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Big Data Is About New Designs and New Ways Of Doing Things

Big Data Can Be A Useful Term If It Motivates Continued Change

big-data In today's world where data is everywhere the term "Big Data" may be losing some of its usefulness. The term came into widespread use in 2007 (see a short history of Big Data here), and was very important in helping people to realize that new approaches were needed to data challenges. Now that large data systems are common and AI/ML is being used to leverage these big data sets, the use of the term is dropping off. We still use it, since when used correctly it can help motivate change. In most every case where Big Data is being usefully applied today, it is associated with analytics. This is frequently the "so what" of Big Data. It is also closely related to the construct of Artificial Intelligence, since for AI concepts like Machine Learning and Deep Learning to work, large quantities of data and well thought out data architectures are required.
And clearly continued change is still needed. There are no simple answers to overwhelming data challenges, but one thing is clear. The answer to our challenges is not “less data.” The reasons we have so much data is the continued drive to improve business outcomes in industry, the need to pursue scientific discovery in academia, and the need to improve government support to citizens and the mission of government. We need new concepts and technologies to deal with these massive amounts of new data. We need new ways of doing more analysis and gaining more understanding, and of course we need smart data solutions.

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When it it time to research the great providers of Big Data Analytics Solutions, kick off  your search in the CTOvision Disruptive Technology Finder. Pay particular attention to our Big Data Companies section. For help putting all this information into context for your business, consider tapping into Crucial Point's CTO-as-a-Service or Technology Due Diligence offerings, both are ways to quickly leverage the technical talents of experienced enterprise technology professionals.

Lessons Learned: Are you one of the Fortune 500’s Unfortunate 221?

The Recorded Future Special Intelligence Desk has just released a new Threat Intelligence Report we found to be full of important context and actionable information for enterprise cyber defenders.

The report, titled The Fortune 500’s Unfortunate 221, is available for download here.

This report is important for two key reasons:

  1. It shows a clear example of the strategic benefit of cyber intelligence to enterprise cyber defense. This is information from outside the enterprise that should drive some key internal decisions and actions.
  2. The report contributes to the strategic situational awareness of a growing problem, the exposure of account credentials in ways enabling adversaries to gain unauthorized access to enterprise resources.

More on the report:

The frequency of corporate data breaches is increasing, with many of the attacks beginning when employees inadvertently disclose sensitive information. This method is commonly referred to as spear phishing. A good way for an adversary to start a spear phishing campaign is to know something about the person they are emailing. A better way is to log into your enterprise and send an email as someone who is known by the target. Stolen credentials allow this to happen.

According to information gathered from open Internet sources (especially pastebin-type sites), 44% of Fortune 500 companies have employees with leaked credentials on the open web.
fortune500

The report provide insights into:

  • How Recorded Future identified these exposed credentials on the open web.
  • Which industries in the Fortune 500 are most impacted.
  • Recommendations to improve your organization’s security.

One thing strategic situational awareness like this can do is motivate change. For this reason we recommend you read it and share with others.

Download the report here.

MYCIN, Watson, and AI History

robot-brainOver at Wired, a headline blares “Artificial Intelligence Is Now Telling Doctors How To Treat You.” Sounds unique, novel, and even scary. Those AIs are replacing humans, to the point where even the detailed knowledge of the physician is superseded by a Dr. HAL! The article talks about Modernizing Medicine database and IBM’s Watson supercomputer. One big problem with that headline (and the general thrust of the story): AI have been telling doctors how to treat you for quite some time. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, Edward Shortliffe created the expert system MYCIN. Curious? You can actually play around with MYCIN. A simplified version of it is freely available online, courtesy of a leading Google employee.

Here’s some source for a MYCIN-like expert system, straight from an early 1990s book penned by current Google director of research Peter Norvig. MYCIN uses expert rules to make medical inferences, and is one of the most famous artificial intelligence programs in the history of the discipline. It was derived from an earlier system, DENDRAL, specialized for chemical research.  I excerpt the first few functions:

;;;; File mycin.lisp: Chapter 16's implementation of MYCIN.
;;;; A sample rulebase is provided in "mycin-rules.lisp".

