John's Music Blog

I spent an hour today with an Onaro customer and through the conversation learned a little bit about how different companies handle the separation of duties in IT processing.  I met with the customer to better understand the critical decision criteria that were behind his choice of Onaro, what features were most valued and what alternatives were considered.  Turns out, at the time of his decision several years ago, he didn’t see many alternatives.  Onaro, which was an independent software supplier at the time, was recently acquired by NetApp, a storage systems company.

This customer originally licensed Onaro’s SANscreen offering to ensure that the company’s IT change-control process was being followed in the storage network.  SANscreen maps the entire data path from the host bus adapter (HBA) in the server, through the cables and switches, ultimately to the storage array.  Anytime someone makes a change to the configuration of his fibre channel storage area network (FC-SAN), he gets a notification.  If the change hasn’t been authorized through the change-control process, he investigates.  As we were talking he showed me several alerts, that he had just received on his Blackberry, regarding changes that had not been authorized. (more…)

In all of my excitement about Facebook, I forgot to mention Xing, to which I was introduced by Billa Bhandari, who is CEO of Akoura.  Akoura offers some interesting security software.   If you use Akoura’s DataSecure product, you get a perfect excuse to use the word “obfuscation” in polite conversation.  DataSecure is a software product that, in the company’s words, “protects information through the use (of) unique obfuscation technology and strong authentication that transforms any sensitive information into plausible covers.”   Personally, I’m interested in both obfuscation and plausible covers.  I have a feeling that there are some government agencies similarly interested.

I first met Billa, when he and I worked at State Street Bank.   I’ve posted a profile on Xing, and I like the way in which it visually shows you how you are connected to other people, but I am a long way from being a heavy user.  OK, I only have one connection, which is Billa.  But Billa is connected to over 2000 people at last count, so Billa’s a good person to know.  Which reminds me, I owe him a call.

Are any of you using Xing?

Last month, at the request of a friend at Genesis Partners, I facilitated a roundtable discussion with Chief Security Officers (CSOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from a few major global companies.  The assembled group was part of a technology advisory council that the firm leverages to help guide them in investment decisions.  There’s nothing like a few generals in the trenches to tell you what the “real world” is like.

Prior to the roundtable discussion there was a brief introduction by Dr. Henry Kressel, who has just written a book entitled “Competing for the Future: How Digital Innovations are Changing the World.”  He closed his remarks with a cautionary comment that those of us who live in the United States need to prepare emotionally for a world in which our children are substantially worse off than we.   The premise is founded in part, at least, on his accumulated evidence that digital innovation is moving rapidly away from its previous center of concentration in the United States.  I’m not sure if it’s some sort of accelerated innovation entropy, but there’s little doubt that very innovative technologies are now coming out of countries and regions that had previously contributed very little to the digital revolution.

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I’ve always been one to appreciate the support of an IT department.  Notice, I didn’t say “a good IT department.”  I mean any IT department.  No matter how underfunded the department, I can pretty much guarantee that an IT department will do a better job of satisfying my information-access, communication and collaboration needs than I can do on my own.   They build, install, and support a variety of email, customer relationship management, accounting, and collaboration tools that make sure that I can do my job better.  Since striking out on my own, however, I am, from an applications perspective, pretty much on my own.

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