Get Connected!

We recently reported on how the global growth of mobile device usage may cripple the wireless airwaves as available bandwidth from the wireless network carriers will eventually reach saturation unless the FCC takes drastic steps to increase supply.

A new report just released by Cisco expands upon these findings.

They project mobile cloud traffic to account for 71%, or 7.6 Exabytes per Month, of total mobile data traffic by 2016. Compare this to the current number of 45%, or 269 Petabytes per month in 2011 and you can easily visualize the eventual wireless saturation scenario.

According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index report, the global worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month or an annual rate of 130 exabytes by 2016.

The expected sharp increase in mobile traffic is due largely to a projected increase in the number of mobile Internet - connected devices, which will exceed the number of people on earth (2016 world population estimate of 7.3 billion according to the UN). During 2011−2016 Cisco anticipates that global mobile data traffic will outgrow global fixed data traffic by three times.

The forecast predicts an annual run rate of 130 exabytes of mobile data traffic, equivalent to the following:

33 billion DVDs.

4.3 quadrillion MP3 files (music/audio).

813 quadrillion short message service (SMS) text messages.

This mobile data traffic increase represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78 percent spanning the forecast period. The incremental amount of traffic being added to the mobile Internet between 2015 and 2016 alone is approximately three times the estimated size of the entire mobile Internet in 2012. 

The following trends are driving these significant increases:

1. More Streamed Content:

 With the consumer expectations increasingly requiring on-demand or streamed content versus simply downloaded content, mobile cloud traffic will increase, growing 28-fold from 2011 to 2016, a CAGR of 95 percent.

2. More Mobile Connections:

There will be more than 10 billion mobile Internet-connected devices in 2016, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules -- exceeding the world's projected population at that time of 7.3 billion.(One M2M application is the use of wireless networks to update digital billboards. This allows advertisers to display different messages based on time of day or day-of-week and allows quick global changes for messages, such as pricing changes for gasoline).

3. Enhanced Computing of Devices:

Mobile devices are becoming more powerful and thus able to consume and generate more data traffic. Tablets are a prime example of this trend generating traffic levels that will grow 62-fold from 2011 to 2016 -- the highest growth rate of any device category tracked in the forecast. The amount of mobile data traffic generated by tablets in 2016 (1 exabyte per month) will be four times the total amount of monthly global mobile data traffic in 2010 (237 petabytes per month).

4. Faster Mobile Speeds: 

Mobile network connection speed is a key enabler for mobile data traffic growth. More speed means more consumption, and Cisco projects mobile speeds (including 2G, 3G and 4G networks) to increase nine-fold from 2011 to 2016.

5. More Mobile Video: 

Mobile users want the best experiences they can have and that generally means mobile video, which will comprise 71 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2016.

We recently reported on how the global growth of mobile device usage may cripple the wireless airwaves as available bandwidth from the wireless network carriers will eventually reach saturation unless the FCC takes drastic steps to increase supply.

A new report just released by Cisco expands upon these findings.

They project mobile cloud traffic to account for 71%, or 7.6 Exabytes per Month, of total mobile data traffic by 2016. Compare this to the current number of 45%, or 269 Petabytes per month in 2011 and you can easily visualize the eventual wireless saturation scenario.

According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index report, the global worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month or an annual rate of 130 exabytes by 2016.

The expected sharp increase in mobile traffic is due largely to a projected increase in the number of mobile Internet - connected devices, which will exceed the number of people on earth (2016 world population estimate of 7.3 billion according to the UN). During 2011−2016 Cisco anticipates that global mobile data traffic will outgrow global fixed data traffic by three times.

The forecast predicts an annual run rate of 130 exabytes of mobile data traffic, equivalent to the following:

33 billion DVDs.

4.3 quadrillion MP3 files (music/audio).

813 quadrillion short message service (SMS) text messages.

This mobile data traffic increase represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78 percent spanning the forecast period. The incremental amount of traffic being added to the mobile Internet between 2015 and 2016 alone is approximately three times the estimated size of the entire mobile Internet in 2012. 

The following trends are driving these significant increases:

1. More Streamed Content:

 With the consumer expectations increasingly requiring on-demand or streamed content versus simply downloaded content, mobile cloud traffic will increase, growing 28-fold from 2011 to 2016, a CAGR of 95 percent.

2. More Mobile Connections:

There will be more than 10 billion mobile Internet-connected devices in 2016, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules -- exceeding the world's projected population at that time of 7.3 billion.(One M2M application is the use of wireless networks to update digital billboards. This allows advertisers to display different messages based on time of day or day-of-week and allows quick global changes for messages, such as pricing changes for gasoline).