(defconstant true   +1.0)
(defconstant false  -1.0)
(defconstant unknown 0.0)

(defun cf-or (a b)
  "Combine the certainty factors for the formula (A or B).
  This is used when two rules support the same conclusion."
  (cond ((and (> a 0) (> b 0))
         (+ a b (* -1 a b)))
        ((and (< a 0) (< b 0))
         (+ a b (* a b)))
        (t (/ (+ a b)
              (- 1 (min (abs a) (abs b)))))))

(defun cf-and (a b)
  "Combine the certainty factors for the formula (A and B)."
  (min a b))(defconstant cf-cut-off 0.2
  "Below this certainty we cut off search.")

Yes, you read that correctly. It’s ANSI Common Lisp. You can read the 1975 dissertation that produced MYCIN as well, as long as you’ve got the ‘fro, lava lamp, and bell-bottoms handy to fully take in the nostalgia. I’ll throw in some vintage Parliament too. Right around the time that Shortliffe published his dissertation book, Parliament dropped Mothership Connection, the best funk record of all time.  Coincidence? Correlation isn’t causation. That said, while information may or may not want to be free, information certainly makes its funk the P-Funk and wants to get funked up. It also probably wants its funk uncut too, I might add.

Now, it might seem ridiculous to compare an old expert system based on a database of expert rules to a modern cognitive computer like IBM’s Watson and the Modernizing Medicine database app that the article covers. Indeed, there’s a world of difference between having to elicit rules from experts and what modern AI does, as hinted at in the article:

Artificial intelligence–essentially the complex algorithms that analyze this data–can be a tool to take full advantage of electronic medical records, transforming them from mere e-filing cabinets into full-fledged doctors’ aides that can deliver clinically relevant, high-quality data in real time. “Electronic health records [are] like large quarries where there’s lots of gold, and we’re just beginning to mine them,” said Dr. Eric Horvitz, who is the managing director of Microsoft Research and specializes in applying artificial intelligence in health care settings.

However, rule-based systems never really went away, as their inclusion in modern engineering and automation textbooks suggests. Another shocker: research in similar systems for medical diagnosis and analysis is still ongoing — and in gasp Prolog too.  Moreover, computational data mining and knowledge discovery in science and medicine isn’t exactly new either. Nor is incorporating learning.   My point is not to suggest that there is nothing new under the sun. Technology is not just about revolutionary new innovations — it sometimes is also about novel combinations of older paradigms together. Things like better algorithms, methodologies, AI applications and systems, and more efficient and easier to use systems also matter too even if they aren’t completely original. Given that quantum computing is not mainstream yet (and is still the subject of fierce debate), I also type this on a classical computer. It’s certainly not entirely novel, but it’s much more powerful (and very different) than the one I first used as a very young child!

Watson in particular is based on a combination of artificial intelligence technologies that dwarfs the old expert system paradigm in power and flexibility. Watson also promises, in theory, systems that are much easier for humans to interact with than ever before. Modernizing Medicine’s user interface and accessibility is also worthy of note. By incorporating learning it also promises greater customizability. But all of this also represents a new response to a familiar problem: the need to capture human knowledge and make it accessible in the form of intelligent agents that cooperate with humans and increase productivity.

Why the headline –and lack of historical context  — raised my hackles is that the article regurgitates  a traditional set of tropes. It opens with an accounting of how computers are taking over more and more of the expert’s craft, and closes on an ominous note about computers making recommendations creeping into making decisions. To boot, the title of the article flat-out states that soon, an AI will be telling your doctor to what to do. The technology may be novel, and perhaps present novel problems. But the story does not tell us anything that someone with even a tiny grasp of AI history didn’t know. Doctors and computer scientists have recognized the needed for intelligent assistants since the dawn of AI. In fact, given the popularity and history of intelligent medical systems and algorithms, AI have told doctors what to do for a long time.

