Avoid Vendor Lock-in In the Cloud

http://gigaom.com/2011/09/24/5-ways-to-protect-against-vendor-lock-in-in-the-cloud/?utm_source=#frankguillen

This article points out the need to avoid vendor lock-in in the cloud. If you allow your company to get locked in, it can and will mean price increases and loss of flexibility, which is why you went to the cloud in the first place. It cites the following steps that can help with this issue:

1. Avoid vendor  lock-in at all cost - if not done, it can result in cost increases that will rob your company of capital needed to invest in growth.
2. Know thy PaaS - use multiple PaaS providers to ensure flexibility.
3. Ask hard questions about redundancy and system architecture - the same questions your customers ask you about your solution. Don't settle.
4. Pick code that's easier and faster to modify - many vendors impose coding technology constraints on their customers (ex. Force.com - Apex).  

Proper due diligence is required to not fall into this trap.

School Construction Authority Use Technology To Assist Public Education

In New York City, the School Construction Authority (SCA), and the Board of Education (DOE) have a very strong linkage in ensuring the use of technology to assist in public education. DOE has developed a 5 year information technology plan to better educate the kids in its system. The plan includes the needed infrastructure, bandwidth, class room dimentional layout to support multimedia,  and many other technology requirements. The SCA is fully aware of this plan and in putting up new structures, they ensure compliance with the technology needs as required by the DOE.

In its construction operation, the SCA uses technology to ensure efficiency and productiivity. They use technology to ensure on time on budget projects, so the kids get the benefits of the new technology on time and the tax payers are not over charged. They also promote the use of minority and disadvantaged business' in helping them achieve their goal. They use tchnology to track compliance and to ensure there is no gaming of the system.

New CIO Agenda - Enterprise Cloud Computing for IT Innovation

http://m.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/09/the-new-cio-agenda.php?utm_source=feedburner

This article does an excellent job of pointing out that in today's economic environment, business survival depends on IT innovation. They point out that enterprise cloud computing

presents CIOs with tremendous opportunities to deliver that innovation. By thinking

like CEOs, they use enterprise cloud computing to play a strategic role in driving new revenue and reducing costs.

Keys to Business Happiness

http://www.inc.com/staff-blog/5-keys-to-business-happiness.html?utm_source=twitterfeed

I must be getting older, because articles like this really appeal to me. I enjoyed that it pointed out happy employees make successful business. Some of the keys to happiness are:

• Be an active participant in many communities of interest - expand your horizon
• Have a high level of personal expression - let it out, don't keep it bottled up
• Have a high level of personal empathy - eat your own dog food
• Be grateful and give back - leave the world a better place than when you got here
• Articulate and believe there is a higher calling - there is bigger plan and you are being used to accomplish it.

Companies that strive to make their employees happy, will be much more successful than the ones that don't care if they are.

Small Business Helped By Google Tools

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-analytics-tips-website-2011-9?utm_source=feedburner

As an owner of a small business with web sites that present our artists, and sell our skateboards, music, clothing, etc. The Google tools intended to identify and report valuable information about your customers and their interaction with your site is invaluable. Use of such reported data as:

• What Browsers and Operating System are being used - helps you streamline testing.
• What specifically isn't keeping people interested - either remove or market differently.
• What exactly draws people to your site - do more of this.
• When you have hit a million clicks - celebrate but not for long, duplicate that effort.

 Makes it possible to plan a strategy to drive success in your business. You can be the decider of your own business destiny, and not leave it up to faith.

Technology Enabling Math Education

A local board of education have been very aggessively pursuing a program to help improve the math understanding and scores of middle school students. They will  be using a combination of online training, one on one, and classroom sessions to help the students assimilate the material. They will be rolling out new technology infrastructure to the participating schools to enable access to the appropriate content approved by the school for use. All the technology and content will be targeted at the school campus  and the kids can only use these facilities to participate. It would a great addition to the program, if it was extended to the kids while they are at home. With many after school programs being cut because of budget issues, kids could benefit greatly from access to this program at home. Many of them have a PC and internet access at home and can logon to the appropriate web site to get access to the program. Expanding the program to the homes can and will have a significant positive impact on kids that want to do the work but were not receiving it in the proper manner.