3. Enhanced Computing of Devices:

Mobile devices are becoming more powerful and thus able to consume and generate more data traffic. Tablets are a prime example of this trend generating traffic levels that will grow 62-fold from 2011 to 2016 -- the highest growth rate of any device category tracked in the forecast. The amount of mobile data traffic generated by tablets in 2016 (1 exabyte per month) will be four times the total amount of monthly global mobile data traffic in 2010 (237 petabytes per month).

4. Faster Mobile Speeds: 

Mobile network connection speed is a key enabler for mobile data traffic growth. More speed means more consumption, and Cisco projects mobile speeds (including 2G, 3G and 4G networks) to increase nine-fold from 2011 to 2016.

5. More Mobile Video: 

Mobile users want the best experiences they can have and that generally means mobile video, which will comprise 71 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2016.

Intel is one of the best chip manufacturing companies in the world. Their investment in Research and Development and manufacturing is perhaps rivaled only by IBM. Intel is looking to leverage this manufacturing output by turning their attention to producing low cost digital Radio Frequency (RF) chips.

Intel will be announcing at a technical conference in San Francisco this week the progress they have made in designing new versions of key radio components that are typically built using analog technology and different materials than the silicon used to create most digital chips. 

These traditional analog electrical components used in circuit design include power amplifiers, transmitters, modulators and other “radio frequency” devices. These are the building blocks of circuits designed by electrical engineers who specialize in RF technologies for chip designs.

RF technologies essentially enable the transmission of data and information through wireless networks. Think of an RF circuit as a device that is capable of transmitting very small amounts of electricity (voltages) by pushing them through a broadcast antenna at certain frequencies across air (via airwaves or frequencies) to a receiving device (antenna) where it induces a small current in a circuit.  The signal is then translated back into a string of binary information. 

This pre and post transmission process includes both digital to analog and analog to digital conversions to complete the transmission. This type of conversion is typically known as digital signal processing and can be conducted very fast with the assistance of microprocessors.

Intel in targeting this entire RF circuitry manufacturing process with new chipset designs.

“We are getting close to having the complete kit of digital RF building blocks for these radios,” says Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer.

Moore's Law, or the pace of transistor miniaturization that Intel co-founder Gordon Moore first described in 1965 keeps bringing us more inexpensive and useful microprocessors and memory chips and devices like laptop computers and iPhones through advancements in manufacturing and chip design.

 If RF circuitry can be produced in the same chip factories with the same declining cost per function, then radios used to send data over networks like 4G or Wi-Fi will be much less expensive and ubiquitous, Rattner argues.

According to the WSJ, if RF components can be placed alongside other components on a chip then Intel can save space and energy and cost in products like smartphones. 

One of Intel’s papers at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference describes such a creation, a chip that has a Wi-Fi transceiver and two Intel Atom processor cores on the same piece of silicon.

Devices called “system on a chip,” or SoCs, already are commonplace in cellphones. Many of them include a key communications device called a baseband processor alongside a conventional processor that runs application software on the device.

But the RF components that actually modulate and amplify radio waves are usually kept separate, in part because their signals can interfere with operations on other parts of the chip, Rattner says. 

Mitigating that interference was a key part of the Intel effort, he adds, requiring collaboration from engineers in its research, development and manufacturing groups to come up with the right approach.

The results give Intel “great confidence” that it will be able to come up with true single-chip products with RF components for phones, tablet computers and other devices where size and power consumption are paramount, says Rattner, while conceding that such developments are at least several years away.

These advancements will ultimately allow Intel to compete more directly with mobile chip designers and manufacturers such as ARM.

Intel is one of the best chip manufacturing companies in the world. Their investment in Research and Development and manufacturing is rivaled only be IBM. Intel is looking to leverage this manufacturing output by turning their attention to producing low cost digital Radio Frequency (RF) chips.

Intel will be announcing at a technical conference in San Francisco this week the progress they have made in designing new versions of key radio components that are typically built using analog technology and different materials than the silicon used to create most digital chips. 

These traditional analog electrical components used in circuit design include power amplifiers, transmitters, modulators and other “radio frequency” devices. These are the building blocks of circuits designed by electrical engineers who specialize in RF technologies.

RF technologies essentially enable the transmission of data and information through wireless networks. Think of an RF circuit as a device that is capable of transmitting very small amounts of electricity (voltages) by pushing them through a broadcast antenna at certain frequencies across air ( via airwaves or frequencies ) to a receiving device ( antenna ) where it induces a small current in a circuit.  The signal is then translated back into a string of binary information. 

This transmission includes both digital to analog and analog to digital conversions to complete the transmission. This type of conversion is typically known as digital signal processing and can be conducted very fast with the assistance of microprocessors.

Intel in targeting this entire RF circuitry manufacturing process with new chipset designs.

“We are getting close to having the complete kit of digital RF building blocks for these radios,” says Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer.

Moore's Law, or the pace of transistor miniaturization that Intel co-founder Gordon Moore first described in 1965 keeps bringing us more inexpensive and useful microprocessors and memory chips and devices like laptop computers and iPhones through advancements in manufacturing and chip design.

