September 2005

Katrina and Zotob have some things in common.

From Jim Pietrocini, CEO RL Phillips Inc.

I am writing this while flying a Delta flight back to the east coast.  I have a hall pass from the wife to attend the Navy- University of Maryland football game during the Labor Day long weekend, then followed by Navy- Stanford (my reunion weekend).  The excitement of tailgating and enjoying the college gridiron has been extremely leveled by the events this past week in New Orleans.  I have friends and business associates from my days in the Navy that worked and lived coastal Louisiana and Mississippi and many have lost their homes.  The event hit home this week, when we received an email of a young IT professional sending his resume and asking if we had any positions opened. He had just lost his home and possessions from Katrina and wanted to move to San Diego County.

RL Phillips federal group has supported the Navy Meteorological and Oceanographic program directorate for the past 15 years.  RL Phillips team was involved in the development of a weather information system for the US Navy in the mid-90’s and gained a valuable appreciation for the collection of environmental information, disseminating that information and providing computer based tools to help forecast the weather and interject how the weather affects mission critical systems such as flying jets to targeting tomahawk missiles.  Bottom Line is that “Weather does MATTER”.  Today, RL Phillips supports the Navy by managing an innovation laboratory at the Coronado Naval Base and provides systems engineering support at the Space and Naval Warfare Command in San Diego.  While watching CNN on the morning of Hurricane Katrina hitting the Louisiana/Mississippi coastline, it seemed the region’s population had an attitude of “it will not be THAT BAD” or “If we survived Camille in 1969, what else can be worse.”  Days later, we are now seeing the effects of poor preparation and a city that was not prepared for the worst.

Zotob, a funky name for a malicious software worm, hit our internet and networks in mid August.  Our commercial small/medium business (SMB) IT services team spent 3 days upgrading and patching our client servers to ensure everyone was safe.  Our SMB client base has grown to over 30 clients in a little over 18 months, evidence that information technology is definitely a core piece of a businesses daily operations and core infrastructure.  Zotob hit over 175 companies including General Electric, Caterpillar, and UPS. The worm dug itself into the “plug and play” code in Windows 2000 and opened an internet relay chat channel back to servers which then downloaded more nasty code that could turn the machine into a zombie to allow it to spam other machines or create a denial of service to other servers/computers on the affected network.  Fortunately, all our clients were not running the older Windows 2000 operating system and are kept current with XP Professional, but the event reminded business owners that attacks on the internet, like bad weather, will never go away. I even wonder if the event was more of a “cry wolf” and most business owners are becoming complacent.

Information Security has gained acceptance since September 11, 2001 (footnote- I am flying back to San Diego on the 9/12 vice Sunday 9/11).  Large enterprises and small businesses are getting educated on firewalls, intrusion prevention, virtual private networks, spam filtering, ad-aware software, and spy-ware.  How much to invest/spend on information technology in general or what information security mechanisms must a business deploy are questions that must be on every small/medium business plan.  Similar to the city of New Orleans living below sea-level with levees that could handle a Category 3 hurricane and pumps that would protect any flooding, the wrath of Katrina changed the rules of the game.

Some factoids and points related to information technology and information assurance for small/medium size businesses to comprehend:

-       The federal government recently received a report card of a D+ on how they handle information security for government networks.

-       The GOOD.  Businesses have spent the past few years learning the power of the internet. Email has become a core application.  Accessing information via email from work, home, or at the hotel is becoming a critical piece of your business processes.  Fax Servers, sending PDF files, accessing databases via websites are becoming day to day activities.

-       The BAD.  The internet is also a medium for corruption and the evil side of society.  Five years ago, a hacker was a young pimple faced teenager having fun hacking into computers. Today, organized crime and terrorist organizations are hiring software/network professionals across the globe to hack into businesses to make money. Hacking databases of credit cards, Fake websites (termed “Phising”), and developing the next worm/Trojan is becoming common practice.

-       The UGLY. The Department of Cybersecurity terms the internet as the “Perfect Storm” for the criminal world. Anonymity prevails on the internet. I received an email today from a former Navy Information Security professional now working at the information security officer for the Colorado Governer’s office.

