Here’s a selection of stories that came out in a week dominated by financial bailout news.
Dana Gardner at ZDnet with a very good post about the coming standardization around cloud computing. Dana believes that customer lock in will come from superior exectution, rather than proprietary hardware and software. I hope he’s right:
More important than in past vendor sporting events, the business model rules. The cloud model that wins is the “preferred cloud model” that gives IT shops in enterprises high performance at manageable complexity and dramatically lower total costs. That same “preferred” cloud attracts the platform as a service developer crowd, allows mashups galore, allows for pay-as-you-use subscription fees. Viral adoption on a global scale. Oh, and the winning cloud also best plays out the subsidy from online advertising in all its forms and permutations.
Yes, we can expect several fruitful years of jockeying among the major vendors, the rain makers for the cloud providers — and see gathering clouds of alliances among some, and against others. We’re only seeing the very beginning of the next chapter of IT in the last few weeks of IT vendor news.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2734
Catherine Holahan and Heather Green at BusinessWeek warn of a coming slowdown in online advertising, particularly in still experimental areas like mobile and social networks. Note to PR types -Holahan is leaving BW:
When budgets are tight, advertisers tend to look for proven methods, such as ads placed alongside a Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO) search, and place less empasis on experimental venues, such as social networks, experts say. “Mobile and social networks will be hit,” Fradin says. It’s harder to prove that ads placed on a social network or embedded in a video are effective in luring Web surfers to a site or enticing them to make a purchase. Matt Sanchez, CEO of online video advertising network Video Egg, says he expects growth to slow in the coming 12 months. He expects that some smaller, less well-funded video ad and ad targeting firms will have difficulty sustaining their businesses. “The next 12 months will be tough,” he says.
Government Computer News reports prospects look good for an update to the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), which many critics complain has become far more about precise paperwork than about improving agency security:
S. 3474, The FISMA Act of 2008, was introduced Sept. 11 by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) to address concerns that FISMA compliance had become a paperwork drill without ensuring improved IT security. The bill would require annual security audits by agencies and would give chief information security officers broader authority to enforce FISMA requirements.
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/47205-1.html?topic=&CMP=OTC-RSS
Carolyn Marsan of Network World highlights how the federal government is taking a big step forward for online security through the implementation of DNSSEC for the .gov domain:
When you file your taxes online, you want to be sure that the Web site you visit — www.irs.gov — is operated by the Internal Revenue Service and not a scam artist. By the end of next year, you can be confident that every U.S. government Web page is being served up by the appropriate agency.
That’s because the feds have launched the largest-ever rollout of a new authentication mechanism for the Internet’s DNS. All federal agencies are deploying DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) on the .gov top-level domain, and some expect that once that rollout is complete, banks and other businesses might be encouraged to follow suit for their sites.
http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/news/2008/092208-government-web-security.html?page=1
And of course the first “Google Phone” (i.e. using the Android OS) launched. Here’s a side-by-side comparison to the iPhone from Philip Elmer-DeWitt via Fortune:
Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3G and the G1 with Google (GOOG) unveiled on Tuesday have a lot in common.
Both are smart phones designed for users who want easier access to the Web than is offered by the current generation of RIM (RIMM) BlackBerries.
They share a lot of features — high res (320 x 480 pixel) color displays, motion sensors, support for GPS and Bluetooth 2.0, and venues for third-party apps. And they share some of the same flaws — both are locked to their respective networks, both lack video recording capability and full cut-and-paste text editing, to name just a few.
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/09/24/g1-vs-iphone-the-tale-of-the-tape/
And related — Gizmodo reports that Google has published a patent that could allow for user phones to “sniff out” available cellular coverage: