(3 votes, average: 8.67 out of 10)
Loading ...Does Virtualization Equal ‘Bullet Proof’?
Virtualization has been available to the IT world for more than four decades, yet it has still not really taken off in the multi system environment. Many vendors are pushing this approach to deploying ‘flexible technology’, yet it still has not emerged beyond the ‘glass house’ of the data centers or server closets. IBM invented this technology 40 years ago and Microsoft is pushing this ‘old wine in new bottles’ with their ‘Dynamic IT’ moniker. The Microsoft approach is laid out in “Harnessing the Power of Virtualization for Dynamic IT”, January 21, 2008 by Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft Corporation at http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2008/01-21virtualization.mspx. Still this technology has not taken off for the enterprise. What are the reasons for this deployment stalemate? Some of the reasons and aspects of deploying these virtual technologies are:
- Complexity: This technology is too complex for IT architects, development or operations professionals to understand. They are used to developing systems that provide tangible functionality in a tangible way in environments that can be measured and managed. There are not many adequate tools to manage virtual and physical environments together.
- Security: Whenever anyone says the environments are very flexible and unconstrained, I know there is going to be a security and control problems. Today, it is so difficult to keep the ‘hatches batten down’ against security, compliance or confidentiality breaches in tightly controlled rigid environments. All the senior IT executives that I work with are under the ‘Sword of Damocles’ to keep their organizations safe and sound. Why would they want to move to this still to be proven technology that can potentially move their computing from the mainframes and servers to across their networks to all the desktops in their organization? Don’t you think there will be some ramifications if a major chunk of confidential client data gets mixed into some ones instant messaging or email stream?
- Unified Communications: A large part of this technology relies on unified communication systems. These are most often managed by telecoms without the full integration, and bandwidth and hardening required for industrial strength IT operations and consolidation of all the virtual resources across the organization. This represents a huge loss of control for IT.
While is true that there is great promise for virtualization, its’ time is still not quite here, except for data centre rationalization, storage farms and server consolidation. The dream of running all resources in a ‘big basket’ is not ready for prime time.
Again there is much promise in this technology that will make IT more cost efficient, responsive and flexible… More work is required to assure the IT buyer that this technology is very robust and secure. The underlying complexity and security management issues require better unified management, security and control technologies systems to make virtualization ‘bullet proof’. Enterprise customers really need something that can be taken for granted to make it feasible to run across their large operations.
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(2 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Analyzing when copyright levies are a good idea, and when they are a very bad idea.
Many people in the IT sector have a strong opinion about the levy on blank media such as CDs that go to the various parts of the music industry. With a number of proposals to remove existing levies, or add new ones, it is helpful to have a bit of background on what these levies are about and a possible test for deciding when they are appropriate or inappropriate.
While these levies are sometimes called a “tax”, this is an incorrect term. The more correct term is to call them a compulsory or statutory license. This is an exception to Copyright where an activity that normally requires permission instead only requires payment at a rate negotiated with a Copyright Collective Society. If negotiations fail, then a rate can be set by the Copyright Board of Canada.
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(3 votes, average: 6.67 out of 10) Loading ...Copyright lobby to IT sector: It’s all your fault! In some cases it is.
While copyright holders already have the legal tools to sue people in Canada infringing copyright, statements made by a relatively large number of organizations from the Copyright lobby have named their real target: the IT sector. They are lobbying to make changes to Canadian law to make the providers of IT products and services more liable for the activities of their customers.
The statements came from two sets of copyright lobbiest earlier this week. An umbrella group calling itself the Creators’ Copyright Coalition (CCC) has released a copyright platform. This group is made up of unions and associations representing individual creators, as well as collective societies that represent specific business models used by some of the same creators, for a total of 16 partly overlapping groups. The CCC platform discusses many issues, most which I will leave for future articles. As an independent creator I am opposed to most of the platform, which I believe is harmful to the interests of Canadian creators.
Also on Monday another partly overlapping set of copyright holder associations were meeting with the Ottawa Citizen Editorial Board (audio of meeting online). This group included Graham Henderson of the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), Stephen Ellis of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA), Alan Willaert of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), Brad Kennan of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) and Duncan McKie of the Canadian Independent Record Production Association (CIRPA). (Note: AFM and ACTRA are also members of CCC)
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(2 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Some sober second thoughts on 2008 IT predictions
The New Year always starts with a bang of predictions on what’s hot and what’s not. Most of these predictions are just more hype to get you going with some new technologies or get some more zip into your conversations.
The best list of predictions I have seen for 2008 is the in the McKinsey Quarterly, January 9, 2007 entitled ‘Eight business technology trends to watch”. To quote this paper, ”Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business. … The McKinsey trends fall within three broad areas of business activity: managing relationships, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways.”
The piece is well written. It describes trends for technology as business or organizational outcomes and objectives and not just technical jargon. You can confidently send this along to your business and IT counterparts whose eyes tend to glaze over from management buzz words or techno-speak.
Highlighted is the ubiquitous move to collaboration, social networking and the new web (Web2.0) is given prominence as a collaborative tool for organizations and individuals:
“Web 2.0 technologies—it has become a more widespread platform for interaction, communication, and activism. Consumers increasingly want to engage online with one another and with organizations of all kinds. Companies can tap this new mood of customer engagement for their economic benefit.”
That is fair enough. Fact is, for many large organizations and financial institutions with very serious security requirements web 2.0ish implementations have to be handled carefully. But there are “sandbox” solutions out there that work admirably.
I suggest getting IT planning, security and communication groups work together to explore the opportunities and evolve new processes that can succeed for companies where reputation and security are core raison d’être.
