Space-Time and Digital Media

Einstein developed a model for space-time and it's truly fascinating to anyone with even a casual interest. Over the past few years the media industry has been making attempts to develop it's own space-time model for content. In this space alternatives like DVR's and OnDemand have been the staple, while other "Time Shifting" alternatives have been slow to gain market share. Many will argue, factors from the Digital Media conversion such as use rights, or bandwidth considerations have been the cause, while still others will look at cable companies and wireless providers as the cause. Regardless of where you stand, there exists a strong value in media delivered without regard to the time or schedule of a media consortium.

Take the current issues at NBC with Leno and Conan. There is a demographic that wants to watch there "Tonite Show" at a 11:35pm. Today NBC decides who you will see at that time and they sell advertising for that hour knowing what demographic will be watching. This is a model that was developed in the 50's and let's face it, a model that is seriously outdated. Much media content lives under similar antiquated models.

As our media market continues to grow, finding new models that deliver value to consumers, is an area where differentiation will lead to a market edge. Being someone who has been in the Technology Industry for the past 25 years, it seems logical that whatever solutions arise they will be technical in nature. Let us not forget though, where Apple Inc. changed the face of Music with the iPod, this wouldn't have been possible without concessions from content providers, so it won't be without cooperation.

However 2010 ends up, the current state will change, as no market can ignore new models with such potential and so many clamoring for their rebirth. Watch for them! Where today we live by a time based model there will come a day when this will be little more than an outdated method.

Cloud Impact on App Development (InfoWeek)

Cloud Ready For App Development In 2010

Posted on Tuesday Jan 5th at 1:45pm *(http://tinyurl.com/yey4ojr)*

The cloud is an emerging platform that can ease the strain on application development, analysts at Forrester Research conclude in a report published Monday, "The Top Five Changes For Application Development In 2010."

Analysts Mike Gualtieri, John Rymer and Jeffrey Hammond conclude that Amazon Web Services' (AWS) cloud, EC2, and other public clouds, such as Salesforce.com's Force.com, AT&T Synaptic Compute cloud, Rackspace Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, are offering mature operational environments that can be used to speed the development and launch of cloud applications.

"Various public cloud offerings are maturing rapidly, opening up more opportunities for developers to quickly build and delivery applications. You should start now." the authors concluded.

Salesforce.com is a leader in establishing its platform as a development environment and encouraging the creation of application to run alongside its standard customer relationship management applications. It offers a proprietary language, Apex, for the creation of business logic and the Visual Force graphical user interface building tool that invokes Adobe Flex components. Microsoft will soon offer Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4.0 to give Windows developers the option of building applications to run in Azure.

Force.com's senior director of platform product marketing, Ariel Kelman, said it takes one-fifth the time to develop an application using the database-centric Force.com platform and development tools versus standard enterprise development techniques. He says that conclusion is supported by a Salesforce.com-sponsored study by Nucleus Research.

In addition to Microsoft and Force.com, the analysts cited LongJump, Caspio, Boomi, and WorkXpress as supplying online tools for cloud application development.

"Cloud platforms offer big improvements in the cost and speed of deploying applications... Embrace cloud computing as an emerging platform," they wrote. The mature cloud platforms allow development teams to skip buying servers and storage and setting up networks to connect them. Rather, development can proceed more directly, based on use of the target cloud's APIs, which speeds the launch of the application in the cloud, they said.

By developing applications for the cloud, developers avoid the doggedly perplexing issue of being able to scale out the application at will. Applications can scale up just as fast as server instance subscriptions can be added, based on the cloud's subscription process. If the application runs on open source code, then no new license charges need to be incurred as the application is scaled out across more servers, the analysts observed.

Public clouds now offer choices for application deployment. The infrastructure as a service option, such as Amazon's EC2, offers developers maximum control over the application. Platform as a service providers, such as Force.com and Microsoft Azure, offer a more integrated development environment leading to faster deployment; and software as a service vendors, such as Oracle's E-Business suite, open source SugarCRM, or Salesforce.com's CRM application, offer ready-to-use, finished applications.

Furthermore, the analysts concluded, public cloud servers are good for running Web site applications, collaboration and social networking applications, email, information services and analysis applications dealing with large data sets. They are still less desirable for running core business production systems and transaction applications.

"The cloud is here to stay," the analysts concluded. "Start learning what cloud computing holds for your development organization. .. Formulate a strategy to put this new generation of platforms to work."

Five key elements of such a strategy are:

1. Make enterprise development more nimble and adaptable -- in other words, more like a startup. "Every line of code they write has to be linked to their ability to obtain revenue." So enterprise development teams should know at a deep level what it is the company is trying to do and how it relates to its customers.

