Online Posts
Joe Weinman has been a long time contributor to CIO, InformationWeek, Forbes, GigaOm, and Wired. Example articles below.
Forbes
4 Ways to Win at Business By Playing Games All Day Long
"Your company can achieve compelling business results just by playing games. No, not by getting to the next level of Angry Birds or Candy Crush, but by improving products, processes, innovation, and customer engagement by leveraging gamification principles..."
How Customer Intimacy is Evolving to Collective Intimacy, Thanks to Big Data
"In their best-selling book The Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema delineate three generic strategies, which they call “value disciplines.” One is “operational excellence,” a relentless focus on business processes to drive out cost and waste and improve quality and cycle times..."
Does Cloud Computing Matter?
"Cloud computing is top of mind for computer geeks, information technology (IT) providers, web and mobile start-ups, and most CIOs (chief information officers), but should other senior executives care?"
What's Next for the Cloud: The Intercloud
"Cloud computing products and services from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Rackspace as well as companies ranging from AT&T to Zuora are clearly gaining traction, growing at a 36% CAGR, according to one recent forecast..."
A McKinsey View on Whether Information Technology Matters
"Ten years ago this month, the Harvard Business Review published Nicholas Carr's "IT Doesn't Matter," which argued that Information Technology had become ubiquitous and a commodity, and was therefore nonstrategic. Since then, however, a variety of companies have created enormous wealth through IT..." READ AT FORBES
4 Ways to Exploit IT For Competitive Advantage
(CenturyLink BRANDVOICE)
"IT and networking are the behind-the-scenes, low-level plumbing that can help companies increase profitability by reducing costs, thanks to point technologies such as the cloud, big data, and the Internet of Things. No. That viewpoint is wrong on a variety of levels..."
Informationweek
Information Management: A New Hope
"Various studies suggest that 75% - 85% of the data that enterprises collect falls into a black hole, never to be seen again. This black hole sucks up not only the data, but the enormous amount of money used to capture, transport, and store the data as well..."
The New Cloud-Enabled Business Network
"The strategy, scope, and structure of a firm -- the primary concern of the CEO -- must align with its software, systems, and services -- the focus of the CIO. As businesses refine their strategies and focus on their core differentiators, organizational structures are disaggregating from vertically integrated monoliths to networked supply-chain ecosystems. Therefore, IT must expand from internal operational support to become an external strategic enabler..."
Cloud Computing Could Boost IT Demand
"The cloud of ash from Iceland that disrupted travel recently is a sign of substantial, yet largely hidden activity in the Earth's infrastructure. Similarly, the emergence of cloud computing is concealing tectonic shifts in the IT infrastructure business, rearranging relationships between enterprises, service providers, and tech vendors. As these shifts occur, which parts of the industry will be uplifted and which will be submerged?..."
Time to Do the Math on Cloud Computing
"At the upcoming Cloud Connect conference, we will evaluate a variety of scenarios that determine where and when the move to cloud computing makes financial sense.
Spiky Demand: However, cloud services may well cost more than some enterprise data centers on a unit cost basis. One might think that this would imply that you should shy away from the cloud, but that's not the case. The key reason has to do with the usage-based pricing paradigm of cloud services. The important insight here is that even if cloud services do cost more when they are used, they cost nothing when they aren't used..."
Get Ready For Internet Of Clouds
"CIOs are already addressing the opportunities and challenges of cloud computing. It is now time to consider the next phase of the cloud: the Intercloud. In the same way the Internet enabled interoperability between proprietary networks, the Intercloud will enable proprietary clouds to interoperate, and it will encourage third-party services such as cloud marketplaces..."
Netflix's Cloud Contest: More Companies Should Follow Suit
"As is intended by such open contests, the winners weren't experts in movie recommendations, but in statistics, machine learning and computing. The GoldCorp Challenge turned around a Canadian gold mining company near bankruptcy to a recent market capitalization of more than $26 billion, and was won by a team of 3-D modelers and geoscientists with no prior familiarity with the geology of the mine..."
Cloud Economics and the Customer Experience
"We know that time is money. A large retailer found that 100 milliseconds of extra delay could have a “substantial revenue” impact, while a search provider discovered that delaying search results by 500 milliseconds (from 400 MS to 900 MS) reduced page views and therefore revenue by 20%.
