http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/index.cfm?forumid=19 en-US FuseTalk Standard Edition 3.2 Build 80405 James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=52557 2013-05-21T09:42:47 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=52557#comments 0
"Although the cloud has matured rapidly, concerns surrounding data protection and security remain high and are impeding the pace of adoption whilst end users learn how to overcome the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that surrounds the subject. It is therefore vital that the industry works together to address these concerns professionally... Our members are made up of the global thought leaders from across the widest spectrum of organisations enabling or delivering cloud services... going forward."

Andy Burton, Cloud Industry Forum]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=397&threadid=52389 2013-05-08T09:03:14 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=397&threadid=52389#comments 0 Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel.

William Seward Burroughs I (1857-1898) established in 1886 the American Arithmometer Company, which changed its name to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in 1904, and went on become the biggest adding machine company in the US.

Over the opening decades of the 20th century the Burroughs Adding Machine Company extended its product line to typewriters and other devices. In 1953 it renamed again to the Burroughs Corporation, thus starting its move into computer products which began with the acquisition (in 1956) of the ElectroData Corporation. ElectroData had produced the Datatron 205 computer (renamed the Burroughs Model 205, or 'B-205'). A decade later the D2000/D4000 product range (known also as the Terminal Computer 500) was produced, which had a printer and a 1K (80 bit) disk memory. These sold well in the banking sector, as they could be connected to mainframe computers from vendors other than Burroughs Corp. - a rare example of interoperability in an era when proprietary 'closed' technology was the norm.

In the 1960s and 1970s the Burroughs Corporation went on to develop innovative mainframe computer architectures: their machine instruction sets were based around high-level programming languages such as ALGOL, COBOL, and FORTRAN.

Although never as 'visible' a brand as IBM, the Burroughs Corporation's Model B-205 hardware appeared more often as props and set dressing in several of my favourite childhood telly shows, such as Batman (1966-1968) as the Batcomputer, and Irwin Allen's Lost in Space (1965-1968) as the Jupiter 2 spacecraft's on-board computer system.

Spinning B-205 tape drives, meanwhile, also appeared in other Allen series, such as The Time Tunnel (1966-1967) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968). A B-205 console is also seen in cult sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage (1966), and other big screen Hollywood efforts of the time. More recently a B-205 had a cameo in the retro-spoof comedy Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999).

In the early 1980s, like several of its rivals, Burroughs Corporation began producing personal computers - the B20 and B25 lines - with the Intel 8086/8088 family of 8-bit chips as the central processor. These ran the BTOS operating system (licensed from Convergent Technologies), and implemented an early local area network to share a data storage resources between workgroup users.

But the advent of the PC meant that the decade was also one of consolidation and contraction for the traditional big system incumbents, and eventually Burroughs Corporation acquired rival Sperry Corporation in 1986 to form a new IT company, Unisys Corporation.

During these years, William S. Burroughs II had nothing to do with his namesake corporation - his family had long since sold up its shares in the business (but they'd done well out of it). He was instead acquiring a wayward reputation as a 'literary outlaw', as notorious as a dipso drug addict who shot his wife during a drunken game of William Tell as for his controversial novels, such as Naked Lunch (1959) and The Soft Machine (1961).

In his writing Burroughs often targeted the dubious and ruthless self-aggrandisement of corporate culture, exemplified by the big new computer businesses of the 1960s and 1970s, which he deemed covertly political in nature - although I'm not aware that he took any direct satirical swipes at Burroughs Corporation by name.

He did, however, have no qualms about irking the Burroughs Corporation by posing in front of its New York offices for a much-reproduced photo portrait taken in 1972 by sometime Andy Warhol acolyte Gerard Malanga, with the company's logo appearing prominently on the wall behind him.

In the early 1990s Unisys used to invite IT journalists down to its International Management Centre in St Paul-de-Vance, France, to cover conferences and other media briefings. At one of these events I mentioned in passing the distant connection between Unisys and the scribbling scion to a seasoned Unisys staffer who was ex-Burroughs Corp, and they told me that even though he had no formal connection with the company during its glory days, because of his reputation Burroughs' published work was frowned upon by Burroughs Corporation executives, and apparently Burroughs Corporation personnel caught in possession of a naughty Bill Burroughs book faced a stern telling off.

Although he lived well into the personal computer era, Burroughs held an 'anti-computer stance', according to fellow novelist William Gibson: 'When our paths finally crossed, I asked Burroughs whether he was writing on a computer yet,' Gibson later recalled. '"What would I want a computer for?" [Burroughs] asked, with evident distaste. "I have a typewriter".'

Nonetheless, Burroughs was one of the first 20th century writers to become interested in the computer's capability for random sequence generation and its potential applications for creative experimentation through his association with electronics engineer and programmer Ian Sommerville (1940-1976) - more about that in later posts. ]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=52338 2013-05-02T09:13:50 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=52338#comments 1 50 years ago. Burroughs was among the first bicamerally-minded thinkers to recognise that language has a viral propensity that many humans not only have low resistance to, but will willingly contract, in their dual quests to abate status anxiety and fill-out the factoid void.

When outbreaks of contagious infections such as measles combine with the contaminated strains of the word virus it's open season for the cliché-rati and jargonistas. Chances of catching measles in affected parts of Wales becomes a postcode lottery; morbilli is the monster we never quite killed off, that could be a game-changer in regard to how we view so-called dormant-thought-defunct legacy epidemics...

The MMR vaccine seems to be proving an effective antidote to measles - but what can vaccinate us against the sub-vocal speech raging inside our heads, and topped-up by ceaseless media meaning mongering?

"Modern man has lost the option of silence," added Mr Burroughs. "Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word..."

Hmmm... more antibacterial mouthwash, anyone?

Meanwhile here is E&T's latest updated list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords from our wholly unscientific and unmethodical media monitor:

1. Game-changer
2. Postcode lottery
3. Level playing field
4. On steroids (as in 'This is Government policy on steroids')
5. Inspirational
6. Finesse (as in 'finesse an argument')
7. Poster boy / poster girl
8. The train has left the station
9. Fit for purpose
10. On my watch / not on my watch
11. Captured the public imagination / public's imagination
12. Fair play

Spring Bonus Buzzword: Vector (as in 'Badgers are the major wildlife vector for the spread of TB').]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=51858 2013-04-03T11:40:19 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=51858#comments 0
I've yet to hear a business leader use the phrase 'exponential decay' when the balance sheet is veering toward the red; more likely they'll speak of 'negative growth'. The more inventive of the species may even try for something akin to faux disciplinary terminology - recent favourites have included 'revenue reversal' and 'income inversion' - neither of which, however, have a place in E&T's latest unscientifically-generated list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords...

1. Level playing field
2. Soft landing
3. Exponential
4. Game-changer
5. Postcode lottery
6. The train has left the station
7. Key (as in 'key issues', 'key metrics')
8. Low-hanging fruit (NB: there are no 'high-hanging fruit')
9. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
10. Comfort zone
11. Thought leadership
12. Wake-up call
13. Ecosystem]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=51637 2013-03-22T09:43:12 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=51637#comments 0
"The benefits of cloud computing are widely recognised... But, somewhat surprisingly, businesses still fail to factor in the broader benefits of this delivery model when calculating ROI, preferring instead to focus on cost-savings... The benefits brought by cloud computing go beyond the IT department purse strings and it is essential that these are factored in from the start when deciding whether to move to a cloud-based solution... When it comes to ROI, businesses and vendors alike must think more laterally about improvements to technical capabilities and the knock-on effect that it has on the business at large, such as improved flexibility and productivity..."