Trends Shaping the Future of Commerce

http://gigaom.com/mobile/four-mega-trends-shaping-the-future-of-commerce/?utm_source=#frankguillen

I think the four trends of Mobile, Local, Social, and Digital that are shaping the future of commerce, make it very exciting. Mobile devices have exploded in adoption and use, and with the continued realization of Moores's law, these devices are getting faster and cheaper and can support many new and innovative applications. Combined with knowledge of Local events, Social interactions, and Digital capability, the future looks bright and challenging. As the part owner of a christain Hip Hop music label, an online retail store selling skatebaords, clothing, and music, and a charitable foundation I formed to honor the memory of my mother - who was killed in freak traffic accident, these trends get me very excited about where I can take these business'. 

Virtualization of the Workforce

http://mashable.com/2011/09/17/work-from-home-infographi/?utm_source=twitterfeed

This article highlights the growing phenomenon of virtualization of the workforce. I started working from home about a year ago and have interacted with many more professional who are doing the same. We all believe that we are much more productive, spend more hours working, enjoy what we do more, are more creative, and have a more balanced life. This phenomenon will continue to grow.

True Workforce Globalization

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/09/13/hcl-looks-to-boost-u-s-workforce/

Having been responsible for driving workforce globilization strategy and implementation for many years, which have always meant, taking jobs away fron US workers and sending them offshore to India, China, and other countries. I am very encouraged to see HCL, an Indian based company, working with US schools to help drive improvment in technology related curriculum, and to start hiring and training more US based students as engineers to take jobs here in the US. This is truely globalization of the workforce.

Enhancing Math Education With Software

http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/09/16/tenmarks-raises-3-million-for-personalized-math-learning-saas/?utm_source=feedburner

I applaud companies that are using their skills and resources to help to improve the math learnings of our students. We know that the US is far behind many other nations like India and China in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and we need to make a serious move to try to catch up. TenMarks is one company that is using technology and content to help get students interested and learning this important subject. I have been involved with the NYC department of education School of One program. In this program they are working to improve the match scores of middle schoolers by proving them with training in the best manner for them to learn, that is online, one on one, classroom, etc.

Technology Impact on Parks and Recreation

Technology is being utilized by many local governments to more effectively schedule events at local parks. This ensures that the process to get these events up and running are being handled much more efficiently and with more wide knowledge of their occurnace on the part of the citizens. This helps drive participation and improved quality of life. Technology is also being used to plan recreational programs, get citizens to signup and to monitor customer satisfaction with programs. All in all local governments are using technology to ensure that parks and recreation is a much more smoothly run organization than it has been in the past.

Technology Impact on the Mobility of Disabled and Elderly Citizens

As a result of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, transportation must be provided to individuals who are unable to use conventional public transportation due to their disabilities. Local governments are mandated to provide a safe, and reliable transportation system for residents throughout the city who prove they are disabled.

Technology is being used as an enabler to ensure the system is safe and reliable. Some such technologies include:

• Automatic vehicle location monitoring and tracking system,
• Mobile Data terminals with navigation,
• Global positioning system,
• Vector street matching,
• Wireless LAN,
• Computer aided dispatch with flashback
• Interactive Voice Response unit,
• Call center with reliable queueing algorhythms,
• Interface to traffic reporting and routing systems

This Act and the technologies that are deployed to enable it's safe and reliable execution are delivering a stonger quality of life for disabled citizens, put in place by the government. 

Technology impact on local government

Government organizations at all levels have been negatively affected by the global economic recession. Many local governments have been hard hit financially by reduced federal and state funding appropriations, stretched budgets due to the economy and inflation, shrinking funding sources from erosion of their tax base, and structural deficits such as unsustainable union contracts. These financial issues further exacerbate long standing organizational issues of limited enterprise wide application platforms, lack of cross functional integration, and IT organization's lack of proper business acumen and effective business unit partnerships. Operationally they suffer from problematic annual budget reconciliation processes, non-optimized procurement and asset management processes, limited and/or flawed records management processes, badly needed infrastructure modernization and a insufficient leveraging of IT platforms to achieve business results.

Many of these issues require the same solutions implemented by private sector companies to reduce their operational costs, increase their revenues, and enhance their customer satisfacion. These include:

• Business process analysis and optimization
• IT architecture blueprint development
• System consolidation, and data integration
• Citizens portal - conduct business 24x7
• Business intelligence, analytics and management dashboards for transparency
• Document management strategies and implementation 
• eProcurement and asset management systems
• Content management strategies and implementation
• Cloud based strategies and implementation
• Locator Services
• Address and mail management services
  (address cleansing, move updates, pre-sort discounts)
• National DMV integration
• GIS center of excellence