Often in this world, you get what you pay for, but in the world of applications and the cloud, things are more complex. Sometimes you get what you pay for, sometimes incremental improvements are extremely costly, and sometimes there is such a thing as a free lunch..." READ AT INFORMATIONWEEK
McKinsey Cloud Report's Popularity Disproves Its Own Analysis
"The sudden spike of interest in McKinsey's cloud computing report, ironically, demonstrates why the consulting company got its cost analysis wrong. Since the report focused on Amazon EC2, I thought I'd use Amazon's own Alexa web monitoring service to provide data that proves why that's so. McKinsey and the Uptime Institute recently determined that cloud computing can be twice as expensive as enterprise data center computing on a unit cost basis, e.g., a Linux-server-hour..."
Informationweek
The 10 Laws of Cloudonomics
“If your enterprise has access to the same things — virtualization, automation, performance management, ITIL, skilled IT resources, etc. — as cloud service providers, would clouds provide any real and sustainable benefit? Public utility cloud services differ from traditional data center environments — and private enterprise clouds — in three fundamental ways. First, they provide true on-demand services, by multiplexing demand from numerous enterprises into a common pool of dynamically allocated resources…”
Why McKinsey's Cloud Report Missed the Mark
“Sixty years ago, the first Kinsey Report was released, challenging conventional beliefs and causing consternation in the community. Last week, a McKinsey report did more or less the same thing, showing that for most enterprise customers, moving applications to cloud infrastructure would more than double their total costs. McKinsey’s conclusion: moving to the cloud may be a mistake for most enterprises…”
Is Pay-Per-Use for Broadband Inevitable?
“Exactly 20 years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee invented the browser, HTML, and the World Wide Web, but things really took off six years later when America Online switched from pay-by-the minute dial-up to unlimited flat-rate plans, causing usage per sub to more than triple. Recently, however, wireline and wireless providers are circling back, either trialing or instituting tiered or pay-per-use pricing, and in the world of cloud computing, pay-per-use is touted as a major benefit…”
Predictions 2011: If Pay-Per-Use Comes to Broadband, Then What?
“In yesterday’s post, I outlined arguments from a much lengthier analysis (PDF) regarding recent carrier announcements concerning tiered pricing for broadband services. Not only is such pay-per-use a clear trend, but arguably the natural outcome of rational consumer decision-making, as light users actively choose not to subsidize heavy ones by paying for more capital-intensive resources than they use. However, if pricing plans are no longer “unlimited,” but increasingly granular and usage-sensitive, one can predict massive disruptions in the current ecosystem and reversal of some trends of the last few years. However, as with all such shifts, this will create new opportunities and drive new technology breakthroughs. Here are some thoughts on such a future…”
6 Half-Truths About the Cloud
“Is there any subject in IT today with more promise — or more confusion — than cloud computing? Here are six commonly held views that, while not wrong, are just not entirely accurate…”
Another Half-Dozen Half-Truths of the Cloud
“Last week, I reviewed six half-truths of the cloud. Here are six more commonly held views that, while not completely wrong, may not be entirely accurate…Clouds are less secure: Less secure than what? Given the regular news reports of enterprise data lost through laptop theft, third party misfeasance, WEP hacking, loss of backup tapes, disgruntled employees, etc., it’s not like enterprise data is currently held in impregnable Kryptonite fortresses…”
Why the “stupid network” isn’t our destiny after all
“A decade and a half ago, as Internet adoption began to accelerate, David Isenberg wrote what may well have been the manifesto for the revolution, “The Rise of the Stupid Network.” He argued that seismic shifts were shaking the very foundations of the telecommunications industry: data traffic was overtaking voice, circuit switching was succumbing to packet, price-performance was radically improving, and customers were increasingly taking control…”
The power of IT (it’s not all in energy consumption)
Over the weekend, a two-part article in the New York Times took issue with power consumption by data centers. There has been substantial reaction from the industry, including a response from GigaOM’s very own Katie Fehrenbacher. She assessed the argument and its rebuttals, pointing out that while the data center industry can perhaps do more, it has in fact been focused on energy efficiency for quite some time…”
Why data centers have a big impact on the economy
“The U.S. presidential election is now only a week away, and if there is one thing that this election is about, it’s jobs. The tech world has had its own running debate about jobs—one focused on the question of just how much large-scale data centers contribute to employment and the economy. After all, not only has the New York Times bemoaned energy use by data centers —using an analysis I’ve argued misses the bigger picture —but it’s also claimed that although data centers may cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they “don’t bring in very many jobs [since it] takes relatively few people” to run them. It is true that today’s data centers don’t require hordes of on-site staff, but that’s ultimately an incomplete way to look at their impact on employment and the broader economy…”