• We updated yesterday’s diary with the information of fake emails and domains being used to get donations for the Katrina Hurricane and Brian Krebs just updated the Security fix blog, with new information about these fake domains. Some that we strongly suspect so far are katrinahelp.com , katrinarelief.com and katrinacleanup.com.

-       A recent survey of businesses show over 51% will increase their IT budget and focus on better access control, secure remote access, and ensure up-to-date patching of systems.

-       The University of California at San Diego had several their databases of personnel information compromised.

There have been several headlines in 2005 related to computer security breeches.  There is also a feeling that most businesses, especially the larger names, do not want to admit that they lack certain security infrastructure to deter the potential threat.  RL Phillips also runs into small businesses not wanting to spend a dime extra on their firewalls, backing up their data, and even having a discussion on disaster recover plans (Where does your business operate in the event of a power failure or earthquake?). Unfortunately, like Katrina, it takes a major “event” to convince our personal and business mindset to change.  There will be internet event in the future that will affect our businesses and cost money to fix.  The events of Katrina and Zotob should continue to drive home the fact that all businesses should “BE PREPARED”.

I am a strong advocate that small businesses are what drive this country’s innovation and spawn the large enterprises of the future.  Small businesses move faster and touch customers that several large companies do not care about.  In the same light, I am rooting for underdog Navy over the Terps and Cardinals.
Go Navy

* RL Phillips has setup a “care package” for the Katrina victims. We are collecting any small items (gum, canned food, toilet paper, etc) and will send on behalf of RL Phillips and our clients. Please email Sheryl Estey  for more information.

The post Bad Weather and Computer Hacks are similar appeared first on iGouge.

On the homefront, I have all my files on my laptop going to Google Drive and also synching to Dropbox (double cloud backup).  It is great to access all my files (documents/spreadsheets, presentations) from my ipad, iphone, or any laptop or desktop that I maybe in using throughout the day or night (even my one chromebook).

The post Innovation for ISR appeared first on iGouge.

If you don’t have an Apple iPhone 4s yet, go get one and be one of the 37 million people that bought one over the last three months.  Siri introduces you to natural language processing and for those not old enough to remember LISP and artificial intelligence (AI), she begins to make us think of what machines can do within our government/federal projects.  By the way, I was a Google Android phone user for 3 years and have to admit that the iPhone 4S is a game changer.

So what is the Gouge Software Development Kit (SDK)?

First what is “gouge”.  I founded the company last year based on a few key trends happening in our world. One is “big data” or the situation surrounding all of us. We have too much information flowing into our computers, data centers, brains, eyes, yet still have to solve every day problems and “filter” or turn this information into knowledge.  In addition, most of this data is “unstructured”.  To add to the situation of “big data”, we also have a focus on computer network defense and cybersecurity.  How do we protect our networks? If we can’t protect our networks, then how do we protect our data?  How do we at least migrate to protecting data that is important to coming up with decisions or meeting our mission(s) or service level agreement(s).

Gouge was a term that I learned of at the Naval Academy. It is slang for “knowledge”  or cutting through the mounds of information to find exactly what you needed to know to pass a test, pass a flight lesson, or get past that mean (pain in the ass) upperclassman.  In the spirit of the apple revolution taking our world, I stuck an “i’ in front of “gouge”.  My wife hates the name (RL Phillips was named after her maiden name and did not sound like gouging out an eye!).

So the Gouge software development kit will be a tool/environment for integrators (both government and industry) to develop key applications around machine learning. Specifically, the technology is termed “biologically inspired intelligence”. It is analogous to a brain that is “unbiased” and can both be trained and untrained.

The technology transforms information into a generalized rule set and processing environment. Gouge is capable of multiple higher-order concept formation, i.e. it can learn new concepts by taking multiple layers of context information into account such as visual information structures in pictures or the whole range of lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic context in text. These information structures are transformed into generalized rule sets, which can then be applied to further input facts.

Unlike other approaches, the Gouge SDK enables machines to learn with or without human supervision. The technology automatically generates a lightweight ontology (look that word up!) that detects all relationships among data elements. Learning occurs at the time data is ingested — so it is very fast compared to other approaches.

When incorporated into products as software or embedded as a chip solution (future release), Gouge enables solutions that feature new functions with large improvements in cost and performance.

The features and benefits of the holosemantic data space in combination with the mathematical approaches (math geek combined with free-thinker) are:

• Self-optimized information processing
• Self-controlled content organization
• Multiple higher-order concept formation (multiple high order co-occurrence)
• Autonomic learning via multiple context recognition (unsupervised machine learning)
• Self-generalizing of learned concepts

There have been several projects around statistical models of machine learning and Gouge takes a very different approach.  The technology is based more on self-adapting or self-learning and focuses on being an un-biased “brain” that learns from the unstructured data (bits) that it is fed.  Today, the technology is focused on textual information (in any language). Future builds will support binary data and motion video.

Early projects have focused on bulding case studies for the technology and helping the customer understand that the  human needs a complimentary partner that can handle and process the large amounts of data that is being fed into our lives, enterprises, and overall decision making.  I look forward to graduate students (Georgia Tech, Naval Postgraduate, CMU,etc) coming up with ideas to make our government more efficient and secure.

Some ideas or thoughts to stimulate the application developers in the audience:

• Analysis of twitter feeds. What knowledge can be obtained by monitoring the 140 character feed. Also, should we look at twitter fields as separated tidbits, or correlate and group them by author, geographic zone, etc.
• Analysis of YouTube comments (Who would think to look at those silly comments)?
• Future analysis of YouTube videos
• Analysis of specific government documents to find duplication or contradictions. This could apply to DOD Policy documents, DIACAP/C&A documents, training documents, message traffic, etc.
• Analysis of resumes or fitness reports to find trends or special capabilities in personnel. Finding trends in people, career paths, and to aid the human resources side of the government.
• Analysis of Facebook post. (My recent cruise aboard the USS Carl Vinson in June 2011 showed me potential issues of allowing wide open use of facebook.  Fully understanding the “mood” of the ship’s crew via facebook post data can be valuable.
• Analysis of open internet websites, blogs, pictures, etc
• Understanding the range of machine learning. When is it best to use statistical models vs. association and self learning/un-learning.
• Gouge applications running on computers that compliment the intel analyst on the watch floor.  This technology does not replace the human analyst, only complement and enhance the human planning and decision process.
• Cuts thru human behavior and known cultural biases.  Supports a joint combined command by adding un-bias to the team of sailors, airman, marines, and soldiers. Makes purple more purple!
• Helps support new concepts and ideas centered around planning and decision making in a more collaborative web 3.0 environment (over traditional command and control).

The role of the Gouge SDK is to be a catalyst to spawn a multitude of ideas, applications, and cost-effective development of solutions by today’s government and industry partnership.

Please send your ideas on possible applications and to learn more about helping you be successful to gouge@igouge.com.

The post Get the Gouge and build new solutions…. appeared first on iGouge.

Looking for Another Rickover

Finding a Rickover for Information Technology

By Jim Pietrocini

The post Rickover remembered appeared first on iGouge.

In U.S. Navy jargon, gouge is the essential piece of information; the heart of the matter; or outstanding test-preparation material (such as an old test copy). A person who is tired of hearing all the extraneous information surrounding a problem might exclaim “Just give me the gouge!”

Adding an “i” to “gouge”, amplifies the new world of the internet and introduction of web technologies that have increased the amount of information available to everyone. The future will be affected by our ability to covert this information to knowledge in order to streamline business processes and make quick and relevant decisions.  The mission of iGouge is to help transform and translate the bits of “Big Data” into knowledge that will be used for mission critical decision making.  We see the future as a combination of machine learning and human interaction.

The post What is iGouge? appeared first on iGouge.

