CTOvision.com » Facebook http://ctovision.com News, analysis and context on enterprise technology for the CTO Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:03:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Dear Google, I am not buying Plus http://ctovision.com/2012/01/dear-google-i-am-not-buying-plus/ http://ctovision.com/2012/01/dear-google-i-am-not-buying-plus/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:48:05 +0000 RyanKamauff http://ctovision.com/?p=15650

Google+ might be a decent alternative to Twitter, but it does not play well with others

Okay Google, we get it. You make some really great products. But what’s the deal with Google+? The service is seems to aspire to be mix between Facebook and Twitter, yet is lacking the critical differentiators that both of Facebook and Twitter offer.

Facebook and Twitter have become huge for a few reasons. The first, is a low low barrier to entry. The second, is the ease of integration for Facebook/Twitter with each other – and the number of ways to access. Android and iPhone both offer deep Facebook and Twitter integration. I doubt iOS will ever integrate Google+ too deeply – simply because of the competition. All said, the real question is what is Google’s intent with Google+?

It seems that Google has done this before (with Wave and Buzz just to name a couple). They release a capability to market – that is not necessarily ready to go (nor fully thought out). Google+ is trying to take the spot of both Facebook and Twitter – and to be your go to for your entire social media consumption.

While I’m always open to a new service (especially one from Google which COULD better integrate into my workflow), Google+ is not that service and here is why:

  • Google+ has terrible integration with other services
    • It will easily let you add Facebook or Twitter (and publish there), but will not (easily) allow you to publish from Facebook/Twitter to Google+
  • The Google+ app is just not very good
  • Circles? A good idea at first, but how many circles do I need – how long will this take?
  • Google+ integration into Google search results (very unlikely I care about Google+ results in any searches, as in, likelihood = zero)
  • Nobody I really care about uses Google+ (and not other media sources (If you’re going to get me to migrate to a new service, you better have some high-speed differentiation)
  • I haven’t yet figured out the Google+ notification system (I can’t seem to get them out of my inbox, let alone my GMail screen. THIS IS ANNOYING.)
So yes, I will be disseminating this using Google+, but I won’t ingest anything there (or pay much attention there) until I can access it from many different platforms – with easily integrated access into my favorite social media capabilities.
Also, Twitter user/developer @Khanov has this relatively simple tutorial for posting from Twitter to Google+ here.
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]]> http://ctovision.com/2012/01/dear-google-i-am-not-buying-plus/feed/ 0 From Networks to Swarms http://ctovision.com/2012/01/networks-and-swarms/ http://ctovision.com/2012/01/networks-and-swarms/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:30:49 +0000 AdamElkus http://ctovision.com/?p=15509

CTOs , CIOs, and technology reporters are very familiar with the idea of the network. Think of networks and tech and the terms network-centric warfare, netwar, social networks, the wealth of networks, and a host of other terms and ideas immediately roll off the tongue. The network is the defining metaphor of the information age. But while the network is important, so is the swarm. Swarming in warfare has been fairly well analyzed by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla. However, the kind of swarming I’m going to talk about is a different sort, not performed by human agents but by automated and autonomous agents.

In the context of automated and autonomous weapons, swarming is an emerging operational pattern. Dispersed large and small unmanned aerial vehicles of the future, networked together, may swarm together–each node playing a small role in a larger reconaissance and attack pattern. Other potential swarms include clouds of autonomous small munitions, shortening the sensor/shooter gap by eliminating the difference between the two. Botnets and worms also swarm too. Botnets provide sheer mass for brute force attacks, whereas worms autonomously propagate themselves and evolve in response to security measures.  While swarming by munitions and drones is still in the concept stage, botnets and worms are already doing so.

Perhaps the primary difference between the kind of swarms described by Ronfeldt and Arquilla and non-human agents is that human swarming has always been a metaphor rather than a direct replication of swarming in nature. Swarming on the battlefield is a nonlinear attack dynamic, which while reminiscent of a insect swarm is not identical to it. Animal swarms are built on spontaneous collaboration and distributed intelligence of a kind that is simply difficult to replicate in a human setting. Until now. While Mongol battleswarms and the tactical dynamics of WTO protestors have come close to the pattern, viruses and collaborative sensors and weapons are going to produce activity that is actually replicative of animal patterns.