 If RF circuitry can be produced in the same chip factories–with the same ever-declining cost per function–radios used to send data over networks like 4G or Wi-Fi can be much less expensive and ubiquitous, Rattner argues.

According to the WSJ, if RF components can be placed alongside other components on a chip then Intel can save space and energy and cost in products like smartphones. 

One of Intel’s papers at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference describes such a creation, a chip that has a Wi-Fi transceiver and two Intel Atom processor cores on the same piece of silicon.

Devices called “system on a chip,” or SoCs, already are commonplace in cellphones. Many of them include a key communications device called a baseband processor alongside a conventional processor that runs application software on the device.

But the RF components that actually modulate and amplify radio waves are usually kept separate, in part because their signals can interfere with operations on other parts of the chip, Rattner says. 

Mitigating that interference was a key part of the Intel effort, he adds, requiring collaboration from engineers in its research, development and manufacturing groups to come up with the right approach.

The results give Intel “great confidence” that it will be able to come up with true single-chip products with RF components for phones, tablet computers and other devices where size and power consumption are paramount, says Rattner, while conceding that such developments are at least several years away.

These advancements will ultimately allow Intel to compete more directly with mobile chip designers and manufacturers such as ARM.

We recently reported about how the global growth of tablet and smartphone usage is leading the charge in what is known as the consumerization of IT. The following numbers portray the scope of  this consumerization of IT trend.  

As the population of the world in 2012 passes 7 billion the number of cellular subscriptions worldwide is approximately 6 billion. The number of cellular mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide is approximately 1.2 billion.

By 2016, smartphones and tablets will put real computing power in the hands of a  billion global consumers.

CIOs and IT departments are just begining to prepare for the fact that mobile is not simply another device for IT departments and helpdesks to support. 

Mobile becomes the manifestation of a much broader shift to new systems of engagement. 

These systems of engagement help organizations empower their customers, partners, and employees with context-aware apps and smart products. 

According to Forrester, in order to maintain a competitive edge CIOs must step up and work with other executives to establish an "office of the chief mobility officer" to implement an enterprise wide mobile strategy. 

This team will coordinate the business and technology investments under a "design for mobile first" policy that delivers four immediate benefits:

1) Fuel profitable growth with stickier offerings and mobile self-service.

2) Move faster along the mobile learning curve.

3) Aggregate mobile project budgets to fund needed engagement technology.

4) Grow from an IT group focused on systems of record to a business technology group focused on systems of engagement.

In this sense CIOs must align their IT departments and businesses to develop a formal mobile strategy to match the increasing use of mobile devices and applications to foster communications between the organization and their customers, partners and employees.

The report,  "Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement" by Forrester, estimated that one billion consumers worldwide will own a smartphone or tablet by 2016. This growth is expected to fuel mobile self-service via mobile apps.

Mobile self-service helps organizations engage with their customers, partners and employees, and “empowers” each party.

According to the report by 2016, 200 million employees will bring their own devices, the mobile apps market will reach $55 billion and business expenditure on mobile projects will grow by 100%.

This growth should lead CIOs to establish the office of the chief mobility officer (CMOO) and mobile architecture team.

The office of the CMOO will have 10 to 30 business and technology staff, where each member should possess skills in experience design, financial planning, policy development, process analytics, program management, supplier oversight, and understanding back-end systems and middleware architectures.

The office of the CMOO, supported by a mobile architecture team, will be responsible for balancing the needs of business owners building mobile apps against the technology requirements to service those apps. In addition, CIOs should create a mobile architecture blueprint for their organizations.

The mobile architecture team sets out the technology issues that IT must resolve for mobile apps to work, and works in conjunction with the mobile engagement guide which is established by the CMOO.

The mobile architecture team would be responsible for finding new funding approaches for back-end investments from mobile project budgets as it creeps into the tens of millions of dollars. An example used in the report is the European bank, which borrowed against the mobile project budgets for 12 months to fund the capital spending.

The team would also be responsible for leading the adoption of Cloud and as-a-service solutions, which Forrester said is driven by the mobile shift.

The Forrester report warned that organizations run the risk of being plagued by disruptions if they do not implement a thorough mobile strategy across the enterprise.

These disruptions may include the follwoing problems:

1. In coordinating data, access and applications across multiple channels.

2. Servers and infrastructure that are unable to handle the surge in activity volumes.

3. Applications poorly constructed for user engagement.

4. Design and development of processes misaligned with mobile requirements.

We recently reported about how the global growth of Tablet and Smartphone usage is leading the charge in what is known as the consumerization of IT. The following numbers portray the scope of  this consumerization of IT trend.  

As the population of the world in 2012 passes 7 billion the number of cellular subscriptions worldwide is approximately 6 billion. The number of cellular mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide is approximately 1.2 billion.