A parody on Software as a Service and the US Navy

The beginning of this blog has to discuss a simple analogy of what the Navy is going thru over the past few years in the area of enterprise solutions. Since we are in the middle of a financial crisis, I could not help being amazed that Apple Computer has over $75B in cash on hand, more than 3x what the United States has available.  So, please excuse the Apple infested story to follow, but it is fair to say that the music industry is leading the evolution of moving from product licensing to service subscription models.   This large industrial segment of our economy is having the same cultural roadblocks/restrictions that the Navy will go thru with a mind shift from product licensing to service subscription licensing (and we will not forget about the security piece).

First, let me introduce you to Commander Nimitz (fictional character).  Cdr. Nimitz has over the past 5-6 years blended in with our civilian society and owns two classic iPods, and iPod touch, MacBook pro, and recently bought an iPad2.  He is an avid runner and works out 4 times a week at the base gym.  He started out in the “enterprise”, by going to Tower Records in Pt. Loma and buying Music CD’s every weekend.  He would take the CD’s home and listen to them on his stereo or in his car.

Each CD was between $9-$15.  It is probably fair that Cmdr. Nimitz and most people can fill several boxes of CDs that have been purchased over the past 20-25 years.  I will not go into the life of Admiral Smith, who has boxes and boxes of Albums, 8 Track tapes, and Tape Cassettes. (that is another legacy discussion).  Back to Cdr. Nimitz.  A few years ago, he was an early adopter of iTunes and also spent his duty days, burning his CD collection to his iTunes library (thus allowing his legacy CD collection of tunes to be played on his collection of iPods.  In recent years, he has not purchased one CD from the store and does not even use his CD player in his car.   He migrated from CDs to purchasing songs via the iTunes store at 99 cents a song or an entire album for $9.99. Better yet, he did not have to buy the complete album, but only had to buy those songs that he wanted to listen to on his iPod (don’t forget this when we thing of how much we use all those features of MS Office).  Cmdr. Nimitz checked his apple account a few weeks ago and he had spent over two thousand dollars in iTunes purchases over the past two years.  Some of the songs he had purchased in 2005 were very rarely played (remember Mariah Carey).

How many CDs do you still play?

Six months ago, Cdr. Nimitz opened up an account with Pandora.

The service was free and he could listen any kind of music he wished. For an annual rate of $36 he could get the improved subscription (better sound quality, no commercials, etc.).  He would now listen to music on his iTouch via Pandora.  He did not give up his iTunes subscription, but he has noticed that over the past few months, Pandora meets about 80% of his needs and when he needs to reach back and play a favorite song or album, he will go to his iTunes library.

*We will see a heterogeneous mix of subscription cloud based services to compliment legacy client/server solutions.

Since Cdr. Nimitz was stationed at SPAWAR for 3 years in PMW 170, I have to discuss the Navy world of “limited bandwidth”.   Cmdr. Nimitz loves to listen to Pandora at his condo. He connects his iTouch to his stereo system and threads Pandora songs thru his 802.11 WiFi via his 15MB TimeWarner Cable Modem connection (that he pays $39.99/month).  There are bandwidth and data download limitations when he is using his iPhone via the cellular network, since he has a 5GB limit/month.  Those data plans are kind of like those Inmarsat bills handed to the Navy battle groups (plug for future KaBand Spot Beam technology i.e. Viasat 1).

Cdr. Nimitz has started to change his purchasing habits away from buying songs via iTunes and is starting to use the Pandora Service. Also, he hardly ever goes to Blockbuster to rent a movie. (Oh yeah, they went bankrupt and the local Blockbuster store is becoming a Sushi/Fish restaurant).  Cdr. Nimitz loves his $7.99/month Netflix SUBSCRIPTION rate.

He can stream a movie (limited selection, but it is growing) instantaneously and is not stuck with late fees or a collection of DVDs (don’t forget to dust the DVD cabinet).

End of parody…..