We’re already well familiar with the dynamics of swarming in cybersecurity–both the human variety (self-governing networks like Anonymous) and the autonomous weapon (viruses) . In the decades ahead, we may see swarms very much like the worms we combat take the field in the world’s conflict zones.

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]]> http://ctovision.com/2012/01/networks-and-swarms/feed/ 0 Adam’s 2012 Tech Predictions http://ctovision.com/2011/12/adams-2012-tech-predictions/ http://ctovision.com/2011/12/adams-2012-tech-predictions/#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:00:55 +0000 AdamElkus http://ctovision.com/?p=15225

Editor’s note: We have asked each of our researchers to pull together considerations meant to help in your planning for 2012. We solicit your feedback on all these predictive posts. bg 
 

Prediction is a messy game. Especially in a field that is often characterized by a state of punctuated equilibrium—long periods of stasis and then rapid disruptions. However, I will toss my hat into the ring. 

The geopolitics of cybersecurity will take center stage. Certain visitors from the Land of the Pandas have been stealing a lot of our things. We’ve known they are stealing our things for a while. So what’s going to change? The increasingly aggressive nature of cyber-reconaissance and cyber-theft by geopolitical competitors is coming at a time of growing tension in the non-tech world. DOD’s concern over cyberwarfare is propelled by its larger anxiety over the anti-acccess/maritime denial challenge and a shift in the dynamics of the power game in the Pacific. Expect cyber to become more of a diplomatic and strategic issue, seen largely through the lens of Pacific geopolitics.

Mark Zuckerbeg will continue to build a user-populated total information awareness engine, and users will complain vigorously–but let him do it anyway. With every Facebook upgrade, the company moves closer towards the Platonic ideal of a complete database of one’s personal life. But no reasonable alternative exists–and users will complain without actually taking any steps to seriously deter the company from continuing to erode privacy. Expect more invasive platform changes.

A high-profile mobile device security breach will occur. Given the panoply of security problems with the introduction of networked mobile devices into the workplace, an truly embarrassing security breach may be one of the unavoidable growing pains. Within the federal or defense industry world such a breach may temporarily retard the growth of the mobile federal ecosystem.

Single-author blogs will continue their slide into the abyss. Unless you are a recognized figure in a certain community of practice or have a corporate sponsor (such as a magazine or think-tank), you are unlikely to generate much value out of your blog. Multiple-author blogs generate high page views and provide an interplay that keeps unique visitors coming back for more. The professionalization of blogging and the rise of sponsored content further hurts single-author blogs. Of course, there is a “long tail” effect that some can exploit.

Swarms will continue to grow as important as networks. The dominant metaphor for the information age is the network. But swarming will increasingly be enabled by technologies that allow one human to control masses of autonomous machines. As John  notes, this is true of both drones and botnets.

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]]> http://ctovision.com/2011/12/adams-2012-tech-predictions/feed/ 2 Tech of #OccupyWallStreet http://ctovision.com/2011/12/tech-of-occupywallstreet/ http://ctovision.com/2011/12/tech-of-occupywallstreet/#comments Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:00:40 +0000 AdamElkus http://ctovision.com/?p=14841

A social movement with a hashtag in its name is obviously heavily reliant on technology. Here are a few technologies and approaches that Occupy Wall Street used to expand rapidly.

  • Mesh networks: localized Internets, set up for rapid and secure internal communication.
  • The People’s Skype, a distributed voice and voting system that enables the peculiar General Assembly voting system to function by linking different voice accounts to a general PA system.
  • The Occupy Network, a Facebook app that allows a user to see every Occupy Wall Street and affiliate-related page, which users are involved, and live feeds from affiliated users.
  • Apps that send text messages out to preset lists of friends as the user is about to be arrested, which might explain the movement’s very rapid communication tactical loops.
  • “Go” and “Vibe” iPhone apps, which allow allow anonymous users to stream and post media in real time and locate tagged posts on a GPS map.