By 2016, smartphones and tablets will put real computing power in the hands of a  billion global consumers.

CIOs and IT departments are just begining to prepare for the fact that mobile is not simply another device for IT departments and helpdesks to support. 

Mobile becomes the manifestation of a much broader shift to new systems of engagement. 

These systems of engagement help organizations empower their customers, partners, and employees with context-aware apps and smart products. 

According to Forrester, in order to maintain a competitive edge CIOs must step up and work with other executives to establish an "office of the chief mobility officer" to implement an enterprise wide mobile strategy. 

This team will coordinate the business and technology investments under a "design for mobile first" policy that delivers four immediate benefits:

1) Fuel profitable growth with stickier offerings and mobile self-service.

2) Move faster along the mobile learning curve.

3) Aggregate mobile project budgets to fund needed engagement technology.

4) Grow from an IT group focused on systems of record to a business technology group focused on systems of engagement.

In this sense CIOs must align their IT departments and businesses to develop a formal mobile strategy to match the increasing use of mobile devices and applications to foster communications between the organization and their customers, partners and employees.

The report,  "Mobile Is The New Face Of Engagement" by Forrester, estimated that one billion consumers worldwide will own a smartphone or tablet by 2016. This growth is expected to fuel mobile self-service via mobile apps.

Mobile self-service helps organizations engage with their customers, partners and employees, and “empowers” each party.

According to the report by 2016, 200 million employees will bring their own devices, the mobile apps market will reach $55 billion and business expenditure on mobile projects will grow by 100%.

This growth should lead CIOs to establish the office of the chief mobility officer (CMOO) and mobile architecture team.

The office of the CMOO will have 10 to 30 business and technology staff, where each member should possess skills in experience design, financial planning, policy development, process analytics, program management, supplier oversight, and understanding back-end systems and middleware architectures.

The office of the CMOO, supported by a mobile architecture team, will be responsible for balancing the needs of business owners building mobile apps against the technology requirements to service those apps. In addition, CIOs should create a mobile architecture blueprint for their organizations.

The mobile architecture team sets out the technology issues that IT must resolve for mobile apps to work, and works in conjunction with the mobile engagement guide which is established by the CMOO.

The mobile architecture team would be responsible for finding new funding approaches for back-end investments from mobile project budgets as it creeps into the tens of millions of dollars. An example used in the report is the European bank, which borrowed against the mobile project budgets for 12 months to fund the capital spending.

The team would also be responsible for leading the adoption of Cloud and as-a-service solutions, which Forrester said is driven by the mobile shift.

The Forrester report warned that organizations run the risk of being plagued by disruptions if they do not implement a thorough mobile strategy across the enterprise.

These disruptions may include the follwoing problems:

1. In coordinating data, access and applications across multiple channels.

2. Servers and infrastructure that are unable to handle the surge in activity volumes.

3. Applications poorly constructed for user engagement.

4. Design and development of processes misaligned with mobile requirements.

In the Federal governments IT departments across the country,  desktop Virtualization has a huge potential for savings.

According to a recent report published by Meritalk, Desktop Virtualization provides untapped opportunity for savings but Just 7% of agencies plan on a full implementation.

Virtualization savings are real – and are expected to grow – but government agencies need to overcome funding uncertainties and other significant barriers to achieve their virtualization goals, according to a study by MeriTalk. The new report, “Virtualization Vacuum: The 2012 Government Virtualization Study,” explores the 

current and future state of play in government server and desktop virtualization initiatives, including key differences between Federal and state/local markets.

The majority of federal agencies have embraced server virtualization and have been rewarded handsomely for their efforts. Fewer have taken on the desktop virtualization initiatives though.

 Less than 10% of IT pros plan to virtualize all apps for all users. If desktop virtualization cuts just half the budget as server virtualization, agencies could save 9.5 percent of their IT budgets – or $7.5 billion.

So, why are the Federal government IT departments not embracing this challenge? The short answer is funding. Only 48% of Feds and 39% of state-and-local IT pros have the funding to virtualize servers.

The second big issue to funding is legacy app migration issues. Government IT departments label that as the biggest obstacle – for both server and desktop virtualization. Government IT staff report they lack the management support as another significant barrier. 37% of IT pros say their management doesn’t support virtualization – and, less than half report their agency has a formal policy or common framework for server virtualization. Perhaps Federal CIOs need to do a better job selling the benefits of desktop virtualization?

Virtualization has proven cost benfits over time and continues to deliver real savings. 57% of government IT pros report that it’ll take a year or more to realize server virtualization RoI. 

The survey of government IT decision makers indicates that virtualization initiatives are picking up momentum.

 82% of Federal and 77% of state-and-local IT professionals say their agencies have already implemented some server virtualization, leading to an estimated savings of 19% of their IT budgets – $15 billion across government.