Get Back to the future at the TTM symposium
“I recently participated in the second annual IEEE Technology Time Machine symposium in Dresden, Germany, the chip-making center of Europe. In Hong Kong last year, the IEEE’s (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) inaugural TTM event covered chips, devices, networks and systems. This year in “Silicon Saxony,” there were discussions on everything from emerging nanotechnologies to application-layer services…”
2020 via time machine: chips, devices, & tech
“I had the privilege of keynoting the inaugural IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium last week in Hong Kong, where I listened to the world’s leading academics, engineers, executives, and government officials project what the world will look like in 2020. Their predictions were based on revolutionary technologies for processing, sensors, and displays becoming integrated into global systems that can do everything from enhance the human experience to improve environmental sustainability…”
2020 via time machine: networks and systems
“Last week’s IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium brought together leading academics, engineers, executives, and government officials from around the world, to engage in presentations and dialogue regarding the evolution of technology over the next decade. In yesterday’s post, I reviewed some of the insights regarding devices and technologies. Today, we’ll address networks and larger-scale systems such as smart grids…”
Hedging Your Options for the Cloud
Joe Weinman
“With the second decade of the millennium now just weeks away, I thought I’d offer up some possibilities for the cloud computing market as it continues to evolve. Cloud services — whether infrastructure, platform or software — share similarities with other on-demand, pay-per-use offerings such as airlines or car rentals. But what’s past in those industries may be prologue for the cloud. Here are some key aspects of those services that could become integral to the cloud in the coming decade…”
Compelling Cases for Clouds
“What are cloud services uniquely good for and why? After all, CIOs aren’t going to leverage online services offered on demand just because they’re available, but for compelling business reasons. There are helpful compilations of use cases from a technical viewpoint; here I’ve identified key cloud rationales from a strategic perspective…”
4 1/2 Ways to Deal With Data During Cloudbursts
“Cloudbursting is an approach to handling spikes in demand that overwhelm enterprise computing resources by acquiring additional resources from a cloud services provider. It’s a little like having unexpected houseguests and not enough beds for them to sleep in; some of them will have to be put up in a hotel. While such “peaking through the clouds” promises to maximize agility while minimizing cost, there’s the nagging question of what exactly to do about the data such distributed applications require or generate. There are several strategies for dealing with cloudbursts, each of which have different implications for cost, performance, and architecture. One of them may fit both your application’s unique requirements and your enterprise’s overall business model…”
Peaking Through the Clouds
“Cloud infrastructure services are particularly good at supporting variable demand and peaks with unpredictable timing or amplitude. Peaks are a challenge for CIOs, because forecasting too low may lead to poor performance or service unavailability, and guessing too high means paying for unneeded capacity. Peaking through clouds, instead of handling peaks with your own resources, can minimize cost while enhancing flexibility…”
How Clouds Can Complement Consolidation
“As businesses struggle to remain viable, much less grow, cost management is an imperative. Massive data center consolidation, automation and virtualization can drastically reduce costs — reportedly up to a billion dollars annually, in at least one case. However, money isn’t everything: CIOs need to balance what I’ll call the six FACETS of IT: Flexibility, Availability, Cost, Experience, Timeliness and Security…”
Is the Cloud Right for You? Ask Yourself These 5 Questions
“Is cloud computing right for you? For the fledgling startup, the appeal of the cloud is obvious. Given how easily an entrepreneur’s vision can be stymied by a lack of technical and operations expertise, leveraging an Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine could provide the only viable option…”
Is the Internet going down the Tubes?
“I had the good fortune to meet up with Andrew Blum at Structure 2012, who was in San Francisco on a tour for his recently published book, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. In this brief video, he addresses some of the things he discovered in his global tour of interconnection hubs, landing sites, and other physical components that are part of the vast, yet largely unseen infrastructure that are enabling you to read these words right now…”
Wired
Will Multiple Clouds Evolve Into the Intercloud?
"A group of interrelated technologies is redefining how we live and work: cloud computing, big data, mobility, and the Internet of Things. The cloud is at the epicenter of all this activity: big data migrates to the cloud to be sliced and diced; today’s tablets, smartphones, and phablets rely on the cloud for services and entertainment ranging from social networking and microblogs to streaming video; and the hyperconnected world of smart grids, biosensors and connected vehicles will rely on the cloud to collect data and then turn down thermostats, alert physicians, or avoid collisions.."
New Paragraph