Michel Robert, managing director, Claranet]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=51203 2013-03-04T10:03:40 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=51203#comments 0 cut back on discretionary spending. The sector will record 'weak growth' during the rest of 2013, IBISWorld predicts.
The phrase 'take-away' is, of course, no longer restricted to meals-to-go; it has in recent years entered common usage in a different context, that of the lingo of business efficiency: the 'takeaways' from a report, meeting, or event are the key points a person derives from them: often they are presented amid the 'headline findings' or maybe 'executive summary' of a report or survey. Use of takeaways in this context date back to the mid-2000s, but there's been a resurgence recent weeks that's won this dread phrase a place in E&T's unscientifically-generated list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords...

1. Take-aways
2. Low-hanging fruit (NB: there are no 'high-hanging fruit')
3. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
4. Key (as in 'key issues', 'key metrics')
5. Box-ticking exercise / ticks all the right boxes
6. Ecosystem
7. Excited / exciting
8. Big ask
9. Of biblical proportions (i.e., 'a data deluge of biblical proportions')
10. Magic bullet / silver bullet (as in 'there is no magic bullet for solving gun crime')
11. Thought leadership
12. Inappropriate (as in 'inappropriate behaviour')
13. Wake-up call
14: Level playing field]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=51042 2013-02-22T09:06:21 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=51042#comments 0
Specialised radiation-hardened components can allow conventional satellites to operate for years without problems; but they are expensive, which adds significantly to the overall cost of development. A further expense comes from the need to ensure that circuits have back-ups if one is unfortunate enough to be damaged by radiation.

Many of the circuits that function happily at ground level are much more likely to fail, sometimes irreversibly, when flung into orbit and exposed to the harmful phenomena there to be found. Dealing with these damaging emanations have posed major challenges for satellite engineers.
One approach to ameliorating the effects of radiation is to use triple modular redundancy (TMR). Three sets of electronic circuits are used for each function, and vote on the output to weed out errors caused by stray alpha particles that may flip a control or memory bit.

This is expensive to do across the board; but as Chris Edwards reports in the current issue of E&T, Cubesats such as UKube-1 project - developed, built and tested for the UK Space Agency by Clyde Space of Glasgow - employ limited amounts of TMR to ensure critical subsystems, such as the Mission Interface Computer (MIC), can function after a failure.

Radiation may also have its practical uses up there. An EADS Astrium experiment to fly aboard UKube-1 will use the properties of radiation strikes to create random numbers for cryptographic applications. It is difficult to generate random numbers with sufficiently high entropy to defeat codebreakers. Spaceborne random number generators may provide an answer.'

Read more on this topic - 'The future of the satellite is cubed: meet the Jack-in-the-box that can carry your experiment into orbit on a realistic budget']]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=50978 2013-02-20T08:41:06 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=50978#comments 0 convince constituents of their earnestness and sincerity have fixated on the word 'passionate' to characterise the depth of their driving emotions. "Yes, I feel passionately about opera", "I feel so very passionately about this regeneration project"; then there's the double-passionate, as in "I feel passionately, passionately about the moral climate in this country", as if merely deploying this word constitutes irrefutable proof and assurance of their heartfelt sincerity.

But PWFP (people who feel passionate) are now being replaced by PWFEs - people who feel excited. You just listen out for anyone being interviewed on BBC Radio 4, say. 'Excited' has been slowly entering public discourse as the new defining adjective for the emotionally stirred. Now politicians and social commenters are excited by the possibilities of space mining, or find the Richard III disinterment very exciting... My view is that it's a somewhat weaker substitute: you can just about imaging someone faking intellectual passion - but intellectual excitement?

So here is E&T's latest updated list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords from our wholly unscientific media monitor...

1. Excited / exciting
2. Box-ticking exercise
3. Ring-fence
4. Key (as in 'key issues', 'key metrics')
5. Low-hanging fruit (NB: there are no 'high-hanging fruit')
6. Magic bullet / silver bullet (as in 'there is no magic bullet for solving gun crime')
7. Backstory
8. Moral climate
9. Nuclear option
10. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
11. Big ask
12. Thought leadership
]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=50702 2013-02-05T11:17:46 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=50702#comments 0 so that they are protected from riskier investment banking. The metaphor has been received added value by further suggesting that the ring-fences be "electrified" if banks fail to implement Osborne's reforms. Later pundits suggested that electrified ring-fences be topped by a layer of barbed wire to deter bankers from attempting to climb over them; but what safeguards can be deployed to stop bankers from attempting to tunnel under said electrified ring-fences remains under debate. A warhead might suffice, according to the Financial Times, which reports that 'the chancellor's team said he could not resist the political pressure to add the "nuclear option" of full banking separation to the regulatory arsenal... as more banking scandals came to light'.
Here's E&T's latest list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords from our wholly unscientific media monitor...

1. Ring-fence
2. Nuclear option
3. Magic bullet / silver bullet (as in 'there is no magic bullet for solving gun crime')
4. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
5. Moral climate
6. Thought leadership
7. Box-ticking exercise
8. Backstory
9. Future-proof
10. Transparency
11. Discontinuity
12. Economic miracle (usually preceded by "China's")

]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=397&threadid=49897 2012-12-24T11:57:55 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=397&threadid=49897#comments 0 E&T readers yet to experience Ridley Scott's classic SF movie 'Blade Runner: The Final Cut' might want to pencil BBC-2's 30 December TV screening into their personal schedulers (11:30pm). The film is choc-full of predictive SET
- science, engineering, and technology. But how has it progressed over the 30 years since the film's first release? And what is it that makes 'Blade Runner's 1982 take on the shape of tech to come so much more credible than the cheesy tricorders of 'Star Trek' or Dr Who's sappy sonic screwdriver? Check out E&T's delve into the SET of 'Blade Runner'. Flying cars, companion robots, digital signage, bionic eyes, biometric voice ID, multi-dimensional motion imaging, mega architecture, smart lighting, smart weapons, robo-pets, public videophony, lie detection and interrogation IT, and electron microscopy - they're all in there.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=49708 2012-12-13T10:12:35 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=49708#comments 0
"Businesses will not be able to compete without hybrid cloud storage strategies... The need to create, store and access more data, from mobile and traditional computing devices, makes old storage and data protection solutions obsolete, inflexible and expensive. If IT departments don't provide end users with this capability, end-users will bypass IT and obtain it themselves."

Alan Laing, vice president EMEA, Acronis]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=49461 2012-11-28T12:46:18 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=49461#comments 0
"The key to developing a trustworthy, effective cloud-enabled service is in taking knowledge and expertise not just from recent advancements in cloud infrastructures, but decades of outsourced data management... Whilst enterprises of all sizes are increasingly moving towards external infrastructures with varying levels of virtualisation, emphasis on business critical risk is as strong as ever."

Benoit Mercier, ICT solutions director, Telehouse ]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=49334 2012-11-21T11:05:05 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=49334#comments 0 factory sensors, trading systems, and call detail records compiled by telecoms companies; a big multinational enterprise soon faces its own 'Big Data Andes' range to conquer.

One often overlooked area of Big Data management that developers are under increasing pressure to minimise is data trafficking. Because the processing of large data sets is often performed in a different location to where the information itself resides, it first has to be transmitted over a network connection. Bandwidth fluctuation can affect both application availability and performance - especially true in environments where privacy and data sovereignty concerns demand that sensitive data does not leave on-premise servers, and where many users at multiple sites collaborate to submit, process, or analyse big data sets or reports.

