Have you heard of the Technology CEO Council? Neither had I until recently. The council is made up of a strange mix of tech CEOs from organizations including Applied Materials, , , IBM, Intel, Micron, and Motorola. Why this group and not Adobe, Cisco, HP, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Oracle, and Symantec? Beats me.
Anyway, the group published a paper in early October called, “One Trillion Reasons: How Commercial Best Practices to Maximize Productivity Can Save Taxpayer Money and Enhance Government Services.” The paper stresses the need to reduce federal spending and suggests some IT initiatives in support of this objective. The initiatives include:
The paper is available at www.techceocouncil.org.
I agree with the spirit of this paper as there are plenty of ways to use IT costs savings to reduce overall federal spending. That said, the paper is pretty weak and self-serving. Specifically:
The CEOs also need to remember that their own internal IT organizations are far different than those in the federal government. When EMC executives mandate a massive VMware project, all of IT jumps into formation. It doesn’t work that way in the public sector.
There were certainly some good points in the paper, but overall it is really a marketing piece put out by a lobbying organization. In my humble opinion, there is some irony in this paper and organization–while the Technology CEO Council puts out a paper about how the federal government can save money on IT, companies like Dell, EMC, IBM, and Intel are happily wasting dough on a half-baked lobbying/PR organization. Funny world.
Tags: Applied Material, CIA, Cloud Computing, data center consolidation, Dell, DHS, DISA, EMC, Federal Enterprise Architecture, FedRAMP, FISMA, IBM, Intel, Klinger-Cohen Act, Micron, Motorola, NASA, Technology CEO Council, Vivek Kundra Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
The international horse show wasn’t the only event in Washington DC this week; I participated in the Virtualization, Cloud, and Green Computing event in our nation’s capital. One of the guest speakers was Ira “Gus” Hunt, CTO at the CIA. If you haven’t seen Gus speak, you are missing something. He is very strong on the technical side and extremely energetic and entertaining.
Gus focused on cloud computing activities at the CIA (I’ll blog about this soon), but I was intrigued by one of his slide bullets that referred to something he called the “encrypted enterprise.” From the CIA’s perspective, all data is sensitive whether it resides on an enterprise disk system, lives in a database column, crosses an Ethernet switch, or gets backed up on a USB drive. Because of this, Hunt wants to create an “encrypted enterprise” where data is encrypted at all layers of the technology stack.
The CIA is ahead here, but ESG hears a similar goal from lots of other highly regulated firms. When will this happen? Unfortunately, it may take a few years to weave this together as there are several hurdles to overcome including:
A lot of the technical limitations are being worked on at this point, so the biggest impediment may be based upon people and not technology. We simply don’t have a lot of experience here, so we need to proceed with research, thought, and caution. To get to Gus Hunt’s vision of the “encrypted enterprise,” we need things like reference architectures, best practices, and maturity models as soon as possible. Look for service providers like CSC, HP, IBM, and SAIC to offer “encrypted enterprise” services within the next 24 months.
Tags: CIA, CSC, EFS, EMC, Emulex, Encrypted enterprise, Gus Hunt, HP, IBM, KMIP, Microsoft, Oracle, PGP, RSA, SAIC, Symantec Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
There is a glimmer of good news on the venture capital front. In Q1 2010, venture funding rose 38% from a year ago to $4.7. What’s more, the pool of VC money is spread over 681 companies–a 7% increase from Q1 2009.
Good, but not great news. Most of the dough is going to biotech companies while investment in clean technology tripled.
The bad news? Investment in software declined 1% year over year. Remember that in Q1 2009, we were preparing for runs on banks and Hoovervilles.
While I have no data, there is anecdotal evidence suggesting additional bad news. I speak with security companies all the time and I simply don’t see VCs investing heavily in this space.
Perhaps they got burned investing in the 5th NAC, anti-spyware, or UTM vendor. Maybe they think that Cisco, Check Point, Juniper, McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro have everything covered. It could be that many believe that the whole tech space is mature, so they are chasing the new new thing in other technical areas.
I’m not sure why the VCs are eschewing security investments, but I do know that this is a problem. Why? At a time when attack volume is steadily increasing, cybercriminals operate like Fortune 500 companies, and FBI directors characterize cybersecurity attacks as “an existential threat to our nation,” the VCs are moving on to perceived greener pastures. In other words, there is serious demand for next-generation security skills and technology, but the supply-side continues to invest elsewhere. Bad economics and bad for the digital assets we all depend upon.
Okay, I understand that the VCs are in it for the money and nothing else, but something is wrong with this picture. It seems to me that when demand exceeds supply, there is money to be made. I’d like to see the VCs invest in security as a patriotic act, but I’m not optimistic. Therefore, I have a few ideas for the “smartest guys in the valley” on Sand Hill Rd.
The lack of VC investment in security could have broad implications moving forward, so the VCs can’t sit on the sidelines. It’s time for the rich guys to get more involved and proactively champion security innovation and investment rather than sit back, drink Merlot, and wait for business plans to come in. Our digital security may depend upon this.
Tags: Check Point, CIA, Cisco, DOD, DOE, Federal Government, Israel, Juniper, NSA, Symantec, Technion, Tel Aviv University, Trend Micro, Venture Capital Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
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