2. Startups don't build up elaborate architectures. They use "just enough business-focused process and technical tools to get them to a solution as quickly as possible," they said. Likewise, startups need to respond quickly to changing conditions and competition. "You can't just set a course and stubbornly stick to it," they warn. In other words, find your inner startup, they advise, and put it to work.

3. Don't stick with the same development platform out of misguided loyalty. The Java and .Net languages and related technologies remain the favorites of developers, but the analysts said there has been "a significant uptick" in the use of lighter weight technologies, such as the Apache Tomcat Server, Adobe Flex, the Dojo Foundation's Ajax components, open source Drupal content management, Google Web Toolkit, and the open source Joomla portal management system.

In addition, other open source code is frequently used, including the Red Hat JBoss application server and middleware, the Ruby on Rails scripting language framework,the SpringSource Framework for producing Java applications (SpringSource is now part of VMware), and the Zend Framework for PHP development from Zend Technologies. A large retail chain recently deployed open source Geronimo, an Apache Java application server to 4,000 stores, saving itself charges for 4,000 software licenses.

4. The analysts urged developers to expand their definition of performance in 2010. Performance is affected by the overall platform quality, ease of use, ease of adoption, ease of making changes and availability of a broad community of support. Open source code alternatives are often not as rich in features as their commercial counterparts, "but they often measure up just as well in other dimensions of an expanded performance matrix," they wrote.

Furthermore, the report's authors urged developers to become "passionate" about the user experience they were delivering in their software. Best practices for user experience design need to be injected into the development process, they said.

5. Finally, the analysts urged the cultivation of developers with the right talents. Many offer fine technical skills but don't have much understanding of the business. When accelerating development in the cloud, knowledge of the business may prove as crucial as technical skill.

Cloud computing is part of the "new normal" of enterprise computing, which takes the lean and mean operation during recessionary times and continues it into the return to a healthier economy. Cloud development will help enterprises do more with less, and getting cloud skills right might make the difference between success and failure. "If your competition can build an app faster than you, then your business will be destined to be no more than a fast follower," they concluded.

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Quote of the Week

Knowing what you want turns hope into a plan.

2009-2010

Happy Holidays all, ...........now don't shoot your eye out!

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2009- 2010

Happy Holidays all, ...........now don't shoot your eye out!

Quote of the Week

"find the best in everything. Let it justify the bad and underscore the good."

ZuCom

Situational Leadership

Situational Leadership

I was reminded today of the importance of situational leadership. As a management consultant I often meet with trusted partners and clients who are experiencing some sort of organizational shift.  Whether or not it's an entity that has good development programs there is always a need to maintain situational leadership styles.

Many organizations invest in programs on this subject and almost any MBA program includes some form or review on the practice.  It's not a particularly difficult concept to understand and it's based on the work from Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidt (1958, 1973) who put forth the notion that a leadership style should be born from the circumstance and therefore leaders should have a range of styles in their arsenal.

In the technology industry many leaders rise to management on the backs of technical skills, and some ascend very quickly (Gates, Wozniak, Jobs are great examples).  A good leadership development program can teach situational leadership and experience can mature these skills such that anyone can become a "4 Tool Leader"™.  

This is all great stuff to review and somewhat fundamental so what is new here?  What I was reminded of today was the maintenance that accompanies this skill set and the responsibility we are empowered with to use it appropriately.  To effectively utilize this practice you must employ a healthy introspective review of situations, styles and results.  I will go as far as to say that getting feedback from other leaders familiar with the organization is also another diligence that should accompany your review.  Some leaders feel threatened at the thought of considering any post analysis of their leadership.  Many will realize value in it and nearly all who engage in the practice will grow from the experience.

How do you maintain and grow your situational leadership?

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HP buying 3Com

HP buying a company that helped found the NET.

"By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our converged infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry,"

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE

HP executive VP Dave Donatelli

Tim Sanders - Cloud Computing

Cloud computing will eliminate discreet servers at companies like voice mail killed the answering machine.

-Tim Sanders (former Yahoo exec)

Zero-day flaw found in web encryption

Interesting article. The implications of this are potentially earth shaking for those dependent on based TLS authentication designs.

Is TLS in your basket? What are the reasons you've not gone down that road?

ARTICLE

-ZuCom

One Reason NOT to upgrade to 64bit Mode in Snow Leopard

VIRTUAL MACHINE SUPPORT!