The Navy should identify and study those enterprises that are taking advantage of the “subscription-based” service model.   The initial applications to discuss are email services and the NGEN program should take a hard look at the Google Mail pilot being conducted out of SSC Atlantic.   Pilot programs are great ways to introduce new technologies and cost effective business models. The future NGEN enterprise should use these products to gain a full understanding of their capabilities and limitations.  I plan to blog about this in more detail, but here is a short assessment via bullet list, of using Google Business Aps for the past 18 months and continuing to live and work within the Navy environment (as a contractor around SPAWAR/Navy commands):

• No need to purchase any hardware (exchange server) or pay for the labor cost of an IT engineer to setup Exchange 2007/2010
• No need to have sufficient bandwidth in my office to host an exchange server (in fact, using 4G MiFi is very cont-effective over a Bonded T-3 contract).
• Deal with security around hosting a server in the office.
• Deal with power/electrical loss at the office. Hello Irene!
• Did not have to purchase MS Exchange license.
• Costs-, $50 dollars /year for a Google Business App subscription which included    
  • 25GB of Space for email/documents, etc.
  • Full access to other Google Services such as Google Docs, Calendar, Tasks, Google Sites, Full implementation of anti-virus/spam filtering
  • Ability to share documents/co- edit /comment on documents- essentially a better solution than Sharepoint (no  cost to implement/procure sharepoint
  • On the negative side, The Navy is very Microsoft Centric (use to Powerpoint, Outlook, Sharepoint (to some degree).  As the weeks go by, Google is building more Microsoft supported solutions (Google Synch, etc).
  • Google Apps motivates a group to collaborate (vice what I see with implementing around Sharepoint  (mostly due to a lack of building out the correct webparts on Sharepoint and a leadership push to collaborate via portals vice “just email it to me”.

Other subscription applications to investigate include:

Evernote- a great cloud application for sharing notes, audio, video, images on all your devices

Dropbox- great file sharing in the cloud

Basecamp- great cloud sharing application and easier to install and use than Sharepoint.

Current Navy efforts related to Software as a Service

The Navy should investigate/collaborate with the following projects/programs that would support a better understanding of the benefit and cost savings from Software as a Service implementation.

Trident Warrior 11- Asset Management/Situational Assessment

PEO C4I/PMW 790 demonstrated the use of BMC/Remedy technology during the recent Trident Warrior. The focus by the Navy, primarily 10^th Fleet on Situational Assessment of the Navy networks, requires the ability to fully grasp the number of assets (devices) that the Navy currently own/operates on their set of federated networks (NMCI, three variations of One-Net, afloat backbone, NAVFAC, BUMED enterprise, etc.  This blogger encourages the evaluation of the results of Trident Warrior and will push the Navy leadership to develop an overall plan on what solution could be integrated into the Navy networks.  As with most program solutions, we are most familiar with traditional client/server hardware/software solutions that are acquired thru traditional licensing.  The Navy pays for a license per seat or cost per server (that supports a set number of client licenses.  In some cases, the Navy enters into an Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) with the vendor.  History has shown that these ELAs tend to be not fully defined or have an open-ended term  (i.e. contract/ELA for x number of years, does or does not include annual maintenance, does not include certain upgrades or plug-ins, etc.)

The introduction of web or cloud applications adds a new dimension to the way the Navy can solve their enterprise requirements:

• Help Desk: The Navy has a federated collection of Remedy licenses and CMDB databases.  It is recommended that Service-Now’s new SaaS model be investigated and evaluated in comparison with other Help Desk and ITSM solutions (i.e. CA’s tool, Open Source Xenoss, etc). In addition, BMC has a SaaS business model.
• ITSM- Investigate the Service Now feature sets (provided as cloud services).
• The ability to place the Service Now services within a private/hybrid NGEN Cloud.  The Service Now solution is not
• Security: We cannot have a discussion about solutions today without having a concrete focus on the impact that the cybersecurity threat has had and will continue to have with our Navy networks.  I was involved in the “Sweet 16” project to provide increase security to the NMCI networks.  When SaaS is involved, the Navy must fully understand the issues and mindset changes with security (or trust) of the cloud application.  It should be noted that this cloud service could come from a public or private (or even hybrid cloud).  The Google Navy pilot has done some work with DIACAP/FISMA compliance of the Google Cloud.

SSC Pacific providing an ITSM Service

The E2C lab at Spawar Systems Center- Pacific in San Diego is currently hosting the CMDB for the NMCI Program.  This raises some good thoughts on future Navy Enterprise Services and how Software as a Service could play a key role.