By 2015, virtualized workloads are expected to nearly double from 37 to 63% – which would boost the savings to an estimated $23.6 billion government-wide.

According to the report, 57% of Federal and 64% of state-and-local respondents say server virtualization takes priority over desktop virtualization. While government agencies have plans to implement some form of desktop virtualization, less than one in 10 plan to virtualize all applications for all users. However, if desktop virtualization provides just half of the savings of server virtualization, agencies could save 9.5 percent of their IT budget or $7.5 billion.

“When agencies do begin developing their virtualization plans, they should look beyond servers and consider desktop virtualization as well,” said Mark Weber, President, U.S. Public Sector, NetApp. “The more opportunities that agencies are able to recognize and incorporate into their modernization frameworks, the greater their long-term benefits.”

Despite the proven results and clear savings opportunity, only 48 percent of Federal and 39 percent of state-and-local respondents believe that they have the funding needed to meet their server virtualization goals, and that’s not the only barrier. The most common challenge that agencies face for both server and desktop virtualization is legacy application migration. Security is also a hold-up, but more so for Federal agencies than for state/local – 41 percent of Feds cited security concerns, as opposed to 24 percent of state-and-local respondents. Only 63 percent of respondents say their management fully supports server virtualization adoption. Fewer than half report that their agency has a formal policy or common framework for server virtualization.

“Virtualization and consolidation are critical components of an effective cloud strategy, resulting in tangible benefits,” said Susie Adams, Microsoft Federal’s Chief Technology Officer. “If agencies are thinking vigorously and broadly about combining server consolidation, data center consolidation, and private cloud infrastructures, the industry can realize tremendous leaps in scalability, cost savings, improved services, and integrated management. In many ways this begins with a smart approach to virtualization.”

The report also reveals that while virtualization yields big savings, good things come to those who wait. 57% of participants say they expect to wait one year or more to realize savings once a server virtualization solution is fully implemented and operational.

Empowering the masses with IT tools is a continuous evolutionary trend in the world of consumer computing. 

The so called PC "Power Users" embraced the introduction of the IBM PC in 1979 and there was an instant adoption and borderline addiction to the hot apps of the times:  the Word processing programs ( DisplayWrite, Wordperfect, WordStar),  Spreadsheets ( Visicalc, Lotus 123 ), and Database programs ( Dbase ).  

This change in the allocation of computing resources caused some real pain in enterprise IT departments  as budgets were allocated for Mini and Mainframe computing, not microcomputers. Suddenly departments were demanding networked PCs and PC software purchases which competed directly with scarce corporate IT budgets. This trend is played out once again today as some business groups make independent Cloud Computing based purchasing decisions without consulting the IT department then later call IT for support when the Cloud based app does not integrate or work as promised.

As the hot apps of today move onto popular consumer devices such as smart phones and tablets, the world of enterprise computing is changing as are the challenges faced by both the IT department and the CIOs to once again manage these changes.

The evolution is clear, the technology focus is migrating from the back office applications (accounting, process management and ERP) to the front office ( analytics, marketing, sales and customer relationship management). 

This migration is partly about how companies are deploying newer and more sophisticated technologies throughout the organization, but it's also about how the people are empowered by their devices and the apps they are acquiring and using in newer and more sophisticated ways.

We recently reported on the proliferation of mobile devices and the growing demand on the mobile data carriers to keep up with bandwith requirements. Just as the mobile carriers are pushed to their limits, so  are the CIOs who in turn struggle to provide a secure infrastructure to manage what is described as the consumerization of IT within an organization.  This trend has been driven largely by the ubiquitous use of the Internet, mobile, and broadband technologies.

Here some key numbers which depict the consumerization of IT trend.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau:

By April 1, the population of the world will stand at 7 billion.

According to research from the market research site mobiThinking, as of January 2012:

The number of cellular subscriptions worldwide was approximately 6 billion.

The number of cellular mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide was approximately 1.2 billion.

The value of venture capital investments in mobile technologies in 2011 was $6.3 billion, approximately 42% of total budgets.

EBay expected customers to buy and sell $8 billion in merchandise this year, and PayPal expected to process $7 billion in payments.

Opportunities Arise from Consumerization

IT vendors and companies see great opportunities in moving from consumer to enterprise sales if they can embrace the needs of the consumer on their personal devices while facilitating their work responsibilites.

CIOs should look for an easy solution if one exists that fits their roadmap.

Companies like Google have a long-term goal to take consumer assets and bring them to businesses that are interested in changing how they operate because they see the kind of innovation that's taking place in the consumer space. Google, for example did this first with their search appliance, then with apps, then with maps solution. They are taking their technology assets and building enterprise versions of them.

CIOs are starting to embrace these services for the enterprise as they recognize the whole consumerization of IT has deep, profound implications. It's much more than bringing your own device to work.

