and help us in all things.

Hmm, sounds like a whole other blog...

The Coolest Thing Revisited

This past weekend you would have found me once again scurrying around town doing still more Christmas shopping, finally with the end of my list clearly in sight. And 'scurrying' may be a bit too energetic to describe the sometimes painful process of getting through the agonizingly-slow-moving columns of traffic both outside as well as inside the stores. It was clearly obvious I was not alone in my task judging from the volume of shoppers out and about. I was thrilled to locate most of the gifts on my various lists, and of course some that were not. But as usual there remained several more challenging items left to still be procured.

Troughout the day I turned many times to my iPhone texting questions about a particular gift, or to search Google for something, to browse for comparable products, check prices, availability, shipping charges - at one point I even sat in the parking lot to order an item for home delivery after discovering the store did not have it in stock.

That evening back home, having unloaded the car and inventorying the day's booty, I finally kicked back in front of the fireplace, a glass of crisp chardonnay in hand, holiday music gently playing in the background. On the table next to me my iPhone began providing status updates for my online purchase - first the order confirmation, then the credit card receipt, then fulfillment, and ultimately the shipping confirmation with tracking number. All in the course of no more than thre to four hours time. I smiled.

While none of this is necessarily new, it is continuing evidence nevertheless of how technology is revolutionizing consumer shopping habits. Basking in the satisfaction of my day's accomplishments I reminisced about gift-shopping experiences of Christmases past, before the personal computer, the Internet, and the iPhone. It was a far more exhausting time and energy-consuming process, searching store shelves, driving from store to store, sometimes town-to-town, searching for a special item that just simply had to be under the tree.

Many people still enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the frenzy of the SHOP-PING experience and that's absolutely fine. But for me, I love my techno-tools and how they have simplified my gift-giving experience. Vendors are successfully delivering the sights and sounds of Christmas over the network. Now we just need to figure out how to deliver the smells of Christmas over the same network as well. Talk about integration!

The Coolest Thing

Yesterday my daughter and I were doing some Christmas shopping when I was intrigued by an application of digital signage at one of the stores we visited - ok, it was Kohls. Posted everywhere - in the aisles, on the shelves, directly on merchandise - were 7" LCD display panels with the sale and price information for the particular item(s). There were literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. Each one was battery powered, easy to read, designed to be hung virtually anywhere - with nary a connection. So, being the tech-inquisitive person I am I covertly slipped one off its palstic hanger to see what the heck it was, a brand, model number, any identification I could find. Probably drove the store security people watching camera monitors nuts!

The sign had nothing to distinguish it from any ordinary, everyday black and white LCD picture display, about 3/8' thick, battery access door, that was it. And the name "Altierre Corp., San Jose, CA.". I was so intrigued by this little device I found it difficult to pay attention to the real purpose of our trip - Christmas gift shopping! Was it Wi-Fi enabled I wondered? Did it get automatic price updates from a central database somewhere, distributed wirelessly throughout the store? Then I noticed the complete absence of traditional printed product and promotional placards. They had been replaced by the digital displays. What a great time-saving, perfectly feasible application of digital display technology I decided. And what made it feasible was its ease of deployment - small lightweight package, battery powered, and wireless.

Back home I Googled Altierre Corp. and found their website but not much in the way of product information. The image above came from the home page as does the following Press Release:


ALTIERRE ANNOUNCES NFC-ENABLED PRICE TAGS AND DIGITAL SIGNS
Smart Phone Interactivity Complements Suite of Consumer-Facing Offerings for Retailers

