The KIT ─ Knowledge & Information Technology
No. 114 - 17 February 2014
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In This Issue
Elementum: Mobile Supply Chain Management
Oil & Gas Process and Information Integration
Security and the Internet of Things
Mobile Data Forecast
Debate about Internet Governance
Watching the Cloud
Seen Recently
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Elementum
Believing that supply chain processes are old-fashioned, mostly based on phone calls and faxes, a startup called Elementum has launched a cloud-based, mobile-oriented, end-to-end supply chain management application. The online videos are cute, higher on hype than on actual substance, but the concept is valid and the company has already sold its product to Dyson and Flextronics.
Process and Information Integration in the Oil & Gas Industry
The Feb. 25-26 event in Houston has 30+ registrants and some room for more. The March 30-31 repeat in Utrecht, Netherlands, is now also available for registration on the Energistics Web site. Both events are free, and the Utrecht event is adjacent to the SPE's Intelligent Energy 2014 conference. You may contact us for more details.
Security and the Internet of Things
The Cutter Consortium presents on March 5 (at noon, Eastern US time) a web Q&A session featuring Claude Baudoin on the topic of the security challenges of the "Internet of Things" (IoT). Register here.
Mobile Data
A Cisco forecast, mentioned in a Wall Street Journal Business article, says that mobile users in North America consumed about 1.4 gigabytes of data a month on average in 2013, and are expected to average 9 gigabytes a month by 2018. This growth is causing a push for more WiFi services, since mobile data plans from cellular operators are much more expensive than WiFi connections, which most current smart phones support. This pits the telephone companies against the rest of the tech industry, which announced on Feb. 13 the formation of the WifiForward coalition.
Another Surveillance Fallout
This is not the first time that the controlling role that the U.S. has now played for decades in the governance of the Internet has raised eyebrows and been challenged; but a European Commission opinion links the need for change to recent events: "Large-scale surveillance and intelligence activities have [...] led to a loss of confidence in the Internet and its present governance arrangements." The U.S. is downplaying the tension ahead of international conferences on Internet governance, claiming that it welcomes European involvement and that the internationalization of governance (especially by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was in progress even before the NSA issues surfaced.
Watching the Cloud (or Just About Anything)
On February 7, the home page of the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) was revamped with the addition of an "industry tracker" powered by VBprofiles. That company's approach is somewhat different from that of the large and better-known providers of media intelligence services such as DowJones Factiva, NASDAQ OMX, Vocus or Meltwater. VBProfiles uses automatic keyword-based collection of news stories as a first step. but relies heavily on manual curation and continuous filter refinement, performed by a team of specialists based in India.
If you are interested in seeing a prototype of what a VBProfiles feed would look like for your own industry or area of technology watch, please contact us for further information.
Seen Recently...

"Paper 1 proposes a new transformation language because it's 'convenient.' Too much of software engineering research is done for 'convenience' or 'laziness'."

-- Richard Paige (@richpaige), tweeting his frustration while 

peer-reviewing a series of papers on model transformation 

 

"Technical debt: Win short-term by assuming debt, win long-term by paying it back. Win both ways with clean code you understand."

-- Ward Cunningham (@WardCunningham)