And where information cannot be readily fed into the various different Big Data system elements because the sheer volume of information involved swamps one or more of them, further bottlenecks on the ingress or processing side can bring the flow to a halt. It's a scenario that will be familiar to any old school network manager from the 1990s, a decade when data traffic volumes first started to outstrip infrastructural capacity in open-build premises LAN backbones.

Back in those days it was a matter of introducing bigger, more capacious intelligent hubs and using network management tools to better segregate traffic flows before evaluating the necessity to build-out more cabling infrastructure, preferably fibre-based.

Nowadays most organisations will probably not want to spend more ICT budget on installing supplementary premises cabling just for the periodical Big Data 'shunts' - building a sort of 'Big Data bypass', as it were - especially at a time when strategists are claiming that the compelling appeal of IP-based networking is that you can constrain costs by running multiple traffic stream types over the same hardwired infrastructure.

But this additional physical demand incursion is another factor in the Big Data challenge, and one that has particular poignancy for organisations who, for whatever reason, are not allowed to outsource their data centre operations.

Meanwhile, anyone with an interest in Big Data should attend the 'Big Data - Turning Big Challenges into Big Opportunities' Seminar, taking place on Wednesday 5 December at the Lion Court Conference Centre (just off Holbern) in central London (WC1V 6NY). This case-study driven seminar day - chaired by yours truly - will equip delegates with insider know-how as to how to implement big data strategies, and furnish you with contacts from across the big data industry to support your work going forward. Full details at
www.theiet.org/big-data]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48904 2012-10-23T09:30:09 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48904#comments 0 the most in-vogue tech jargon word of this year must surely be 'ecosystem': last Thursday, for instance, I heard it uttered some 12 times in one day during the
course of my visit to the IP EXPO exhibition and conference, and then later the IET Young Professionals Event - the splendid evening lecture by Eben Upton, Founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Wikipedia's definition defines ecosystems conservatively as 'a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the non-living components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system'. The Oxford Dictionary allows for a secondary usage, 'a complex network or interconnected systems', as in 'Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ecosystem', but does so with a certain distaste, one fancies. In this respect, vendor brand value can be seen as the residual DNA of a technology-specific ecosystem. Here's E&T's latest list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords from our wholly unscientific media monitor...

1. Ecosystem
2. Moral climate
3. Discontinuity
4. Mandarins (as in 'civil service mandarins', 'Whitehall mandarins')
5. Transparency
6. Thought leadership
7. Box ticking exercise
8. Narrative
9. Future-proof
10. 360° (as in a '360° view of the socio-political landscape')
11. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
12. Economic miracle (usually preceded by 'China's')]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48692 2012-10-08T09:21:43 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48692#comments 0 using text words instead of normal English, according to a survey of 1000 persons by authentication solutions firm SecurEnvoy. And nearly 60 per cent think text, instant messages, and social media are "changing how we write" - and more than 40 per cent reckon that they are compromising their children's ability to write correctly.

'Wht a ld of cdswlp!' you may think. After all, when in the 19th Century telegram service providers adopted a price-per-word model, a whole new language of telegramese - a style of writing which leaves out words that are not important - to keep down costs. Did the Victorians throw up their petticoats in horror at the prospect of a generation of telegram senders starting to abbreviate their speech, or condense written correspondance accordingly, even when in those days you could send a 10,000-word love letter by penny post? They did not. What a pthtc bnch of wss we are in danger of turning into.
Meanwhile, here's the latest list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords from E&T's wholly unscientific media monitor...

1. Intuit
2. Economic miracle (usually preceded by 'China's')
3. Narrative
4. Mandarins (as in 'civil service mandarins', 'Whitehall mandarins')
5. Transparency
6. Thought leadership
7. Box ticking exercise
8. Pleb (aka 'pleb rant' in context of Andrew Mitchell hoo-ha)
9. Backburner, backburnered (as in 'this proposal has been backburnered for now')
10. 360° (as in '360° view')
11. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
12. Moral climate]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=48436 2012-09-18T13:12:57 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=48436#comments 0 Jonathan Hunt, business development director at desktop and virtualisation firm Point to Point, about 'bring your own device' (BYOD), an ideology that could be transitioning from wishful thinking to market orthodoxy.

Generally-speaking, BYOD is a business policy of allowing/encouraging employees bringing personally- owned mobile devices such as laptops and smartphones to their place of work, and use them to access company resources including email, intranet, and company applications, alongside their personal data and applications. That the BYOD ethos can also have 'disruptive' impact on enterprise digital communications should not be overlooked.

Yet BYOD might also uncover pointers toward changes in the way people need to use information technology in mobile-connected working environments. The lowering price-tag of sophisticated mobile devices, plus the growing ubiquity of free, reliable public Wi-Fi connectivity, are also highly influential factors in encouraging the phenomenon. People no longer have to rely on their employer to meet the cost of a baseline-specification system that costs thousands. Corporate equipment refresh cycle lags sometimes meant that office workers had more sophisticated PCs at home than they did at work; but even so, some predict that BYOD will cause a bunch of operational issues that many boardrooms will find discomforting.

Such concerns will have to be allayed if pro-BYOD sloganising about capital expenditure reductions and staff training budget savings, as well as how staff are more likely to take care of devices containing sensitive data if the device is a personal possession rather than belonging to an employer, is to be taken seriously.

More productive staff might mean higher salary bills, and budget saved on buying new PCs over standard product refresh cycles is likely to be offset by a requirement to invest in new BYOD management tools - a growing market sector.

Although BYOD is partly about decentralisation and the freeing-up of choice, it still has to be managed under a policy-based regime. This presents fresh challenges for ICT policy makers. BYOD advocates could yet find that newfound flexibility comes with quite stringent obligations and even a renewed requirement to stick to agreed guidelines, such as acceptable usage policies - employers will be concerned about corporate data sharing a hard disk with potentially inappropriate personal content, say. There is also the possibility that career penalties will apply even when individuals are careless with hardware that belongs to them, and they are liable for replacements should it get lost during work hours.

But the BYOD ethos is pervasive enough to cause IT strategists to consider if it might usefully inform new thinking about future developments in enterprise IT planning. For instance, if fewer enterprise staff are working from hardwired computers, are 'traditional' local-area network infrastructure still needed as much? One scenario along these lines is in smart buildings where more of the available Ethernet communications capacity might be deemed by premises technology managers as better used by other applications as there is less fixed-device information systems data running over it, and more of what remains can be transferred onto internal Wi-Fi connections, where procedures allow.

BYOD could also prompt changes in conventional enterprise voice communications. Email and text messaging are increasingly the primary media for business communications, making the necessity to pick-up first time less necessary. Voice messaging is not commonly regarded as efficient a business tool as it used to be.

A related factor at play here is the fact that VPNs allied to cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) and data as a service (DaaS) options - possibly bundled as virtual private clouds (VPCs) - should mean that less, if any, sensitive employer data will actually be stored on any portable devices. It is also important to bear in mind that the BYOD phenomenon can been seen to some extent as part of a general trend toward 'thin client' style endpoint devices - both fixed and mobile - where very little actual enterprise data actually held on the device itself.

