Big Data (aka Analytics)

There was a very interesting article from Dan Kusnetzky in ZDNET about Big Data. Telco has always been at the forefront of producing, processing, and analyzing large amount data. What I'm witnessing today is another order of magnitude of data volume. When items such as razor blades, racks of fresh produce, jeans, and pallets are "sending" updates about their locations, status, and temperature through a network of automated sensors, we are talking "big data". That data tells a lot about habits and trends at a micro (privacy) and macro (economy) scale.

If you were to send all this raw data right to a central server, you would make Big Data simply Huge Data, and immediately lose the value of real-time automated data. We believe a large amount of information generated at the Edge should be used at the Edge. Only a fraction of that data should make it to a central server and become Big Data.

When a forklift picks up a pallet full of fresh berries from a loading dock, then drives through a multitude of portals equipped with sensors to finally put away the fruits in a cold room, thousands of records have been created. They include very important real-time information such as: "Is this the right truck and loading dock?", "Is this the right pallet?", "Are these the right berries?", "How many workers are around the forklift while it is backing out?", "Are all the pallets in the right cold room?". This data is critical during the actual movement of the assets but unless exception occurs, we are only interested in a small subset for the long term.

Hobart Machined Products Deploys Omnitrol Real-Time Supplier Collaboration Solution

Hobart Machined Products is a manufacturer of precision parts for the aerospace, medical, automotive, and electronic industries. Over the past 32 years, Hobart has earned a global reputation for consistent high-performance ratings and customer service excellence in complex mechanical and airframe assembly design, engineering, and precision machining.

Aerospace and other manufacturing industries have accelerated outsourcing of manufacturing operations to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. However, moving some of the operations outside of the physical four walls of the factory has created “dark areas” in the manufacturing visibility process. As a supplier to Boeing, one of the world’s largest manufacturers, Hobart was looking for ways to address this problem and become a better supplier. It wanted to provide real-time production visibility to its customers to alleviate any fears of missing mission-critical deadlines.

The Omnitrol solution has simplified the process of entering and tracking customer orders through a web portal that can be securely accessed anytime from anywhere. By choosing an integrated solution from a single vendor, Hobart benefits from a seamlessly integrated view, from customer orders through to their inventory system, to generate an extremely accurate production forecast with customer feedback capability. Based on what is available or expected to arrive in the warehouse, the system gives Hobart's employees a detailed view of what they will be able to kit, assemble, and produce now and in the future.

You can read the news release here.

Disruption at work: Apple's iPad

Apple has done it again. The Cupertino guys have, one more time, dramatically changed how people consume digital content with their new iPad device. This is on the same scale as the iPod and iPhone introduction. Digital content streaming is going to explode with the adoption of the iPad. The size, the weight, the resolution and the price make it the perfect device to use in the house. I don't like to look too far back, but Apple is superbly executing on their strategy as discussed in an early 2006 post. So who should be concerned with the new iPad?

• Amazon. It's going to take a lot of work for the Kindle to get any significant traction unless there is a big change in design and business model.
  


• Carriers. AT&T gets a 3GSM model to increase its subscriber base in an environment where ARPU is declining. Verizon and Sprint must be worried and so should be other carriers worldwide.
  


• Print Media. It's going to be very interesting to watch how media companies such as newspapers are going to react to the new device. Why do you want to pay for print newspapers/magazines ever again? I'd better monitor newspapers sales and distribution from now on.
  


• Device manufacturers (Nokia, RIM, Samsung, LG). Apple is all over the house now, they have so many touch points with the consumer that the barriers to entry will be too high for you and you may become irrelevant quickly.
  


• Google. This is a double-edged sword. Apple was first to market but a lot of the device manufacturers may flock to Google to adopt Android. This looks very much like the open vs closed war that we saw before.

All these companies are vying for a dominant position around the network triangle. Apple and Google are appearing as the leaders to control the overall user experience.