Understanding OWS’ usage of tech, however, goes beyond specific technologies. Alexis Madrigal and Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic also wrote very interesting and perceptive posts about Occupy Wall Street’s broader tech philosophy. Friedersdorf had a short post about how the movement’s decentralization enabled rapid response–a suggestion he made about specific demands for the protestors ended up being reproduced word-for-word on a protester’s sign. Madrigal wrote about how the movement‘s specific philosophy and operating methods mirrored Twitter’s use of APIs to let app developers create software.

To some extent, the tactical and operational dynamics of OWS can also be explained by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt’s literature. Their path-breaking 1994 study of the Zapatista movement in Mexico is recommended for any student of information technology and social movements. John Robb and Shlok Vaidya were also ahead in looking at tactical and operational dynamics of OWS and tech.

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]]> http://ctovision.com/2011/12/tech-of-occupywallstreet/feed/ 1 Are You New To WayIn? Here Are Some Accounts To Follow http://ctovision.com/2011/12/are-you-new-to-wayin-here-are-some-accounts-to-follow/ http://ctovision.com/2011/12/are-you-new-to-wayin-here-are-some-accounts-to-follow/#comments Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:21:52 +0000 BobGourley http://ctovision.com/?p=15137

WayIn.com is a new mobile engagement service developed by Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems. Utilizing the free Wayin app on their mobile devices, users post images and questions that will spark humorous, passionate and lively debate among the global Wayin community. As soon as a Wayin user posts content, he or she will receive an instant pulse of other people’s sentiment about an entertaining topic. Wayin allows users around the world to connect with each other in real-time, giving them a gaming platform to share instant feedback on items that are most important to them and their friends. More importantly, all Wayin users know their voice will be heard.

You have several ways to start using Wayin, but the two primary ways are to either download the mobile app or login from a web browser. Either way you pick is easy and will get you up and running in now time.

I’ve been using WayIn for months now and have been enjoying watching as new features are continually rolled out and new people join and start launching games and quizzes and polls.

Over time I’ve cultivated three channels of information that I intend on maintaining and I would like to draw your attention to them. Please check them out and vote on the games I place there. I would also appreciate it if you click the follow button so we can stay in touch in WayIn.

My channels are:

  • My personal account at:  http://j.mp/bgwayin  - Follow for enjoyable (I hope) games on topics that personally interest me.
  • The technology channel at: http://j.mp/wayintech - Follow for questions/games/insights into technology. Make your voice heard on tech issues.
  • The government channel at: http://j.mp/wayin-gov - Follow for a focused stream of topics on governments, including a focus on social media for government use.
]]> http://ctovision.com/2011/12/are-you-new-to-wayin-here-are-some-accounts-to-follow/feed/ 6 The Roku Player – What’s it Good for Anyways? http://ctovision.com/2011/12/the-roku-player-whats-it-good-for-anyways/ http://ctovision.com/2011/12/the-roku-player-whats-it-good-for-anyways/#comments Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:18:09 +0000 RyanKamauff http://ctovision.com/?p=14948

The Roku brings Streaming Video Directly to your Living Room

On a whim, I recently picked up a Roku XD player from Woot.com. The Roku allows you to tap into a lot of the video going around on the “interwebs” and watch it on your HDTV of choice. The Roku is one of the devices that so-called “cord-cutters” use to keep themselves entertained. After a few weeks with it (coupled with subscriptions to Amazon Prime and Netflix Instant Video) I’ve got a few thoughts on it.

Streaming Video and the Roku – Is it all it’s cracked up to be?

When playing around with my Roku player, I used Amazon VOD, Cracklin, Netflix Instant and played around with a few others. None of the interfaces were great – they didn’t really allow for good search/discovery, but I’d have to say the Netflix app offered the best UX. Cracklin’ is a video offering that tortures you with endless commercials, but rewards you with free movies and TV. However, I stuck to Amazon VOD and Netflix myself. Roku does a really good job bringing video to your HDTV (especially the HD streams). I have a large (73″) TV, but all of the HD streams looked crisp and clear. The Facebook App only allows you to look at videos and pictures – but I imagine it that will change in the future.