Hence in theory none of the benefits and problems that the new systems pose are novel or unanticipated. To see what new benefits and problems might present themselves, we’d have to compare the technology being profiled to that which came before. Which, again, the article makes little to no effort whatsoever to do. Ultimately, the Wired article is symptomatic of a larger problem in discussion of AI: a lack of historical context. Not only does the article fail to inform its audience about a possible connection between P-Funk and computing (OK, I’m getting carried away but its George Clinton — you have to forgive me), but it also adds to a longstanding problem: its difficult to make, well, intelligent public policy choices about intelligent systems when almost every conversation about them takes place in a historical vacuum.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so that vacuum is filled by a fair degree of fear mongering. Distinguishing between reasonable concerns and irrelevant ones is hard when every story is pitched as speculative and cutting-edge — instead, maybe the journalists that penned the story could have thrown in a couple sentences about what older systems tell us about the prospects for Watson and Modernizing Medicine. Instead, it chooses to present it as “wow, machines are telling doctors what to do! How revolutionary! How potentially troublesome!” History certainly is not destiny, especially when information technology is concerned. But taking the risk that history may not prepare us for disruptive innovations is better than simply ignoring history altogether.

Furthermore, continuously saturating the public with a combination of hype (“AI is the future!!”) and fear mongering (“AI is telling your doctor what to do!!!”) also has costs. Those that do not know the history of the episodic “AI Winter” bubble-bust cycle may invest in technologies that seem full of promise but in fact could very well be nearing a dead end. Saturating America with ahistoric fear mongering could result in a public and/or legislative backlash against potentially innovative and/or socially beneficial. The history of cybersecurity regulations does not inspire confidence, especially as exploit researchers today find themselves being denounced as “merchants of death.”

You don’t have to download Norvig’s MYCIN code and operate it yourself. But knowing it exists is at least better than the analytical status quo in 2014.

Dive deeper into AI with the CTO’s Guide to the Business of AI

The Technology Behind Breakthrough Alzheimer’s Disease Research: An Interview with Simon Lovestone

Simon Lovestone is a professor of translational neuroscience at Oxford University, and a key researcher that has been part of a decade long pursuit of insights into Alzheimer’s. In an 8 July Telegraph piece titled “Alzheimer’s disease could be prevented after new blood test breakthrough” Simon provides key context on research conducted at Oxford and King’s College London which shows that detectable proteins can indicate the disease is imminent. This major step forward in research holds the promise of allowing for earlier treatment of the disease and potentially even a preventive strategy.

The potential benefit of this research is staggering to comprehend. Estimates are up to 44 million people worldwide are living with Alzheimer’s. The impact on them, their families and caregivers and society as a whole are impossible to calculate but clearly far too costly for humanity to tolerate. This makes the research reported here very virtuous and welcomed by a wide swath of people.

The research team published their results in a paper titled “Plasma proteins predict conversation to dementia from prodromal disease” at Science Direct.

We had an opportunity to ask Simon a few questions about his research. Our questions and his responses are below:

Gourley:  It seems your team used a pretty straightforward technology setup for your research. You leveraged the commercially available Luminex 200 xMap Assay instrument, then the Systat software package and SPSS for analysis. The machine learning algorithms of WEKA were used as an aide in classification of data. Does this describe your core technology setup?

Lovestone: Absolutely correct. The only additional point is that previous work, over the past ten years (first publication in 2006 and very many since that document our work) that did the primary discovery suggesting which proteins were associated with either disease or with pathology used a range of technologies including 2DGE and LC-MS/MS and other mass spectrometry approaches including multiplexing with TMTs and MRM methods. We used these as proteomic discovery phases, then did some replications and then finally the ‘near-qualification’ level study we published yesterday using Luminex tech.

Gourley:  These capabilities all come from different providers. Did your team encounter any challenges in moving data from system to system during this analysis? Any lessons learned regarding system interoperability you would like to pass on?

Lovestone: Good question. In the paper we published 8 July then the answer was no. All worked smoothly and the collaboration with Proteome Sciences and Millipore Merck was extremely productive and much valued. There were no inter-operability issues at either a technical or analytical level. However, if you take the last ten years work as a whole (as in the response above) then there are frequent interesting interoperability issues. It isn’t unusual for us to find a potential analyte associated with disease at proteomic level using MS and then not to find the same thing using an antibody capture technology. There can be many reasons for this – statistical error/happnestance/overfitting of data in proteomic phase, a failure of the antibody capture tech (antibody doesn’t ‘work’, other test failure) or what we suspect most often, that the MS measures something ‘different’ to the antibody capture. So the MS measures the analyte at a compound of protein level and post-transaltional modification. The antibody capture actually measures an epitope not a protein. So they measure different things and its not surprising that moving from discovery to validation doesn’t progress smoothly in all cases. However, the failures to progress are less important than the ones that do progress if the goal is a practicable and useable test.