San Jose, Calif., September 13, 2012 — Altierre Corp., a provider of ultra low-power wireless technology that enables dynamic pricing, promotion, and product information in brick and mortar retail stores, today announced the introduction of near field communication (NFC)-enabled price tags and digital signs, augmenting the company’s complete suite of wireless solutions for retailers. NFC is a standards-based connectivity technology that enables interactivity with smart phones, facilitating communication and mobile payments. Altierre’s NFC- embedded technology opens the way for shoppers to scan electronic price tags and digital signs using their smart phones, making it possible for retailers to provide in-store personalized offers and product details such as nutritional and allergy information. In addition it allows retailers to cross-sell or upsell associated items, while also enabling instant checkout via applications like Google Wallet. “Convergence technologies like NFC are the wave of the future for bricks and mortar retailers seeking the holy grail of one-to-one personalized engagement with customers,” said Sunit Saxena, Chairman and CEO of Altierre. “We are continually striving to offer retailers new opportunities to harness technology to increase their store efficiencies and revenues, and to delight their customers while strengthening loyalty.” The introduction of NFC capability adds a new dimension to, and complements, the broad suite of infrastructure, sensor network, and consumer-facing display technology offerings from Altierre that includes E-Paper and animation capable tags. Altierre’s bi-directional ultra-low power wireless technology is already operating in over 1,000 retail stores across US and Europe. The system has been enterprise-hardened in terms of ease of deployment, ease of ongoing maintenance, least infrastructure cost, 24/7 system dependability, and synchronization to point of sales cash registers, all adding up to the highest functionality, lowest-cost system in the market place today.


Technology that makes sense gets me all excited. This makes incredible sense. It uses the same 'e-ink' techology as the popular book readers so battery life is incredible. And considering the implications of being integrated into marketing and PoS solutions this makes the printed signs and posters things of the past. Undoubtedly we'll soon be seeing these things - and others like them - everywhere. To read more, go to Altierre's web site www.altierre.com

Happy Thanksgiving

I've got so many things to be truly thankful for and yet I often find myself down-in-the-mouth about one thing or another, lamenting that I don't have something or that circumstances haven't gone exactly my way. Typically, and thankfully (again) those times are short-lived as I am always reminded of the bounty and goodness that fills my life.

Not surprisngly the most precious of my blessings are the loves of my life, the people nearest and dearest to me. And I can tell you I am blessed with a great many lives - family, friends, close relationships - in my various communities and roles, too numerous to count.

Here at work I have the honor of  working daily with some of the most genuine, dedicated people I've known. They are individually gifted with unique skills, talents and abilities  that collectively result in the greatness that our customers have come to appreciate and expect. But far more importantly, they possess a spirit of service and compassion. They care deeply about what they do and for the customers we serve. Time and again I have witnessed each of them graciously sacrifice personally for the benefit of a customer in need.

While we may not be unique, we are certainly indeed rare. In a time of increasing challenge and cynicism, our company I believe stands out as a shining example of what's right in the industry.

The people of my life are who I am most thankful this Thanksgiving Day. Please accept our grateful appreciation and best wishes for you and yours this holiday season!

Our Most Cherished Right

I am excited! Tomorrow is Election Day. It is the day guaranteed to me by my Constitution to vote for the people I want to represent me in governement. It is the day I am privileged, and obligated, to vote for the men and women candidates that I believe possess and demonstrate the skills, wisdom, character and conviction to lead our nation for the next few years. It's an invaluable, inspired process by which we are empowered to self-determination.

Personally I feel my freedom and individual liberties increasingly rewstricted and/or removed altogether by the encroahment of a presumably well-meaning government. To some degree I have come to the conlcusion that our government at all levels has become 'self-aware', seeking more to preserve itself than to preserve the welfare of the nation's population. The growing differentiation referenced by public officials when speaking of "the people" and "the government" is alarming. It's as if they do not grasp nor value the instrinsic 'one-ness' rooted in the Declaration of Independence and reiterated by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address:

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth"

We are one nation under God. We are Americans all. We face many great challenges but history has shown time and again that by God's hand we have overcome those challenges to become the greatest nation in the history of the world. We always come together in the face of great hardship and sacrifice to rise above ourselves for the good of another.

I love my country. I will vote with exhuberation and relsih the freedom to do so. At day's end the voice of a free people will have once again been heard. Please vote. God bless America!