Sunday, August 29, 2010

Geospatial Cloud Computing In Support Of National Policy

A few weeks ago I once again had the pleasure of participating in a private discussion on cloud computing with Mr. Vivek Kundra.  What struck me in this most recent meeting was his views on the need to infuse geospatial information into the national policy decision making process. To demonstrate this point, he highlighted that even though high rates of healthcare fraud can be linked to specific locations, our lack of a national geodata standard could potentially hamper the consistent enforcement of a national policy in this area.

In their February blog post, "BI's Next Frontier: Geospatial Cloud Computing", Margot Rudell and Krishna Kumar succinctly described this need:

"Competitive superiority and prosperity require timely interpretation of space and time variables for contextual, condition-based decision making and timely action. Geospatial cockpits with cloud computing capabilities can now integrate the wealth of cloud data like macroeconomic indicators on the web with internal operations information to help define and execute optimal business decisions in real-time."

In fact, if Washington, DC CTO Bryan Sival has his way, Washington would become the first "Geocity in the Cloud":

"'The city is already a heavy supplier of mapping applications, having 26 apps that mash maps up with data on crimes, evacuation routes, school data, emergency facilities, addresses of notaries public, leaf collection, and much more.'


Sivak also wants to provide ways for citizens to update city maps or augment maps with additional information such as the location of park benches and traffic lights. The idea is to take crowdsourcing to a higher level of detail by offering the capability to use this geospatial data to mark not just locations but documents and data relevant to the place."

If you're interested in a detailed look at this growing trend, you should definitely take a look at the most recent On The Frontline publication titled "Geospatial Trends In Government". In the electronic magazine, Robert Burkhardt, Army Geospatial Information Officer, highlights the four major geospatial trends that are driving the use of Geospatial technologies in government. You can also read about the Army's Buckey System, which provides high-resolution urban terrain imagery for tactical missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
 
No wonder the NGA and Google are moving fast to link up with each other :-)
 



Bookmark and Share
Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )

Friday, August 27, 2010

"Cloud Musings" Named A "Top 50 Blog"

My appreciation and thanks goes out to Jeremy Geelan for including "Cloud Musings" on his list of the Top 50 Cloud Computing Blogs. Thanks is also in order for "HighTechDad" (Michael Sheehan) for his insightful suggestion to create this new "prism through which to view cloud computing".

Congratulations to my fellow cloud enthusiasts!

Dustin Amrhein  "A View from the Clouds"

Randy Bias  "Cloudscaling"

Rene Buest  http://www.clouduser.org/

Larry Carvalho "Robust Cloud"

Sam Charrington "Cloud Pulse"

Colin Clark "Cloud Event Processing"

Peter Coffee cloudblog.salesforce.com

Reuven Cohen  "Elastic Vapor"

Adrian Cole jclouds.tumblr.com

Tim Crawford  "Cloud Computing & IT Optimization"

James Downey  "Cloud of Innovation"

William Fellows blogs.the451group.com

Stephen Foskett  "GestaltIT"

Tim Freeman http://www.timfreeman.org/

Jay Fry  "Data Center Dialog"

Bernard Golden  "The Open Source"

James Hamilton  "Perspectives"

Christofer Hoff  "Rational Survivability"

Kevin L. Jackson  "Cloud Musings"

Steve Jin  http://www.doublecloud.org/

Sam Johnston  http://www.samj.net/

Ben Kepes  "The Diversity Blog"

Markus Klems  "Cloudy Times"

Dave Linthicum  "Cloud Computing"

William Louth  williamlouth.wordpress.com

Lori MacVittie  devcentral.f5.com

Paul Miller  "Cloud of Data"

Stuart Miniman  blogstu.wordpress.com

K. Scott Morrison  scottmorrison.ulitzer.com

Greg Ness  http://www.infra20.com/

Ray Nugent  "Cloudshaping: What's shaping the Cloud"

Geva Perry  "Thinking Out Cloud"

Gregor Petri  "The Cloud Academy"

George Reese  enstratus.typepad.com/blog

Guy Rosen  www.vircado.com/blog

Ellen Rubin  "Enterprise Cloud Computing Blog"

Scott C. Sanchez  "Cloudnod"

Michael Sheehan  blog.gogrid.com

Krishnan Subramanian  "CloudAve"

John Treadway  "CloudBzz"

James Urquhart  "The Wisdom of Clouds"

William Vambenepe  "IT Management in a Changing IT World"

Werner Vogels  "All Things Distributed"

Phil Wainewright  "Software as Services"

Simon Wardley  "Bits or Pieces"

James Watters  wattersjames.posterous.com

Alan Williamson  alan.blog-city.com

Alex Williams  "ReadWrite Cloud"

John M. Willis  http://www.johnmwillis.com/

Bookmark and Share
Cloud Musings
( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Will Oracle Buy Informatica?

According to 1,250 ERP Software Advice readers that will be Oracle's next acquisition. Terradata came in a close second in this race, suggesting that Oracle will "...play it safe next time around and strengthen their already formidable data warehousing and business intelligence offerings". TIBCO roundes out the top three "fairly straightforward ideas".  For details on the other options visit ERP Software Advice.

•Teradata. This data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) play would check a lot of boxes, augmenting Oracle’s strength in databases and BI. Moreover, Teradata brings strength in key verticals. At 21x P/E, the price might work.


•Informatica. Another data warehousing play, Informatica would complement Oracle’s leadership in database and business intelligence. While the deal would be bite-sized, Oracle would have to eliminate a lot of costs to make it acretive.

•TIBCO. Like the BEA Systems deal, TIBCO would bring the benefit of adding a middleware market leader while also bolstering the Fusion story. With a P/E of 34x, this is another deal where Oracle would have to cut costs deeply.
 
 
Bookmark and Share
Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )

Saturday, August 14, 2010

What's Next For Oracle?

Watching Larry Ellison and Oracle over the years as it has morphed itself is a real study in market dynamics.  It's transformation from database company through middleware provider to now being a "cloud computing pioneer" is simply amazing. The only question now seems to be "What's next?".

The image below dipicts the company's recent mergers and acquisitions. Stephen Jannise, ERP Market Analyst at ERP Software Advice, wants to know your prediction of  Oracle's next move.  Participate in the survey and read more by going to:


As one of the leading software providers to the government marketplace, this next move could be interesting.

Bookmark and Share
Cloud Musings 
( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Enterprise Architecture Enables Innovation: Melvin Greer, Lockheed Martin

Earlier this week, my good fried and NCOIC colleage, Melvin Greer was interviewed by Rutrell Yasin of Government Computer News. In the interview, Mel focused on the importantance of entrprise architecture as an innovation enabler.

" What I want to challenge EA practitioners to think about and to move toward is an environment where we use enterprise architecture not only for compliance to our chief information officer’s needs and to use it for alignment but [also] to drive EA as an enabler for innovation."

As the director of Lockheed Martin Corporation's SOA Competency Center, Melvin is focused on ensuring that the awareness and applicability of service-oriented architecture in increased in all of the company's relevant government programs. In the article, Mel also address cloud computing and the use of trusted cloud services.

"We are focusing the enterprise architecture for advanced innovation, but we can optimize advanced capabilities across an entire set of business processes and minimize waste associated with deployment of IT resources. So this idea allows the enterprise architects to ensure that whatever services that are focused from an innovation capability — SOA, cloud, BPM, mobile or wireless, they all are sustainable and optimized as a business process.

I strongly recommend this article to you.  It will open your mind to the importance of this valuable function.

Bookmark and Share
Cloud Musings

( Thank you. If you enjoyed this article, get free updates by email or RSS - KLJ )