After posting the roundup of issues with the release along with the hint on how to force 64bit mode a number of readers and colleagues noted that VM support was absent in the musing. After some post analysis it does appear that the Virtual Machine market in the 64bit host arena is very weak when it comes to this support.

Crossover Mac (the WINE port), has a number issues while VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, and Parallels may not even launch and this is not to mention the few others that are in the consumer market. Suggestion for now. If you need to run a consumer virtual machine on your Mac, then wait to force your copy of Snow Leopard to boot into 64Bit mode. Let it run in 32bit mode and you will be fine for now. Those who use these tools in the enterprise will find that the running VMware Fusion and Parallels does have support under the Snow Leopard Server version but this would not be something a consumer wants to tote around on a MacBookPro.

Stay tuned more to come

-ZuCom

Boot Snow Leopard into 64Bit Mode

The default mode for the new Snow Leopard install is 32bit mode.

Want to change that and upgrade to 64bit.

Simply change one line in the  /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist file and your Macintosh will boot into 64bit mode.  With most recent Mac's you'll see a significant performance improvement , of course the more memory you have the better and results may vary.  You can always switch back using this method

FROM THIS

________________

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple$

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

        <key>Kernel</key>

        <string>mach_kernel</string>

        <key>Kernel Flags</key>

        <string></string>

</dict>

</plist>

________________

TO THIS

________________

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>arch=x86_64</string>

</dict>

</plist>

________________

Any text editor should work or you can simply use PICO by typing the following in terminal along with your root password.  

sudo pico /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

-ZuCom

http://www.zucom.com

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Snow Leopard Roundup

Well it's been over a month now since Apple released "Snow Leopard" (version 10.6 of it's popular operating system OS X). From first reports, the upgrade seems to be a non-event for most. Two enterprise clients (those with at least 1000 upgrades) are reporting a 98% success rate on the upgrades while the power user community (the hardest group to win over) is reporting satisfaction ratings in line with past upgrades.

The roundup of popular issues and potential fixes:

BLUETOOTH

Several reports that Bluetooth devices fail after the upgrade. While ZuCom has not seen this in volume we can validate that deleting the devices and re-paring quickly solved the problem

NETWORK

In most cases we've seen no issues however some wireless network profiles needed the password (WEP Key, WPAx Password, etc.) re-entered

HOME FOLDERS

CNET has reported that "several" users have lost there home folders and even posted a detailed account of how to restore the home folders. While we've not seen this at all, the potential may exist, and especially in consumer environments where setup profiles can "drift" from the norm. Another reason to do a full backup before you do any upgrade.

GPG-Mail

The wildly popular open source GPGMail v1.2.0 plugin for OSX Mail.app does not work in Snow Leopard. This is something that was found in the later beta's and remain's a major problem in the Power User community. At issue is the use of an undocumented API in the mail bundle that is no-longer supported in the new v4 of Mail. A developer has posted an interim fix for the community which can be downloaded here. Simply unzip this file and copy it to the /Library/Mail/Bundles folder and re-start Mail and your back in business.

More updates will be posted as they come in. As usual Apple has made the upgrade process painless and smooth. Considering this upgrade is for most the first time they will migrate from a 32bit to 64bit platform it's been relatively quiet. This is a feat that many accomplished technology leaders expected to bring a litany of problems but has really been a non-event. Kudos to Bertrand Serlet and team for getting this one right. If you haven't made the jump yet, just back things up and pounce (pun), from all accounts it's another non-event with many benefits.

-ZuCom

Apple, the iPhone and Mobile, The Barbarians are at the gates.

It's hard to argue with the success that Apple has seen in it's mobile platform. Entering it's third year on the market the iPhone continues to to break new ground and is as popular as ever. Some pundits say that it's just savvy marketing coupled with great timing, others believe it's the leading edge of a revolution. As with most things when history looks back at this time it will undoubtedly fall somewhere in-between, but one thing is undeniable, .....with success come the barbarians.

In no particular order, there is Google developing a very similar looking phone called the Android and has accompanied it with an Application Store similar to the iTunes App-Store look and feel. Palm has come out with the PRE and claims to have a developer platform that rivals Apple and Google, not to mention the virtual plethora of others.

Outside of those beating down the hardware path there are software giants who are keen to get in on some of the spoils. Many of the corporate software giants have been forced to play by new rules in order to get past the proverbial "gates". Rules set by mobile carriers, platform SDK owners and hardware limitations, something these giants aren't used to dealing with. The revenue and market shift to mobile is palpable and thus a few of the big boys have found ways to capitulate. Still others have chosen to take matters into their own hands. This week Adobe announced that Flash CS5 would support the creation of native iPhone apps. As of this writing it's unclear if this is a defection or something that has been condoned, but suffice it to say that many foresee a day where tightly controlling the move to mobile won't be possible, and we may be seeing the first signs of that coming.