Another factor on the security side is the fact that BYOD-minded organisations are realising the necessity of new approaches to overall risk-assessment that include classifying their data and applying an IT-scale value to it, so that each user data access privileges are better aligned. This seems another factor in support of BYOD, but one that could entail cost implications in a business environment where enterprises are generating data at such rates that the monitoring and classification is a full-time tasks which would require additional IS staff, tools, and the support of third-party services.

A extended version of this 'The Device Divide' post appears in the October 2012 issue of 'E&T' magazine.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48417 2012-09-17T11:03:02 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48417#comments 1
"The market is clearly moving out of a nascent state into mainstream adoption[,] and with it the challenges are changing from clarity and comfort that the cloud is viable as an IT delivery model into achieving a strategic goal of integrating cloud within the wider IT agenda[,] and determining an effective and efficient path for more widely embracing cloud services without diminishing efficiency, control or governance."

Andy Burton, chair of CIF and CEO of Fasthosts]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48120 2012-08-24T15:32:59 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48120#comments 0
"EtherCloud breaks through the complexity of legacy storage management, replacing it with a flexible, automated, programmable platform. This allows enterprise and cloud customers to provision and manage petabytes of high-performance block and file storage, with the same simplicity found in consumer cloud services. We are excited to enable the next generation of software-defined data centres, and drive complexity out of the most challenging layer of the data centre today - storage."

Anil Virmani, senior vice president of engineering, Coraid]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=397&threadid=48062 2012-08-20T12:14:34 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=397&threadid=48062#comments 0 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.

Gartner's 2012 Hype Cycle Special Report provides strategists and planners with an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of more than 1,900 technologies, grouped into 92 areas. New Hype Cycles for 2012 include 'big data', the 'Internet of Things', 'in-memory computing', and 'strategic business capabilities (SBC)'.

Gartner analysts say that these technologies have 'moved noticeably' along the Hype Cycle since last year, while consumerisation is now expected to reach the Plateau of Productivity in two to five years, down from five to 10 years in 2011. Bring your own device (BYOD), 3D printing and social analytics are some of the technologies identified at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in this year's Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle, Gartner adds.

"The theme of this year's Hype Cycle is the concept of 'tipping points'," says Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner. "We are at an interesting moment, a time when many of the scenarios we've been talking about for a long time are almost becoming reality. The 'smarter smartphone' is a case in point. It's now possible to look at a smartphone and unlock it via facial recognition, and then talk to it to ask it to find the nearest bank ATM."]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48025 2012-08-17T11:34:32 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=48025#comments 0
"A degree of public scepticism surrounding cloud services is inevitable after such high expectations were set and therefore it's natural that, as the market matures, there will be some rebalancing of that expectation and understanding... The good news is that cloud services are now largely proven as offering viable IT deployment models regardless of organisational size, vertical or application area, and as such will continue to improve in both capability and adoption and I have no doubt that wider mainstream adoption will follow."

Andy Burton, chairman, Cloud Industry Forum]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47769 2012-08-01T16:56:54 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47769#comments 0
"IT is a fashion industry and cloud computing is the new black."

Repurposing of an ages-old cloud computing cliché on latest Ovum Cloud Forum marketing email shot.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47454 2012-07-13T17:11:53 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47454#comments 0 being asked if you want to 'upgrade' to a meal deal - for just an extra 20p you can add an apple or a chocolate bar or a packet of crisps to your pre-packed sandwich. As an acquaintance of mine observes, "The most annoying thing about the 'meal deal' phenomenon is the way shop staff stare at you when you decline their 'irresistible' offer, as though you're crazy for not going for it". Anyway, here's Buzzsore's latest update of the dirty dozen current clichés...

1. Kick it into the long grass
2. Be careful what you wish for
3. Systemic
4. Moral compass
5. Transparency
6. Thought leadership
7. Box ticking exercise
8. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
9. Trope
10. 360° (as in '360° view')
11. All of the above
12. Coping mechanism(s)]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47349 2012-07-05T09:56:25 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47349#comments 0
"Cloud computing is becoming mainstream but there is still a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt in the market... The reality is that experience, expectation and common sense all point to the fact that any one organisation will access IT in any combination of on-premise and in-cloud, and through any combination of service and deployment models. To this end it is essential that organisations are able to clearly assess for each project or application which scenario best achieves their objectives and how that fits within their wider and long term IT strategy."

Steve Harris, managing director, Polymorph]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47074 2012-06-18T09:10:13 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=47074#comments 0
"Despite the cloud hype, many companies still find obtaining a group-level picture of current IT assets and how they support the business elusive. Britain's firms need much clearer IT system insight and scenario-planning to map out the key steps to 'cloud-readying' their organisation and cut management costs in the meantime... Many UK firms do not know if they are genuinely benefiting from 'first stage' virtualisation or early cloud adoption."

Glyn Heath, managing director, Centiq]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=46898 2012-06-06T10:26:42 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=46898#comments 0 you will get it in middle life' (JW von Goethe, James Joyce), but in its purer form probably has its origins in Chinese proverbs. It's perfect for modern day punditry, because it sounds impressively like it has one foot in ancient profundity, and another in modern-day post-ironical wryness, with the added ring of a classic movie quote. Ditto 'trope', which is often used incorrectly by the media as a synonym for 'plank', as in a stated principle or objective comprising the political platform of a campaigning party. Both examples join the latest update of E&T's Buzzword Barometer.

1. Trope
2. Be careful what you wish for
3. Direction of travel
4. Transparency
5. Game-changer
6. Thought leadership
7. Box ticking exercise
8. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
9. Passionate / passionately
10. Cluster
11. All of the above
12. Sustainable / sustainability]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46806 2012-05-30T17:11:41 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46806#comments 0
Organised by the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, 'Turing and his Times' featured a talk by computer historian Professor Simon Lavington on 'Turing and his Contemporaries', a simulation of the Pilot ACE computer by TNMOC trustee Kevin Murrell, and the first formal public showing of a video commissioned by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of the recollections of two of Alan Turing's colleagues.
The three-part videoconsists of:
Part 1 Introduction and NPL video featuring two of Turing's colleagues: Part 2 Prof Simon Lavington talks about Turing's ideas post-1945.
Part 3 Kevin Murrell demonstrates a simulation of the Pilot ACE followed by a Q&A session (includes an unexpected appearance from an audience member who had programmed the Pilot ACE computer!

'Turing and his Times' was the second of three Turing-themed events linking three of the top computing museums in the world. At The Computer History Museum in California on 7 March, historian George Dyson (author of 'Turing's Cathedral') was in conservation with Museum President and CEO John Hollar about the influence of Alan Turing on John von Neumann (and vice-versa) as the digital universe was taking its present form. A video of that encounter is also available.

And in Germany, on 26 May, the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn, Germany, hosts an event featuring two short lectures: Professor Dr Horst Zuse talking about his father Konrad Zuse and his computers, Professor Dr Paul Rojas comparing Turing and Zuse, plus videos of their Turing exhibition and the Heinz Nixdorf Museum's working mechanical Turing machine.

And there's information about the forthcoming Alan Turing Centenary Conference - and other Turing content - in this recent E&T news update - 'Turing conference promises unique meeting of minds'.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46614 2012-05-17T15:00:03 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46614#comments 0 beginning tomorrow, Friday 18 May) will know that even a relatively straightforward mechanism as the Strowger system system - prototyped using pins and collar boxes, legend has it - soon developed into a highly sophisticated piece of electromechanical apparatus.