There are various sports, news, music (think Pandora), kids and games applications that can all be added to your Roku. Roku’s own news applications allows you to plug into live feeds and check out all sorts of episodic news shows. The Roku offers a variety of sports channels with subscription services that are great for the out of market viewer.

Pros of Roku:

  • Great Price (should be able to find one for $50ish)
  • Very configurable – choose your homescreen “channels”
  • Easy to understand
  • Great streaming for top 3 content providers (Amazon/Hulu+/Netflix)
  • Integrates well with other A/V devices
Cons of Roku:
  • Most don’t have USB
  • Does not have support for every codec
  • Difficult (but possible) network streaming
  • UX is mostly horizontal, leaves a lot of empty space
Overall Thoughts:
The Roku is a great little device for any home theater. It is easy enough for the technophobic, yet customizable (and hackable) enough for the expert. However, without one of the subscription services I wouldn’t consider using it. As more users cut cords, devices like the Roku will proliferate and become the norm. Also, I imagine more subscription channels will pop up (with far lower total cost than cable/satellite service). We are moving to a more connected society – but one that will offer users choice of what they ingest (and adjust pricing to match).
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]]> http://ctovision.com/2011/12/the-roku-player-whats-it-good-for-anyways/feed/ 2 Wayin Update: Newt, PGA, and More http://ctovision.com/2011/11/wayin-update-newt-pga-and-more/ http://ctovision.com/2011/11/wayin-update-newt-pga-and-more/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:27:22 +0000 Dillon Behr http://ctovision.com/?p=14690

Wayin has been moving forward in the last couple of months. We did an initial announcement of their offerings on CTOVision over the summer, but they have evolved quite a bit since then. Since we like to keep you updated on what is going on in the social media world, I figured now would be a good time to check back in with Wayin. I recently talked with someone from business development at Wayin, and she is excited about how far the social media site has come and where it is going.

When Wayin first came online over the summer it was nothing more than some user uploaded photos with the ability for other users to vote on the content. It was very rudimentary, and I personally wondered what its direction was. Since then, however, Wayin has added new services. One of them is Live Events, where users can upload photos and chat about live sporting events, TV shows, conferences, and political debates. In fact, one recent addition is that Wayin has joined with Newt Gingrich‘s campaign through his Facebook Page. It allows a platform for followers to give feedback to Newt about some of the issues he chooses to weigh in on. This partnership invitation has been extended to all GOP candidates, as well as President Obama, but Newt is the first to jump on board.

The partnership with Facebook is a huge development for Wayin. Working with users fan pages, it gives Wayin even greater access to people, without making them a direct competitor of Facebook. It seems that their model is different enough that it can be a great addition to Facebook, yet also stand alone easily. I think it is great to see Wayin moving toward having a greater presence in areas of interest such as politics and other issues of importance. Wayin wants to be a platform for everyone to express their interests though, so celebphotos are here to stay it seems.

Wayin also recently teamed up with the PGA Tour at the Presidents Cup in Australia. Integrated again with the Facebook Fan Page, this was a step forward for Wayin – demonstrating its international reach. Some of the pros that were playing even tweeted about Wayin during the tourney and over 200 people were involved in tournament live events on the website. Wayin also registered and average of 219 new users daily during the tournament from the Facebook fan page. Wayin’s next step is to integrate an iFrame Widget into the PGA Tour homepage.

One of the most creative users for Wayin so far has been Donald William, and artist that uses the username deedubco. Donald invites fans to hang out with him while he paints and listens to his favorite music, allowing other users to comment on his works in progress. That is something I could have never done (not that I am an artist, anyway). I prefer to keep my work close to me until the final product is ready.

Wayin is looking increase its offerings again next month. I could only tease out a few features, but it sounds promising. With its new release in mid-December, look for Wayin to change up its website and mobile application user experience. Wayin users will be able to filter some of their content, so if you want to follow Newt Gingrich, but don’t care to be bogged down by celebrity pics, you can have some more control over that. As always, CTOVision will be there to cover the launch in mid-December. We will keep you updated with Wayin’s new offerings as they strive to carve out their own space in the social media realm.

