Collabri Group LLC

Just looking over an Information Week article warning that the mobile spectum will be running out of bandwidth on their data networks in the coming years, due in no small part to the popularity of the iPhone. I was an avowed Blackberry user for the last 5 years and finally switched over to the iPhone this year when the 3GS was released. The final nudge it took to get me over to the iPhone was the enhancement to enable the keyboard image to turn horizontally thus making it easier to type – quite an important feature in my view.

Besides accessing my Exchange email and calendar via ActiveSync, I have been able to access the web, and utilize about a dozen small web applications that serve up content from Facebook, Google, YouTube and other rich media outlets, or which serve special purposes like telling me when the next train arrives. Based on my flat rate pricing for data I confess to accessing these facilities without much concern as to the bandwidth consumed…not very green of me. But it’s exactly these use cases that have made accessing data over wireless a huge success, and threatened Blackberry’s turf in the business mobile space. I certainly am exstatic about my switch to the iPhone and hope not to move back. Rooting now for the FCC to begin allocation of additional spectrum – something I would not have thought about before today.

Was puzzled by the findings in a CIO Insight posting this week entitled “More CIO’s Block Social Networks“. The content presents the statistic that 54% of CIO’s have policies at their company that completely prohibit employee use of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Also that 16% of the policies allow limited personal use and that only 10% are liberal allowing unlimited use. This concludes by stating that Nucleus Research analysts estimate that companies could get a 1.5% productivity boost by banning Facebook in the workplace.  So 1.5% is about 7.2 minutes out of an 8 hour day, unless my calculator is broken. What is the cost of the ill will created by blocking access to consumer sites? A lot more than 7.2 minutes a day to be sure. I’m with the apparently 16% of companies who believe a simple policy allowing for limited personal use is respectful and reasonable. Just like any policy matter, if someone is out of bounds, that will be a management issue, not a control issue. I’ll tweet this on Monday….in the meantime, trick or treat…

Echo & The Bunnymen came out of the punk and goth movements in the late 70’s & early 80’s and have continued to produce great recordings to this day.  Last week they presented their seminal 1984 work “Ocean Rain” at the Fox theater in Oakland, CA with live orchestra.  This was a revelation, from the first track, “Silver” to the last title track. The orchestra was integrated perfectly into the mix and was much more prevalent than on record.  The strings, horns, and percussionists propelled their sound forward, accenting the drama of every song. Singer Ian McCulloch’s voice was in great form and has aged like fine wine. Guitarist Will Sergent brought out his rare assortment of guitars and accented the music with his unusual, attentive and precise playing. They played every track from the album, in sequence, including the decidedly non commercial, brooding wonders “The Yo Yo Man” and “Thorn of Crowns” which Ian introduced by asking “are you ready for this?”. The whole ensemble brought the house down with the final titular track “Ocean Rain” arguably one of their greatest works and a fan favorite in concert since it’s release over 25 years ago. Echo got this all perfectly right – it was brilliant to go about presenting this powerful album with strings, winds, and added percussion making this a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The second half of the show found the band performing much of their best material from what is now a 30 year career. Highly recommended!

Spoke last month at an Ingres, RedHat, Exadel event focusing on the promise of developing new applications with Java and hosting the results in the cloud. Naturally, my section was focused on Ingres and our part of the technology stack that includes RHEL (OS), JBoss (App Server, Dev Platform), and Ingres (DB). Exadel is a partner of both RedHat and Ingres and they provide professional services to help companies plot and implement a cloud strategy.  Exadel talked in particular about their forthcoming effort to release an open source cloud accellerator based on this same stack of components. An interesting quote shared from Gartner from last December: “Through 2013, 90% of market-leading, cloud-computing providers will depend on OSS to deliver products and services.” OSS is officially mainstream in the cloud and that’s great news for me and my CIO colleagues!

Okay, summer recess is over.  Time to reopen my twitter account (maybe), dust off my blog (definitely) and get back to it!  Lots of bands out on the concert circuit made the summer enjoyable – I only blogged here about a few of these shows, but also attended concerts by Foreigner (with replacement singer), Yes (with replacement singer), Pink (no need for a replacement singer), Yeah Yeah Yeahs (sounds like Siouxie anyway), Porcupine Tree and finally U2 (almost in the cloud). Was planning to go to Boston this fall, and was able to time it so as to see this show.  It’s billed as the U2 360 tour and sports a massive stage resembling a space ship. Lots of technology on display, but the band was relaxed and unforced, in as fine a form as ever, highlighting new and old material and even breaking out the seldom played title track from “Unforgettable Fire“.  Best track – “Stuck in the Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” acoustic which seemed appropriate for these times. See if you can catch the flight when it comes near.

Working today on slogans for our new VectorWise project.  Background:

The Ingres VectorWise project provides superior database technology that will allow industry developers to fully take advantage of advances in modern processor and storage hardware. Initial results show that the Ingres VectorWise project achieves more than 10x performance gains over existing solutions.

As CIO, I am going to take on the task of hosting the outcome of this project at Amazon and potentially other cloud service providers, to give everyone a glimpse of resulting solutions.  Been thinking of tag lines – want to play on performance, and cloud messaging – any other ideas?

Ingres VectorWise: Lightening Fast, In the Cloud

Ingres VectorWise: That Just Happened

Ingres VectorWise: _______<-your slogan here!

Recently went to see Coldplay at the Shoreline Ampetheater with some best friends.  Had seen them at the start of this tour and though you could tell they were a bit road-weary, the show was still great and the energy was high.  Lead man Chris Martin delivered strong vocals, and the band retained much of what made this tour special, including playing some tracks from small stages among the audience. At the end Chris said “see you in a few years” by which time I expect they will have recovered!