Some are starting to say you're safer in the cloud...

You can make a reasonable argument that you are safer parking your date in the cloud, as does Michael Capone, CIO of Automatic Data Processing Inc., in a recent IT World Canada post. It may be smartest to rely on a large, reputable cloud provider who's primary business is hosting and securing your data and whose reputation and survival as a business depends on providing a secure, reliable service to its customers.

The tides are turning. More and more, IT is being provided to business as a service, and the level of service expected is also rising. More and more, technology consumers, both personal and in business, are expecting their information technology to just work, properly. People expect their phones to provide accurate verbal and visual directions. They expect their email to be always available and up-to-date, and they expect their cloud-bourn date to be readily available to them while being properly secure from those who should not have access to it. The first reactions to news of Internet security breaches are no longer that the Internet is insecure and that this is to be expected, but to think of the failures on the part of the data hosting party to properly secure their data.

We know that information in the cloud can be sufficiently secured, if the responsible parties know what they are doing and are vigilant. The party in the best position to do this is a company whose business focus is exactly that. The era of do-it-yourself IT is waning. Business IT's role morphing increasingly into a services management role, leveraging specialists and the economies of scale to get the technical job done, increasingly better, faster, safer, cheaper than it can be done in-house. Inextricably, this is the direction we are headed with our increasingly interconnected IT infrastructure, and we are approaching a tipping point. 

First, make sure you've got the problem framed right...

Good entry at the HBR blog page. "Critically analyzing and clearly articulating a problem can yield highly innovative solutions. Organizations that ask better questions and define their problems with more rigor can create strategic advantage and unlock truly groundbreaking innovation. Asking better questions delivers better results.

Excerpted from Dwayne Spradlin article on the Harvard Business Review Blog page "The Power of Defining the Problem" Definately worth a look. 

Android & Malware

Careful what you install on your Android phone! Per McAfee's Second Quarter Threat's Report Android now has the dubious distinction of being the most popular mobile platform for Malware, with almost two-thirds of all new mobile platform threats identified during the second quarter. The most likely vector is malicious or compromised apps. Once installed, they might start sending expensive SMS messages or sending your personal data out to the bad guys. Or they might set about installing other bad software onto your phone.

Java ME, Symbian and Blackberry were distant also-rans, together comprising about a third of the total new mobile platform malware exploits discovered in Q2 2011. There were none encountered on the iPhone, one powerful advantage of Apple's App Store model, with its monitoring and app review process.

So, a few reminders:
* Be careful what you install and where you get it! It could be an app you know, but it could be a compromised version of that application. Acquire applications from a reputable source.
* Be careful what links you click on. Think twice before you click on that link promising a funny picture.
* Have a good password on your phone - Hint: 1234 and 0000 are not good passwords. They will be the first a hacker or malware package will try.
* Turn off Bluetooth on your phone if you don't use it or when you're not using it.

Technology is a Means, Not an End

I recently read an article in The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/qUbK6Z) about technology in education. The gist of the article was that despite all the hope and hype and money that has been pored into technology for education, there is no clear evidence that the application of technology in itself leads to increased test scores. School districts that have spent millions on technology cannot point to improved test scores as evidence that the expenditure is has paid off. And while some point to benefits the students are reaping that are not reflected in test scores (like increased familiarity with technologies that are in widespread use in business) this begs the question - did we spend millions on laptops and smart boards so my daughter can learn to use Powerpoint?

Upon brief reflection, one realizes that this isn't surprising. Technologies are, after all, only tools. Simply having or using a tool does not automatically bestow upon the user some automatic benefit. Having a chisel does not make one a cabinetmaker. Though a chisel can enable a skilled cabinetmaker to do beautiful work.