Interested students of telecommunications history should check-out this 8.5 minute 1951 instructional film, made available online courtesy of the AT&T Tech Channel - 'The Step-By-Step Switch'.

As the accompanying web text explains, the purpose of this film was to show Bell employees how calls were automatically switched through an SxS office, and gives a general appreciation of the importance, complexity, and cost of switching equipment in an average 1950s telephone office. The path of a call is shown as it runs through a demonstration unit. "Careful adherance to Bell System maintenance practices" is stressed.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46564 2012-05-14T09:06:50 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46564#comments 0 make the correct connections between caller 'end device' and receiver 'end devices'.

American Strowger first conceived his invention in 1888, and patented the automatic telephone exchange three years later. Some reports suggest that he constructed an initial model of his invention from a round collar box and some straight pins.

The centenary will be marked in a three-day celebration beginning on Friday 18 May at the Avoncroft Museum, home of the National Telephone Kiosk Collection. Avoncroft Museum (near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire) is a 15-acre open-air site of historic buildings. The Kiosk Collection opened in 1994, with the support of BT's Connected Earth heritage initiative, and contains examples of all BT kiosks down the decades. The Museum is open from 10.30am to 5.00pm during the Strowger Centenary Event (18-20 May 2012). More details at http://www.avoncroft.org.uk.

Mr Strowger, BTW, was not a technologist by trade, but a funeral director from Kansas City. Legend has it that Strowger's undertaking business was losing custom to a rival whose telephone-operator wife was intercepting and redirecting callers to Strowger to her hubby's parlour.

Alas Strowger himself didn't live long enough to see his brainchild flourish: he died in 1902, a decade before the opening of the Epsom exchange. He was survived by his widow Susan: after her death in 1921, an obituary claimed that she had been sitting on additional 'revolutionary' Strowger designs, but 'had refused to make them public while she was alive because only others would profit from her husband's designs'.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46325 2012-04-27T18:20:40 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46325#comments 0 Deutschland's Schlechteste Über-Daten-Hamsterers!, (trans: Germany's Worst Super Data Hoarders) the reality show which features 'ordinary' (but bonkers) people who cannot face-up to discarding redundant computer data.

Host Mitzi Meyers' subject this time was Steffi, a 36-year-old biochemist and part-time webmeistress from a Berlin suburb who obsessively retains all her PC log files: she has millions of such sets going back to her time at university, including all of those from various websites she has administered over the last 15 years. Unlike her fellow data hoarder Günther featured in Tuesday's show (see Buzzsore's 25 April 2012 post), Steffi has the wherewithal to migrate her data onto successively more up-to-date storage media, and has reached the stage where she keeps RAID devices under the floorboards of her small terraced haus.

Also unlike Günther, Steffi remained for most of the programme in staunch denial that she had any kind of problem - "It is not so much that I want to keep all my data, it is just that I do not want to delete any of it," she explained tearfully into the camera. To help Steffi come to terms with her data-doting psychosis Mitzi took her to a data de-duplication consultant in Stuttgart who helped take the first painful steps on the road to recovery: excising all the third and fourth copies of files alone slimmed-down her data sets by several gigabytes, and alles war gut for Steffi; but not for your blogger, who channel-hopped to a Spanish TV documentary about a tribe of Intellectual Pygmies who, a bearded anthropologist explained, worship Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 programme 'In Our Time', which they listen to every week on an ancient crystal set that was salvaged from a crashed biplane sometime in the 1940s.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46304 2012-04-26T13:33:59 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46304#comments 0 Gilberto) attracted a lot of visitor attention as it
trundled around the smooth-floor circuit bordering the company's stand.

This year Bluebotics has been joined by more service robot makers, and there is clear evidence that this technology is moving from clever novelty to commercially-viable application.

Take for instance the showcased products from German firm MetraLabs, its SCITOS G6 Transporter and its SCITOS G3 home-care model. The former resembles an item of cafeteria furniture most people are familiar with: the open-stack cabinet for leaving your tray and used tableware, etc., in. G6 is a robotised version of this eatery staple, programmed to autonomously take the dirties back to the kitchen when all its slots become filled, then return empty to its designated post.

MetraLabs has stuck a bug-eyed little 'head' on the top of the unit, and at first I thought, "Oh, not another daft attempt to make a robot look like a toy human"; but it actually has a practical purpose: it prevents people from overloading the unit by placing items on its top, and also provides a branding opportunity for restaurant chains or their suppliers.

SCITOS G3 is designed to support persons in home environments,nursing homes, and even hospitals. It trundles about displaying an interactive touch screen that can be used for, say, displaying medication schedules. Future possibilities include integrating this with mobile phone-based telehealthcare apps, or even full M2M functionality.

One other point about the mobile service robots at Hannover Messe worth noting: unlike last year, when they were kept corralled within the confines of each exhibitors' stand, this week they have been allowed to wander - autonomously in some cases - around the aisles, so that visitors can inspect them up close, touch and prod them, put their arms round them and have their photograph taken, etc.

This mularkey will in due course present something of an issue for exhibition organisers, one suspects, when their clients want to use mobile robots to distribute marketing collateral (flyers, freebies) to visitor throngs. And how belong before the dreaded health & safety issue crops up, with the first legal action for an injury caused by somebody colliding with an autonomous service robot?

You can't help wondering how many of the past's key breakthrough innovations would have been stymied by H&S if it had been around at the time. Just think of Stephenson's Rocket, for instance ("Sorry Mr S., we can't have the crew setting off in an open-top plate without protective headgear and safety harnesses"); mind you, a bit of 19th century H&S might have saved William Huskisson MP from being knocked down and killed by the steamy locomotive at the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in September 1830, thus becoming the first victim of a train accident.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46296 2012-04-25T17:10:05 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46296#comments 0 Deutschland's Schlechteste Über-Daten-Hamsterers!, (trans: Germany's Worst Super Data Hoarders) a reality show which features
'ordinary' (but bonkers) people who cannot face-up to discarding redundant computer data. During the course of each episode they are coaxed into junking stuff that they have been hanging-on to for years, sometimes decades, because they they have a pathological inability to get rid of it.

Hosted by genial self-styled self-help guru & lifestyle enabler Mitzi Meyers, the show at first confronts its subjects with the extent of their obsessive retentiveness, with lots of hand-held camera tours of the extent of the problem, dramatic zoom-ins and soundtrack chord changes.

Yesterday evening's Über-Daten-Hamsterers! featured 48-year-old Günther, a freelance governance officer from Frankfurt, who has kept copies (and copies of copies, and copies of copies of copies - you get the point) of every file he has ever created since he first started using a PC in the late 1980s. The spare room of Günther's family flat was stacked with storage media - 5.25 inch disks and 3.5 inch diskettes, tape cartridge and external hard disc drives - I even spotted an old Syquest unit among the chaos.

Mitzi pulled out some discs at random and made Günther view their contents: acknowledgement letters, old invoices, drafts of letters to travel agencies regarding forgotten package holidays, and thousands of photo files of family pets long since deceased and disposed-of. There was gigabytes of downloaded PDFs containing information that Günther still believes "may come in handy at some day".

When confronted by stern but understanding Mitzi into accepting that he has a problem, and that this problem is having repercussions on the psychological well-being of his family (the youngest child has to sleep in the garage because Günther refuses to remove his hoard of ancient, rotting data from the spare bedroom), he broke down in tears and agreed to tackle his problem. Mitzi gave him a big hug, and told him soothingly that "es ist OKAY"...