Note: Bob Gourley runs two channels on WayIn.  His personal one is at: http://j.mp/bgwayin  He also keeps a thread of technology posts at: j.mp/wayintech

 

 

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]]> http://ctovision.com/2011/11/wayin-update-newt-pga-and-more/feed/ 1 Hadoop is an Open Source Revolution: Federal Computer Week Interview http://ctovision.com/2011/11/hadoop-is-an-open-source-revolution-federal-computer-week-interview/ http://ctovision.com/2011/11/hadoop-is-an-open-source-revolution-federal-computer-week-interview/#comments Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:54:14 +0000 AlexOlesker http://ctovision.com/?p=14537

Open source software has historically had a hard time competing with its big budget proprietary rivals but, as Bob Gourley explains in an interview with Federal Computer Week, “Hadoop is totally unique in many ways.”

Hadoop, and a handful of open-source tools that complement it, has no equal when it comes to making gigantic and diverse datasets easily available for quick analysis using clusters of inexpensive computers, Gourley said. The oddly named software is already considered mission-critical at Web giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and many others for marketing chores, personalizing Web pages and detecting junk mail.

Nevertheless, agency IT officials still need to weigh their options carefully because Hadoop, like most open-source tools, can require a significantly bigger commitment of skills and involvement from its users than most commercial products demand.

Hadoop’s roots go back to 2004, when Google published a paper on a parallel processing technique it had developed to juice its Web operations, called MapReduce. Those ideas inspired Doug Cutting to create the Java-based Hadoop, which he named after his son’s toy elephant.

There is no proprietary match for Hadoop in the realm of Big Data analysis across clusters of commodity computers. Many have tried to field in-house designed or proprietary solutions for this type of work, but so far there seems to be just one closed/proprietary system for this approach, and that is the pre-Hadoop methods of Google. Microsoft recently  abandoned work on its Hadoop alternative to focus on integrating the open source software with its server and cloud platforms. Already, Hadoop is competing with and beating commercial software at solving Big Data problems and is critical to private companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo, as well as to federal agencies such as the NSA, which adopted Hadoop two years ago to store, share, and analyze massive amounts of unstructured data.

The Federal Computer Week articles also covered many other aspects of Hadoop and Big Data.

The National Security Agency started using Hadoop two years ago for a massive, nationwide system for sharing and analyzing data. The system also houses unstructured text, large files and other forms of intelligence with unprecedented scalability, reported J. Nicholas Hoover for InformationWeek.

“The object is to do things that were essentially impossible before,” said Randy Garrett, director of technology at NSA’s integrated intelligence program, at a symposium at the time.

The NSA is using Hadoop to do what it had previously thought impossible, and it is not alone within government. As the Government Big Data Solutions Award highlighted at this year’s Hadoop World, numerous innovators and agencies are leveraging the open-source software to provide taxpayers with better and more agile service. The winner of the award, the General Services Administration’s USASearch, uses Hadoop and Hive to go from utilizing only the most essential data to storing and analyzing anything that might be useful for its 550 government agency clients.

Using Hadoop with the Hive open-source data warehousing software fundamentally changed how the system designers thought about data, said Ammie Farraj-Feijoo, GSA’s program manager for USASearch.

“Freed from the constant anxiety of wondering how we were going to handle an ever-increasing amount of data, we shifted from trying to store only what we really needed to storing whatever we thought might be useful,” wrote Loren Siebert, an independent software developer and technical lead for the USASearch program, in a blog entry describing the project.

But as with all open-source software, Hadoop comes with some challenges. Assembling a Hadoop stack then installing, configuring, and using the software on your own is a hands-on, complicated process. Users must also program applications to perform analysis on their own. That’s why companies such as Cloudera offer distributions of Apache Hadoop, support, and applications to fascilitate enterprise-grade deployments.