• Initiate the discussion and analysis around hybrid cloud services.  The Navy entertains the thought of using DISA Enterprise services for such things as email/exchange services.  In this case, a Navy Echelon Three could support a hybrid cloud/data center (government facility supported by government/contractor personnel) that would provide a key enterprise service in the area of ITSM/Help Desk/Asset Management (note asset management is a key first step in having a grasp on Situational Assessment (SA).   The Navy first needs know that devices/assets they have on their enterprise(s) network(s).
• Shifted customer focus from total performance management to performance metrics
• Improved accountability and traceability of IT service budgets/assets

Benefits of SaaS Model and effect on Navy Enterprise Networks

SaaS Value Proposition

Defining SaaS in the Navy Enterprise.

The words “Software as a Service” very aptly define a new model of selling software.  You buy the software as an online service, paying for just what you need as you need it.  You sign up for the service with an annual or monthly fee (typically based on the number of users), and you then go online to use it.  Instead of purchasing the software for an up-front license fee, and then paying 18-22% of this per year for maintenance, you pay a recurring fee forever (typically 20-30% higher than licensed maintenance).

The important word in this definition is the word “service.”  While the real product you are buying is software, you do not “purchase it” and “own it” – rather you are buying a service agreement, which includes commitments from the provider to deliver features and capabilities, up-time, storage, network bandwidth, ongoing support, upgrades, and a wide variety of configuration and data options.  You expect the solution to have various tools, such as the ability to load HR records, the ability to connect it to other systems (through a rich set of programming interfaces), the ability to customize the workflow and look and branding, and the ability to develop a wide range of ad-hoc and periodic reports.

Additionally, instead of owning the software and running it in your own IT shop, you are now part of a community of customers using the software.  Today modern SaaS vendors help you connect to this community online, by accessing support, peer groups, shared content, and in the case of recruiting even shared job candidates.

The SaaS model is quite different from licensed software:  you have little or no IT costs;  you do not need to worry about software upgrades;  and the vendor takes responsibility for ongoing support, service, and protection of your data.  From the vendor’s standpoint SaaS is an excellent business model:   while they must invest in a re-engineered product and more hardware infrastructure, they develop software on a single platform and avoid the problem of multiple development teams working on multiple versions of the product.

Recommendation: SaaS Licensing Model.  Compare the difference in licensing costs between traditional client/server or current Enterprise License Agreements (ELA) and how ELA’s are defined.

What considerations lead to this recommendation? For example, the Service Now licensing model is based not on the number of users in the enterprise, but the number of actual people that use the service (more details can be found at their website).

Recommendation: SaaS Reduction in Engineering Services/Consulting Services.  Implementing a SaaS solution reduces the amount of engineering services needed to setup, install, and support the required solution.

What considerations lead to this recommendation? The Navy spends considerable amount of time and money to setup traditional enterprise software solutions. Hardware is required to be procured, proper configuration, STIG/IAVA Compliance, etc.

Recommendation: SaaS Additional Features.  Adopting the SaaS model provides extra benefits/applications that are gained from other clients/end-user features that are added to the total solution.

What considerations lead to this recommendation? As a user of Google Business Apps, iGouge sees the value of when Google Docs or Google Mail add’s new features. There is no software to load, update. The features just appear. Google also provides a “Lab” area to which specific widgets/apps can be tested prior to ‘Turning on’ for the complete enterprise.

Recommendation: SaaS Licensing Model.  SaaS and Cloud will cause political/business transformation issues with the NGEN program.

What considerations lead to this recommendation? The Navy has past examples of not wanting to adopt new business models or processes due to the negative impact it will have on the current workforce.  The Navy should consider the transformation or change management that will be involved in migrating to the SaaS or cloud business model. Security (or Trust) is an area that needs to be discussed in depth.