After the commercial break a crew of burly blokes wearing protective clothing arrived in a rather cool-looking Mercedes truck, and spent the morning chucking the bags and boxes of old disks etc. into waste disposal crates. The disgusting archive was covered in dust and grime, and several cockroaches came scurrying out as stacks of lockable plastic storage cases of disks were disinterred.

Poor old Günther was led away sobbing to stay with some IT clinicians while the spare room was gutted and redecorated by another burly crew of 'fresh-start décor counsellors'. The show ended with Günther being led back into the room blindfolded to find a surprise party held in his honour. Everyone was having a lovely time until Günther's wife discovered a secret hoard of novelty USB memory sticks that he'd been hiding at the back of the cutlery drawer.

Ja, you can bet that I'll be one of the many millions of German viewers who'll be tuning into the next heart-rending episode of Deutschland's Schlechteste Super Daten-Hamsterers!]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46290 2012-04-25T14:29:06 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46290#comments 0 - a sector not normally associated with its heartland mainstream business computing; but Cisco has big plans not only for the smart technology that's coming into factories and assembly lines around the world, but also for the next-generation of technologists who'll be tasked with making it all work - and in manufacturing that means manufacturing engineers, rather than conventional ICT techies who provide CCNP rankers.

In respect to the first, Cisco 'reinforced its commitment to the industrialisation of the Internet' with the launch at Hannover of the Cisco IE 2000 industrial switch series. This class of devices is designed specifically for the build-out of intelligent networks for industrial automation that link the plant floor to enterprise networks.

This glib phrase belies the fact that managing datacommunications within manufacturing plants or assembly lines is not only hugely different to running business applications in offices, but it also requires competent personnel who can work the kit, and integrate it with strong-arm robotics and big metal that stamps and molds and hisses. To this end company has revealed that it is "looking at the possibility of Cisco training and certification for manufacturing professionals", according the Maciej Kranz, VP/GM of Cisco's newly-established Connected Industries Business Unit, speaking exclusively to E&T.

Cisco regards manufacturing - smart manufacturing, more specifically - as a major new potential market for its solutions, and that potential seems so evident that it is surprising that some of its erstwhile competitors haven't grasped the possible benefits of strutting their stuff in front of procurers visiting the world's biggest industrial fair.

An important driver of change here are sensors, Kranz points out: "The growth of sensor-based data is just unprecedented," he says. "They are now being installed in many industrial environments where they haven't been before, or certainly not in such a sophisticated way. Oil rigs, for instance, fitted with sensors for various applications, generate terabytes of data. And as that data builds-up organisations need to traffic it and analyse it. In some ways this is not so much different from the datacommunications that Cisco has been doing for years - the same issues like security and resilience still apply, of course - except that the units have to be much more robust." Kranz's unit's engineers have been busy finding ways to make Cisco kit ready (think ruggedised routers) for these tough environments.

"Barriers between the IT and OT [operational technology] worlds are just breaking down," Kranz avers, as the latter increasing calls for "levels of sophistication that have up till now been the preserve of enterprise IT".

The time has only just become right for Cisco's move. Up until quite recently industrial computing platforms had to have very high levels of reliability and robustness because they were so often operating alongside safety critical systems. Another point not to be overlooked is Cisco's reputation for the build-quality of its existing product lines, and the fact that as a company that has been closely involved in the manufacture of product hardware for over 20 years, it's had plenty of experience of life on the factory floor.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46255 2012-04-23T11:17:47 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=46255#comments 0 which are leveraging the attention around the event to publicise their respective agendas; but the extent to which Chinese showings at the event could also serve as counterpoints to criticisms of the country's ecological reputation should not be overlooked.

The presence of no less a personage than Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, who opened the event yesterday (Sunday) with German chancellor Angela Merkel, was a high-profile coup for Hannover Messe, to be sure, but one that also brought added impetus to his government's critics. This blogger wasn't present, but Yahoo News reports that a crowd of some 200 demonstrated outside during the ceremony.

At Kröpcke, the Stadtbahn station closest to the hotel where Wen Jiabao met with various civic dignitaries, Amnesty International has taken out a series of large advertisements on the Messe-bound platforms, highlighting 'Human rights made in China'. And as delegates and exhibitors in their thousands step-off the trains at Messe-Nord station they are greeted by at least two bannered protest groups camped outside the entrance distributing flyers.

At the same time it's worth noting that while the partnership with Hannover Messe 2012 is principally about generating commercial/cultural opportunities, it is also couched in the context of change: China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, for instance, has announced plans to increase R&D investment for 'enabling technologies for eco-friendly vehicles' geared toward a commitment toward the production of mass-market electric vehicles.

Of course anyone cognisant of declarations of environmental protection will be aware that promises and deliverables in this thorny area are prone to disparities the world over. But it's reasonable also to recognise also that Chinese exhibitors are not in Hannover without bona fide 'green' technology on their stands (no pejoratives meant by those inverted commas, BTW - no technology is ever 100 per cent environmentally clean).

Even legitimate criticisms of China's environmental record should not discount the possibility that the sustainable technologies being showcased at Hannover Messe are aiming to find solutions to the problems - both in the People's Republic and anywhere else in the world where sustainability abuse is evident. High-attendance and open events like Hannover Messe provide visitors an opportunity now to examine the technological claims at close quarters.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=46254 2012-04-23T10:42:43 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=46254#comments 0 the current disinclination to show commitment to a specific course of thought or action, as well as smacking of a self-satisfied sense of socially-slick über-equanimity. It wouldn't be so bad if 'all of the above' had not become such a clichéd reaction fuelled by media interviewers' propensity to pose multi-part questions (due to limited timeslots and audience attention spans): they cram in multiple points in the hope that it will retain the interest of as many viewers/listeners as possible, and then their wormy subjects are able express an all-encompassing assent. It is also exceedingly annoying on the ear, because people are apt to say 'All of the above' with a smarmy chuckle, as if to say 'Aha - I have outwitted your clever line of enquiry!' Anyway, here's the latest Buzzword Barometer:

1. Cluster
2. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS debate/comment)
3. Game-changer
4. Transparency
5. All of the above
6. Thought leadership
7. Box ticking
8. One size fits all / no one size fits all / none size fits all
9. Passionate / passionately
10. Vigorous (e.g., 'this policy will be vigorously pursued')
11. Informed decisions
12. Sustainable / sustainability]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=45623 2012-03-09T18:58:55 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=45623#comments 0 endorse new product development cycles, but also are flexible and versatile enough to be retro-fitted to existing technology in need of an image spruce-up.

'Cloud computing' is the most recent example of this phenomenon, although over the last two years the 'computing' part has been quietly jettisoned so that 'Cloud' can be reconfigured to serve both as a generic contextualiser ('storage in the Cloud', 'IP telephony in the Cloud'), and as a kind of catch-all prefix to a range of existing product (achieved through the ungainly intermediate coupling of 'cloud-enabled').

The latest entry in the buzzword lexicon much in evidence at the CeBIT international ICT trade fair this week is (of course) 'Big Data'. Big Data is always spelled with a capital B and a capital D for added marketing resonance. On exhibition stand displays you might even spot it in all caps - BIG DATA.

Who has the biggest Big Data solutions? Why Big Blue, of course, and from what looks like one of CeBIT's biggest stands, IBM has been bigging-up its Big Data offerings by bolting them onto parts of its existing portfolio and realising its jargonistic attributes at the same time - 'Big Data Security' and 'Big Data Analytics'. IBM is Big Data bananas - indeed, the computing giant declares that it wants to 'bring Big Data to the enterprise' - as though the enterprise hasn't already got quite enough data of all sizes to be getting on with.