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]]> http://ctovision.com/2011/11/hadoop-is-an-open-source-revolution-federal-computer-week-interview/feed/ 7 Nextdoor Wants to Bring Back That Sense of Community We Have Lost http://ctovision.com/2011/11/nextdoor-wants-to-bring-back-that-sense-of-community/ http://ctovision.com/2011/11/nextdoor-wants-to-bring-back-that-sense-of-community/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:37:33 +0000 Dillon Behr http://ctovision.com/?p=14554

If you are like me, social media is already a large part of your life.  I spend at least some time each day checking in with my friends, regardless of where they are in the world.  Most of them do not live near me, or at least in not in my immediate vicinity.  There is a newcomer to the social media world that wants to take a different approach to social and connect you to your neighbors, and only your neighbors.  Nextdoor.com, founded by San Fransisco based entrepreneur Nirav Tolia, is looking to bring back the sense of community that many people have not felt in their neighborhood for years.

Nextdoor allows members to start pages for their own neighborhood, and you must actually be a part of it to participate.  You must enter a verifiable address to within the neighborhood to be a part of it.  Neighbors can then exchange all kinds of ideas – advice for good, cleaners, babysitters, and dog walkers; plan community BBQs and garage sales; or coordinate trick-or-treating times for Halloween.  Nextdoor is all about connecting you with the people that are closest to you, literally.

Currently Nextdoor up and running in over 400 neighborhoods across the U.S., but it seems it is gaining traction relatively quickly.  It is not going to replace Facebook or Twitter for you, but I think for people that interested in being a part of their immediately local communities, Nextdoor will have some appeal.  I entered my address to see if there was a neighborhood started in my part of Arlington, VA. There wasn’t, but there is now!

So what are your thoughts?  Does Nextdoor seem like something you might be interested in?  Do you care to interact with and bring back a sense of community in your neighborhood?  Do you have room for another social media site in your life?  Let us know in the comments below.

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]]> http://ctovision.com/2011/11/nextdoor-wants-to-bring-back-that-sense-of-community/feed/ 0 Hadoop World Breakout Sessions 8 and 9 Nov: Recommendations for the enterprise CTO http://ctovision.com/2011/11/hadoop-world-breakout-sessions-8-and-9-nov-recommendations-for-the-enterprise-cto/ http://ctovision.com/2011/11/hadoop-world-breakout-sessions-8-and-9-nov-recommendations-for-the-enterprise-cto/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:58:03 +0000 BobGourley http://ctovision.com/?p=14314

Hadoop World 2011 is upon us. Once again the community, with the consistent/polite/leading/persistent coordination of Cloudera, has built a great agenda with the right speakers and great attendees for what is now the “must attend” Big Data event.

For those who are attending, I can’t wait to see you there. We are going to be treated to some GREAT keynotes from masters community-focused thinkers like Doug Cutting, Hugh Williams, James Markarian, Larry Feinsmith and Mike Olson.

But now we all face a real problem. We have to decide which breakout tracks to attend. This is where it gets hard.

As for me, I decided to attend the sessions that would have a direct impact on my ability to understand the mega trends in the community. I also thought hard about who the readers at CTOvision.com are, as well as the researchers are that hit the CTOlabs.com site and decided to attend the tracks that will help me generate good content for those sites.  So, below are my pick for the key tracks at Hadoop World. I’ll be at these. Then I’ll try to learn what transpired in others by watching video and downloading graphics as they are made available.

 

That said, here are my personal recommendations for breakout tracks:

Tuesday 8 Nov Hadoop World Breakouts:

10:15 - Building Realtime Big Data Services at Facebook with Hadoop and HBase.

Jonathan Gray Software Engineer Facebook. Facebook has one of the largest Apache Hadoop data warehouses in the world, primarily queried through Apache Hive for offline data processing and analytics. However, the need for realtime analytics and end-user access has led to the development of several new systems built using Apache HBase. This talk will cover specific use cases and the work done at Facebook around building large scale, low latency and high throughput realtime services with Hadoop and HBase. This includes several significant contributions to existing projects as well as the release of new open source projects.

Bob’s thoughts:

11:15 - The Hadoop Stack – Then, Now and In The Future

Charles Zedlewski Vice President, Product Cloudera.