It is bringing your device to work and using it as a weapon or tool to become more productive at your job so you can leverage your knowledge to beat your competitors by becoming faster, cheaper, abd better all while offering and more quality and value. The role of the CIO is to empower and lead the employees to use their consumer devices, but in a safe manner by minimizing both risk introduced by potential security problems.

Empowering the masses with IT tools is a continuous evolutionary trend in the world of consumer computing. 

The so called PC "Power Users" embraced the introduction of the IBM PC in 1979 and there was an instant adoption and borderline addiction to the hot apps of the times:  the Word processing programs ( DisplayWrite, Wordperfect, WordStar),  Spreadsheets ( Visicalc, Lotus 123 ), and Database programs ( Dbase ).  

This change in the allocation of computing resources caused some real pain in enterprise IT departments  as budgets were allocated for Mini and Mainframe computing, not microcomputers. Suddenly departments were demanding networked PCs and PC software purchases which competed directly with scarce corporate IT budgets. This trend is played out once again today as some business groups make independent Cloud Computing based purchasing decisions without consulting the IT department then later call IT for support when the Cloud based app does not integrate or work as promised.

As the hot apps of today move onto popular consumer devices such as smart phones and tablets, the world of enterprise computing is changing as are the challenges faced by both the IT department and the CIOs to once again manage these changes.

The evolution is clear, the technology focus is migrating from the back office applications (accounting, process management and ERP) to the front office ( analytics, marketing, sales and customer relationship management). 

This migration is partly about how companies are deploying newer and more sophisticated technologies throughout the organization, but it's also about how the people are empowered by their devices and apps as they are acquiring and using in newer and more sophisticated ways.

We recently reported on the proliferation of mobile devices and the growing demand on the mobile data carriers to keep up with bandwith requirements. Just as the mobile carriers are pushed to their limits, so to are the CIOs who in turn struggle to provide a secure infrastructure to manage what is described as the consumerization of IT within an organization.  This trend has been driven largely by the ubiquitous use of the Internet and mobile and broadband technologies.

Here some key numbers which support the consumerization of IT trend. According to the U.S. Census Bureau:

By April 1, the population of the world will stand at 7 billion.

According to research from the market research site mobiThinking, as of January 2012:

The number of cellular subscriptions worldwide was approximately 6 billion.

The number of cellular mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide was approximately 1.2 billion.

The value of venture capital investments in mobile technologies in 2011 was $6.3 billion, approximately 42% of total budgets.

EBay expected customers to buy and sell $8 billion in merchandise this year, and PayPal expected to process $7 billion in payments.

Opportunities Arise from Consumerizaton

IT vendors and companies see great opportunities in moving from consumer to enterprise sales if they can embrace the needs of the consumer on their personal devices while facilitating their work responsibilites.

CIOs should look for an easy solution.

Companies like Google have a long-term goal to take consumer assets and bring them to businesses that are interested in changing how they operate because they see the kind of innovation that's taking place in the consumer space. Google, for example did this first with their search appliance, then with apps, then with maps solution. They are taking their technology assets and building enterprise versions of them.

CIOs are starting to embrace these services for the enterprise as they recognize the whole consumerization of IT has deep, profound implications. It's much more than bringing your own device to work.

It is bringing your device to work and using it as a weapon or tool to become more productive at your job so you can leverage your knowledge to beat your competitors by becoming faster, cheaper, and offer more quality. The role of the CIO is to empower the employees to use their devices, but in a safe manner by minimizing risk and potential security problems.

According to several sources including the WSJ and Gartner, Google is reportedly working on a new cloud-based storage platform called Drive which offers similar functionality to current marketplace leaders Dropbox, Box, and Apple`s iCloud.

Google has been a major proponent of cloud computing services and believes that Drive will allow the company to expand and grow this market.

Can Google build a better mousetrap? Google is planning at some point ( rumors say this year ) on offering its current millions of Gmail users an alternative to the established platforms on which they can deposit files and folders to retrieve at a later date.

The market for online storage for both consumers and businesses is expected to grow rapidly as personal digital footprints continue to expand and users of various devices desire ubiquitous access to their important data files from anywhere.

Google Drive will launch in the coming weeks or months, according to a recent WSJ report which repeats an annual rumor that began back in 2007 when it was reported current Google CEO Larry Page was personally leading product development.

The rive, known by the code-names as Gdrive and Platypus, will let consumers and professional users store photos, documents and videos on Google's servers.

Users will be able to access that content from any computer, tablet or smartphone that connects to the Web. The content will likely be rendered shareable as links and possibly offer some integration with the Google+  social network.

Startups Dropbox and Box are now the top providers of Web-based object storage. Dropbox currently has more than 45 million members who saved 1 billion files every few days through October 2011. 

Box finished 2011 with more than 8 million users, has rejected several takeover offers and continues its aggressive expansion plans.

