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Latest read: The Changing Role of the CIO

We live in a world of constant change in IT. O’Reilly’s The Changing Role of the CIO provides a foundation regarding Big Data for any IT team and every manager, executive or board member. Today if your not embracing change your getting run over by it whether you know it or not.

The Changing Role of the CIO From the corporate boardroom to the campus research lab we indeed are undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift in our digital lives.

Without a doubt it is also an educational shift. Questions of Excel cubesets in a world of unstructured big data analytics will be a much needed training opportunity not for your IT team but actually or your entire workforce.

The Changing Role of the CIO is about the opportunities to engage your IT team over data. Today data is fueling actionable analytics not just vanity metrics. The IT team needs to embrace the idea that data is the new oil.

After leading your organization to a cloud solution that eliminates in-house, legacy enterprise systems you never can look back. Helping my organization migrate to a CMS public cloud that reduced just one enterprise service $400,000 annually resulted in our senior leadership never looking at me the same way. You gain a seat at the table.

And due to the nature of the mobile beast, The Changing Role of the CIO shows its now easier than ever to measure quality engagements in real time with your customers. The future of data, how it can be measured, immediately reported within your office or from the other side of world is a game changer.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Google Innovation Internet2 Network Reading Technology

Latest read: Big Data at Work

Big Data at Work is a good book for reviewing tested analytics case studies by Tom Davenport. As I began reading this I found myself reading an update to Tom Davenport‘s great analytics book Competing on Analytics that I read in 2008 which IMHO really set the standard. Big Data at Work is the follow up with tested business cases.

big data at workIt seemed like an eternity that analytics are now realized as a critical business strategy for universities. Peter Drucker said it best: if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.

While much shorter than his Competing on Analytics, Big Data at Work is a must read. In Higher Education alone the Big Data at Work case studies by Davenport can serve as near perfect blueprints in the dynamic world of campus networks and services migrating to cloud.

Davenport needs to convince nobody that Big Data is a growing field, yet even in 2014 the number of colleges offering degrees in Big data science is not yet up to speed. More importantly he shares how traditional Business Intelligence is struggling to adjust to the analytics and big data era.

For as much as Big Data at Work contributes to the requirements in both technology and IT professionals, his suggestions that management stands in the way of more game changers outside of Silicon Valley. Yes Hadoop and MapReduce have forever empowered LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo and other startups. Healthcare, banking and insurance are markets who have already embraced and are excited about the abilities of big data for their customers.

Davenport is pretty upfront about what is needed: colleges have not fully embraced Big Data. Their mistake is assuming Big Data is a Computer Science degree. A good chapter of this book reflects on the inability of management to adopt Big Data for today’s competitive market. Is it surprising to see only a hand full of college programs sending grads to the likes of Google? More and more companies are looking to regional campus partnerships for Hadoop big data efforts. Yet many of those colleges still have no existing undergraduate or masters-level degrees in Big Data.

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Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation Internet2 Network Technology

Cloud computing illustrated

The history of computer thinking and the revolution of utility in cloud computing:

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Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation Network Technology

Game Changer: InBloom at SXSWedu

InBloom is hoping that when you combine the best games, tablets, flat screen TVs and schools that real 1:1 education becomes a reality?  Kinda maybe the game changer we need to make

InBloom made quite an impression at SXSWedu 2013.

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Cyberinfrastructure Design Education Globalization Innovation Network Technology

WaaS: Warehouse as a Service

As the crowded cloud space continues to rapidly change today’s business landscape an emerging service is finally just arriving: Data Warehouse as a Service or WaaS, is joining SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and the still late-in-arriving SuperComputer as a Service or SCaaS.

Is it remarkable to see this type of new service that offers data warehousing as a service? This big data service can be consumed rapidly across companies and still keep the hardware layer in the background.  While Amazon’s RedShift (still in limited preview) will capture a lot of attention, BitYota is just coming out of private funding.  BitYota is moving their solution around SaaS:

Warehouse as a Service

Clearly we are moving into a dynamic change in network enhanced services for a new cloud empowered internet.  BitYota’s initial focus is mobile, advertising and educational applications.