-Robert Zullo

ZuCom

Project Management Quote of the Week

"You can't be neutral on a moving train"

- Howard Zinn

(actually that's the name of his book).

Great test to tell if a project is moving of not.

The Changing Face of the Enterprise Desktop

The Changing Face of the Enterprise Desktop

Capital investments in enterprise desktop infrastructure are often a sizeable part of an IT department’s budget. Add in the cost of maintaining the hardware, OS, software stack, etc. and the total cost analysis would shock most. Technology leaders who are savvy enough to understand this, have already adopted alternatives that present a much smaller impact and address some evolving pressures in the industry.

Many shops have developed a strategy to address recurring desktop costs by involving a blend of thin client and virtualization. These solutions can present an enormous effect on a budget and overall support costs in a short amount of time. With products from WYSE and HP being very popular here in the US these solutions offer zero or minimal configuration, which can be done by unskilled labor, and within an enterprise network offer more than adequate performance standards. Because these clients don’t perform much in the way of processing or storage they have a very low cost, and offer some additional security benefits as a consequence. Many studies place the utilization of these types of systems at about 20-50% of a work forces’ desktop computing needs. In these environments a strong network management component is important for success, something you will see is a theme that is developing in the industry.

As data centers reduce in size and hosting applications on private or public Cloud solutions evolves it’s impact on the enterprise desktop has already seen a dramatic impact. While it’s rare there are studies where the elimination of a desktop product (thin client, thick client) was not only possible but also more efficient. A biotech research company eliminated desktop clients for it’s sales force, replacing what they carried into a sales call with an iPhone based solution utilizing Google Apps for it’s needs. While this is not typical it’s representative of what is possible and where the face of enterprise desktop will go. Application hosting is another article entirely, but the consumer success of Google Apps, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and those of the like are undeniable. Cellular based networks are maturing in the US making this a viable option in the enterprise desktop market and something to consider.

The change we have seen in the enterprise desktop space has been dramatic. Gone are the days were the only option was Wintel or Mac OS and a piece of hardware. As the economy tightens and applications migrate to a web based platform opportunities become more available, cost effective and efficient. Some day we may look back at the days of sitting in front of a computer as archaic and unnecessary. Where will your enterprise desktop roadmap take you?

Robert Zullo

Vice President, Technology Consulting

ZuCom

www.zucom.com

rzullo@zucom.com

518-496-2592

When Green became Chic!

When Green became Chic!

I received a call from a colleague today who manages a large data center in North Carolina. About a year ago we toured this facility and while impressive and modern it was far from what someone would call "GREEN". Over the past year they have undergone a major change in thinking and have undertaken a program to make all of their IT operations and functions GREEN aware. From easy items like solar panels to more difficult items like monitoring cooling and air flow the change has been palpable, not just in technology approach but also the the bottom line.

Of course there is the savings against utilities and general facilities costs but there is also government subsidies that can make the whole pill a little easier to swallow. In most states their are programs that can help take advantage of tax breaks or incentives for for embarking on a GREEN effort. In this case the correlation from the incentives to the return was immediate and for most enterprise data centers this has to be at least a fundamental consideration at this point even with energy costs leveling off.

Whilst this was a great example of industry (and government) making a change for the good, advising clients to GREEN outside the data center space is often a more challenging situation. Government subsidies are targeted at energy and not hardware per-say. Client based GREEN efforts have come of age, and they've done so without similar government subsidies. As most know client computing has been dramatically effected by the move to the Virtualization and Mobile platforms. While clients often see an immediate impact on budgets by a reduced cost for hardware the GREEN impact of not having to run additional hardware is often lost in the fray. Making hardware refresh decisions today often is an opportunity to explore the impact of GREEN on IT as well as the efficiencies of new technology.

No matter what size organization, there are options to let GREEN find it's way into your organizational thinking for IT. Virtualization, Alternative Energy, Mobilization, and even Cooperative Cloud Computing are just a few examples and efficiencies in this space are growing every day.

Robert Zullo
Vice President, Technology Consulting
ZuCom
www.zucom.com
rzullo@zucom.com
518-496-2592

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TKIP Based WPA Cracked

http://tinyurl.com/navjvp

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Zig Ziglar

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.
	- Zig Ziglar

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PandoraBoy Code

http://code.google.com/p/pandoraboy/

 Nicely done Pandora App...

 -ZuCom

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