What makes Google Drive`s product introduction particularly important is the fact that it will eventually be integrated with the firm`s Android mobile operating system.

This will enable users to upload files to Google Drive from their home or work PC and then get access to them from their smartphone immediately. This type of integration and synchronize capabilities has many benefits especially with Google's established infrastructure of devices, platforms and software services. Linking together all of these services should be relatively easy for Google as they have proven skilled at such tasks many times in the past.

It is thought that Google Drive will take a tiered approach to usage. Basic users can sign up and store a fixed amount of data in the cloud free of charge, getting access from their handsets and perhaps having to abide by other limitations. A subscription to Google Drive will have far more features, flexibility and storage space to work with, which could make it suitable for businesses and enterprise users.

This can potentially be very disruptive to the Dropbox and Box business models. Google's potential offering to its' tremendous user base with products such as search, Gmail and YouTube, along with its 4 million businesses that use Google Apps cloud collaboration, could make it difficult for other to compete in the same space.

Google's hundreds of thousands of servers in data centers all over the world would provide Google with a scalability advantage Dropbox and Box might have a hard time matching. Ultimately, Google Drive could become the dominant cloud storage in the industry.

Gartner analyst Gene Ruth said both Dropbox and Box.net should be concerned by mounting competition, which includes SugarSync, Live Mesh and others.

Google has every opportunity to provide an excellent and inexpensive Dropbox-like service but it remains to be seen how broad an audience they will target. In particular, will the audience include enterprise-scale customers and support hundreds or thousands of users and thus relieve an IT organization from having to offer file-sharing and collaborations services? We shall see. I expect capability at least on par with Google Apps and expect some actions to mitigate the effects of such an offering on Google's partners.

Oracle announced they are acquiring Taleo , the cloud-based talent management company for $1.9 billion.

Oracle reported in the press release that Taleo’s SaaS services will become part of the Oracle public cloud.  The move comes just two months after rival SAP said it would acquire HR software provider SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion.

Taleo lends more cloud credibility and more vertical expertise to Oracle’s broadening applications portfolio.

Enterprise Human Resource Management software packages are particularly attractive to companies like Oracle and SAP because they fit well into their existing product line and in most cases are already integrated to run on top of an Oracle RDBMS.

While most enterprise customers will not switch their core financials or supply chain software to the cloud, they're much more willing to move to the cloud with HR software. The migration is less disruptive to operations.

Both Taleo and SuccessFactors deals demonstrate that Oracle and SAP  see the need to enhance both their cloud credentials and their vertical industry focus. 

The SaaS market is growing rapidly but the biggest opportunity is seen in applications in verticals for which vendors can charge a price premium. The Oracle deal may be a better deal than the Successfactors deal for SAP for the simple fact that when you include the underlying Oracle RDBMS license fee the pricing model for Taleo cloud services changes dramatically. The deal brings more cost efficiencies they can potentially  share with their customers while growing their margins.

The Taleo acquisition will create a comprehensive cloud offering for organizations to manage their Human Resource operations and employee careers. 

According to Oracle, the combination is expected to empower employees and managers to effectively manage careers throughout their entire employment, enable organizations to retain talent and optimize costs, and improve the employee experience through faster on boarding and better collaboration with team members via social media.

The move by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is a bit overdue as he has spoken numerous times about the movement of enterpriese to the public cloud. The fact that Oracle only paid a 14% share premium for Taleo does not factor in the 20% run up in their stock price since SAP announced the Successfactors acquisition.

Big Data keeps getting bigger. As corporate data warehouses bulge with tranactional data, opportunities increase for various vendors to provide toolsets needed to process and mine the data in meaningful and efficient ways.

Oracle is embracing the use of the open-source statistical modeling language - R, a tool and a skillset that is increasing available in many IT organizations today.

Oracle has announced a new Advanced Analytics product which couples R to its database and family of software-hardware appliances.

The introduction of the Oracle Advanced Analytics for Big Data package comes after they recently unveiled the Oracle Big Data Appliance, which combines the company's new NoSQL database with Cloudera's distribution of Hadoop.

The Oracle R Enterprise database product combines the processing capabilities of the Oracle database and the distribution of the "R" open-source programming language into a tightly coupled facility.

The R interface to the database becomes powerful when developing statistical data analysis applications. The ultimate goal is to acheive very fast analytics inside the database and inside memory if possible.

Oracle Data Mining, which includes data mining and predictive analytics algorithms, is a component of the company's Oracle Advanced Analytics suite.

The combination of the Oracle database, the R language and the data mining tools enables better analytics capabilities because more complex equations may be utilized to drill down into large data sets.

Other vendors such as SAS and SPSS currently have R integration solutions and the other vendors data warehousing vendors such as IBM, Teradata, and EMC Greenplum will release R language based toolsets in future releases over the next year.