The point is that technology is a means, not an end. You still, first and foremost, need good teachers and good teaching. Like many tools, the tool will only server to amplify the skill, or lack thereof, of the user. In fact, this is something the schools example bears out. Without thoughtful and skilled application, the technology will actually prove more of a distraction than a benefit. This is particularly tragic when you note that the school district in question was decreasing spending on teachers and enrichment programs while increasing spending on technology. Good teachers and enrichment programs are the things that can help children to learn to do the creative and lateral thinking that are what we really need to be teaching and encouraging in order for us to regain our competitive edge in the world. Powerpoint and Facebook will not do that for us. Don't get me wrong, I'm a BIG advocate for the innovative use of technology as a catalyst and a necessity for global competitiveness. But, we must engender innovation in our children. We have to teach them to make the mental leaps. We do not need to teach our children to use technology, though we may thoughtfully use technology to help us to teach. We may need to help them to see technology merely a means to reaching their goals. There is so much more to making beautiful furniture than simply using a chisel. Likewise, providing technology is not the same as making good use of technology to enrich, accelerate and empower the learning process.

A good example of an innovative use to technology as a means to empower and accelerate education is Salman Kahn's approach at The Kahn Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org). He didn't layer it in to an existing system, but used it as a means to achieve his vision (which schools are adopting.)

The same hold's true in business. Countless millions have been spent implementing the latest trends in technology without having thoughtfully worked through the use cases and benefits of those technologies, or the impact on and necessary changes to an organization in order to realize the benefits of a new technology. Technology enabled Kahn to deliver education in a fundamentally different way, in many ways turning traditional education on it's head. As Stephen Covey says, you must "begin with the end in mind" (https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit2.php). You need to go in to any implementation knowing as closely as possible what you expect to get out of it. This will enable you to mange expectations and risks, determine costs and benefits. In order to measure success, you must first determine your goals, and likewise, carefully crafted goals engender success. In the headlong rush for progress, when this step gets skipped, and things don't turn out well, people often end up looking back and either asking themselves "What happened?" or "What we were thinking?" Sometimes, technology is the shiny ball that causes us to take our eyes off the road ahead. Sometimes we have to ensure we keep the focus on fundamentals. "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." We need to be careful we are empowering teachers, not replacing them. We need to use technology to enrich education, not simply digitize it. Likewise, rather than having a goal to update our technology, we need to ensure we are using technology to reach our goals.

Apple's Internet vs. Google's Web

With Apple's revelations regarding iCloud, the upcoming replacement to their often frustrating MobileMe service, the distinction between Apple's vision for the Internetworked world and Google's vision for a Web-based world is becoming clear.

Apple seems to have learned the challenges they faced with the performance of their MobileMe service and with iTunes and the Mac or PC centered tethering architecture for iOS devices. They have seen the challenges, and the shortcomings, what worked and what didn't work. They have taken what the market has shown them - what users want and how they use their iPhones and iPads, and balanced that against their vision for the future. Their vision for the Apple ecosystem is no longer tethered to a Mac or PC, but is evolving into a iCloud-centric ecosystem.

What is significant about iCloud is that it is not a web-based service accessed by users via a browser. What it is is an Internet- or cloud-based service, or constellation of services really, that is accessed by your devices, their operating systems and the applications that run on them. It is a resource your devices and applications use to enable them to provide to you the services you want and are coming to expect from your devices. This perhaps seems to be subtle distinction, but it is an important one. It is this distinction that differentiates Apple from companies like Google or the emerging web-based media and software & services companies who deliver their wares over the World Wide Web via your browser. This distinction becomes clearer when you consider how each of these companies makes money. Apple is, at bottom, a hardware company, and that's how they make their money, selling devices. So Apple is focused on producing the most beautiful, useful, intuitive innovative and "insanely cool" devices they can produce. Apple is focused on providing the best experience to their customers, the people who but their hardware.

Google, by contrast, makes their money selling advertising. Their is nothing wrong with this, it means I get lots of very useful stuff for free, paid for by Google's customers, their advertisers - no complaints from me there. The distinction here is that Google's customers are their advertisers, not consumers who use their services. This is where they still make most of their money. We, the consumers, are their product. Google is selling our attention to their customers, and they deliver us, primarily, over the World Wide Web. Hence, their motivation to keeping us in a web-based environment.

