#help! Japan is Considering Using Twitter and Social Networks for Emergency Notifications

On Wednesday the Japanese government hosted a panel discussion in Tokyo to discuss placing emergency calls through social networks during natural disasters, as reported by PCWorld. This was the first event of a three part program that will run through March of next year to discuss how to use social media during large disasters. The panel included the head of Twitter Japan as well as Yahoo Japan officials.

The thought is that when traditional voice-based infrastructure is impacted the social network might be a better alternative to process emergency requests. During Japan’s Earthquake that impacted several nuclear power plants, many of the Japanese citizens were only able to get updated information via the social network. The culture is quite fanatic about using cell phones and social media, so the government see this as a natural evolution for their emergency communication strategy.

On the surface this sounds like a practical and plausible solution to a difficult situation, however having managed a notifications platform, there is a lot of concern from a product perspective. Posting content and accessing the social media is only viable if the people have access to the service, cell phone service is not designed for the level of usage that occurs during a disaster. Alert notifications are a great tool, but you must have reserved capacity and if you are only using the service on rare occasion, your cost for reserving the bandwidth could become quite expensive over time.

But let’s assume the government can solve the bandwidth issue, now the question comes around geo-presence, how do you know where the person is if they are using it to tweet in an emergency? Yes the phone probably has a GPS chip and the location can be triangulated to near proximity of the cell tower, but how do you control this, how do you use it only in an emergency? You could probably build an app for this, but that would mean that now everyone has to install the application to tweet in an emergency and how do you train the masses on how to use the social network?

Finally, and this is my biggest concern, how do you prevent hacking, both on the notification and 911 inbound tweets. None of the social media sites that I have used provide any moderator level controls, which means if the government Twitter account gets hacked and someone send out an emergency alert, there would be wide spread panic.

Don’t get me wrong, these are the right discussion to be having, we need to find new ways to communicate to large groups of people, especially in a disaster, but if we are going to enlist the use of social media then these service providers have to find a way to manage security beyond their current methods.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

AMD’s New Buzz Word “Surround Computing”

Mark Papermaster, the IBM executive who was named AMD’s chief technology officer last year, prompted discussion on Tuesday at the Hot Chips conference in Silicon Valley to promote “surround computing” a concept that will usher in an era where the intelligence delivered through microprocessors becomes a built-in functionality that integrates into all devices around us.

Papermaster described a world in which natural user interfaces such as gestures, fingerprints and facial recognition replace keyboards, touchscreens and mice for interactive experiences on tablets and other devices. That integration can help users connect in a more natural way with their hardware but ultimately would require more power for servers to keep up with the increased flow of information being processed.

While everyone is always intrigued with the hologram keyboard that is often used in movies or the slick hand movements that pull up video and content, like in the minority report, the reality is that we are a few years away from that and probably a decade away before it becomes something you would see in a home.

I enjoy the competition that AMD and Intel have built over the last decade, and chip performance has certainly improved over that time, but the amount of data and processing needed to deliver these types of enhancements may make the financial cost somewhat impractical, not to mention the peripheral devices needed to interact with the user and the machine. Speech recognition programs have been around for years and despite the best technical minds and improved processing speed, they still do not function at the level that we have come to accept in our movies.

Perhaps the most comical example come from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when Scotty is trying to build the glass needed to contain the water to transport the whale and he starts off by saying, “computer”, and the owner looks at him and points to the mouse and he picks it up and says “computer”. The irony is that we have envisioned computer interactive designs for over 50 years, so I guess another decade is probably to be expected, at least the chip manufactures are thinking along the next generation of productivity.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

VMware’s New vCloud 5.1 Makes Data Centers Virtual

According to VMware, VMware vCloud® Director™ (vCloud Director) orchestrates the provisioning of software-defined datacenter services, to deliver complete virtual datacenters for easy consumption in minutes. Software-defined datacenter services and virtual datacenters fundamentally simplify infrastructure provisioning and enable IT to move at the speed of business.

So what are you really getting? Conceptually this is a very neat package of utilizing data center services (compute, storage, networking, security and availability) into a software on-demand construct.. The vCloud Suite 5.1 is built on an updated version of VMware vSphere 5.1 and includes over 100 enhancements.