Final Curtain

During a recent underway period with a strike group, it was very clear that the Navy was evolving to a more SaaS model. The ADNS increment 3 technology allowed a 10MB pipe to the ship, allowing the staff/crew to access SaaS like services (Defense Travel System, Facebook, Gmail, etc). To some degree, one could call the “chat” application a SaaS like application (at least its peer to peer architecture).  The bandwidth will increase (as mentioned with the onslaught of KaBand solutions, which will make the overall SaaS model more interesting in the Navy enterprise.

The post NGEN should start listening to Pandora! appeared first on iGouge.

Making RJ 45 connectors and doing the pin out was an art (or was that science !).

Fast forward almost 20 years later and I am sitting at the Space and Naval Warfare Command (PEO C4I offices) with my Verizon Thunderbolt and an iPad.  I am reading my business email by turning the Thunderbolt into a 4G hotspot (allows up to 8 connections). I am getting about 17MBs download and 5-7MBs upload.

Why would I ever connect to the wired network?

In fact, support contractors on-site are not paying for NMCI seats and opting for Verizon 4G mifi cards and a laptop (and bringing their own wireless printer). Instant Office at a very nice price.

The great technologies provided by Verizon are changing how we think about the future of Local Area Networks.

The wireless LAN has become a core, strategic network for tomorrows enterprise?

The future growth of smart phones and tablets will force wireless networks to become just as important as wired networks.

We cannot hide behind “lack of security” or “old culture”.

My old office paid $700/month for a T-3 bonded internet connection (old DSL). I get 7 times faster bandwidth at home on my timewarner cable modem (22MBs down for $59.00 /month). Most remote offices are paying over $200/month for T-1 (1.5MBs) as this tends to be the standard company policy for remote offices (The Navy has several remote recruiting offices, reserve commands, and detachments that could be re-architected for the Next Generation Enterprise  Network.

The upcoming Next Generation Enteprise Network (NGEN) should push for wireless 4G networks to be key parts of Naval Base infrastructure and be a alternative pipe to carry secure packets of information.

From a recent blog… (see the complete blog at slashdot)

Aberdeen’s surveys show that 82 percent of companies already have smartphones on their wireless LANs and 75 percent have tablets, compared to 95 percent that have laptops, and by spring 2012, 100 percent expect to have laptops in use on their wireless LANs, 99 percent to have smartphones, and 96 percent to have tablets.

But exports says those are just the tip of the iceberg of what is running on wireless LANs these days. Companies report the following types of devices already in use on their wireless networks:

• 43 percent have wireless printers, expected to rise to 56 percent by spring 2012
• 38 percent have e-book readers, expected to rise to 49 percent
• 32 percent have bar code scanners, expected to rise to 42 percent
• 32 percent have asset tracking systems, expected to rise to 43 percent
• 31 percent have video surveillance, expected to rise to 44 percent
• 30 percent have video monitors, expected to rise to 47 percent
• 29 percent have videconferencing, expected to rise to 52 percent
• 25 percent have inventory systems, expected to rise to 38 percent
• 20 percent have digital still cameras, expected to rise to 28 percent
• 19 percent have entertainment systems, expected to rise to 25 percent
• 17 percent have gaming systems, expected to rise to 21 percent
• 12 percent have heating and air conditioning (HVAC systems), expected to rise to 19 percent
• 9 percent have electric meters, expected to rise to 19 percent
• 6 percent have appliances, expected to rise to 12 percent

Most of these devices are used for mission-critical activities, yet most wireless LANs aren’t designed to be mission-critical,

As is often the case, those companies that have taken a strategic view of their wireless LANs — centrally managing them as part of the core LAN, not as a separate network from the wired LAN — are both getting better performance than the rest. They typically have twice or more the performance across a series of measures, including problem resolution time (3:1), application response time (2:1), end-to-end wireless LAN performance (3:1), and end-to-end LAN performance (2:1).

The post Crimping RJ-45 connectors appeared first on iGouge.

http://www.defpro.com/news/details/24304/?SID=20ab138d53b2069e6c9b80d8f083c983

The post Views on Navy NGEN appeared first on iGouge.

CIO wary of DOD cloud migration with current tech

Department making strides in efficiencies, acquisition and IT, but work remains

By Amber Corrin

Apr 21, 2011

Defense Department CIO Teri Takai on April 21 cautioned against jumping too quickly into cloud computing.