Gourley:  Did you encounter any significant delays in your research due to technology limitations?  (what technology do you wish worked faster?)

Lovestone: It took longer than we wished as we have a very hands-on/manual laboratory as is typical in an academic lab. Also, although multiplexed, the Luminex we used was spread over more than one plate. Running that many Luminex tests on that many individuals and taking suitable care in doing so simply takes a lot of person-hours. However, all the technology is semi-automatable and suitable for robotic liquid handling etc

Gourley: Any recommendations for the technology community on capabilities that can enhance your team’s capabilities?

Lovestone: Buy some robots!

Also – we now need some tech development and we want to put the core analytes on a single multiplexed platform – if Luminex then on a single plate. This would hugely reduce costs and time.

However – looking forward, the thing I am most excited by is the possibility of miniaturisation and automation. I think the possibility is of very high throughput diagnostics for repeated use without centralised laboratories. This is possible…..

Gourley: Thank you very much for the context Simon. And thanks to you and your entire team for the continued pursuit of this critically important research.

Lovestone: My pleasure.

 

Other Resources:

Great Reference Graphic To Keep Your Brain Engaged On All Elements Of Big Data

Sources of cyber intelligence from governments and academia

Great Reference Graphic To Keep Your Brain Engaged On All Elements Of Big Data

The reference below was provided by friends at Altamira.

If you are an analyst, enterprise architect, CIO, CTO, CISO, CFO or even a business executive seeking insights into the nature of modern data solutions you will find the poster below to be a fantastic resource.  Click to expand it to full view. Download and print and post on your wall to periodically review and to continue to ensure you are thinking of the many related elements of analytical solutions. The graphic was produced by three of the most highly regarded practitioners of real world data solutions I know, with contributions and mentorship of by one of the nation’s great enterprise architects.

doyouknowbigdata

 

Other Resources:

Great Reference Graphic To Keep Your Brain Engaged On All Elements Of Big Data

Sources of cyber intelligence from governments and academia

The Technology Behind Breakthrough Alzheimer’s Disease Research: An Interview with Simon Lovestone

What is the Cyber Conflict Studies Association?

You Should Run R On Your Computer: Not just for stats, but to know what all the excitement is about

Comprehending Machine Intelligence: Research and Graphic by Shivon Zilis

 

You Should Run R On Your Computer: Not just for stats, but to know what all the excitement is about

R-on-my-mac“R” is a freely available language for interacting with your computer that is designed for a wide variety of functions. It is most frequently associated with statistical computing and graphics. R runs on a wide variety of systems, including Mac, Windows, Linux and Unix.

Every analyst who deals with data should have a copy of R and be familiar with it. And every technologist with a desire to track the greatest technologies available should run it as well so you know what the buzz is all about.

Here are some tips to get you up and running fast:

There is a comprehensive archive of all things R related, called “CRAN” for Comprehensive R Archive Network.  Visit CRAN here: http://cran.us.r-project.org/

You will immediately see links to Linux, Mac and Windows versions of R. Download and install the one for your system.

That’s it. See how easy that was. Now you have R running on your system.  Open it, and look around. One of the greatest things about R is the help functionality. Make that the first menu item you click on.  The powerful guidance in the help section can walk you through an introduction to R and have you up and working with real world problems in no time at all.

In coming posts we will provide more tips, including how to install new “packages” to R to expand its functionality.

Related Articles:

How and Where to Find and Download R

R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics

Revolution Analytics, A Statistical Software Company, Now Part Of Microsoft

 

Strategic Big Brain Science: NIH celebrates grand opening of John Edward Porter Neuroscience Research Center

Editor’s note: This strikes me as important news that can impact every sector of the economy and every industry, as well as the future of humanity. Yep, this can be really big. Read the release below for more, including info on how to watch the scientific symposium online. – bg.