Apple, motivated to provide the best possible experience to their customers, the people who buy their products, us, the consumers. Truthfully, the best possible end-user experience is still provided by locally-running applications - more power and flexibility and less latency. But today these applications are increasingly network-aware. This software model has exploded since the introduction of the iPhone and the associated App Store. Apple and its developer community have learned a lot over the past few years developing IOS application for the iPhone and then for the iPad. These are locally running networked applications. A testament to their superiority to web-based application is the way they almost immediately supplanted the web-based application that preceded them on the iPhone platform. With the iPhone and iPad applications of today, you interact with the application and the application does what it needs to and gets what it needs from the network. You interact with the application, not the Web or the Internet, the application takes care of that for you.

With iCloud, Apple is bringing this model to the Mac and Mac applications. iCloud is a resource that Mac application will access in the same manner IOS application access network resources. It has proven to be a better model than the Browser-based applications model, and will provide a better overall user experience. iCloud will also release iPhones and iPads from the need to be synced to your computer for backup and updates, and iTunes data is moving up into iCloud to make it more easily accessible from all your devices. Apple is selling the best possible user experience and for today's mobile, multi-device users, with iCloud, Apple will again distinguish itself at the top of the class.

With Apple's revelations regarding iCloud, the upcoming replacement to their often frustrating MobileMe service, the distinction between Apple's vision for the Internetworked world and Google's vision for a Web-based world is becoming clear.

Apple seems to have learned the challenges they faced with the performance of their MobileMe service and with iTunes and the Mac or PC centered tethering architecture for iOS devices. They have seen the challenges, and the shortcomings, what worked and what didn't work. They have taken what the market has shown them - what users want and how they use their iPhones and iPads, and balanced that against their vision for the future. Their vision for the Apple ecosystem is no longer tethered to a Mac or PC, but is evolving into a iCloud-centric ecosystem.

What is significant about iCloud is that it is not a web-based service accessed by users via a browser. What it is is an Internet- or cloud-based service, or constellation of services really, that is accessed by your devices, their operating systems and the applications that run on them. It is a resource your devices and applications use to enable them to provide to you the services you want and are coming to expect from your devices. This perhaps seems to be subtle distinction, but it is an important one. It is this distinction that differentiates Apple from companies like Google or the emerging web-based media and software & services companies who deliver their wares over the World Wide Web via your browser. This distinction becomes clearer when you consider how each of these companies makes money. Apple is, at bottom, a hardware company, and that's how they make their money, selling devices. So Apple is focused on producing the most beautiful, useful, intuitive innovative and "insanely cool" devices they can produce. Apple is focused on providing the best experience to their customers, the people who but their hardware.

Google, by contrast, makes their money selling advertising. Their is nothing wrong with this, it means I get lots of very useful stuff for free, paid for by Google's customers, their advertisers - no complaints from me there. The distinction here is that Google's customers are their advertisers, not consumers who use their services. This is where they still make most of their money. We, the consumers, are their product. Google is selling our attention to their customers, and they deliver us, primarily, over the World Wide Web. Hence, their motivation to keeping us in a web-based environment.

Apple, motivated to provide the best possible experience to their customers, the people who buy their products, us, the consumers. Truthfully, the best possible end-user experience is still provided by locally-running applications - more power and flexibility and less latency. But today these applications are increasingly network-aware. This software model has exploded since the introduction of the iPhone and the associated App Store. Apple and its developer community have learned a lot over the past few years developing IOS application for the iPhone and then for the iPad. These are locally running networked applications. A testament to their superiority to web-based application is the way they almost immediately supplanted the web-based application that preceded them on the iPhone platform. With the iPhone and iPad applicatons of today, you interact with the application and the application does what it needs to and gets what it needs from the network. You interact with the application, not the Web or the Internet, the application takes care of that for you.

With iCloud, Apple is bringing this model to the Mac and Mac applications. iCloud is a resource that Mac application will access in the same manner IOS application access network resources. It has proven to be a better model than the Browser-based applications model, and will provide a better overall user experience. iCloud will also release iPhones and iPads from the need to be synced to your computer for backup and updates, and iTunes data is moving up into iCloud to make it more easily accessible from all your devices. Apple is selling the best possible user experience and for today's mobile, multi-device users, with iCloud, Apple will again distinguish itself at the top of the class.