Nonetheless, the size of your corporate data can a lot about a company's aspirations. Small-to-medium enterprises - SMEs - with Large Data requirements should subject their information management strategies to an immediate review.

Here in Hannover, the local techies speak not of große datenmengen, but of Big Data; ditto and likewise, cloud-computing, rather than wolke-datenverarbeitung. But curiously, another well-established bit of contemporary jargon, the 'Internet of Things' is referred to in translation - Das Internet der Dinge. Wonder why?]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=388&threadid=45594 2012-03-08T13:52:43 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=388&threadid=45594#comments 0
As befits an ICT event of CeBIT's reach, security is a major component of the week-long proceedings, with most of the major vendor names in this sector exhibiting in Hall 12 this year. The media briefing to address the topic of 'What is next for cyber-crime' included speakers from very different security solutions providers, including US firewall specialist Palo Alto Networks, UK super-VAD Wick Hill, and the second most well-known Russian anti-virus/spywear/spam vendor, Dr Web.

The panel's purview on the current state of the 'threat landscape' sounded largely discouraging: it foresaw no respite from cyber-criminals' ingenuity and determination to increase their swag of stolen cash and re-salable data. Phishing and extortion continue to rise, as does the exploitation of personal information harvested from social media. The breaching by the leading-edge hackers of encrypted authentication certificates debilitates one of the foundations of the trust framework that enables the use of the Web for financial transactions and trusted information exchange.

Wick Hill chairman Ian Kilpatrick opined that the security threat is enlarging "because the range of vulnerabilities grows each time a new smartphone or tablet PC is switched on for the first time". Statistics support this view, but before we get to vulnerabilities, the question of responsibilities has to be clarified. Some prickly points were raised with special regard to the effect that the proliferation of mobile devices is having on cyber-crime dynamics, such as:

Should end-users be held solely responsibly for ensuring that their Internet-connected devices are properly secured?

Is it responsible for the mobile device industry to sell unsecured products leaving it to end-users to make the arrangements?

Should software companies who disseminate insecure apps and mobile operating systems abetting cyber-crime?

On the question of CIO culpability the panel was divided; some felt it was distractive to the 'real' fight against cyber-crime, others of the opinion that legal penalties remain an effective way of enforcing policy. One speaker stayed silent. Wick Hill's Ian Kilpatrick suspected that whereas CEOs - and CIOs to an extent - will forever be impervious to technological arguments for better security, they will take notice of financial penalties imposed by, for example, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office. "The ICO used to be a toothless tiger; now it has teeth and it is biting people [with fines]". That's when security becomes the kind of financial imperative the execs can understand.

But if negligent CIOs are to be sent to gaol for forgetting to browbeat beleaguered IT departments into upgrading back- and front end network security, shouldn't the same stringency be enforced at a desktop level as well: cracking down on end-users who carelessly respond to phishing attacks and/or mislay sensitive data, by making observance of security policies core to their contracts of employment?

This sort of debate runs and runs in the security sector, but there is one precedent for bring habit change in the way more rigorous health & safety regulations have been introduced and applied. Your reporter was advised during induction by a previous employer that if I spilled a drink anywhere in the building - while carrying a coffee back to my desk, say - and failed to wiped it up, and a colleague slipped on it and injured themselves, I might be personally liable for any damages that ensued. Furthermore, if I saw some spilt coffee that someone else had left, and did nothing about it, I might also be liable. I dunno whether this was just a scare tactic, but it worked. Any splosh of beverage I spotted on the stairs had me scampering for some paper towel.

That employer had IT and computer usage guidelines which I was asked to read, but never asked if I actually complied with that request; nor did it advise me of any penalties that I would face were I to misuse my company email or Web access.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=45552 2012-03-06T16:15:35 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=45552#comments 0
In the enterprise space eye tracking interfaces will change the nature of how we work, but may also change the ways in which we contrive to avoid it - for short 'allowable' periods, that is. A consideration of the history of our relationship with typewriting is instructive here. In the old days professional typists rarely hammered away at their keyboards for recreational purposes, or because they were drafting a message to their social network confreres. Back then, productivity was pretty easy to gauge: it started and stopped when typing was heard and not heard.

PCs changed all that: now who can actually tell why you're tapping away at that computer: is it really work, or is it 'non-work-related'? Are you applying yourself diligently to the 'agreed' employment tasks you've been set - or catching-up on advances in latest personal social media tools? Even when an inquisitive manager looms Blakey*-like behind you you just toggle the work spreadsheet to full-screen to effect a decoying manouver.

Such subterfuge at least gives the impression of busyness, and most bosses are happy to overlook cyber-skivers so long as the work of the day gets done (it's not fair: if an employee decided to simply sit gazing into space in lieu of cyber-skiving they'd be down to HR on a fizzer pronto).

Enter eye tracking: using image sensors and image processing to convey commands and instructions to the computer using movements of the operator's eyes. Technology being showcased at CeBIT this week by one of the market leaders, Swedish firm Tobii aims to take eye tracking beyond niche use, and put it to broader use, and that includes finding ways to converge it with conventional applications such as process control and even surgery.

It is in the area of standard office applications that eye tracking perhaps faces its biggest challenges, especially when it comes to monitoring individuals' productivity. When gaze interfaces come in manager will know even less about when their staff are really engaged in: responding to a sales inquiry or watching YouTube?

And what will be the implications for the hard-won human skill of multi-tasking? I'm drafting this blog entry in the CeBIT press centre while concurrently engaged in glancing at emails, search engine results, and my netbook's remaining power, while also acknowledging a passing hack who I haven't seen in donkeys, and glaring at the fatuous blogger who is loudly recording his podcast at the desk next to me instead of doing it in an empty room (one that's about 10km away, ideally). Will, come the era of eye tracking, such visual flittery be recalled with the same nostalgia as the typewriter generation now look back on the mixed aroma of new ribbons, carbon copies, and Tipp-Ex paper?
*That's Blakey the lurking Inspector of TV's On the Buses, BTW, not the Jazz drummer.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=45053 2012-02-07T15:23:28 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=45053#comments 0
"In 2012, we will meet new challenges in the data storage market with a combination of design enhancements aimed at specific trends such as efficiency and loud, and hardware platform upgrades that will offer customers the raw power required to deal with ever-increasing demands on their data centre infrastructures. By adopting a multi-dimensional approach to product development, we aim to comprehensively ensure customer satisfaction, our top priority..."

Thomas Kao, senior director of product planning, Infortrend]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=45004 2012-02-03T15:03:41 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=45004#comments 0 challenge, opportunity, robust, issues, and sustainable) that have by dint of mealy-mouthed contextualising, been turned into a weasely euphemism.
Any thought or deed that might give rise to dubious interpretation or possible offence is immediately branded 'inappropriate' by the apolitically-correct brigade. The stripping of former RBS boss Fred Goodwin's knighthood earlier this week has boosted inappropriate's place in our monthly buzzword rankings: many felt the move 'inappropriate', proving just how versatile this word can be. A variant popular a few years ago is 'age-inappropriate' - 'age-inappropriate behaviour', 'age-inappropriate clothing', etc., a gentle chide for forty- and fifty-somethings experiencing difficulty in growing old gracefully.