Strategic Big Brain Science: NIH celebrates grand opening of John Edward Porter Neuroscience Research Center

State of the art research facility on NIH campus will foster new collaborations among scientists studying the brain

The National Institutes of Health will host a scientific symposium and a dedication ceremony March 31- April 1, 2014, to celebrate the completion of the John Edward Porter Neuroscience Research Center. This state of the art facility brings together neuroscientists from 10 institutes and centers across the NIH in an effort to spur new advances in our understanding of the nervous system in health and disease.

The dedication will feature remarks by the honoree, former congressman John Edward Porter, for whom the center is named. Porter was a member of the House Appropriations Committee, chair of the subcommittee that funded NIH, and a staunch supporter of biomedical research and the NIH mission. He served in the House for more than 20 years, representing a district in Illinois.

Other speakers include NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill)., and Story C. Landis, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. More than 800 people are expected to attend the dedication and symposium.

The inaugural event for the building is a two-day symposium featuring five scientific sessions with presentations by leading neuroscientists from across the United States and within the NIH. Topics will include presentation on some of the hottest topics in the field today: neuronal circuits, cell biology and the genetics of brain disease.

“The symposium will highlight cutting-edge neuroscience research that is conducted here at NIH and around the country. This is a wonderful opportunity to bring together an esteemed group of scientists and hear about the latest findings in neuroscience,” said Dr. James Battey, director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD).

As one of the largest neuroscience research centers in the world, the Porter Neuroscience Research Center has 500,000 square feet of open laboratory space and offices, shared resources and facilities, and other design elements meant to foster collaborations among scientists.

“The concept for this building first arose when we saw a need for a place that could bring together scientists studying all aspects of the brain. We are delighted that the Porter Neuroscience Research Center is officially open and look forward to the many innovative discoveries that are bound to come from the programs in that building,” said Dr. Landis.

“Serendipity plays an important role in science. Many great ideas for experiments result from casual conversations between researchers. The open design of the Porter Research Center will certainly encourage those types of interactions,” said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

The Porter Neuroscience Research Center is made up of two buildings connected by a glass atrium. Construction on the first building began in 2001 and was completed in 2004. The second phase of the center, designed by Perkins+Will, was built with a number of environmentally friendly design features such as solar cells, geothermal energy system, and energy efficient lighting, which make the facility 25 percent more energy-efficient than a conventional laboratory building.

“Phase two of the project faced several unavoidable stops and starts but appears to be have been well worth the wait,” said Gerald Fischbach, M.D., who was one of those who conceptualized the idea more than 10 years ago while serving as the NINDS director.

“We hope people will come from every corner of the earth to see and work in the John Edward Porter Neuroscience Research Center, a magnificent tribute to the most important and challenging scientific endeavor we face – understanding the human brain,” said Dr. Collins.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

Other Resources

Advancing Genomics Through Big Data Studies: An Interview with Dr. Mark Guyer of NIH

Great Reference Graphic To Keep Your Brain Engaged On All Elements Of Big Data

The Late Henrietta Lacks: A legacy that has touched you and your loved ones in ways that may surprise you

Spies Want Your Money: Look at this pinhole camera used to steal credit card numbers

 

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and Cloudera CSO Mike Olson on Intel and Cloudera’s Technology Collaboration

Two of my favorite technology companies, the great American firms Intel Corporation and Cloudera, are now working very strategically together in a way that will have a positive impact on the future of enterprise IT.

For context, see the video at this link and embedded below:

In the video, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich talks about the equity investment and importance of the technology collaboration between Intel and Cloudera. The bottom line here: The leader in data center hardware and high performance computing (Intel) is now strategically teamed with the leader in the big data software platform (Cloudera) to produce a great innovation for developers, users and solution providers across every realm. This is bringing solutions to the mainstream in a way that leverages a standard platform.

