The KIT ─ Knowledge & Information Technology
No. 127 - 2 Sep 2014
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In This Issue
Labor Day
IoT Security Overlooked (Again)
KM and IT Innovation Courses
Big Data Meets Cloud
Reader Feedback: Col(l)ocation
Seen Recently
Claude Baudoin

Consulting Services
  • IT Strategy
  • Enterprise Architecture Roadmap 
  • Business Process Modeling & Analysis 
  • Enterprise Software Selection 
  • IT Innovation Briefings
  • IT Due Diligence
  • Executive IT Seminars
  • Cloud Computing
  • Security Maturity
  • Software Process 
  • Knowledge Strategy
  • Technical Communities
  • Knowledge Capture
  • Taxonomy development 
  • Enterprise Social Media 
Contact Us:
c�b� IT and Knowledge Management
www.cebe-itkm.com
info@cebe-itkm.com
+1 281 460 3595
Twitter: @cbaudoin 
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The Oxymoronic Holiday
For our non-US readers, the first Monday in September is known in the U.S. as "Labor Day," which means (as is the case for the first of May in some other countries) that... no one works. It's also usually the last nice warm (or hot) longer week-end of the year. This is why we delayed this issue to September 2. Issue 128 will appear on Monday 15th.
IoT Security, Once More
The Spring 2014 issue of the MIT Technology Review Business Report  published a set of articles on the Internet of Things. In the 16 pages comprising this issue (the link above goes to the cover article, but you can follow further links on that page for the other articles, or download the entire issue as a PDF file), otherwise very interesting, the word "security" appears exactly twice.

We continue to find the imbalance between technological excitement about the IoT and the neglect of security quite inappropriate.
Reminder: KM and IT Innovation Courses
The 4-day course by Claude Baudoin on Knowledge Management (with some emphasis on the Oil & Gas industry, but it is entirely applicable to others and will be tuned in real time to the concerns of the audience) is currently planned:
  • in Houston (Galleria area) on Sep. 30 to Oct. 3, 2014
  • in Calgary (downtown) on Oct. 20-23

The 3-day course on "Advances in IT for the Oil & Gas Industry" is planned for Oct. 7-9 in Houston. More information and registration for all courses are available on the NExT web site. 

Big Data Meets Cloud
Big Data Analytics (BDA) poses several challenges to adopters: it creates a sudden requirement for large amounts of storage, which may or may not be required for a long time; and it requires specialized database architectures that are still evolving rapidly. This makes cloud solutions, with their elasticity and lack of long-term commitment, an interesting "pairing." This was made quite clear in a recent e-mail from GoGrid:
"Interested in trialing a Big Data solution in 10 minutes or less? With GoGrid's 1-Button Deploy, I can have you up and running in about 10 minutes. Choose from Cassandra, HBase/Hadoop, MongoDB, or Riak."

We're not judging the quality of the vendor's solution, but we appreciate the clarity of the message, which will appeal to people who want to try BDA without quite knowing which database structure is best for them.
Reader Feedback
In the last issue's "Seen Recently" section, I quoted cloud expert Bernard Golden, who was criticizing an article for reporting that Wyoming was adopting cloud computing, when in fact it described a traditional IT outsourcing solution. In addition, we piled on more scorn by stating that the word "colocated" was a mistake for "collocated."

Alert readers Martin Buscher, Rachel Kornberg and Guillaume Tamboise reacted to both the substantive and the linguistic points. First, the article did say that "this outsourcing step is part of a broader plan to move the state's computing resources to cloud services." So the author, Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau, understands the difference, it's just that the catchy title (which may have been inserted by an editor) implied more. Bernard's reaction, which I amplified, was excessive.

Secondly, dictionaries now recognize "colocate" with a single L as the accepted spelling for the word that means "place together." The Grammarphobia blog explains the shifting usage better than we could.
Seen Recently...

"Pro tip: blaming another department in your company is NOT good customer service."

-- Brenda Michelson (@bmichelson), probably referring to a personal 

incident but also describing a common professional experience

(or that of a consultant trying to find out why he hasn't been paid yet)