News, analysis and context on enterprise technology for the CTO
Recently, Dillon Behr (@dbehr24) wrote a great piece about how the consumer technology ecosystem has almost completely fractured - breaking into walled gardens. Those of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and the rest are all creating ecosystems with low barriers to entry, but even higher barriers to exit. This post is the first in a series where we will examine each ecosystem in depth. What does Google Have? Google is one of the largest email … [Read more...]
So Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and the Galaxy Nexus have finally arrived. It has taken a while (and taken me some major wrangling w/ VZW to get one) but I have it in my hands, and I couldn't be happier about it. I don't wish to review Android 4.0, but rather talk about the Galaxy Nexus itself. It is an excellent looking device, reminiscent of the iPhone 3G in it's form, but without the "home" button. There are no buttons on the screen, but rather … [Read more...]
Here at CTOVision, we often write quite a bit about the problems of the insider threat, social engineering, and other threats to the enterprise. Amidst the seemingly endless array of security problems a given CTO faces (from overly generous Nigerians to Visitors from the Land of the Panda *cough cough* APTs), it's easy to forget that the bad guys have security issues too. Control of information is a key element in the Mexican cartel war. Slip up, and … [Read more...]
Editor's Note: We were treated to demos of Cloudera Enterprise 3.7 at Hadoop World, and it really blew us away with its functionality for total lifecycle management of Hadoop Clusters. That lifecycle management includes planning, creation of clusters, management of their health, control of access, logging/auditing and many other tools, all put together in a fantastic interface. The Cloudera announcement below provides more details. Managing … [Read more...]
During the recent GEOINT conference I spoke with SGI and Cloudera about the meaning of their recent announcement. They just announced a strategic agreement where SGI will ship Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH) and Cloudera Enterprise Management Suite factory installed on SGI Hadoop Clusters. Although this is good news for both companies there is better news for users of Apache Hadoop. Benchmarking of this Cloudera CDH/SGI platform … [Read more...]
Apple just released the details on the iPhone 4S, for those expecting the 5, they were extremely underwhelmed, and Apple's stock has taken a bit of a tumble. The updates were all internal and all on the back-end. This has made quite a few people upset (mostly because they were hoping for the iPhone 5) but the device is in fact a good deal more powerful. If you've read this blog often, you know I'm not a big Apple fan. While they do make solid … [Read more...]
Dear Readers, With this post I would like to alert you to a new resource that we hope will become part of your self training and education activities, a YouTube Channel for CTOlabs.com. Our channel is a place where we can pull together videos we upload or videos we have found uploaded from others that we either add to collections or "favorite" to bring to your attention. You can view these videos like any other YouTube content, and can also make … [Read more...]
Humans organize to get big things done. And for years leaders and thinkers have tried to optimize organizations. You have no doubt studied this yourself. Do you remember reading books like "The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong" or perhaps the true genius of Scott Adams in works like "This Is the Part Where You Pretend to Add Value." Those are great timeless works because they are working off enduring human scripts. You can find other insights … [Read more...]
Looxcie is a great device that lets you film exactly what you see. I've been testing one out for the last several weeks and have enjoyed learning about it and thinking about its potential uses in the enterprise. It has a lightweight, over the ear form factor that frees your hands and eyes up while capturing video and audio. Looxcie (pronounced Look-See) is fun to use and when combined with its very low cost and well engineered capabilities will likely … [Read more...]