What do I look for next? As a CTO I would like to see new documentation, including use cases, reference architectures and repeatable guidance that enterprises and developers can use for this new platform. Both Cloudera and Intel have many reference architectures and use cases available now, but new ones that combine the power of both these firms will be an awesome read. I really can’t wait.

Mike Olson of Cloudera provided some context on what this means strategically in a blog post at Cloudera. He summarized the essence of the news as:

  • Intel will replace its own Apache Hadoop-based software distribution with CDH. We’ll transition current customers and partners over a reasonable time period.
  • Intel and Cloudera will cooperate to enhance the open source projects that make up CDH so that they take advantage of the power and features of Intel’s chipset. Intel silicon powers 94% of the world’s servers today, so we expect to make life better for an enormous number of users.
  • We’ll work together to promote and distribute the software worldwide, directly and through the channels and partnerships we each bring to the relationship.
  • Intel Capital has acquired a stake in Cloudera, adding to the funds we announced last week. It’s the largest data center investment in Intel Capital’s history, and the investment makes Intel our largest strategic shareholder.

Mike concludes his post with some important relevance on this news, saying:

Our collaboration means that customers will be able to rationalize their IT spending. They’ll be able to do existing work better, faster and cheaper. More importantly, they’ll be able to attack new workloads, analyzing more data than ever before in ways previously impossible. They’ll get value from data they couldn’t capture before.

Mike’s full blog is here: The Next Ten Years

Also see more from the Intel press release below:

Cloudera, Intel Commit to Accelerate and Transform How Enterprises Use Big Data; Intel Makes Significant Equity Investment in Cloudera

PALO ALTO, Calif., and SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 27, 2014 – Intel Corporation and Cloudera today announced a broad strategic technology and business collaboration, as well as a significant equity investment from Intel making it Cloudera’s largest strategic shareholder and a member of its board of directors. This is Intel’s single largest data center technology investment in its history. The deal will join Cloudera’s leading enterprise analytic data management software powered byApache Hadoop™ with the leading data center architecture based on Intel® Xeon® technology. The goal is acceleration of customer adoption of big data solutions, making it easier for companies of all sizes to obtain increased business value from data by deploying open source Apache Hadoop solutions. Both the strategic collaboration and the equity investment are subject to standard closing conditions, including customary regulatory approvals.

Cloudera will develop and optimize Cloudera’s Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH) for Intel architecture as its preferred platform and support a range of next-generation technologies including Intel fabrics, flash memory and security. In turn, Intel will market and promote CDH and Cloudera Enterprise to its customers as its preferred Hadoop platform. Intel will focus its engineering and marketing resources on the joint roadmap. The optimizations from Intel’s Distribution for Apache Hadoop/Intel Data Platform (IDH/IDP) will be integrated into CDH and IDH/IDP and will be transitioned after v3.1 release at the end of March. To ensure a seamless customer transition to CDH, Intel and Cloudera will work together on a migration path from IDH/IDP. Cloudera will also ensure that all enhancements will be contributed to their respective open source projects and CDH.

The collaboration with Cloudera promises to enhance both Intel data center and Internet of Things (IoT) technology initiatives by enabling customers to manage and analyze machine-generated data from a variety of sources, spanning sensors to gateways and a range of devices.

“By aligning the Cloudera and Intel roadmaps, we are creating the platform of choice for big data analytics,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group. “We expect to accelerate industry adoption of the Hadoop data platform and enable companies to mine their data for insights that inform the business. This collaboration spans our data center technology from compute to network, security and storage, and extends to our initiatives for the Internet of Things.”

Both companies remain committed to the open source community that has been the driving force behind Hadoop. The companies will also execute joint go-to-market strategies that include coordinated product, channel and sales programs.

“Hadoop has changed the entire conversation around data,” said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer, Cloudera. “Based on our ability to store, process and analyze all kinds of data, increasingly in new ways, the potential for advances in business, social and economic environments are vast. Teaming with Intel, the industry leader in data center technology innovation, presents an opportunity for us to layer Hadoop into a platform’s core framework. The result is rapid performance improvements on workloads such as those extracting intelligent insight. Intel’s vision for delivering open, performance optimized solutions for big data is synergistic to our vision to help companies accelerate time to achieving success.”

About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com andblogs.intel.com.