Context-aware technology

I just read an excellent special report on Business Week about context-aware computing. You can read most of the report here. Context-aware software tracks a person's location, interests, buying habits and other information. Smartphones are the perfect device to collect and aggregate that kind of information.
Early 2000, Location Based Services (LBS) already promised unimaginable smart services to serve coupon to shoppers walking by a store and other innovative applications. Handheld location was determined by triangulation based on signal strength from each base station. That architecture never delivered. Several reasons to this failure: hype cycle, precision was not good, wireless service providers controlled the information and wanted their own applications to use that data (not external applications). It is my opinion that the first incarnation of presence services went the same way for the exact same reasons.
Fast-forward nearly 10 years and we have a completely different environment. Apple (and its developers/partners), and Google are in total control of the user experience. Multiple applications are able to use location information to provide advanced services to the users. Yelp provides a unique example of combined use of location and camera with the Monocle feature (augmented reality).

The more source of data you can integrate (social media, CRM), the more phone features you can leverage (camera, accelerometer), the best experience you can provide and the more information about the user you get to track. Good and bad. Best way to enable this is to open up the phone platform (Android, iOS, RIM, Windows) to as many developers as possible. Java was a great example of a rapid and pervasive adoption.

What is cloud computing?

There is so much chatter about cloud computing these days that it is really hard to get people to agree on a common definition not only for cloud computing but also for SaaS and other acronyms. Fnally, I found a presentation from the NIST that is probably the best overview of cloud computing , its economics, standards and case studies. I can't recommend these slides enough to anyone involved with cloud computing.

A quick summary of this great material:

"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."

This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of

Five essential characteristics:

1. On-demand self-service
2. Broad network access
3. Resource pooling and Location independence
4. Rapid elasticity
5. Measured service

Three service models:

1. Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS): Use provider’s applications over a network
2. Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS): Deploy customer-created applications to a cloud
3. Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Rent processing, storage, network capacity, and other fundamental computing resources

Four deployment models:

1. Private cloud: enterprise owned or leased
2. Community cloud: shared infrastructure for specific community
3. Public cloud: Sold to the public, mega-scale infrastructure
4. Hybrid cloud: composition of two or more clouds

Cloud computing often leverages:

• Massive scale
• Homogeneity
• Virtualization
• Resilient computing
• Low cost software
• Geographic distribution
• Service orientation
• Advanced security technologies

It looks like we have now a common ground to discuss cloud computing!

HP to Acquire 3Com

HP is buying its way into the edge by acquiring 3Com. The acquisition makes sense in order to offer a complete edge-to-the-data-center solution. HP and Cisco have been on a collision course for some time now and this purchase is accelerating things. Read this blog entry from Cisco.
What it means for the other network equipment providers? Nokia Siemens, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent. Is there room for independent network equipment providers to the enterprise market. Let's watch IBM and Oracle's next move.

It seems to me that the network and the applications will meet somewhere in the cloud and IT giants are positioning themselves accordingly. I need to draw another triangle that would show the infrastructure supporting my first triangle. The developer community should be the focus for all these IT companies to develop a vibrant, interoperable ecosystem. Google and Apple are doing exactly see with their platforms. Equipment providers

Omnitrol Networks releases Retail Shop-Floor Inventory Tracking Solution for Apparel

Another great example of collaboration, we are now ready to release this solution to our partners and channels. Large retail companies can offer wide selections of clothing and have advantages in purchasing, distribution, and marketing while smaller stores can compete by offering unique merchandise, targeting a specific demographic, providing superior customer service, or serving a local market. All retail stores across the industry share a similar and very labor-intensive model when it comes to inventory tracking and inventory replenishment. New competition in recent years has come from discounters and from catalog and Internet retailers. Cost reduction is a key goal for apparel retailers.

Until now, solutions were "tailored" solutions. Thanks to our partner, we have been able to bring up an easy-to-install solution that can provide immediate visibility on apparel item movement and address the out-of-stock problem. Out of stock situations cost the industry nearly $90 billion every year.