Many people refer to Apache Hadoop as their system of choice for big data management but few actually use just Apache Hadoop. Hadoop has become a proxy for a much larger system which has HDFS storage at its core. The Apache Hadoop based “big data stack” has changed dramatically over the past 24 months and will change even more over the next 24 months. This session will explore the trends in the evolution of the Hadoop stack, change in architecture and changes in the kinds of use cases that are supported. It will also review the role of interoperability and cohesion in the Apache Hadoop stack and the role of Apache Bigtop in this regard.

Bob’s thoughts: Charles Zedlewski is one of the smartest engineers I have spoken with. And this breakout is hitting a topic very important for us all to understand. “Hadoop has become a proxy for a much larger system” is an important point. When you use that term, what do you mean? I want to hear Charles’ views on that.

1:15 - Hadoop Trends & Predictions

Vanessa Alverez Analyst, Infrastructure and Operations Forrester.

Hadoop is making its way into the enterprise, as organizations look to extract valuable information and intelligence from the mountains of data in their storage environments. The way in which this data is analyzed and stored is changing, and Hadoop has become a critical part of this transformation. In this session, Vanessa will cover the trends we are seeing in the enterprise in regards to Hadoop adoption and how it’s being used, as well as predictions on where we see Hadoop and Big Data in general, going as we enter 2012.

Bob’s thoughts: Vanessa Alverez is smart and the trends she highlights will be worth noting and learning from.

2:15 - Life in Hadoop Ops – Tales From the Trenches.

Panel with: Eric Sammer Solutions Architect and Training Instructor Cloudera,  Gregory Baker, Lead Software Engineer, AT&T Interactive, Karthik Ranganathan, Software Engineer, Facebook and Nicholas Evans, System Engineer, AOL Advertising.

This session will be a panel discussion with experienced Hadoop Operations practitioners from several different organizations. We’ll discuss the role, the challenges and how both these will change in the coming years.

Bob’s thoughts: I have found the only way you can pick a “Big Data” project team with confidence is to pick someone who has done it before. This is also the right way to learn lessons, learn from those who have really built solutions before.

3:30 - The Hadoop Award for Government Excellence.

Bob Gourley, CTO, Crucial Point LLC.

Federal, State and Local governments and the development community surrounding them are busy creating solutions leveraging the Apache Foundation Hadoop capabilities. This session will highlight the top five picked from an all star panel of judges. Who will take home the coveted Government Big Data Solutions Award for 2011? This presentation will also highlight key Big Data mission needs in the federal space and provide other insights which can fuel solutions in the sector.

Bob’s thoughts: I have to be there, of course. I would appreciate it if you are so you can let me know how it goes and so you can help build better systems for the federal space.

4:30 - I Want to Be BIG – Lessons Learned at Scale.

David “Sunny” Sundstrom, Director, Software Products, SGI.

SGI has been a leading commercial vendor of Hadoop clusters since 2008. Leveraging SGI’s experience with high performance clusters at scale, SGI has delivered individual Hadoop clusters of up to 4000 nodes. In this presentation, through the discussion of representative customer use cases, you’ll explore major design considerations for performance and power optimization, how integrated Hadoop solutions leveraging CDH, SGI Rackable clusters, and SGI Management Center best meet customer needs, and how SGI envisions the needs of enterprise customers evolving as Hadoop continues to move into mainstream adoption.

Bob’s thoughts:  SGI does build systems that scale. And with CDH they are building for speed. This will be a great session.

 

Wednesday 9 Nov Hadoop World Breakouts:

10:00 - Preview of the New Cloudera Management Suite.

Henry Robinson,  Software Engineer, Cloudera, Phil Zeyliger, Software Engineer, Cloudera, and Vinithra Varadharajan, Software Engineer, Cloudera.

This session will preview what is new in the latest release of the Cloudera Management Suite. We will cover the common problems we’ve seen in Hadoop management and will do a demonstration of several new features designed to address these problems.

Bob’s thoughts: Enterprise technologists need management capabilities. The only one that is really enterprise ready is the Cloudera Management Suite. This session will be a great way to learn more.

11:00 - Leveraging Hadoop to Transform Raw Data into Rich Features at LinkedIn.