The traditional relational database management system within a SAP environment will be replaced by what? About 80% of the world's structured data resides in an Oracle, IBM DB2, or MySQL database. A pretty big large repository of big data sits in one of those traditional RDBMS and is at the core of the typical SAP installation. SAP believes those traditional RDBMS installations will all go away. When will this transition take place and more importantly how?

According to the CIO of SAP, they are likely to move away from relational databases in the future - approxmately in a 10 year timeframe. The new SAP focus will be on its in-memory offering named HANA. 

This is according to comments made by SAP's CIO, Oliver Bussmann, who spoke to Computing Magazine at the SAP User Group Conference recently in the UK.

HANA uses in-memory software to analyse huge volumes of data in real time. The proliferation of cheap memory and inexpensive processors has now made the case for less expensive data wharehouse computing costs by moving data off of DASD and into memory.

"My prediction is that in the next five to ten years relational databases will disappear and all SAP products will be using HANA," said Bussmann. 

"In-memory allows companies to improve the speed of their data analytics by a factor of 100,000. (This is compared with relational databases that are largely disk based systems.) This means that analytics processing that traditionally took hours can now take a seconds."

According to Bussman, SAP began looking at in-memory capabilities three years ago and started developing the technology in early 2010.

Bussmann's team conducted a proof of concept in October of 2010, which saw SAP's data analytics improve by a factor of 14,000: a request now takes one second where it previously took five hours.

SAP then delivered a roadmap for companies to utilise HANA, and 100 of its customers have now implemented the technology.

"The first step is for companies to put the HANA appliance alongside an ERP system. Then you should extract as much data as possible, put it inside the HANA appliance, and run analytics on top of that in real time," said Bussmann.

"Companies should build applications that are 100 per cent optimised on the HANA software. There are many examples of this already, and these include liquidity and risk-planning for banks."

Bussmann said that many companies are now looking at in-memory data analytics because the technology has become cheaper in recent years. "We realized that memory has become very inexpensive. You can get a 2 terabyte machine for $140,000 configured with 64 processers.It is now pretty cheap to own the hardware," he said.

"However, you need software to optimize the hardware, which HANA does. If you move data into the main memory, you will have a factor-of-ten performance improvement. But if you leverage multiple core processors and get the software to spread the work efficiently, you see more drastic improvements in speed."

Despite the optimism and the fact that SAP now has more than 100 customers using HANA, Bussmann still believes that there is room for improvement with the product.

There is always room for improvement according to Bussmann.

"We also need to scale up our development for new applications and allow the ecosystem to establish itself. These things take time."

In-memory databases pose a real challenge to traditional RDMBs which typically operate by pinning a smaller amount of the index used in queries into real memory. Of course these parameters are tunable on most traditional database systems but the SAP product pins nearly 100% of the searchable index into real memory.

The simple fact of the matter is that it is will take longer to process queries on disk rather than in memory.

As in-memory systems evolve they will eventually replace disk based systems completely.

This represents a huge potential windfall for SAP because they will be able to replace an Oracle license with an SAP HANA license and pocket more of the revenue from the customer.

A global downturn in economic activity resulting in shrinking IT budgets, the financial crises of 2008, and IT outsourcing or offshoring are just a few of the potential major career disruptions IT workers have had to contend with over the last five years. It workers recognized the need to embrace their jobs because if they were let go there was great uncertainty in the prospect of finding a new job. 

A recent increase in IT professionals' confidence in the economy was largely led by a perception of more jobs being available and an increased ability to get those new jobs. Mirroring this increase in confidence is a decreased belief that IT pros will lose their jobs within the next 12 months.

Therefore IT career options are starting to improve according to this recent survey of IT professionals from Technisource.

 The company's latest IT Employee Confidence Index reveals that optimism levels have climbed above 50, after dipping below that critical mark in 2011. Overall, tech workers feel better about job security, employment-search prospects and the future of their organizations. 

"With the demand for IT professionals steadily increasing, confidence is rising once again," says Andrew Speer of Technisource. "We're seeing great demand for project managers,  analytics professionals and .NET application developers, demonstrating that companies are opening their budgets and embracing technology implementation." And one-third of employees are actively looking for new employment, Speer notes, meaning CIOs and other tech managers must focus on the needs of IT teams to avoid unnecessary hiring and re-training costs. More than 245 IT professionals took part in the research.

Here are some selected highlights from the Q4 IT Employment Report:

1. 22% of IT professionals believe the economy is getting stronger, up from just 13% the prior quarter.

2. 8% of tech workers believe more IT jobs are available now, up from 11%.

3. 42% of tech employees are confident in their ability to find a new job, up from 40% the prior quarter.

4. 63% of IT workers remain very confident about the future of their current employer, a slight increase.

5. Just 16% of IT employees believe they are likely to lose their jobs, down from 19%.