Notes from the Consultant's Jungle

One of the contrarian voices in enterprise use of Web 2.0 technologies has often been doubt of the value of the “Wisdom of Crowds.”¬† That is, an apprehension that the input from widespread collaboration may have only marginal value toward the development of the product or initiative, or even worse- will be a waste of [...]

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I’ve written before about how the various aspects of our lives drive us to use multiple online personas, and that this is a shortcoming of social networking sites today. What I’m referring to here is that we all wear multiple “skins,” and to represent these personas online one needs separate profiles on separate social networking [...]

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An article appearing today on Reuters describes how researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University’s Machine Learning Department have been experimenting with brain activity related to thinking of words.¬† The process involves capturing MRI images of a person’s brain as they are shown and asked to think about specific words.¬† The image captured on the MRI of the [...]

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We’ve become fairly comfortable with the structure of our IT organizations, but new trends in technology product development are increasingly challenging these traditional models. In the traditional (i.e., over the past 10 years or so) IT organization we have roughly aligned the organizational chart with a logical stack corresponding to our data processing footprint. We [...]

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I learned this morning that Jayshree Ullal has decided to leave Cisco to pursue other opportunities.  Given that I find myself often working with the folks at Cisco on strategic technology initiatives, it makes me sad to see Jayshree move on. On several occasions I had the pleasure of working with Jayshree on forward looking technologies [...]

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In many discussions about Web 2.0 technologies’ role in the enterprise, it’s interesting to me to notice the skeptical voice and contrarian opinion. These are valuable points of view, and essential for one to properly vet the application of the technology in terms of value delivered to the Business. Many times, the contrarian voice represents [...]

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In 2006, Amercan data centers consumed more power than American televisions. Collectively, data centers consumed more power than all the TVs in every home and sports bar in America. That really puts a new perspective on it, doesn’t it? For the past few years, the “P-word” has loomed large in the dialogue around data centers. [...]

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By Carrisa Baptiste- Mobile Devices Consultant, Advocate Networks, LLC It has been years since I’ve used a paper telephone book, I use yellowpages.com. Several of my friends have received their diplomas from online educational institutions. Let’s not forget my eleven year old nephew who has a cellular phone and uses the internet to connect with [...]

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Momentum is a powerful force, and momentum coupled with synergies cannot be denied. Today IBM is announcing their entry into the Container Data Center space. Starting with their newly released iDataPlex high density server product, and riding the wake of Microsoft’s widely publicized embracing of Data Center Containers, the recipe was there for a product [...]

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You may be familiar with the “Dollars per KW plus Dollars per Square Foot of Computer Floor” white paper from the Uptime Institute for data center construction cost estimation. Following the update to their widely referenced Tier classifications paper, this benchmark for thumbnail cost estimation has been updated as well. If you’d like to look [...]

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