What appears promising about this design is the ability to manage flow resources across systems and workloads, along with privatizing the cloud infrastructure and securing the network. However there are skeptics. In an interview with TechNewsWorld, John Vincenzo, vice president of marketing at Embrane stated that this is "basically a small evolution of the classical virtual appliance approach, there's no scale-out architecture, with no elasticity."

The next round of designs will need to incorporate the ability to increase demand as needed (including interoperability with different hardware architecture), reduce demand as needed and park applications when necessary. The software appears to be headed in the right direction and should foster some strong innovation on the data center management front.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

zEnterprise EC12 - IBM’s Mainframe Built For The Cloud

IBM announced today that they are releasing zEnterprise EC12, a Highly Secure System for Cloud Computing and Enterprise Data. According to their press release the new mainframe will provide:

· New, cutting-edge System z® capabilities for security and analytics dramatically boost cloud performance with help from IBM Research innovations.

· zEC12 offers 25% more performance per core, over 100 configurable cores and 50% more total capacity than its predecessor.

· Over $1 billion in IBM R&D investment and collaborative client input on today's enterprise system challenges

In addition, zEC12 includes a state-of-the-art, tamper-resistant cryptographic co-processor called Crypto Express4S that provides privacy for transactions and sensitive data. Crypto Express4S includes new hardware and software developed with IBM Research to help meet stringent security requirements for various industries and geographies. According to IBM, it can be configured to provide support for high quality digital signatures used with applications for Smart passports, national ID cards and online legal proceedings, replacing handwritten signatures as directed by the EU and the public sector.

Traditionally mainframes have been used in the financial sector where millions of transactions are processed and have a high need for security, but I would expect adoption in the healthcare area as well, especially since the US has mandated that patient records move to an electronic status by 2014 with penalties starting in 2015.

Due to the cost (between 1 million and 10 million dollars), I do not expe small organizations to move quickly, but I would expect the larger organizations to adopt the technology and implement IBM;s solution. Being the only commercial server to achieve Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5+ security classification I think IBM has found a way to increase Mainframe adoption.

I would not be surprised to see the reduction of paper processes in a more expedited time frame. The good news is that this could very well spark new jobs and new technologies that have been unobtainable in the past.

IBM’s Mainframe sales account for only 4% of their overall sales, but peripheral sales for the Mainframe account for 25% of their total sales and deliver substantial margin to the bottom line, estimated to be. more than 40 percent of its profits, according to A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

The Patent Verdict Is In - $1 Billion for Apple

After just three days of deliberation, the nine jurors assigned to the Apple/Samsung Patent infringement case answered all 700 questions and returned with a verdict in favor of Apple, and awarding them more than $1 billion dollars in damages. For the most part the financial impact to Samsung, one of the world’s largest electronics manufactures is minimal, but the impact to how smartphones are built in the future could be dramatic.

In what was covered with much less detail, a similar suit was being argued in South Korea, In that case, the court ruled that Apple and Samsung both infringed on each other’s patents and awarded damages to both parties, $22,000 to Apple and $35,000 to Samsung, far less than the 1 billion awarded to Apple in the US.

There is clearly a lot to be said for home court advantage, while South Korea recognized both companies were in violation of patents, the advantage went to Samsung, in the US however, Samsung was the clear loser, not only did the jury find in favor of Apple, but the did not feel that Apple in any way violated Samsung’s patents.

It is interesting how two cases being argued with virtually the same data have two entirely different outcomes. Currently phones and tablets that are on the market have not been pulled off shelves and no injunction has been granted, although experts are predicting that Apple will ask for an injunction on all devices that currently violate the patents, this could have a major impact for Samsung and for consumers, especially since three smartphones are sold to every iPhone. Samsung is expected to ask to have the verdict overturned and if that fails appeal the verdict to a higher court.

There are a few things that will be interesting to see as this dilemma unfolds. There are those that believe that patents, like the ones Apple has, stifles innovation, meaning that the organization will rely on what it has already built and continue to offer that to the marketplace. In this way, the organization remains status quo. Others will argue that it will force Samsung and others to become more innovative and find ways around the patents which will ultimately lead to innovation. Of course, if Samsung licenses the technology from Apple, than we probably will not see that new innovation.