Abhishek Gupta, Software Engineer, Recommendation Engine, LinkedIn.

This presentation focuses on the design and evolution of the LinkedIn recommendations platform. It currently computes more than 100 billion personalized recommendations every week, powering an ever growing assortment of products, including Jobs You May be Interested In, Groups You May Like, News Relevance, and Ad Targeting. We will describe how we leverage Hadoop to transform raw data to rich features using knowledge aggregated from LinkedIn’s 100 million member base, how we use Lucene to do real-time recommendations, and how we marshal Lucene on Hadoop to bridge offline analysis with user-facing services.

Bob’s thoughts: LinkedIn is one of the great use cases we should all understand better.

1:00 –  How Hadoop is Revolutionizing Business Intelligence and Advanced Data Analytics.

Dr. Amr Awadallah, Co-founder and CTO, Cloudera.

The introduction of Apache Hadoop is changing the business intelligence data stack. In this presentation, Dr. Amr Awadallah, chief technology officer at Cloudera, will discuss how the architecture is evolving and the advanced capabilities it lends to solving key business challenges. Awadallah will illustrate how enterprises can leverage Hadoop to derive complete value from both unstructured and structured data, gaining the ability ask and get answers to previously un-addressable big questions. He will also explain how Hadoop and relational databases complement each other, enabling organizations to access the latent information in all their data under a variety of operational and economic constraints.

Bob’s thoughts: Every time I have ever heard Amr talk I have learned something new and I can’t wait to hear what he has this time.

2:00 - Practical Knowledge for Your First Hadoop Project.

Boris Lublinsky, Principal Architect, NAVTEQ, Mark Slusar, Manager of Location Content, NAVTEQ and Mike Segel, NAVTEQ.

A collection of guidelines and advice to help a technologist successfully complete their first Hadoop project. This presentation is based on our experiences in initiating and executing several successful Hadoop projects. Part 1 focuses on tactics to “sell” Hadoop to stakeholders and senior management, including understanding what Hadoop is and what is its “sweet” spots, alignment of goals, picking the right project, and level setting expectations. Part 2 provides some recommendations on running a successful Hadoop development project. Topics covered include preparation & planning activities, training and preparing development teams, development & test activities, and deployment & operations activities. Also included are talking points to help with educating stakeholders.

Bob’s thoughts: This could be the most useful session of the whole event for enterprise CTOs seeking to think through all aspects of a project. Seems like you can learn lessons from others who have done great things by attending this session.

3:20 - SHERPASURFING – Open Source Cyber Security Solution.

Wayne Wheeles, Cyber Security Defensive Analytic Developer, Novii Design.

Every day billions of packets, both benign and some malicious, flow in and out of networks. Every day it is an essential task for the modern Defensive Cyber Security Organization to be able to reliably survive the sheer volume of data, bring the NETFLOW data to rest, enrich it, correlate it and perform. SHERPASURFING is an open source platform built on the proven Cloudera’s Distribution for Apache Hadoop that enables organizations to perform the Cyber Security mission and at scale at an affordable price point. This session will include an overview of the solution and components, followed by a demonstration of analytics.

Bob’s thoughts: This award winning capability is already making a dramatic positive difference. I’ve seen Wayne brief and know he is a powerful thinker. I believe this talk will help us all understand how to more widely deploy CDH in support of cyber security.

4:20 - Indexing the Earth – Large Scale Satellite Image Processing Using Hadoop.

Oliver Guinan, Vice President, Ground Systems, Skybox Imaging.

Skybox Imaging is using Hadoop as the engine of it’s satellite image processing system. Using CDH to store and process vast quantities of raw satellite image data enables Skybox to create a system that scales as they launch larger numbers of ever more complex satellites. Skybox has developed a CDH based framework that allows image processing specialists to develop complex processing algorithms using native code and then publish those algorithms into the highly scalable Hadoop Map/Reduce interface. This session will provide an overview of how we use hdfs, hbase and map/reduce to process raw camera data into high resolution satellite images.

Bob’s thoughts: My friends at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the Geospatial Intelligence Foundation will be very interested in this one. I’ll take notes and let them know how it goes.

 

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