Intel is a trademark of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.

  • Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

About Cloudera
Cloudera is revolutionizing enterprise data management by offering the first unified Platform for Big Data: The Enterprise Data Hub. Cloudera offers enterprises one place to store, process and analyze all their data, empowering them to extend the value of existing investments while enabling fundamental new ways to derive value from their data. Founded in 2008, Cloudera was the first and is still today the leading provider and supporter of Hadoop for the enterprise. Cloudera also offers software for business critical data challenges including storage, access, management, analysis, security and search. With over 20,000 individuals trained, Cloudera is a leading educator of data professionals, offering the industry’s broadest array of Hadoop training and certification programs. Cloudera works with over 900 hardware, software and services partners to meet customers’ big data goals. Leading organizations in every industry run Cloudera in production, including finance, telecommunications, retail, internet, utilities, oil and gas, healthcare, biopharmaceuticals, networking and media, plus top public sector organizations globally.http://www.cloudera.com/ www.cloudera.com

Connect with Cloudera
Read our blog: www.cloudera.com/blog/

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/cloudera

Visit us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/cloudera

Cloudera, Cloudera’s Platform for Big Data, CLoudera Enterprise Basic Edition, Cloudera Enterprise Flex Edition, Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub Edition and CDH are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cloudera Inc. in the United States, and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.

AFFIRM Panel: Kirit Amin’s Concepts Continue To Have Positive Influence In Government Business Models

I just read a review of a a 13 March session of the Association for Federal Information Resources Management (see AFFIRM). AFFIRM is a non-profit collective seeking to improve the management of information and related systems in the federal government. Lord knows we need AFFIRM now!

The panel of 13 March was part of their monthly speaker series and included

  • Kirit Amin, Deputy CIO and Chief Technology Officer, US Department of Commerce
  • Sonny Hashmi, Acting Chief Information Officer, General Services Administration
  • Lorraine Landfried, Deputy CIO for Product Development, Department of Veterans Affairs
  • Param Soni, Chief Architect, Environmental Protection Agency
  • Pete Tseronis, Chief Technology Officer, Department of Energy

My source on this panel is a Mark Rockwell article in Federal Computer Week (FCW) titled “Project Management, Jedi Style“.  Mark captures many great ideas from the panel and is great about crediting the many powerful thinkers in that group.  But the entire discussion especially made me think of Kirit Amin. Followers of federal thinkers have long watched as Kirit has helped us all understand the importance of staying connected with the business end of agencies, and he has long caused us to think by invoking metaphors of Yoda and the Jedi. I think of Kirit whenever I hear this construct. It really is all about the mission, and his articulation of the “GEAR Approach” for Goal, Engage, Accountability, Results is a great way to track how IT is serving business missions.

I also love the professionalism of these other great IT thought leaders. Sonny Hashimi, Lorraine Landfried, Param Soni and Pete Tseronis are champions with great reputations and I can tell from this Mark Rockwell article each are having tremendous impact on the mission end of their agencies.

Regarding AFFIRM, one of the fantastic things they have been doing is recording their sessions and posting them online so you don’t have to have them filtered by the press (or me) to capture the content yourself.  This particular session is not online yet, but as soon as it is I’ll point you to the video, I think it will be a great one.

Other Reading:

ISACA and CSADC In Deep Examination of Public Cloud Security

2014 Analyst Forum: Cyber Security Panel Recap

Addressing Cyber Instability Panel Discussion

Challenges and Opportunities in Big Data From Industry and Academia Panel

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Tom Loftus provided an insightful review of some of Super Bowl ads in the 4 Feb 2019 Wall Street Journal. Like AI parody in SNL, these ads really poked fun at computers: Seriously, did anyone catch the commercials? If the Super Bowl is the zeitgeist, then it is safe to say that America is not […]

HBO’s Westworld: The Man In Black is a special kind of Twitter user

HBO’s Westworld is a modern take on the Michael Crichton SciFi tale of a robotic amusement park. The HBO version has a new twist. The creators/writers were all exposed to years of Twitter, which has influenced every episode and the entire arch of two seasons of the show. Now that season two is wrapping up, […]