Effective Web2.0 is not the only issue for beleaguered IT leaders. There is much pressure to get into virtualization, green computing, open source, and a plethora of new approaches. Here are some things I know from my advisory work and experience which must be included on your list for 2008:
• Relentless pressure on cutting costs and contributing to the bottom line
• Improved security that runs throughout the organization’s interactions, people and its systems, not just around them
• Protecting your information assets right down to the attribute level
• Using software as a service effectively and getting it properly deployed
• Further integration of your systems to allow for slicing and dicing your data into business information that can be used to better manage or build new businesses
• Unplugging the mainframe and less efficient technologies which can no longer be efficiently or properly supported
• Getting on track with ‘green computing’ so you continue to minimize your environmental footprint and eventually go at least ‘carbon neutral’
• Start making ‘the cloud’ work, network computing and sharing of resources through virtualization and other techniques really is giving us a headache.
These are some opening thoughts for discussion in 2008 and beyond… I ask for your contributions, comments and insights as part of this blog.
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(Rate This Article) Loading ...Copyright protesters got Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s attention: now what?
The week of December 10, just prior to parliament going on winter recess, a bill entitled “An Act to amend the Copyright Act” was added to the notice paper. Earlier in December, Michael Geist had created a Facebook group called “Fair Copyright for Canada” and a few Calgary-area participants organized to show up to Jim Prentice’s Christmas party on December 8. Many others called the Minister’s office, and still more contacted their own MP about this bill.
A bill was not tabled in December, and many suggest the delay was because of this unexpected public interest in this policy.
It is expected that the same bill will be tabled soon after parliament returns next week on Monday, January 28. Given this topic is going to heat up very quickly, I wanted to offer a bit of background so that those in the IT Industry will have an idea of what is at stake for them.
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(2 votes, average: 8.5 out of 10) Loading ...Thoughts on Bill Gates eventual “retirement”
We have been hearing for two years about the eventual “retirement” of Bill Gates in July 2008. At this years CES keynote, supposedly his last, someone created an amusing video about his last day, and there were the inevitable spoofs.
The only reporting that got me thinking was one article by the cranky geek himself, John C. Dvorak, talking about “The Bill Gates Exit Strategy BS”.
The summary is simple: Mr. Dvorak doesn’t buy it that Gates is going to leave Microsoft and spend his full energies at the foundation. He talks about Gates’s obsessive competitiveness, and the suggestion that the foundation runs itself and doesn’t need his input.
I am someone who works part time at my self-employed paying job, and part-time as a volunteer technology law activist. As someone with a foot in both sectors, I disagree with Mr. Dvorak. Read the rest of this entry »
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(3 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Even in the “DRM” debate, Content is not King.
I am likely one of the strongest opponents to what is commonly called “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) that you will come across. Given this, you might assume that I would be cheering now that all 4 of the major music labels - EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) - are selling their music online free of “DRM”.
DRM being applied to content such as music has not been the source of the problem, so this change isn’t a sign of the problems caused by DRM are going away.
The acronym DRM is being used for many things, some of which are controversial, and some of which are not. The form of DRM I am opposed to come down to technical protection measures (TPMs, sometimes called digital locks) being applied to two things: content and devices.
When I am explaining DRM to politicians, I feel like Ralph Nader back in 1965. He explained that with an automobile accident there are two collisions: the car hits something, and the passenger hits the car. While automobile safety up to that point concentrated only on the first collision, it was quickly understood that safety features should concentrate on the second collision. This gave us dashboards that weren’t made out of metal, seatbelts, air bags, and other such second-collision safety features. We have the same problem with DRM where policy makers think there is only one “digital lock” being discussed, when in fact there are two and it is the lock of which they are less aware that is the source of most of the controversy. Read the rest of this entry »
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(5 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...We’re not thieves. We just can’t read contracts (McAfee and Open Source)
I have borrowed a headline from an earlier posting by Shane Schick to discuss something I saw this week. McAfee filed a report last month with the Securities and Exchange Commission that made a few statements about risks associated with their use of some Open Source software. These statements received quite a bit of media attention.
According to Information Week, McAfee’s statements included:
“To the extent that we use ‘open source’ software, we face risks,”
“Use of GPL software could subject certain portions of our proprietary software to the GPL requirements, which may have adverse effects on our sales of the products incorporating any such software,”
Discussing this SEC filing, reporters continued to talk about software being “infected” by the GPL, as if this was some sort of disease one can accidentally contract. While much of the media attention blew the issue out of proportion by suggesting that McAfee was already aware of license violations, the all too common underlying misunderstanding stands. Read the rest of this entry »
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(3 votes, average: 7 out of 10) Loading ...When a hardware and software hacker meets lawyers and policy wonks.
Before I start to write for this BLOG I want to offer a bit of an introduction, so that the perspective that my articles will take will make sense.
I started out in this business the regular way. I was introduced to computers at school in the early 1980’s, and then buying, studying, designing, modifying, assembling and breaking some of my own computers soon after. While I wrote software in the 80’s, it wasn’t until the early 1990’s that I discovered the software movement that fought to protect a computer owners right to “run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve” software as well. I have been an active part of the Free Software movement since then,. I occasionally use the Open Source term coined in 1998 although I believe that Free/Libre Software is the most accurate name for what I’m interested in.
In the summer of 2001 I was sent an email informing me that Canada was contemplating passing a Canadian version of the USA’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), easily the most hated law in the Internet and Free/Libre Software communities I was part of.
While I still make my money writing software and as a system administrator for Internet servers, what will flavour what I write will be how I look at technology through a social sciences lens. I spend almost as much time these days in conversations with lawyers and bureaucrats as I do technology people. Read the rest of this entry »
