I've noticed that the nature of my CxO conversations have changed when it comes to security, and it has a lot to do the size of the security market, but not for the reasons you might expect.

With the introduction of Software Defined Data Center into the pantheon of industry jargon, is the IT industry about to be assaulted by another round of confusion and hype and what does this mean to your Cloud and DevOps initiatives?

Many companies will mistakenly assume their failed CRM implementation (as measured by forecast accuracy) is a result of bad technology, or a lack of "discipline" on behalf of the sales force, their management or both. In many cases the knee-jerk response is to replace the technology, the people or sometimes both only to find the problem hasn't gone away. All the while, the customer relationship continues to suffer.

As any of my friends will tell you, I have a love of tinkering with technology. Whether its consumer or enterprise grade, I get a thrill out of getting my hands dirty. Sometimes just for the sheer intellectual stimulation, sometimes to solve a real-world problem I'm dealing with for friends and family.  But, open source software can drive me nuts and I'll think twice before supporting my own systems again.  Here's what I learned...

If you’re not aware of AIG, this in an enterprise that’s had to contend with change at a rapid pace at a massive scale, with hundreds of subsidiaries and business partners and eight lines of business (LOBs), each with its own divisional CIO. As they transformed they had to ensure application integrity while accelerating speed of responsiveness to change. All while being asked to contain or restrain costs.

I had the opportunity to speak with Abe Naguib, Senior Director of AIG’s Global Performance Architecture Group at HP Discover as well as during a longer podcast where we talked about what it takes to cross organisational boundaries and to deliver a return on that investment.

On the 20th of July, one of the less than two hundred people who've visited space left us for a higher orbit. I bet you started to think about all of the male astronauts you knew who might have passed on? It's not your fault - whether it's doctors, physicists or programmers - media has largely conditioned us to assume that technical, hard sciences are exclusively the stomping grounds of men.

However, as Sally Ride, Marie Curie, others have demonstrated, woman have had an outsized impact on the field—when given half a chance. The question really is why are we not doing more to encourage them?

The term DevOps has taken 3 years to become something of an overnight success. There are probably more myths and misunderstandings about it than there are hard facts. This is especially challenging if you’re a CIO or senior IT leader trying to make sense of whether it’s worth taking a look at.

To help cut through the noise, I sat down with Gene Kim and Patrick Debois, two of the DevOps movement’s most widely practiced individuals. We sat down to swap experiences and to discuss how a CIO should be thinking about DevOps. 

The rapid growth of cloud services is challenging even the biggest names in the Internet to deploy new applications faster. The increasing importance of cloud and web services also means that reliable operations and availability is critical to their success.

For the last 5 years O’Reilly’s Velocity conference has focused on sharing what works and what doesn’t for the largest web presences on the planet.  I was there live blogging for xthestreams and to capture stories for future episodes. 

There was a lot of great content, but three sessions really stood out for me...

In case you hadn’t worked it out, I’m an apps nut. I believe that software, and apps in particular, have never been more important to an enterprise’s ability to differentiate and innovate. Every org I meet is under increasing pressure to deliver applications faster because I believe, apps have a shelf-life. 

Yep, just like last week’s bread, apps get crusty, moldy and ultimately useless. They are perishable goods and just like any other kind of inventory, any application that is stuck development and not in production creates waste and reduces agility. A situation that’s made all the more challenging due to constantly changing business needs.

There ARE ways to help you build faster, but you need to think like a boundary spanner...

I'm going a little off topic on this post (get used to it) because, just having wrapped up the US leg of our semi-annual user conference, I couldn't help but notice that the buzz and excitement of our confernece didn't jive with the recent news that many other, often long standing conferences have closed their doors. 

In fact one customer said they get so much out of the conference, they're even contemplating taking annual vaction time to ensure they can attend guilt free. So what's going on?

For those of you who aren’t fans of the movie Ghost Busters, the title of the blog, “crossing the streams” is a tip-of–the-hat to their ghost busting technology and their need to use it unconventionally in order to emerge triumphant.

Keeping with the science-fiction theme, father of the term cyberspace, William Gibson’s quote “The future has already arrived.  It’s just not evenly distributed” reflects the same idea and rings true of my own experience.