1. Inappropriate
2. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS debate/comment)
3. Game-changer
4. Transparency
5. Quel surprise
6. Informed decisions
7. Magic/silver bullet (e.g., 'there is no magic bullet for stopping gun crime')
8. One size fits all / no one size fits all
9. Passionate / passionately
10. Vigorous (e.g., 'this policy will be vigorously pursued')
11. Hubris
12. Thought leadership]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=44800 2012-01-23T16:17:18 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=44800#comments 1
"The irony surrounding the coming-of-age of Cloud Services is that it is not, as so many often comment, the advent of new technology that is so compelling and valuable to the market; rather, it is the agility, scalability and almost utility basis of supply that is transforming IT procurement and challenging the way IT is purchased, provisioned and maintained. Cloud, by nature, is creating a greater sense of capability and collaboration, which can, if not checked, drive contractual and operational ambiguity..."

Andy Burton, Chair of CIF and CEO, Fasthosts - quoted in Cloud Industry Forum media release]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=44106 2011-12-02T17:38:11 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=44106#comments 0
Readers of this publication will know, of course, that 'E&T' picked-up on this annoying linguistic trend way back at the start of last year, but hats off to 'Spectator' columnist Mark Mason for namechecking us in his more recent, and rather more polished, take on the phenomenon.

Meanwhile, here's the last Buzzword Barometer of 2011:

1. Resonance / resonant
2. Informed decisions
3. Mood music
4. Putting lipstick on the gorilla
5. Game-changer
6. Outcomes
7. Quel surprise
8. Magic/silver bullet
9. One size fits all / no one size fits all
10. Passionate / passionately
11. Staring down the barrel
12. Show-stopper]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=43784 2011-11-15T10:00:41 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=43784#comments 0
"All organisations need to be aware of, and considering how to best make use of, this agile and efficient IT supply model to improve their performance and agility. It is also clear that any organisation may over time utilise any or all Cloud Service and/or Deployment models, and as such vendors and resellers need to be educated and aware of how best to assist and guide end-users to determine and implement the solution that will best meet their needs. What is right for one company with one specific application may not be right for another, and the suppliers that will succeed in the long term are those that recognise and embrace this and provide the comfort and clarity to their customers and prospects."

Andy Burton, Cloud Industry Forum chairman and CEO of Fasthosts]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=43592 2011-11-01T16:24:13 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=43592#comments 0
1. Challenge / challenges
2. Eureka moment
3. Unsustainable
4. Wake-up call
5. Game-changer
6. Staring down the barrel
7. Deal-breaker
8. Magic/silver bullet
9. Late to the party
10. Passionate / passionately
11. Dog whistle word
12. Show-stopper]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=43058 2011-09-27T12:12:23 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=43058#comments 0
"Organisations of all sizes are looking towards cloud computing as a means to cut costs, increase agility and facilitate change. However cloud computing is not always about reducing costs, instead it should be viewed as a way to align costs with the organisation's activity and make it more productive as a result. Cloud computing enables organisations to consume IT services rather than fund expensive infrastructure... Cloud services will help organisations, especially the public sector, achieve strategic objectives but only if it is looked at as a means to deliver these rather than simply replicate and house the existing IT estate. A clear understanding of the business objectives behind any IT requirements are fundamental when selecting cloud services... Looking beyond cost cutting we envision that cloud services will help the public sector address organisational changes and give them much needed additional agility... In the private sector, the flexibility provided by cloud computing is already helping businesses to address internal challenges with R&D and facilitating changes, for reorganisation, redevelopment and the merging of departments. It also helps with day to day agility, giving them the ability to scale up resources to respond to demand."

Neil Thomas, flexible computing product manager, Cable&Wireless Worldwide]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42759 2011-09-07T09:42:26 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42759#comments 0
"I am a believer in using the cloud as a way forward for both personal and corporate life. However, there are certain guidelines that I think need to be adhered to before we all start throwing our hard disks away, and placing everything in to the hands of others. Let's be clear - clouds are fluffy, contain water vapour, and sometimes they are not around. That would certainly be no good if we all had our life in one! But seriously, the cloud is today's marketing word, if this were to change tomorrow to a new buzzword with the same meaning, we would all once again be confused. So my first request is STOP. What we need to do is drill down and focus on what the cloud is in its simplest form... It is security we should be focusing on - this is the first and last thing that we and the providers should think about."

Simon Bain, CTO, Simplexo]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=42751 2011-09-06T16:53:41 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=370&threadid=42751#comments 0 BBC News reports that group of scientists and engineers is working to revive a UK satellite that's been in orbit since 1971.
Prospero was the first UK satellite to be sent up on a UK launch vehicle - a Black Arrow rocket; it would also be the last.
Having now discovered the codes to contact the satellite, engineers say that they still have to build equipment to 'talk' to the satellite, and then must win approval from the broadcast regulator Ofcom to use Prospero's radio frequencies - these days being used by other satellite operators.]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42560 2011-08-22T16:00:53 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42560#comments 0 Special mention should also be made of Iain Duncan Smith's widely-reported assertion that 'Britain as a country... is in the last chance saloon' when it comes to sorting out its societal dysfunctionality. However, in the original Spectator interview the phrase appears only an attributed utterance, and not as a direct quote. The veritable challenges we all face, however, continue to hog the top slot.

1. challenge / challenges
2. game-changer
3. hub
4. last chance saloon
5. magic/silver bullet
6. outcomes
7. passionate / passionately
8. risk
9. sanity check
10. tick-box mentality
11. unsustainable
12. wake-up call]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42505 2011-08-18T11:48:23 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42505#comments 0
"Cloud data centres demand a different, far more flexible infrastructure, and everyone knows it... But while legacy networking vendors remain mired in the status quo, essentially trying to cross oceans with railroads, Xsigo has invented the equivalent of the airplane. Xsigo is ushering in a new era of data centre connectivity - virtualised infrastructure - that does for the data centre infrastructure what server virtualisation did for the servers themselves."

Lloyd Carney, CEO, Xsigo Systems]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42381 2011-08-09T16:42:33 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42381#comments 0
"The goal of cost optimisation and increased business agility through the cloud will only be realised with processes and tools that are designed specifically to address the new operational issues that cloud-based services present... IT organisations seeking to remain relevant in a new world of choices will seek to optimise their client's satisfaction by making their transition to the cloud as transparent as possible while they (IT operations) do the heavy lifting."

Cameron Haight, research vice president, Gartner (as quoted in a BMC Software press release)]]> James Hayes http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42278 2011-08-03T09:52:38 00 http://www.theiet.org/forums/blog/blogpost.cfm?catid=389&threadid=42278#comments 0 children brought forth a cliché rarity when the reports' findings are described as 'like something out of Charles Dickens'. This is a conveniently flexible term that can be applied to anything from antiquated bureaucratic processes to investigations into contemporary urban squalor. Meanwhile, the various Euro crises has caused several uses of 'kick the can down the road' to characterise prevarication on the part of IMF politicos in regard to sorting out the Greek debt to-do. And the situation in Sudan has unleashed a slew of 'challenges' (remember, in contemporary parlance there are no problems any more, only challenges)

1. challenge / challenges
2. postcode lottery
3. direction of travel
4. sanity check
5. comfort zone
6. perfect storm
7. kick the can down the road
8. outcomes
9. passionate / passionately
10. risk
11. systematic
12. elephant in the room
13. debate (as in 'we can debate that' - debate replacing discuss)
14. like something out of Charles Dickens.
15. unsustainable]]>