“If we move to a cloud environment with today’s technology, it would make the world worse, not better…from an enterprise perspective [and] from a security perspective. We’re still at stage one. How do we make sure we’re doing it in a way that’s secure? We have to remember that cloud services have to fit into overall services,” she said.

Takai also said a wholesale DOD move to cloud computing would require better organization and strategy, since the department’s volumes of data spread throughout different places could prove difficult to find and access in a cloud environment.

Instead, she said the broader DOD could take advantage of some cloud technologies by taking a cue from the aggressive plans of the individual services to implement their own data center consolidation strategies.

In another area, Takai said she remains focused on meeting the needs of deployed forces.

“It’s easy to get caught up with the things we do at the Pentagon, in the defense community…we get caught up in the day-to-day,” she said, speaking at a briefing sponsored by Input. “Long-term planning is essential, but at the same time we have to be focused on the individuals on the ground and giving them what they need.”

Takai also highlighted the need to understand and defend against the growing cyber threat.

“The kinds of [cyber] threats and challenges we’re facing are growing exponentially…[and] it’s important to understand the level and scope of threats at DOD,” she said. “Cyberspace shouldn’t just be an ancillary part of how we defend the country; we need to integrate it as a domain.”

To do so, DOD is collaborating with Homeland Security Department, the Defense Information Systems Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command on different cyber-related issues, including the development and implementation of policies and framework, Takai said.

Takai’s office is also collaborating with other government agencies to take on evolving DOD efficiency requirements and IT acquisition reform. She said DOD is working with Federal CIO Vivek Kunda and the Office of Management and Budget to improve efficiencies in portfolio management, enterprise architecture and transparency.

_________

Comments are most welcome!

The post What do you think of the move to the Cloud by the DOD/Federal Government? appeared first on iGouge.

Fast forward 26 years and the topic of the day was “knowledge dominance”, which ironically was a spin of the Navy slogan of “Information Dominance”.  Since my tagline of iGouge is “turning information into knowledge”, the views of this great man were extremely interesting and relevant.  His first comment was (paraphrasing) that ‘we should not think that we can dominate anything” and that most of the “taglines” that come of Washington’s beltway are not reality from the soldier in the fight (remembering such things as “Copernicus, Joint Vision 2010, ForceNet, Network Centric Warfare.

It is important that we understand the difference from information (all those packets of data that people want to send around) and knowledge. Knowledge is gained from repeated processes (doing the same thing over and over) and from correlation of bits of information.  I am reminded that we need to fully understand what is going on with new technologies and applications like facebook and twitter. More specific, what ardvark (vark.com) was doing before being acquired by Google and  even the focus of friendfeed (social knowledge).  Are we moving to a generation that only acts on snipits of information and fails to disseminate, correlate and process these bits of information to create knowledge?

Back to General Gray’s comments, these are in no order, but make us all  think harder…..

- All we need to make sure the marine knows is:

• What to do
• When to start
• Who can help him

-We have to understand that a legacy hierarchical C4I infrastructure of several layers is old school. Remembering the book, Pyramids to Pancakes (that great chapter in the book by Michael Lewis),

We need to see how the Taliban are organized in cells and each cell is small enough to operate (without much overhead) and each cell communicates to each cell in a peer to peer way.

Really let your young people (in this case – young marines) loose and give them the environment to do great things.  Do not burden them down with old legacy tools, products, or culture).

Don’t get too dependent on GPS. Our sailors and marines still need to do their job when technology is not there (i.e. “Denied Environment).  I am worried that we do not have enough patience, funding, or leadership to make sure we can plan these contingency operations.  We may not have to teach the new generation how to use a slide rule, but we must make them aware of an environment where they can do their job without the luxury of the internet, power, etc.

Enough for this post. I have to speak into my  new Thunderbolt to get to my next meeting using the Google Maps/Navigation app!

I will be attending this year”s USMC C4I dinner which always is a very patriotic event to honor our fallen marines.

The post Don’t forget how to use signal flags! appeared first on iGouge.