Even if Samsung takes the innovative path to compete with Apple, the reality is that it will take time, time to develop, review, test and ultimately distribute the product, in the meantime the consumer receives less choices, demand goes up while supply goes down, a great mix for increased prices.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Tim Cook Apple’s Savior or downfall?

Tim Cool assumed Apple’s top position a year ago and based on that news the stock price dropped, as of today it is not up more than 44 percent from where it was. On the surface this look great and Apple appears to be driving towards long term success. However (and there is always a however), product development takes more than a year at most companies and Apple is no exception. The products that are driving Apple are still the brain child of Steve Jobs. The real question is where will Apple be next year.

Back in April, Forrester CEO George Colony, wrote in his blog post that Apple will decline in the post Steve Jobs era. Colony also believes that Apple lost quite a bit when Steve Jobs left, “When Steve Jobs departed, he took three things with him: 1) singular charismatic leadership that bound the company together and elicited extraordinary performance from its people; 2) the ability to take big risks, and 3) an unparalleled ability to envision and design products.”

There is also heavy criticism regarding the advertising efforts that Apple is moving forward with, the addition of celebrities versus the traditional imagery that Apple products used to invoke seems to have hit a discord with potential buyers. While not scientific, the belief is that Apple is now becoming just one of the products versus a way to express your own identity and all of their advertising is beginning to lean towards that shift.
In addition, Apple and Samsung are embattled in a patent case around Samsung’s HTC smartphone. The outcome will have a substantial impact on both companies and depending on the verdict may highlight Cook’s legacy one way or the other.

Finally, Apple is also dealing with several issues around their retail stores. First reported by Gizmodo, Apple’s Dallas flagship store has been doing some pretty horrible things to customers including erasing data and breaking components that worked when they were brought in. The story was also further confirmed by 9TO5Mac.

Where will Apple be in 12 months from now? Well if I knew that I would play the stock market, but what I can say is that without continual innovation and strong leadership, Apple will not be the same company it was two years ago.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

FCC Report Finds 19 Million Americans Do Not Have High-Speed Internet Access

According to the Federal Communications Commission's Eighth Broadband Progress Report  there are still 19 million Americans (6% of the US population) who lack access to high-speed Internet. Congress in Section 706 the Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires the FCC to report annually on whether broadband “is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.”

The FCC believes that we are in an era when broadband is essential to innovation, jobs, and global competitiveness, the Report concludes that the FCC – and the nation – must continue to address obstacles impeding universal broadband deployment and availability. In addition, the report states that billions have been invested by the communications industry in broadband deployment, including next-generation wired and wireless services, including:

• Expansion of networks technically capable of 100 megabit-plus speeds to over 80 percent of the population through cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 rollout

• World-leading LTE deployment by mobile operators

• Sweeping reforms by the FCC to its universal service programs, including the new Connect America Fund for broadband deployment, Mobility Fund, and the Lifeline program for low-income Americans

• Action under the FCC’s Broadband Acceleration Initiative to reduce the cost and time required for deployment

• Numerous steps to expand availability of wireless spectrum for broadband 

With this said, many rural and tribal areas still lack access to high speed service. The report also indicated that the US is behind many other industrial countries in the speed and coverage of high speed Internet service. With that said, I will admit I would never go back to dial up - I can even remember when I was overly excited to get the USR upgrade patch to bring my 28.8k modem up to 33.6k, but on the flip side the communications act has a cost.

My cable bill has steadily increased, I now pay more for cable than I ever imagined, yes I love my high speed service, but at what cost is it being delivered? In NJ we spent billions laying fiber optic cabling over a decade ago, someone had to pay for it, nothing in this world is free. So while the report provides great insight to our current state, my experience has been that the last part of a project of this magnitude is typically the most expensive and difficult.

In my days of Six Sigma, getting to 99.9% was much easier and less costly than moving to 99.99%. This is a pure statistical metric, in order to move to the next 9, you have to endure considerable effort and this effort has a substantial cost, so while we are making progress, I would expect the cost to complete the additional 6% to be a heavy burden.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.