Securing Cloud Data

June 12, 2015 Mike Lewis Cisco, Cloudera, Featured, Professional Development, Project Management, Routing & Switching, Technology, Training in Business

Information security in any public cloud can meet contractual commitments and still allow your data to escape into the wild. This discontinuity is the subject of articles across the web, including documented cases of secure infrastructure plus lax polices equaling a data breach. Cloud providers for storage, services, application, infrastructure, etc. provide services and pricing that many executives and end users find enticing. The per-click, per-gig or per-transaction-only fees get our attention. The built-in redundancy, access from anywhere and ownership-eliminating possibilities cause us to think, how can this be a bad thing? Finally, the rigorous security compliance standards that some cloud service providers meet allows us to think, this will be OK. And it can all go very bad with one click.

Elements of a Digital First Life, Desires and Readiness

April 17, 2015 Mike Lewis Cisco, Cloudera, Featured, Professional Development, Project Management, Routing & Switching, Technology, Training in Business

In 2015, information, or data with meaning, has transitioned from a commodity to a utility. In the minds of those creating a digital first life — where information flows to and from those who need it without access or permission worries — information access is the thing. Just as you do not consider the source of the power when you turn on a light switch or charge your mobile device today, in a digital first life you may not know the source or the effort required to deliver information anywhere or anytime you need it.

IT Workers in 2015: Hire for Fit, Train for Skill

March 25, 2015 Mike Lewis Cisco, Cloudera, Featured, Professional Development, Project Management, Routing & Switching, Technology, Training in Business

As the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed workers continue their downward trends in 2015, the trend creates additional question about high demand and highly skilled workers, such as IT workers. If the overall employment rate is 94.5 percent what is the rate for those with highly desirable skills?

Moving from N Scale to M Scale: Compute On Demand in 2020

March 4, 2015 Mike Lewis Cisco, Cloudera, Featured, Professional Development, Project Management, Routing & Switching, Technology, Training in Business

Developing a vision of what information technology will look like in 2020 requires a bit of knowledge, speculation, luck, and the willingness to extend current integration trends. Connecting Internet of Things (IoT), Software-Defined Infrastructure (SDI) and cloud integration to move from the current N Scale (aNy Scale) computing evolution toward a more consumer friendly M Scale (My Scale), creates one vision of IT in 2020.

New IT Requires New Skills for 2015 and Beyond

January 22, 2015 Mike Lewis Cisco, Cloudera, Featured, Professional Development, Project Management, Routing & Switching, Technology, Training in Business

As IT evolves from craft to process to service integration — new jobs, new roles and new functions emerge. The current move toward mobile, cloud, apps or app-like data interfaces provided by XaaS vendors will create the need for IT people who understand essentially every part of the information technology ecosystem. To fill the new roles, IT people will have to know the technology, understand the services, create relationships with service providers, know the contract support language, and grasp the underlying architectures that connect a multitude of vendors into one shared interface.